Big Beat Steve

+1 And his 50s VANGUARD recordings too! (Not to be slighted, those sessions ...) RIP (Had not figured he was still was around - and could it be that his name was constantly omitted when talk came up about those musicians still alive who had recorded with Bird?)

Good point and very easy to imagine ... and probably furthered by the fact that even "way back" there were (male) blues singers who were no great vocalists in the stricter (technical) sense of the term as compared to, say, black singers across the spectrum from Jimmy Rushing to Billy Eckstine etc. (and I'm not even seriously including Bon Bon ) but by strictly technical standards would rather qualify as "croakers". However, considering their background and the message they conveyed this was totally immaterial and beside the point and the way they sang was the way they felt and that's that, rough and unpolished or not. But maybe in later years this has been turned around into what you describe as a "license to sing" by those who by ANY yardstick really cannot sing ... Singing poorly today as an imitation of singing in an "rough-hewn" manner back then ...? Though I'd venture a guess there is also some idolatry at work today when evaluating the "real" blues from long ago when there were singers with thin, weak, wavering, unfitting voices too, though it is not always openly admitted by diehard blues fans that such cases did exist (but rather this lack of competence is glossed over as "proof of authenticity") Am just reading "South to Louisiana" where Guitar Gable (no coincidence, that name) makes the point of never having wanted to sing on record because he was aware of his shortcomings as a singer but calling in King Karl instead ... etc. etc.

Still a dance floor filler in certain circles. And then ... Most notable names in the (collective) lineup are Chris Griffin, Ernie Royal, Taft Jordan, Jonah Jones, Red Allen, Charlie Shavers, Tots Mondello, Eddie Bert, Bart Varsalona, Kai Winding, Urbie Green, Lennie Hambro, Al Klink, Sam The Man Taylor, Ernie Caceres, George Barnes, Eddie Safranski, Harry Jaeger, Cozy Cole, Mickey Baker, Oscar Pettiford, Panama Francis.

I agree with you as for the importance of their vocals, I just am pretty sure that others would place more emphasis on their guitar mastery in the overall picture. Or to put it another way, the "subordinate" role of their "guitar accompaniment" seemed to be less clear-cut than with other (particularly earlier) bluesmen. Hence my question.

Assuming that you name these countriest of country blues artists (and granting that country blues is but one of the strains of blues) for what they did with their (guitar) accompaniment, where exactly does the guitar begin to dominate the vocals? What about Brownie McGhee? Elmore James? T-Bone Walker? Gatemouth Brown? etc. (I was tempted to name Johnny "Guitar" Watson next but refrained for obvious reasons ... ) And if these blues artists would indeed be rated more as guitarists than as vocalists then would Bob Koester's statement about "most WHITES" still hold true or wouldn't there maybe have been a split (or "remodeling") earlier on when blues still was primarily a music for the black community?

Good point/good question ... Maybe a case of drawing a line between "those in the know" and "those all too clueless" and making those who embrace that statement feel oh so much better in nodding wisely to themselves "yeah, I am not one of those 'most' ones ..."? As for what you call a "truism"; I would call it a case of "stating the obvious" ... And maybe Koester DID refer to "white blues fans" after all - in the sense that he may have been thinking of Johnny Winter, et al and their white followers. And if you think of it he may have a point because there were quite a few of those who, when their status in blues is evoked, were invariably praised as oh so excellent "blues guitarists". But just as excellent "blues vocalists"?? Which of course begs the question of where to draw the line and who still is legitimately filed under "blues" and who isn't and is in fact "just rock" ...

IIRC he did a Jimmy Lunceford tribute album (which was reissued fairly regularly), and he also did an album "The Fox in Hi-Fi" on Brunswick in 1955 or so which is quite sumpin' else (unless you like your 50s jazz all "highbrow" throughout). Stellar line-up of jazzmen doing an R&B-tinged album in the vein of the jazzmen-studded orchestras providing backing for many R&B tour packages or recording for the Alan Freed movies or of the Westcoasters/Eastcoasters on the "Boots Brown & His Blockbusters/Dan Drew's Daredevils" on RCA Groove. This album was circulated widely and I have (favorable) reviews of the album (and the EPs taken from it) from Germany, France and Sweden and the gist of all their praises is that "if you have to have rock'n'roll, play it like this and with musicianship like this." Signs of the times ... Conventional by modern jazz standards but "far out" and rough & uncouth by dance band standards ...

16 ... wow ... You sure drove your point home ...

Joself Albers (1888-1976 - famous BAUHAUS artist, emigrated to the US after 1933): I was given this record by a school buddy's father in my very early collecting days in about 1975/76 as he knew about my interest in 50s music and 50s records (and actually cleared out some of his unwanted stuff). Odd at first but interesting (and at times actually this latinized percussion stuff is interesting to listen to, particularly late at night ) ... and I had already been aware of the Bauhaus tradition so this has been part of the (small) "Misc. Music/Easy Listening" section of my collection ever since.. I'd known for some time there were more by Albers in the same vein (a selection were on show at the "Le Siècle du Jazz" jazz & modern art exhibition in Paris in the summer of 2009), and then, during my holidays in Southern France, two weeks ago I came across this one at a small Sunday-morning fleamarket in a small town that I passed trough (and stopped out of curiosity) for a measly 1 euro. How can you go wrong at that price ...

Beware! Purchase prices quoted by a DEALER are a FAR cry from the selling value to an actual "final consumer". If you'd want to sell at all, "avoid the middleman" (to quote an eBay record seller from long, long ago ... )

Very true. Although most of these (except the Linn and Griffin on Atomic as well as the Butterfield AFAIK) have been reissued I don't know how many times in all formats (which very likely lessens their desirability - except to hardcore "strictly 78-rpm only" listeners , and those collecting extremists probably would already have a lot of these) this is a very nice bunch and I'd hang on to it by all means, particularly if it is "part of the family history", as in this case.

As an outsider (native speaker-wise ) looking in, am I right in assuming that - disregarding dialects and local variations - prononcing the "t" in "often" is definitely more common than pronouncing it in "listen"? To my ears, "liss-ten" would sound very, very stilted and way over the top (both in the UK and the US versions that I am familiar - and somewhat comfortable - with).

Now how do all of you pronounce "oftentimes"? One t, two t's or no t?

Indeed. Picked up this EP from 1956 at one of the fleamarkets I browsed during my recent holidays in Southern France.

VERY true! I made huge and fast progress in learning English at school when I was in my "soccer" phase at age 13-14 and literally DEVOURED English soccer mags that I had gotten hold of. And half of the progress I made in learning to read and write in Swedish came from my Swedish jazz books and mags (the other half came from classic car magazines ) Have been trying for some time to get my son to go the same way in learning French in a more entertaining way (by buying him the occasional Heavy Metal music mag when I am over in France) but this is only now beginning to show some results - he even bought himself a rock guitar tuition manual in French when we were on holiday in France recently. BTW, "toi toi toi" is in common use in German too - in the same sense.

The plight of being a "mod", isn't it? Mere human mortals like the rest of us can't do that, I think ...

I would have guessed this to be a Boris Rose label too. Maybe European-pressed, but Boris Rose source material. The covers look familiar to others in that vein, e.g. CARACOL.

Very flattering ... but my reading and writing knowledge of Swedish is FAR superior to that of Dutch. I can cope with reading Dutch as it does have its similarities with German but still it is a struggle ... BTW, do your musical interests also extend beyond jazz (even if only in a casual way)? Just in case you ever feel like delving into some specifically Dutch part of rock history, you are likely to come across those "Indo" rock bands from the late 50s and early/mid-60s. "Rockin' Ramona" (the title obvously referring to that worldwide MONSTER hit by the Blue Diamonds) by Lutgard Mutsaers (SDU uitgeverij, 's-Gravenhage 1989) is a nice book on this subject.

@Niko: Orkester Journalen is Swedish ... different call ... If you can find original copies of DE JAZZ WERELD, consider yourself lucky. As for Berendt's book (I grew up with the 1974 issue, BTW, which I still have - in addition to the 1953 and 1959 issues), if you only have the 1970 issue at this time then the 1953 issue (which was the 1st edition, actually) should be sufficiently different. But of course reading differnt language versions of identical issues side by side is not the worst way of learning some basics the easy way (or just using the German edition to crosscheck what you think you understood), and even those older editions aren't hard to get secondhand.

Niko, no doubt you are familar with (and own) one or the other edition of Joachim Ernst Berendt's "Jazzbuch". This book did exist in Dutch. I have the Dutch version of the original 1953 edition (bought on a whim at a "vintage fleamarket" im Amsterdam close to 20 years ago). So if you would also like to go the "comparison" route to learn Dutch after all (sometimes it helps - I know it has helped me in similar setups with other languages), drop me a line and I will be happy to mail it to you. I don't really need it actually and it is just taking up space in my crate of music books and mags for sale. On a jazz-related aspect, just in case you are interested in Rhythm & Blues to some extent you may remember a reissue series of Mercury masters done by Polygram in the early 90s ("Back Beat - The Rhythm of the Blues"). A Dutch book to accompany this series (and elaborate on the subject) written and compiled by Eddy Determeyer was published at the time by Van Hoeve publishers: "Back Beat - De Gouden Jaren van de Rhyhtm & Blues". To the extent that I can cope with reading Dutch (more or less ... ;-) ) it really is very well done as an introduction to the subject.

FWIW, the original Contemporary LPs do credit Roy DuNann throughout ("Sound by Roy DuNann").

Remember the discographies by Brian Rust and Horst H. Lange, to name just two? They were pretty big at this. Sometimes you can reasonably draw a line but often this reeks of personal preferences and narrowed-down views of the world: "outside the scope of this book" "no jazz content" "of no interest to the collector" etc. etc. Didn't you get the message: THOU SHALT NOT COLLECT THESE UNWORTHY ITEMS! That said, I agree with you all the way about what fairly recent recordings (from the period when a lot of what did not fit into any other categories tended to be lumped in with "jazz") that are not exactly jazz either find their way in up-to-date discographies.