Big Beat Steve

"I Thought I Heard Robert Johnson say" ... He must have been aware of a lot of things in various directions.

Interesting ... Looks like most of the Samoan team is made up of "legionnaires" earning their pay far abroad in more renowned leagues. As a strict outsider to this sport, what I meant to say in my initial post is just that at first sight it is baffling to see a huge country well-established in many areas of sport being beaten by a small (tiny?) one like this. And this can only be due to the fact that rugby is not a major sport in the USA. I was surprised to see rugby has a following there at all. I wonder what playing rugby is like to an American (considering the position of (American) football there). Maybe a bit like college football as it was being played in the 20s, with no headgear, no body protection, nothing ...? In case Samoa should be playing France later on in the course of this championship I hope to catch the French radio broadcast. And of course "established" hierarchies in any sport are no longer what they used to be. As can be seen in the European soccer championship where the Netherlands look like they might not make it whereas Iceland does.

Listened to some rugby coverage casually on French radio here and there these past few days when working on my cars (my radio in the garage is permanently tuned in to Europe 1) and caught something amazing: The US of A actually are in that World Championship and lost their first match to, of all countries, SAMOA?? Says a lot about its ranking compared to (American) Football on the domestic sports scene, doesn't it?

1954 Vogue Paris date recorded for them in NYC. I have a lovely 10inch UK edition . Music is great Formerly reissued here and also on a Prestige LP:

Some PERSONAL favorites (in no particular order) that immediately come to mind that I keep revisiting relatively regularly : Al Haig George Wallington (my Prestige twofer is not a million spins away from being worn out ;)) Claude Williamson Ronnell Bright Hank Jones Hampton Hawes Marian McPartland Pete Jolly Lou Levy

You got me right, MG. Not that I would want to dismiss this series (after all I have heard most but not all so on some I cannot comment), and I do understand the intentions behind that series. In general I just find these remakes a bit puzzling - you wonder where this sort of "updating" is to lead, and OTOH the updating is not different enough either to indicate a desire to really cover new ground. To anybody not being aware of the story behind these LPs, listening to a well-known R&B tune in a version from these albums would result in something like "Hey, but that's not the original version, not the real thing - so what's this???" By comparison, I found the recordings many earlier R&B greats made at roughly the same time for (French) Black & Blue a bit more sympathetic.

Not wanting to discourage you, Dan, particularly since you already have picked up a couple of those Blues Spectrum LPs, but I always found this series a kind of mixed bag. I've listened to several of them way back but shunned them when they were in the shops - mainly because in general I've never liked those latter-day recreations of the original recordings (I'd been bitten a couple of times in my very early record buying days), and in the case of those late 40s/early 50s R&B heroes there is quite a gap between their original recordings (which I always preferred as the "real thing") and those remakes. Some time ago I picked up a dirt-cheap copy of the Joe Turner LP (and based on the comments here will certainly look out for the Joe Liggins LPto see how i feel about it now) but in general the series doesn't overwhem me. I've never been a fan of Shuggie Otis' busybodying on those recordings, nor of the bass guitar (which I always found out of place on jump R&B), and those horns certainly did what they could to get in a jump blues groove but if you are familiar with the original items they always sound a bit awkward like "Are we in a funk groove or are we going to try to do what our fathers and uncles did?" Others may feel differently about it but though I see what Johnny Otis tried to do to give the old masters some credit in the twilight of their careers, compared to the recordings from their prime they certainly are not essential.

MG, you don't have the full story there. By the time that album was recorded Amos Milburn had had a stroke and was unable to use his left hand (which would leave anybody just a shadow of his former self). At the recording session Amos Milburn played the right hand and Johnny Otis played the left-hand part. Trying to make with what they were able to do but for a noble cause, considering the circumstances.

This reminds me ... Son-of-a-Weizen hasn't been seen here for a LONG time. Wonder what he would have to say about that ...

Yes, I mistakenly attributed the black Fats Navarro one to the sames series as the white Giganti del Jazz series. I found out this afternoon (I also have the Henry Red Allen one and 1 or 2 others from that black series) that these are 2 different series, though released concurrently. In the early 80s both series were all over the place here at the same time and remained available for quite some time. They were regular record shop fare (though always rather cheaply priced and crowded the Special Offers bins for ages, it seemed). Never saw any of these combined with mags, but why would anyone sell Italian-language booklets (and mags?) in Germany anyway? It was the vinyl what these reecords were all about here. The covers and booklets were add-ons The Benny Carter/Cecil Gant/Harry The Hipster Gibson LP I mentioned was part of the white series. The combinations of artists on this white series often were odd indeed (which is why I shied away from most of these) and the presentation to my feeling was cheapo too, and the contents probably were a bit shady for the live dates. I remember a Bo Diddley concert I attended in 1988 or so. After the final set a couple of us went to the edge of the stage, wanting to have our LPs autographed. I had brought along several Chess LPs and a buddy had one of those white Giganti del Jazz LPs featuring Bo Diddley. When Bo Diddley saw that LP he gave it a VERY puzzled (and apparently not very amused) stare and after he had taken the whole stack of LPs backstage to sign them one of his aides came up front and asked my buddy that Bo wnated to know where he had got that one from. My buddy of course was both awestruck and scared and tried to explain, not knowing what it was all about. He did get his LP autographed, but it transpired that Bo had noticed this was an LP where of course no royalties had been paid so he made a note of the label and catalog number etc.

There was some connection between this series and the Sonny Lester Consortium, almost certainly...the studio sides were all(?) from Groove Merchant, and the live things would often resurface later on LRC and/or Laserlight. Not all. I had a Fats Navarro LP which had a collection of Savoy and Blue note sides (which I passed on to a relative newbie bebop fan when I bought the individual Savoy and BN LPs that had all the tracks) and I also have one somewhere from that Italian series that has an odd combination of (1960?) Benny Carter live recordings, "I wonder" by Cecil Gant (Bullet studio session, of course) as well as a couple of tunes by Harry The Hipster Gibson (from Musicraft 78s) - a record I bought at the time because nothing by Harry Gibson was available in reissue from yet.

Ha, got it! (Thanks for the info on the LP title) It's on Everybodys EV-3006 (released 1985, liner notes by F. Driggs). Titled "1940 - The Bands of Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Andy Kirk, and Jimmy Lunceford". This tune recorded March 1st, 1940. The LP does not have the few initial announcer's words before the opening notes, though, so the Youtube source is no needledrop, it seems.

No -- Loren said it was issued by Jerry Valburn "many moons ago." So this was on one of those JAZZ ARCHIVE LPs?

Like Colinmce said ... The problem with buying directly from Fresh Sound is their relatively high shipping charges, probably reflecting Spanish postal rates (but who from the US is there to complain, considering that the US postal services are forcing on the "rest" of the world? ;)). It would be somewhat more worthwhile per item if you buy several items at a time. The more, the better. As for Amazon, making the rounds among Amazon marketplace sellers sometimes yields bargains, but you will have to be patient and check back regularly.

Thanks for the info. I've just checked and compared most of the sample pages. Pictures have been changed, it seems, and some minor revisions to the text (more thoroughly revised in the case of the Kenton sample page, though from this smal sample I cannot tell in what direction). At any rate, some serious revision would have been required anyway since at the time the book was first published the Fresh Sound LP reissue program was in full swing and made a LOT of hitherto unobtainable music available again, particularly to the interested listener. Today's availability would require updating the references to a lot of source material (records), though.

Sorry, but if you consider your smart-aleckish carrying on (and on and on) about "masturbating" (including "sperm donor"), etc. just jovial/robust, then those who like to discuss things in a SLIGHTLY more civilized and straight way (puns included, but still ...) would have to assume that describing your attitude as "streetwise" really is a gross understatement. Nobody's being prude (least of all by U.S. standards) but you are overdoing things in what MJzee calls an abusive tone. In short, IMHO MJzee is quite right and it was about time he said it in all straightforwardness.

Close your ears to what you are doing!

Nicely summed up, John. Thumbs up.

I wouldn't doubt that. No doubt the earlier hardbop pianists you mention had an influence on him (haven't listened intensely enough to all of those in recent times and have just a fair smattering of their records, and will have to pull them out again to let them "sink in"). It just was that TO ME his playing on that particular LP immediately sounded like it predated what many others from the later "piano mainstream" that i had heard seemed to have borrowed from. Of course it may just as well have been just ONE typical product of that period that fed what you call the mainstream. But it did make me sit up and take note of that name which otherwise I had only come across in his much later recordings where AFAIK he was much more prolific with leader dates.

Coincidence, but similar name: How about Frank Strazzeri? Would he qualify? At least his earlier works and activity? For a time, when listening to hard bop/post-bop pianists during the 80s/early 90s and their typical comping and soloing and their typical devices (Michel Petrucciani was one of them, from what I have hard of him in concert broadcasts, for example), I always had had the feeling "Hey, you've heard many of those licks and tricks and elements before" but never could put my finger on it. Then, one day, when listening to the Land/Mitchell LP "Hear Ye!", there it came together - Frank Strazzeri and his piano playing on that album: One of the typical blueprints for what many of the hard bop/post-bop pianists of 20-30 years later were still doing.

So his grunting isnt' chuckling enough for you? My, my, if that freewheeling "free"-cum-streetwise soloing of yours such as in posts like this one had been around in the 50s it might well have ended up in some diatribe against Art Tatum (like they were indeed written then - all ornate, all virtuosity, all flash, all pianistic, all overpowering, pulling all stops, but not jazz-drenched enough, etc. etc.)

Time to clear out some duplicate jazz mags again: Items that may be of interest to European forum members: ORKESTER JOURNALEN (Sweden) - 3 euros each: (Year and month of available issues given) 1946 - 1, 2 1948 - 12 1949 - 9 1951 - 10 1955 - 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 1958 - 1, 3, 4, 5, 6-7, 9. 10, 12 1959 - 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7-8 1960 - complete year (11 issues) 1961 - 1, 9, 10, 11, 12 1962 - 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 1964 - 9 1965 - 6 ESTRAD (Sweden) - 3 euros each: 2/1949, 10/1954, 5/1956, 12/1958 JAZZ PODIUM (Germany) - 10 euros per complete year: 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1990 METRONOME YEARBOOK - 25 euros each: 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958 Shipping is extra, rates vary according to destination country but should be relatively affordable within Europe..

Compared to the massive buildings from (I guess) roughly that period that one sees consistently in old pics on SHORPY that building there is next to nothing. And honestly, I find a lot of more recently built pseudo-modern, pseudo-modernistic (but in fact just showy) buildings for uses like this much more overbearing. And by us Yurpean standards, there are MUCH worse (and potentially criminal) banks (and banksters) than any Raiffeisenbank, ain't it, Flurin?

A sharp-edged cutter used with care (which can be done) works wonders there, both on excessive LP wrapping and on opening sealed CDs. And excessive wrapping certainly is preferable to ANY broken LP due to shoddy packaging. As for CDs, what I find most annoying when it comes to their sealing are Italian CDs with those tax or mechanical copyright (?) stickers taped across the opening flaps of the jewel cases and leaving nasty glue marks very difficult to remove!

If it comes down to jazz pianists finding an audience and popularity among non-jazz fans and therefore being viewed with suspicion by "pure" jazz fans, how about another name in the ring: AHMAD JAMAL?