Big Beat Steve

@Hot Ptah: I wish you luck and will keep my fingers crossed.

Add (roughly) 40 to 50 years to the pictures on this site I linked to earlier https://auraladdict.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/rip-saundra-hummer/ and compare ... Going by the pic with the 2 cowboys on FB, it might well be so ...

You very neatly summed up my impression of the stories she told (and no doubt I have read only a fairly small part of them). Considering all the "oral histories" out there which all have their merits but often lack the sensitive yet necessary editing to bring the (sometimes rambling) reminiscences of the interviewees into a somewhat more coherent and readable form (without sacrificing the essence of the narrational styles), hers would have been a much more readable first-hand account right from the start. Apart from the page I linked to earlier in this discussion, I remember reading somewhere else about her not feeling she was a writer. It's a pity she downplayed her own competences

Part of the Toshiba-EMI (TOJJ-numbered) facsimile 10" reissues from Japan??

Thanks for linking it, BTW. I have several of the Swinging The Blues and Jazzing The Blues CDs from Document so your review might make me spring for that one too.

Stahlnetz! Ah, those were the days ... And the Viscounts too! You sure made the rounds ...

The point is, the snootiness (I'd call it sarcasm - like it or not ) was intentional - because this is a widespread problem, i.e not as a matter of "spoken" sonversation but as a matter of being able to put into coherent WRITING what you want and have to say in any depth. Those 2-line twitterisms and facebookisms really don't help. I witness this with a lot of young'uns (within my family and on other forums where young'uns DO hang around) and usually am fairly relaxed about this because "time will tell" (and "time will show them"). But what I have observed over and over again is that if you have acquired such competences you feel PARTICULARLY at ease if you can make use of them in a setting where it is not about hack work and duties but about fun and your private hobbies and interests. And in most cases I have seen those who "had it together" just made use of it quite naturally and it all made sense. But those who didn't for the life of it were unable to cope, even after repeated, extremely patient questions about what they actually wanted to get at. With those of the older generation who may never have had any sort of higher education it just is so and needs to be accepted as such (life is like that ..., and it'sto their credit they are confident in using a PC anyway) but with the younger ones (particularly including those who basically DID get a decent education) it all too often seems to be so that competences that you used to acquire quite naturally way back now just get sort of lost. A bit like what's happening in some schools where the curricula say "it is no longer mandatory to teach pupils how to write decently in handwriting - they are using keyboards and tablets these days to communicate anyway" (seriously - don't know about the US but this IS what has been on some curriculum agendas here). Can you imagine where we are likely to be heading if this goes on unabated?

Good points too - the points of entry into jazz, including on forums. But like is tried to exmplan in my Miles Davis example above - if the question is too fogg,y how ARE you top provide a useful answer to a newbie? As for other way of getting into jazz - be it Robert Glasper or anybody else ...there is a LOT of snobbery out there among the "old hands" on the forums, particularly when it comes to forms of jazz that ARE accessible as an "introduction to jazz" to the "general music consumers populace" . One thing that really bugged me about AAJ not long after I joined there was that much to my pleasant surprise there were some who actually spoke out in favor of what in the 90s came to be called the "neo-swing" movement (which still went on in places - and still does now, including over here). But as soon as that subject was raised, there was the immediate avalanche of posts by those who found all this of "of no musical merit", "unworthy of discussion", "no real jazz" etc. etc. (like on this forum over here every now and then too, unfortunately). I happen to know of enough cases in this part of the subculture where people got into jazz (which even today DOES include swing springoffs, BTW, not just crossover, avantgarde or world music or whatever today's most frequently used labels are, FWIW) that way and eventuall explored other styles of jazz too. But of course if young'uns are confronted with this kind of B.S. statements they will turn their back on jazz forums too and just shake their heads in disbelief at those old'uns. I'd not be bugged by any such attacks by self-proclaimed popes of "good taste in valuable jazz" who may have "seen the light" for themselves when free jazz came along but fail to see the parallels, for example, between what went into "jazz rock" in the 70s and what happened in the 90s when punk and swing met (sometimes for betteer, sometimes for worse, but often interestingly enough), but I'd understand the young ones who just cannot be bothered by this kind of high-brow lecturing. If that works - fine. I'd be all for it.

All in all I agree. Although ... 1) ... there is no reason to take it as an established fact of life that these shorter "attenton spans" are the maximun they will ever need to master. Of course you have to gradually EASE them into realizing that reading and communicating (and, above all, CONCENTRATING) a bit more is something that will serve them well elsewhere in their lives, particularly in their professional lives where they will HAVE to acquire these competencies if they want to get ahead at all. A discussion board where the subject on hand is FUN would not be worst place to start to GRADUALLY develop these competencies on their own impetus IMHO. Besides, there is nothing wrong with being able to "read coherent somewhat longer written texts and understand their contents". You don't think, do you, that it would be a good idea to ALWAYS sit and watch those "digital natives "of today turn into a state where "digital native" comes to rhyme with "semi-illiterate when it comes to read and write more than 2 consecutive lines"? 2) About those newbie questions à la Miles Davis (which indeed are very frequent and were COMMON over there IIRC): Fair enough - be patient and, again, EASE them into the subject. But how would you tackle a subject like this if that feller is unable, for example, to describe more accurately about what he ACTUALLY heard? Birth of The Cool, Prestige Quintet, Sketches of Spain, Bitches Brew etc.? ANY newbie would consider all these to be totally diferent music by totally different artists and is not likely to find all of them to his liking at the same time from the start (understandably ..). So how do you go about recommending what he expects you to? It's real tough, this kind of ultra-blindfold guesswork tests .... Particularly if (like I have witnessed in occasional discussions of this kind), after someone has explained the problem and asked for particulars of what he heard, the reply sounds more like "How am I to know? YOU are the experts. Why can't you just recommend me something?" ("Attention span" at work again, you know ... )

Particularly since there ARE period photos (like they use for the covers of this series) taken in more or less the same spot that would be in style with the series and at the same time would convey an impression of the original cover. I'd like the Arvanitas reissue to be the first of his two Pretoria LPs (the facsimile reissue of this one escaped me at the time) but I doubt it.

Wait until MG drops by. He might be the most likely one to know.

Maybe this was in her latter days (she passed away in early 2011). https://auraladdict.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/rip-saundra-hummer/ The stories I read on the AAJ forum in the years immediately after 2006 all were very clear and down-to-earth and in fact to me they sounded like coming from a much younger person (until I realized these were personal eye/earwitness memories).

That was about my impression too. I joined there about the same time I came here (discovered both of them at roughly the same time - about 2005 or 2006). Pretty soon after I got there I had to witness a feud between some member (who by coincidence was rather much into swing-style jazz, just like me, so we exchanged repeatedly, even off-forum) and the powers-that-be (probably including both "senior" members and the admins). I canot remember the exact cause but apparently that cat spoke out publicly about certain tendencies in the jazz scene at large that seem to have gone against the grain of some who had a (business?) stake there and eventually he was banned. As I had witnessed similar confrontations on another forum - that relatively soon led to that forum becoming a "ghost town" - in a totally different field of interest at about the same time (and was personally affected there too) this was rather off-putting. Another reason I went there less and less was that for quite a time almost any new discussion that came up in any field of the long and widespread history and styles of jazz was a kind of "Hey I have to do a paper on XXX in jazz at school. Can you fill me in on ..YYY?" Way too much of this. Total clueless and inane stuff where you have got nothing to start with in any way of sensible discussion and exchange of insights. All in all I found the Org people here to me much more knowledgeable overall almost from the start. And the Lester Young corner they had there (one of the highlights) in the long run wasn't better than the one here either IMO. I think the last time I regularly checked AAJ was around 2010. Only very brief and sporadic lurks afterwards, and none for several years now. So - no, it is not missed, except for that lady from the West Coast (Saundra Hummer) who had been around in the heyday of West Coast Jazz and had repeatedly been pleaded with by numerous forum members to write down her memoirs (her reminiscences often were priceless). And then - all of a sudden she had died. A real loss ...

Is it only me or how come the intro of that clip reminds me of Barry White??

That extra track "Just You Just Me" is probably on all the national Black Lion pressings. It's on my (US) AudioFidelity pressing (BL-159) too.

According to the book "The Hip - Hipsters, Jazz and The Beat Generation" by Roy Carr et al., the entire "half a motherfucker" story went like this (as told by Billy Eckstine): We had this little midget, Pee Wee Marquette, the emcee at Birdland, on tour with us. We were on the bus, and he kept stepping over Pres while Pres is shooting dice. "Lemme get out, Pres!" So finally Pres says, "Will you SIT DOWN, you half a motherfucker!" Maybe someone recalls this: Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s you often heard some then-current black pop/funk/semi-jazz tune on the radio that had an (uncredited) announcement (apparently coming from a 50s recording) by the midget at the start of the tune: "And now we are proud to present a Blue Note recording star at Birdland tonight" (or something like this - might actually have been an excerpt from that announcement on the Art Blakey LP). I wonder how many of the average pop radio listeners who heard/bought this tune knew who that high-voiced character at the start of the tune really was ...

Sorry to intrude with a non-closed eyes cover but so you are talking about an unflattering cover photo of Anita O'Day? How about THIS for a REALLY unflattering photo that - what is more - gives a TOTALLY false impression as to the contents? This reissue includes the tracks Anita O'Day did for the Signature label in 1947 - recordings that normally are totally off the radar between her big band and Verve years. I bought the LP DESPITE the cover but this cover made me cringe, considering how much better and more in style it could have been done with a PERIOD photo and cover artwork (like others did with reissue LPs of 40s Musicraft masters, for example). So all in all I don't find the Early Years reissue that bad. That photo just shows she puts her soul in the singing.

If you count those that were released later for the first time, there were these: https://www.discogs.com/label/793646-Specialty-Jazz-Series

Facsimile LP reissues are/were around. Mine is an 80s reissue (no OJC!) marketed by Ace (UK) but pressed in Germany (though marked "Not licensed for sale in the USA & Canada") on the back sleeve... Cover looks every bit like the one uploaded by Paul Secor.

The only recording that I closely associate with this tune is that live recording by Charlie Parker on his "Bird Is Free" LP (Charlie Parker Records PLP-401) which I have owned since my early jazz collecting days. This record credits one JACK EDWARDS as the composer.

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, seems like no Krupa there. Strange ... it was only put up a scant few days ago, and some of the other links on that site go back a LONG way. I'd just been curious about what tracks they programmed there. I am quite eager and willing to make discoveries but very, very often I have been rather annoyed by Krupa's clobbering out the rhythm on the big(gish) drums which to me either sounded overbearing or bogged things down (yes, when it comes to Swing rhythm sections I am firmly in the Jo Jones, Dave Tough et al. camps. ) But who knows what gems ARE out there ...

Why do they show me a page that I am about to leave Facebook when I just want to click on that Blue Lake On Demand link? I never was on Facebook and certainly won't.

The currently listed 2016 printing has 600 pages and measures 24 x 33.6 cm (9.5"x13" according to amazon.com site) which is a wee bit smaller than the 2008 edition .

This is what had me wondering too. I have seen other Taschen books in other fields where they added a smaller-sized, lower-priced edition later on but managed to include all the contents of the earlier one, except that it was downsized, e.g. changing the layout and fitting more photographs on one page. So I wonder what the extra contents of the 700-page editions (vs the 552-page editions) actually are - did they include more previously unseen photographs from that 1960 tour or did they include more West Coast pics by Claxton (which would not be quite as impressive because most of them have been out elsewhere)? And of course IMHO the 552-page editions are the best value by far - 20% less contents (containing what exactly?) but at a price which is only one fifth to one TWENTIETH of the larger editions (depending on which one you go for) is not a bad deal at all. Re- "Pictorial History of Jazz": You have to consider the time this was first published. There was nothing like this anywhere - and not even for a very long time afterwards (the books by Gene Fernett were nice but narrower in scope). So this book IS a milestone IMO. Of course the focus is on documentary illustrations (which is fine in my book - i just LOVE "Swing Era New York", for example) and less so on art photography. But overall there is a place for all of these.

Depends on the period and the singers you refer to. I am slightly underwhelmed by quite a bit of the Dan Grissom stuff. Hasn't aged well.