Big Beat Steve

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.

What's your opinion on the whole book? I bought it several years ago, started reading it, got though about the first quarter and then put it aside for some reason I no longer remember (but was neither bored nor displeased with what I read) and somehow never got back to continuing my read. So some opinions would be interesting to hear.

How about post-Soul?

By all means do so. I certainly won't try to prevent you, and no hand wringing either, just some snickering at what some characters out there come up with. Ha, where did all those concert flyers with those "speed-trash-cum-garage indie" et al. band and genre descriptions go? They sure were/are fun in their explicitness. And to top things, you can string together almost anything and still trigger the reader's/audience's imagination.

You see, that makes some sense - just like Post-Bop does to me: You have gone beyond (I guess) the usual stylistic boundaries of a subgenre but where end up at still shows where you came from and you still are within "rock" (or jazz in the case of Post-Bop). But if you go beyond THE all-encompassing major genre (such as in "Post-Rock") where DO you go from there? And "what is it", actually? (This to get back to your yesterday's question - which is not for me to answer, BTW, but for those who are INTO that genre - but it hasn't been answered in this thread yet, except if by those who refer to it as progressive independent instrumental or experimental - which would certainly make more sense to me than "post-rock". Will ask my kid tonight if he has heard of Post-Metal and where he locates it.

In fact I did like the mood conveyed by most of your tunes I've listened to on Youtube. It's just that even jazz music you imagine with 40s "noir" films often has a somewhat different overall sound to it that is very much linked to that period. But I do see your point that you wanted to do a timeless playlist. BTW, as for this ... ... I wouldn't be that much of a purist anyway: In fact I found that "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" toon movie and its 40s "film noir" setting quite amusing and it could have benefitted from some jazzy "film noir" music scores, including maybe some of yours. However, a long string of one "générique" after another (which is what your playlist might be interpereted as) lacks a bit of dynamics. Like I said, the pace of such a movie can and does vary enormously and it cannot do any harm reflecting this in the music. In fact I did like the mood conveyed by most of your tunes I've listened to on Youtube. It's just that even jazz music you imagine with 40s "noir" films often has a somewhat different overall sound to it that is very much linked to that period. But I do see your point that you wanted to do a timeless playlist. BTW, as for this ... ... I wouldn't be that much of a purist anyway: In fact I found that "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" toon movie and its 40s "film noir" setting quite amusing and it could have benefitted from some jazzy "film noir" music scores, including maybe some of yours. However, a long string of one "générique" after another (which is what your playlist might be interpereted as) lacks a bit of dynamics. Like I said, the pace of such a movie can and does vary enormously and it cannot do any harm reflecting this in the music.

Thanks for this additional info. I have # (2) of the original editions. Found it at what was quite a good price in those pre-internet days in the very early 90s when the market was much less transparent and less chance of finding an outrageously low-priced copy. About the Taschen edition, Taschen indeed had listed this huge deluxe book edition with the 4 large prints at 1,000 euros ($1,250). I kept the descriptive page from their old catalog with my copy of the 25th aniversary "standard" edition of the book so was able to check their prices now. As for the other photo books that Berendt was involved with, copies of "Jazz Optisch" indeed are around (particularly the smaller-sized "Fan Edition" with identical contents) and are nice to look at, though I would not consider it a precursor to Abe's book. It is much too slim for that. As for the comparison with Keepnews/Grauer's "Pictorial History of Jazz"; disagreed again. That book for its time had sensational contents but the PRINTING quality of the photos of "Jazz Optisch" was indeed far better. To me it seems that the editors of the Keepnews/Grauer book goofed with their printing runs. In my early collecting days I regularly perused a library copy of the 60s US edition which was printed in Czechoslovakia (!) and the printing quality was OK to me, given the then standards. Later this copy had disappeared from the library and been replaced by a copy of the 1955 US edition printed in Yugoslavia (!!!) which was decidedly worse. Many pictures came out way too dark. My own copy which I have had for a long time is the second printing of the UK edition of the 60s issue (printed in Czechoslvakia too!). Printing quality (to the best of my recollections) is quite comparable to the 60s US edition printed in Czechoslovakia. Not earth-shattering (as you can tell by identical pics printed in better resolution in other books since) but OK. I wonder what these publishers were up to anyway, getting their stuff printed behind the Iron Curtain in the middle of the Cold War? Did this sit well with everybody in the US or elsewhere in the West? About "Foto Jazz" , this is indeed beyond any sensible price range. Just as costly as the original Dutch edition by Ed van der Elsken. But that recent reprint of the Dutch edition is so well done (and affordable) that one can easily live without shelling out big bucks for the original edition. At least I can. @medjuck:The 2008 edition weighing 9 pounds or so is unwieldy indeed but is even a bit smaller in size than the deluxe edition selling at 1,000 EUR (and weighing about twice as much as the 2008 edition). The 2016 edition that Taschen now has listed is a wee bit smaller in size but the difference amounts to less than 10% if the indications on the sellers' websites are anything to go by. As for this book fitting your bookshelf, it all depends on where you put it: My copy sits next to the Bob Willoughby photo portfolio published by Nieswand in the 90s which is yet larger in size (though much slimmer). Next door are the "Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock'n'Roll" and "Grand Ole Opry - The First Fifty Years 1925-1975" by Jack Hurst which both are a bit larger than Jazzlife too (though not as thick). So - no, my copy does fit the bookshelf and does not look that out of place on it either.

A bit over the top, really, that kind of money ... I do not think I saw this 2005 discussion before but what I do regret is that Stateside the ACTUAL name of the author - Joachim Ernst B erendt - seems to have slipped into oblivion (probably furthered by the unfortunate cover layout adopted by Taschen). Not wanting to blow a local hero's horn (Berendt never needed that from anybody), but it was Berendt who was instrumental in setting up the trip and Claxton went along for the ride to capture the pictures. Text and pictures form an indissociable unit and equal credit ought to be given to both. They did give this equal credit in the original edition of the early 60s. I have had this original hardcover edition for at least 25 years but nevertheless ran and snapped up the 552-page 2008 edition (which has no CD, BTW) when it was on sale for something like 30 euros or so at the local Zweitausendeins shop here in late 2011. I never regretted this purchase , though I do understand to some extent what Neveronfriday complained about in 2005. They COULD have included even more new material. I wonder, BTW, if the 700-page book discussed here in 2005 really holds that much more content or just has a different layout that fit into 552 pages later on. Taschen only refer to their "updated" version of 2003 throughout even in their publicity for the subsequent printings, including a 2016 printing of that book that they have now listed on their site.

Thanks! You beat me to it. Referring to this return question ... ... I was about to post the below when your comment and the answer by Scott D. came up. Who am I to coin a term for a (sub-) genre? Experimental it is for sure. Somehow the overall feel this generates in places reminds me of the music to experimental short films (dating back to the 60s/70s) I saw before (and I can assure you I haven't seen many), and other sounds are reminsicent (at least to me) of some of the German 70s avantgarde jazz we had here, including some of the vocaleseing out to produce sounds where the human voice was put to non-vocal use. What had me puzzled about this "post-rock" term and its implications of going BEYOND the MAJOR overriding genre of today's popular music (which I doubt it does throughout) is just this: If you want to coin a term to describe a music genre or sub-genre, then say what it is but NOT what it is not. See what I mean?