Big Beat Steve

On a SLIGHTLY related matter: Do we know (or is there any rundown on this) to what extent (beyond Benny Goodman) any portions of the Savory recordings have been issued before? The other day, while browsing through my vinyl collection, I pulled out Fanfare 15-115 ("Small Band Jazz- Rare Broadcasts") released in 1977 and featuring Red Norvo (1936), Bud Freeman (1940), Miff Mole feat. Muggsy Spanier and Pee Wee Russell (1944) and "The Captivators" (feat. Ben Webster and CharlieShavers (1943), and the fine print on the back says: "This series of LPs comes from a private collection of over three thousand hours of broadcast recordings that has been assembed, in many cases, with the help of the participating musicans themselves". Who was that, I wonder? Surely not all LP releases of airshots etc. from the Swing era can have been Boris Rose stuff, right?

Quite true. Being more in the analog camp as well, I remember it took me a lot of LPs with duplications and overlaps and helter-skelter programming to get most of what I wanted from his prime years (luckily most were bought secondhand at quite affordable prices). The Lunceford orchestra was not an easy one to buy efficiently on vinyl. I also agree with what others said about his output being uneven at times. I remember buying one of the Classics CDs (covering his Columbia years) at the time for a handful of tracks I did not yet have and on listening found most of those fairly non-essential. BTW, I cannot remember having ever seen that vinly box set anywhere anytime in the record stores (and we did have excellent jazz departments here in the 80s). No doubt I would have snapped it up right away without hesitation - but no such luck ...

This must be just about the briefest and curtest "first post" ever posted here, don't you all agree?

For the life of it I cannot remember the first jazz LP I ever bought at the age of not quite 15 in 1975. It must have been one of these: - ODJB twofer with their classic early recordings on RCA VIctor - Fats Waller piano rolls on a twofer on the (French) Monkey label - Duke Ellington "Best Of" (1927-41) on Joker (Italy) and/or various others from that label widely available here, including NORK and Muggsy Spanier's Dixieland Band (1938) - Artie Shaw big band 2-LP compilation covering his years up to 1945 (Yes, I approached the subject more or less chronologically, often also dictated by availability in the Special Offer bins suitable for a student's purse in the local record stores)) These were among the very first jazz LPs I ever bought new, and then there were some LPs and 45s bought secondhand at fleamarkets during those months (I still must have these but cannot pin them down either). I also remember when my mother tried to make me listen to the MJQ's "Fontessa" as "being jazz" (Third Stream was as far as she ever got into jazz from her classical music listening habits) this sounded DISTINCTLY ODD to me (her black-label original Atlantic pressing has long since joined my own collection, though ... )

Yes, FLP555 was the number given. Neither Jepsen nor the Goldmine Album guide listed it so I wasn't sure if this was the same one or not. Particularly since the album cover artwork looks more 50s-like and not so 60s-ish to me (reminds me of those mid-50s EmArcy LPs). Dear Mods, would it be OK to post this except from Down Beat Jazz Record Reviews annual, Vol. I, here - purely for background info?

Don't forget his April, 1937 recordings with Frankie Newton. Fairly "straight" (by his standards) but hinting at things to come.

This one?? (Cover shot downloaded from eBay many, many years ago, Freeway catalog number given by a seller was a different one, however - yet discographies list only FLP1)

Bloodnock Rock'n'Roll Call anyone? Maybe a case of who was copying whom? Although from what I have heard of them (just a smattering, but anyway ...) I really cannot see much common ground between the Goons and Slim Gaillard (the very DICTION of the Goons alone pigeonholed them ....) As for whom Spike Milligan befriended, I'd rather say it was his namesake (JONES, that is .... ) With maybe a bit of Stan Freberg mixed in ... And maybe even Red Ingle? Slim Gaillard really was in a class of his own.

So I suppose all this material is AFTER the contents of his (1958 IIRC) "Rides Again" album?

During my university years in the early 80s Stearns' book was about the only book on jazz in the "Americana" section (intended for research on cultural history etc. of the U.S.) in the library of this (small) university. That book certainly got around.

Now you put the doubt in me. Given their reissues of King material I was assuming they were as thorough in obtaining the material as with Modern/RPM, but upon checking some CD reissues i find indeed this carries a note that the "Copyright is owned by G.M.L. Inc" so it appears they leased the recordings. So, I plead guilty to glossing over the facts and until further evidence, forget my assertion. At any rate, European reissues of King R&B and country material HAVE been plentiful right from the 80s onwards and it seems indeed so that the author of the article in the opening post was unaware of them.

Yes, King Jazz IS totally separate. According to Randy McNutt's "King Jazz of Cincinnati" pictorial history (a volume in the "Images of America" paperback book series), Syd Nathan founded King in 1943. I must admit I am too lazy to look details up now but in those years of the indie label boom there were quite a few labels with identical names but based in different cities that did operate in parallel (often in somewhat different areas of popular music too, which might have helped keeping them under the radar of anybody out for a lawsuit, or maybe the labels really didn't bother in many cases )

Dude, I was just being a bit tactful (in a way ...). And I was NOT referring to music fans or even more or less serious collectors (who am I to judge the collector community AT LARGE?) but what music SCRIBES (who ought to have known better if they had done their homework) failed to know. ONE case in point: "Music Hound SWING - The Essential Album Guide", edited by Steve Knopper, Visible Ink Press.

My copy (Amazon too) wasn't that expensive. Did I hit a scoop? But if I understood Face corectly he was asking specifically for recommendations about "early jazz" (which I loosely interpret as Pre-hard bop). This would be some 60-80 pages out of your 300-something, isn't it? Which does not invalidate your book one bit, or course, but may just explain why it was off the radar in previous recommendations.

Ira Gitler: "Swing to Bop" I find this book a LOT more fascinating than Scott DeVeaux' book on the same subject matter (mainly because - much as I like the Hawk - I find his book blows up Coleman Hawkins' importance to the development of bop WAAAAYY out of all proportion - as if Hawk was the beginning and core of ANY development of modern jazz) As for THIS focus of yours ... "which has a strong focus on using music as a window into social, cultural, and political history .." have you tried these? Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin' The Dream - Big Band Jazz and and the rebirth of American culture David W. Stowe - Swing Changes - Big Band Jazz in New Deal America I have my troubles with both of these (and a few others in that vein) as the (scholarly) authors here and there make it plain obvious beforehand they have an agenda they are out to prove and arrange their "story" to prove their point. So the reading and understanding of these books might need to be taken with a dose of background knowledge. But STIll they make for interesting and instructive reads. And at the other extreme (going beyond "Hear Me Talkin' To Ya"), how about getting your class to sift through fact and fiction in Mezzrow's Really The Blues or pinning down the essence of Condon's We Called It Music?

Yes, "Little Labels Big Sound" is a nice book, though I remember it (it's been a while since I read it cover to cover after having bought it) as lacking a bit in depth and leaving me a bit hungry for details. So I find the angle of that 2008 article linked above quite interesting and original because it puts things into a smoewhat new perspective. As for King reissues, yes they have been reissued comprehensively from waaay back in the 90s (or even 80s) but the bulk of this happened on the U.K. ACE label (they bought the King vaults and archives lock stock and barrel) and I've repeatedly found U.S.: scribes (at least those outside the diehard fan circles) being blissfully ignorant of what happened in the reissue world outside the U.S. (unawareness of Bear Family reissues was another of those cases). Who knows ... maybe in the case of King it was a case "cannot be that THEY over there snapped up the deal and we missed out on it?"

Dancing in a PARTNER dance way? That's the point as far as the "dancing" statements in the initial story are concerned. Because this is ONE (not the only one but an important one IMHO) make-or-break point about jazz being perceived as being "cool" (again). Each one of us enjoys specific styles of jazz all for ourselves in a way that probably satisfies only us and handful of others and we find all this cool on a personal level - and it IS - but is this a way jazz AT LARGE might be perceived as being "cool" (again) ever? So let's not mix these two different ways of being exposed to jazz and enjoying it (or not). The bottom line to me is - when we are talking about "jazz", are we always talking about the same thing or do we always know what everyone else who is using the term "jazz" is referring to? The spectrum of what is being called "jazz" today IS very, very wide and I still feel there is a lot of music out there that is being labeled under "jazz" mainly because it fits any other category even less (particularly if people openly advocate throwing any remaining common denominators overboard - such as "no, jazz doesn't have to swing anymore, swing is not that important to jazz today"). And maybe this is the only sign that there still is some "coolness" to the term "jazz" because apparently to some it is a sign of distinction to be sailing under the "jazz" flag (niche existence or not ...). But STILL it is a dead end if you go about lamenting the fact that people don't "get" those strains of jazz that you happen to enjoy and want to see getting wider exposure but that are even a minority's taste within the minority world of jazz. And it doesn't help one bit either if you put down others who might enjoy other forms of jazz that you might find too "lowly" because they are "too accessible" (meaning "too watered down" or "too dumbed down" in the lingo of quite a few out there, it seems) and therefore not "new-music-ish" enough.

Nothing against that. There's room and place for every taste. But you cannot FORCE people into what they are SUPPOSED to find cool. If you want to win them over you have to realize that one of the best ways is to EASE them into the music and let them find ways to open up their ears so they can gradually find their own way into jazz. Maybe not into the sub-segment of jazz your (or I) prefer but another one that THEY prefer. As for the article being a "bummer", doesn't it describe the situation as it is (not everywher, probably, but to a large extent)? So don't shoot the messenger ...

Probably quite true everything mentioned so far ... But ... that part about shaking your booty: I don't think what the author meant was people snapping their fingers, tapping their toes or even clapping when they listen (note : LISTEN!) to jazz. You CAN do that (and all the better if you do) but I think what he meant was when was the last time most everybody (or at least a sizable portion of the audience) flocked to the dance floor as soon as the first bars of a particular tune got them right "into the groove"? So ... when WAS the last time this happened on a wider scale? And then try to answer for yourselves how oh so many of those who probably perceive themselves as being jazz connoisseurs frowned upon and sneered at those parts of jazz that DID manage to pull people to the dancefloor, be it R&B (straight from the modern jazz era onwards), oldtime/dixieland jazz or neo-swing. There were/are strains within jazz that did manage to find an audience that found it cool to attend these jazz events not least of all for the fun of partying ALL OUT to the music. But they were invariably given short shrift by those "serious" jazz listeners and shrugged off as not really being jazz. Maybe this "serious" part of many jazz fans' attitude is the main problem of it all? Food for thought ...? Of course there are different ways to enjoy jazz for oneself. I still get lots of enjoyment out of putting on a platter of West Coast Cool (or Cohn/Sims et al. Eastern cool too, for that matter) when lazing late at night in my lounge chair or being sprawled outside in my garden easy chair, some ice cream and a cool drink and a good book or mag on hand. This IS immensely (jazz-infused) cool to me. BUT that's only me ... and not something for everybody. Just like with those who enjoy other forms of jazz for themselves, including the intenseness of Avantgarde etc. Perfectly fine on a personal level. But not something you can expect to find a wider audience that finds THIS "cool" on a more permanent basis. Not to mention the fact that "jazz" has come to encompass a very, very wide spectrum of styles that hardly anybody can be expected to appreciate to the same degree throughout. Honestly ... as far as I can see the only time this "cool" thing happened in the past 20-25 years was when neo-swing came up (and then up again). But see how all this was blasted by "core" ("serious") jazz fans from Day One. There were good and bad acts at all times (like with any music), but if you could mix jazz and funk etc. into fusion in the 70s, for example, why not mix jazz and punk into neo-swing in the 90s? (Not my favorite kind of bands in that style, BTW, but their crossover approach had something quite legitimate (disclaimer: word used NOT in the "classical music" sense here!) going for it.) Maybe many among the jazz "core" audience (at least many of those who've been into jazz for along time) are their own worst enemies when it comes to turning jazz into being cool again?

Now am I "un-foreign" or just an outcast if I admit that I have records both by Jug and by Hank (Williams, not the Mobe, though him too - a bit ...)? Though I do listen more to Jug than to Hank himself (but a bit more to other country music from Hank's golden days). I don't quite see what this "not getting Jug" is out to prove anyway, and shomehow I have a feeling it is more the "high-brow, high art jazz" listeners (from that era and later) who might turn their backs on Jug, whereas more R&B-open-minded jazz fans will embrace him much more openly. So there IS an audience inside jazz ... (but of course then those high-brow, high-art jazz listeners might want to stop sniffing at those who enjoy jazz for more down-to-earth enjoyment ... )

If it was all about the playing and listening one had done and based his judgements on, I wonder what BREW "Anybody who doesn't play like Lester Young is wrong" MOORE would have had to say about Gene Ammons?

I never liked the "Rare of all rarest performances" LP series as they often appeared to be openly thrown together in a helter-skelter way. At least among those artists that I was somewhat more interested in at that time in a more thorough way there weren't many that filled gaps in a thoughtful way. But I did like the Queen Disc and also Cicala label releases from Italy - they were around, they were affordable to a student's purse and they DID offer rare music not available anywhere else at the time. And primitive layout or not - they were not worse than many of those visually home-made U.S. budget (Boris Rose-sourced?) labels from the 70s. And to be quite honest - in a pinch I preferred (in fact, I still prefer) those primitive layouts to other reissues from that period where the reissuers had nothing better to do than to package music from, say, the 40s or 50s, into a garishly colored, almost psychedelic or disco-funked up sleeve design that did not show the featured musicians or bandleaders in their sharp-as-a-tack 40s/50s style but rather recent photographs of elderly or at best middle-aged chaps attired in ill-fitting, ill-styled 70s garb that did not convey ANYTHING about of the music inside the vinyl. Horrendous! Musicdisc was earlier (70s rather than 80s) and while the live recordings they collated often had incorrect lineups and recording dates (so did other reissue labels, BTW), they covered an impressively wide range of recordings from the 20s to the 50s (as well as some later ones) (including a dig in the Savoy vaults long before those twofers and single LPs recently discussed here were released and some important airshots such as the 1940 Fargo ballroom recordings by Duke Ellington - IIRC theirs was the very first European release). And as for the incorrect data on these LPs I have a hunch in many cases it was not necessarily their fault as some of their releases were taken over 1:1 from U.S. labels such as Jazz Archive.

Seems like we got different sleeve printings of Queen Disc 003 over here. Mine seems to be the same version that Mike got (with the back cover shown below). At least they did get the "Sharine" and the "Poppin" right this time ...:

Two ADDITIONAL ones for the list: I have read and liked: Charlie Barnet - Those Swinging Years Terry Gibbs - Good Vibes (hilarious!) (Since other autobiographies that had input from co-authors are already in that list I figure these would rate as well)

Lucky you! Keep on ...