Big Beat Steve

Oh yes, some of them do push sales, but haven't they been out in that BLACK "Original masters" series of the late 90s or in other formats that aren't totally unavailable? Do we collectors (who aren't all newbies) want duplicates ALL the way? The first box was fine, despite the duplications with what one (even as a non-completist) had and many of its CDs serve well as fodder for the CD player in my car, but another one with even more overlap? Not really ... Fill the (reissue) GAPS, you Vogue people! (Yes I know I'm being unreasonable and unrealistic but it just had to be said at least once ...) You know what? Somebody ought to get them to do a CfD (Club francais de Disque - French equivalent of Jazztone) box set! They did some pretty nice and unfairly overlooked sessions and 10in LPs back then, ...

Indeed. There would be a lot of proper Vogue 10-inch (or even 12-inch) LPs from that period released back then (beyond all the Bechets ;)), some probably never before reissued, but that would make this really a "Eurojazz" box (remember the first box also included a bit of U.S. headliner acts) and therefore would require compilers and producers who are much, much more ambitious and not afraid to target NICHE markets even WITHIN the "jazz niche market" instead of the big names.

Re- St. Martin's Lane: I remember Honest Jon's only from his site far up Portobello Road. The only record shop in St. Martin's Lane I remember was James Asman's (but that was in the 90s so I don't really know about his previous activities). Not only judging by the shopping bags, James Asman (specializing more in oldtime jazz and early dance bands, at least in the 90s) seemed to cooperate with Mole Jazz in a way. One time I made my rounds at the London shops in the 90s I bought two of the three Hampton Hawes All Night Session LPs (having previously read about them in Ted Gioia's book) as very clean U.K. originals (on Vogue). And lo and behold, on the very same day I found the third volume of these recordings (U.K. Vogue original too) in the "mixed bag" bin at James Asman's - with a somewhat more worn cover but fine, glossy vinyl. And at one quid who was I to complain? As if Mole had unloaded some of their "not quite good enough" stock at Asman's.

I think a VERY close look at the individual discs that make up this set would be in order. I doubt too much of this was originally recorded for Vogue. To me, most of it sems to be Vogue issues of U.S. recordings leased at the time for the French market. So probably quite redundant today. Browsing the list briefly without doing any discographical research, the Stan Getz tracks look like his Roost recordings to me, Charlie Christian of course is the oft-recycled Esoteric LP, discs 6 to 8 look like the Dial masters recycled, the R&B men come from King. The Miles Davis CD reads like his Blue Note 10-inchers (a lot of the Blue Note 5000-series LPs were issued on Vogue with different cover artwork at the time, and BN in turn released some Vogue recordings in the 5000 series) and Lester Young looks like some Savoy and Aladdin combined, right? Maybe interesting to see how France got exposed to these U.S. artists at the time but I doubt there is much you don't already have in other guises and/or need badly if you don't. I think I'll pass this one up. Too much too often recycled elsewhere there IMHO.

Yes you can get mixed up in your memories about those shopping places you visited (musing about missed opportunities ..). One place I cannot recall exactly but which left a deep impression on me at the time (1977) was a book shop that was a bit outside the inner city streets "littered" with record shops. IIRC it was one of the major north-south streets runnig off Oxford Street - possibly Regent Street or New Bond Street. I think it had a record corner (though no jazz or blues I remember) and also music instruments but a huge section of music books (second only - probably - to the Bloomsbury Book Shop or - later on - the Compendium Bookstore in Camden Town where I regularly left money in the 90s until unaffordable leases forced them to close). What I remember about that bookstore I visited in 1977 was not only the huge range of (for the time and for me) "esoteric" specialist books on blues and roots music (and jazz too, I think). I bought two of the Studio Vista paperback blues books (series edited by Paul Oliver, I think) on Tommy Johnson and Charley Patton (which I still have today) though I did not get any number of their recordings until quite a few years later. And this shop also had loads of different music magazines, starting with Blues Unlimited and the like but also including what would best be described as "under the counter fanzines" such as the legendary early rockabilly mag "Not Fade Away". Incredible to me as a 17-year old non-Brit that such specialist publications existed at all, and too bad I visited that place during the final days of my stay there, so not much money left ... Anybody remember what this place might possibly have been?

That rules out the "The Works of Duke" LP series that French RCA did of all this material (incuding alternates -which were not exceedingly many) in the 70s/80s on 24 individual LPs (repackaged in five box sets - the first four with 5 LPs each, the final one 4 LPs). For those interested, it was marketed worldwide, it seems, and might still crop up in secondhand bins here and there. In fact at a recent local clearout sale a lot of them cropped up here at 2.50 euros each (so I finally was able to get that single LP - Vol. 17 - that I was still missing). BTW, would it be possible to get all the 'Chronological Classics" CDs at all without incurreing major costs, now that they have been deleted for quite a few years? A lot of CDs from this series go for insane prices on the secondhand market. This may not affect Ellington but who knows ...?

Re- this statement on the blog linked above ... Dealing mainly in jazz, folk, blues and world music they had, as indicated in the flyer on the left, a shop in New Oxford Street and also the basement of a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road. During the 1970's, they moved to bigger premises in Charing Cross Road, close to the Astoria. ... could it be that the record shop I remember visiting on the ground floor of a corner building a few steps away from Foyle's books in 1976-77 was Collet's?

That happened to me once at Mole's: Erroll Garner's "Concert By The Sea". A recording that somehow sounded much better through that P.A. than the individual tracks I must have heard on the radio LONG before. As for Dobell's, the above-linked blog has a picture of a Dobell's corner shop front that I cannot recall at all (though I do remember a record shop like this under a different name at a streetcorner just a few steps from Foyle's from the 70s). When did Dobell occupy those premises? The Dobell's I remember from my visits in '75, 76 and 77 was this: 's

I was sort of late to the game (born in 1960) but when our school arranged for 14-day stays in Croydon in the 70s I joined the trip in 1975, 76 and 77 and as I had started buying (collecting, in fact) records a bit earlier in 1975 I already was aware of Dobell's through a pretty up-to-date tourist guide by our 1975 trip and went to Charing Cross Rod each time but of course funds were VERY tight so I wasn't able to buy much but rather gaze in amazement at the incredible choice. The small, overfilled, dingy shop at a sort of semi-basement level still lingers in my memories! I remember I bought both at the "Jazz" shop and at the "Folk" shop next door, though. What I remember I did buy there was rather an eclectic mix including a Memphis Slim double LP from the "special offers" bin, some old-time country music (Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers) and one of Dobell's own productions, "Cyril Davies All Stars" on the Folklore lable (a followup to his 77 label, as far as I can tell). I don't remember any partiuclar details about the staff by others in the above-linked blog, except that they all were very patient with me (sensind the newbie, maybe) and let me browse for quite a while. Too bad I was so short on funds at that age - there were so many other great shops in London and the suburbs at that time (particularly to me from the Continent, though ours at home were nothing to sneer at either if you look at it objectively), including several well-stocked secondhand record shops on Portobello Road (no, I don't think I went to Honest Jon's then - these shops were further towards the other end) or e.g. the Bloomsbury Book Shop run by John Chilton's wife (a connection I was unaware of then) where I bought the 3-LPs set with Clifford Brown's Paris sessions from the record bin (or was it around the corner in another shop?) and my long-searched-for copy of Leadbitter's blues discography as well as a book on collecting rare rock'n'roll (particularly doo-wop) 45s and "Catalyst" , the first book on Sun Records (yes, she did stock that wide a field of books!). I received her periodical stocklists for some time thereafter and remember when I once asked about the huge "To Bird with Love" book I duly received the next list with a handwritten notice from her on it: "Can get "To Bird with Love: 56 Pounds - UGH!!" After 1977 it took me 15 years to get back to London and when I was back for the first time in 1992 I duly went to Mole Jazz (from whom I had VERY cocasionally bought by mail order before) as well as to Ray's Jazz Shop, spending LOTS of money at both shops (particularly at Mole, though) each time I went to London up to 2000 (sometimes several times a year). I also remember in 1992 I tried to locate Dobell's but not only found that the shop was gone (I was unaware of his previous move) but also that the Charing Cross Road area where his shop was had been redeveloped beyond recognition. Needless to say that the Dobell's price stickers (and John Kendall's too - there were some) remaining on some of the secondhand vinyls I bought from Mole and Ray's have been kept on the records to this day ... As for Ray's Jazz Shop, they always were my second stop AFTER Mole (Mole had more to choose from and better prices) and sometimes James Asman's but I always found some select stuff there, including in the "printed matter" sectio that yielded several Metronome yearbooks as well as Delaunay's and Jepsen's discographies at affordable (though not cheap) prices. Heaven-sent in those pre-internet days ... Their "Rare as hens' teeth" and "Rare as rocking horse manure" bins had tempting items too but usually were out of my price range. Though maybe I ought to have picked up the Prestige 16rpm LPs they had one time I dropped in there. The discount for buyers paying cash was always appreciated, and the personnel at Ray's always was very obliging too. I particularly remember a somewhat short, stocky, bearded and bespectacled fellow whom I always tried to deal with. Funny thing about the downstairs blues and roots section one time ... in 1998 I went there with a girl I knew who was more into rockabilly and they in fact stocked some bootleg vinyls current on the circuit then (compiled by London rockab' DJs) so she picked one and asked to listen in to this or that track upstairs. They obliged but after not much more than one track one of the other staff - a long, thin, grey-haired fellow (I think Ray himself, according ot the pics on the blog linked above ;)) - pulled the needle off the record in dismay as he apparently had had enough for his sensitive ears .... (or was it the photomontage of Margaret Thatcher in domina posture on the cover that was too much?) Well, whaddaya want? The record came from their own stocks ... (Yes, the girl did take the record ;)) And re- the Ray's blog above, that cache of 78s brought in via Chris Barber in 1974 must indeed have been huge. I bought some mint DeeGees And Savoys from a stash of 78s in a corner of their blues & roots basement in the late 90s! Must have come from that very source. Ah, those were the days ...

It depends ... do you want alternates or can you do without them? And are you dead set on CDs or would vinyl be an option too?

Some of it comes through here, it seems: http://www.jazzwax.com/2010/04/interview-herb-geller-part-4.html

My UK original (RD-27018, black label) plays at quite a full and enjoyable level at "room volume" in my not so large music room without upsetting my better half next door in the living room.

Agreed. Such reminders often are inspiring. I played "Rogers plays Rodgers" as well as the album with "Blues from Neither Coast" and then (on a whim, for added input but also because it was next door on the shelf ;)) Tony Aless' "Long Island Suite" yesterday evening and regardless of which session emanated from which coast did get quite some continuity out of it (aside from all the listening fun, of course ). As for the "West Coast Jazz" angle, praise for Shorty Rogers rings an alarm bell sometimes - knowing how often he gets blamed for his alleged westcoastish heavyhandedness (often open to dispute IMHO).

Maybe it's just that there were more facets to WCJ than some would think at first sight (or hearing) and some attempts at pigeonholing what makes the music "west-coastish" really fall short of the target? Because there were enough WCJ artists and records that were very much part of the West Coast scene and still were not that far removed from souds also heard elsewhere. Particularly when looking at Eastern schools like that of Al Cohn, or what about Gerry Mulligan who was lumnped in with WCJ but hated it and distanced himself vehemently. Arguments along the lines of "If it comes from the West and I don't like it because it's too arranged or too airy or too "effeminate" for my TASTE then it's West Coast Jazz and if it comes from the West and I like it because it is more "muscular" or more "blowing music" then it is an Eastern sound gone West by accident" don't hold that much water IMO. Maybe time to play some "Blues From Neither Coast" too?

Yes, time to wear this one out some more (it's one of those I mistakenly bought twice - picked up a mint Fresh Sound facsimile reissue some years ago, knowing I had not bought that reissue before but not remembering I already had a U.K. original (very clean vinyl, though somewhat scruffy cover). Actually IMO this is just just what very, very many West Coast sessions and records are all about -. no angry young men posing, no messianic zeal, no stubborn searching for unplayed tones ending up with "far out" sounds, no inner anguish screaming inside yourself that comes out screeching through your horn, no personal demons (well, most of the time ) riding on your back and clouding your senses ... Though it may be cliché-laden, picturing yourself lazing on some sunny day at the beach or by the seaside (or out in an easy chair in your back garden with some cool drink by your side, in fact ) helps quite a bit in enjoying the music for what it is and not projecting more into it than you need to if you just want to take in some easy swing in a relaxed mood ...

Sounds a BIT less crackly on my Metronome reissue, though ... Otherwise, fine sessions ...

At the risk of sounding "moldy fig", maybe my no. 1 favorite Getz session still is "At Storyville". Other favorites are the Jimmy Raney session mentioned earlier and "Hamp and Getz" as well as his Stockholm sessions of 1958. I am less familiar with his later work (some of what I have heard sort of put me off, have never really got into "Children Of The World", for example, and sold it off - a rare occurrence I part with records I do not have in duplicate ;)) but will definitely have to explore his bossa period a bit more.

Rust DOES give the original releases (and apparently often the UK releases, i.e. US RCA Victor + UK HMV, plus certain others form the same period). so you wil be able to see all the orignal 78rpm couplings (and in case of previously unreleased entries that were first released in the LP era the original LP issue wil be given - e.g. in the case of transcriptions made by the John Kirby Sextet that saw several LPs worth of transcriptions first released on the Collector's label in the 60s). And basically Rust is not THAT different from the system used in the Garner discography in your link. Except that the later reissues listed UNDER the session entries are not included. As for how long those online discographies will remain up ... good question, but ... ... I know why I have an entire ring binder crammed full with printouts of Swedish jazz discography put online on visarkiv.se ... precisely for that reason!

As a matter of curiosity, was IS your age group? As for the "rest" of your post, I somewhat disagree that there was that little jazz in the "dance band" era. Of course a lot of jazz of the swing era was pop music but that was what made it so appealing to the status of jazz overall at that time. And of course not all pop from that era was jazz, and you have to distinguish between swinging dance bands such as the Tony Pastor band I named before and corn like Guy Lombardo or Horace Heidt, etc. Though even some cornier bands could swing pretty well on rare occasions, but that was more an interlude. I'd also say there is more jazz to Tommy Dorsey than one would imagine at first hearing (but you will have to listen ...). And discovering the jazz content does indeed become a bit more difficult if you focus on the singers and vocals. Which is why (among WHITE bands) I tend towards vocals by Tony Pastor, Louis Prima or Butch Stone and their ilk from that period ... BTW, even Duke Ellington (to name just one whose jazz credentials nobody will dismiss though they fall into the same big band era too) did regularly play for dancers too in the 30s/40s so certainly was not just a "concert hall" band. As for other sources of documentation (not discographies but biographies to put things into context), I suppose you have the books by George T.Simon and Leo Walker?

What you describe as your main interests in the post-Rust area is going to be hard to find indeed in later jazz discographies because quite a few of those vocalists and arrangers/bandleaders are on the fringes of jazz or outside jazz in a "somewhat" stricter sense of the word. So many discographers don't even opt for complete discographies of this kind of artists but include only those recordings with closer jazz ties (e.g. if the backing orchestras/groups are more jazz-oriented, etc.). Beyond the "Rust era", I still use my Jepsen discography books regularly for the basic information and then do cross-checks in a CD-ROM edition of the Bruyninckx discogrpahy. The Tom Lord discography is waaaay beyond my financial means (particularly if you want to keep it updated) and offers little added value over the contents of the earlier discographies in my main areas of interest (which essentially comprise recordings up to, say, the early to mid-60s, and for later reordings I don't need complete discographies but usually find what I want to know on the internet ;)).

No idea if this offer posted here a week ago is still current ... ... but it might be worth a try. As for recommending any specific issues, I have the 4th edition and also rfer to it fairly often. If you can live with the fact that it usually gives only the "period" 78rpm isses and not other issues or later reissues (as Bruyninckx etc. do) then it is a very useful reference book - even today. What I sometimes do find irritating (but this is probably due to the persona of Brian Rust himself and his personal preferences) is that it goes into amazing detail in 20s (or at any rate PRE-swing era) bands, including many semi-jazz bands that are of rather marginal interest to "hot" jazz fans, but the same depth of coverage doesn't always seem to be there in the swing era and particularly big bands. I find it strange, for example, that he totally ignores the Tony Pastor band whose early recordings do fall within the 1942 time frame and whose jazz content I for one consider higher than that of many 20s dance bands included there (seems like "8 bars of hot soloing" already qualified in the 20s for being included in the book whereas you had to offer much more in the 30s and early 40s to qualify - a bit skewed IMO ...). ..

Yes this WAS disturbing. Did not get the news until the morning after - luckily, because my not quite 16-year old son went to (local) Metal rock concerts both on Friday and Saturday night. Cautioning him before he set off for Saturday night was surreal enough, but two nights?? If you realize that the band at the Bataclan venue had Metal in their band name (though apparently their style of rock was not conected to it) and you then hear that those muslim scumbags claim their attack against that venue was against a place where "hundreds of heathens feast on pornography and sin" and so on, then this really, really gets creepy. Sangrey's theory on just turning the lights off doesn't work under these circumstances either. These precivilizationist hoods just were out to open fire at ANYBODY. You can accomplish that target even in total darkness. And it definitely is no laughing matter if they happen to aim at each other by mistake after dozens of innocents have been butchered.

Thanks for your links and illustrations, Erwbol. Hope this will get a few of those do-gooders out there to wake up and face the realities ....

Good to see Richard Vacca's book mentioned. I think it is one that unfortuntely is not given much thought when regional jazz histoires are evoked. It took me a while to really get into the book - his coverage of the pre-war years somehow drag on a little, as if the author could not really connect to the subject matter. Maybe there were too few major acts to cover (which would not have kept others from doing in-depth coverage - see "Before Motown" on Detroit, for example) but once the history reaches the post-war years the story really gets off the ground and I found the book hard to put down (though I have no personal connection to Boston whatsoever, obviously ... but rather see the interest of books like this in filling gaps in the history of jazz by covering regions off the usual places).

More impressions - not re- the Jutta Hipp box but the MOD label box (which arrived today here) and therefore re- the operations of the Be!" label as I perceive them: Very, VERY nice finishing, presentation and packaging of the box set (not the kind of glueish nonsense you seem to get from Mosaic ). Overall nothing at all to fall short of the work of box set reissue labels such as Bear Family IMO. I'd post a few photographs to give an impression (maybe will do so later) but the pics on the Be! website might give an idea anyway. The repro vinyls show a lot of attention to detail too (and do sound good indeed ;)). I happen to have an original copy of the Bill Russo LP and the facsimile of this reissue really is a very close match (and no, I won't be complaining about the rose color of the label being a little bit darker on the reissue ;)). The book is impressive too, even for those who have the period mags that a lot of concert and record reviews are pulled from. A lot of key persons from the German jazz scene are credited in the acknowledgments (including some who no doubt would have had the leverage of blocking or at least hampering this release if it had had a blatantly bootleggish ripoff approach about it) so it must have received blessings from many sides. Do you get value for money? In the end it's up to each one to decide for himself. I'd calculate like this: I paid 219 euros for the set. We get 5 10in LPs and 6 45 EPs plus 4 CDs. For niche-market vinyl reissues (i.e. including those occupying just a niche within the "jazz niche" at large), 20 euros retail price for a reissue LP are not totally unheard of here. And then, say, 15 euros for a facsimile EP. Which would add up to 190 euros. Which leaves 30 euros for the book, the facsimile label poster and the CDs. Cheap all in all? No. Excessive? Not totally over the top, compared to what you see elsewhere. Not that I'd count on many of those from 'cross the pond who smell a bootleg rat whenever some European reissue deal comes up (even if from the Public Domain era) revising their opinions from the ground up in these "debates" of (alleged) ripoffs, but tell me - when and where have you seen INDIVIDUALLY owned U.S. reissue companies last embark on projects like this (no, 20s blues doesn't count!)? Not that all is perfect, and not wanting to nitpick, but there are a few minor complaints. I did spot at least one error in the discography (incorrect reference to a previous - period - issue of the music on a label other than MOD) and one unclear label release reference which looks like an actual release but apparently wasn't - and they persistently spell that Italian label "Carish" (I know "Carisch" doesn't sound very Italian, but still ...), . And since it will probably be (or has already been been) pointed out by others that the contents of the CDs go beyond the contents of the vinyl and include "unissued" concert recordings, this isn't quite so. These recordings have been released before as an accompanying CD to a book called "Jazz in Köln". The book is still available secondhand for those who are dying to get it and many potential buyers of this box set probably own it anyway (me included, yes ) so already have that music. So this is a bit of a cheap way out of adding "bonus" stuff and a pity that precisely the tracks already released there have been recycled here, considering that a lot of other tunes were recorded at one of those concerts (titles and playing times are given in the discography so can it really be so that all those others have been lost?). But these are minor points and other reissuers are probably "guilty" of cutting corners far more. So - yes, a very nicely done job and not one that reeks of cheapo bootlegging. Particularly since this is not likely to be a major seller everywhere.