Big Beat Steve

Yes, but this would mean the overview would start at the start of the current fundraiser, i.e. Dec. 1 (since Dec. had already been overpaid by several 100% ;), covering the cost for several months), right?

Out of sheer curiosity: How come only "this" month's donation balance is displayed now and the results of December's donations are not shown anymore? IIRC the $150 requested were "overpaid" by a multiple figure by the end of December so should cover the costs incurred for several months. Might be useful to know that a certain backlog is there (just in case ...), isn't it?

I'd say if you have been comatose and unresponsive for 4 years or more following that stroke the end is a relief and a blessing for everybody concerned. R.I.P. He will be remembered for his 50s recordings, along with his fellow Honking Sax Men heroes. I spun his "Cornbread & Cabbage Greens" CD in remembrance yesterday before coming across this review. Robert Christgau sums up his work pretty much to the point. http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=1733

Not so sure about small-town (or medium-sized town) U.S.A. in the early 50s. Local dancing bands (including big bands) still did have a loyal audience there that kept the clubs going for occasional visits by the big names. Of course that's quite different today. But maybe it's not even quite as unthinkable today as it was one or the other decade ago. I think the pendulum swings a LITTLE bit back here and there. Unless you lump only "far-out jazz" into the jazz category.

Maybe what she meant to say was "Despite HAVING BROKEN his leg in two places .... "(during the war or wherever ...) Further on down in the text there are a few instances that seem to indicate a lack of proofreading too ... But an interesting, down-to-earth story indeed. I wonder how many families lived through situations of "missed opportunities" like this ...

You mean this music relaxes you so much that instead of working up a steam behind your wheel about those road hogs out there you just ease back in your seat and sigh to yourself "WTF??" I need some of that sometimes!

IIRC this photo appeared on the SHORPY website some time ago, and I immediately had a hunch this might make some beautiful cover picure for a down-home blues anthology. So I guess Yazoo had thought so first too (or is this a VERY recent reisue)?

Honestly, no idea about his current availabilty overall (crooners are pretty much off my radar in my pre-1945 jazz or "hot dance band" interests ) but his records used to be around for quite a long time. I remember when I was browsing the London record shops in my "collecting beginnings" in the second half of the 70s there used to be tons of Al Bowlly LP reissues in all the "oldies"/"nostalgia"/"swing" racks so at that that time he still must have been very much a national hero (much like Carlos Gardel in Spain - and Latin America). Maybe a discography (accessible online for reference) would be a good starting point as some jazz collectors might be able to provide info on where the recorsdings by specific orchestras that he most often recorded with would be available in comprehensive reissues, therefore including the Al Bowlly vocals too)? Have you tried the Vocalion website? Among more jazzier items, they reissue lots of British "nostalgia" music too.

Yes, me. Certainly not reading this from Hoosier State. At first I thought it was just here (Mozilla) but am somewhat relieved now this happens to others too.

I've only got one of his 2-LP "hit" compilations on RCA Camden (therefore predating his Monument period as far as I can tell) which was bought mainly for the presence of "Percolator" (a tune that for some reason got VERY regular airplay on oldies radio shows here in my very early music collecting days from the mid-70s and does get stuck in your ear once you've heard it). Some of the tunes there show his R&B roots, others are VERY MOR-ish. Apart from that, his presence on many Nashville country recordings of course makes him impossible to pass by if you listen to that kind of music at all. I agree, though, that it was Sil Austin and the other 50s R&B tenor sax men (from Plas Johnson through Red Prysock or Sam The Man Taylor - one who also did VERY MOR stuff that you would not associate with R&B at all - and all the others) rather set the pattern for white sax men and not the other way round.

True, MG, due to the length of the tracks and the featured sax men stretching out this Austin/Prysock LP is not like his others. But apart from that one I always liked the ones shown below (of which I was able to get quite affordable original pressings) better than his soft mood sounds like on "Plays Pretty For The People" (a phrase I had always associated with Louis Prima anyway). Comercial - yes (in a way very much of its time, as JSangrey says) but powerful blowing anyway. So to me he was not so much a black Boots Randolph (nice analogy anyway) but rather a somewhat grittier Earl Bostic. (Yes, those matching covers are corny but very period-like and a document of their times )

Actually several albums' (three 10-inch LPs) worth of music. ;)

A random note about jazz musicians looking down on (down-home) bluesmen: The "Before Motown" book about jazz and R&B in Detroit has statements by black jazz and R&B musicians from the early 50s that clearly put down John Lee Hooker, stating "he couldn't play shit".

Yes I guess this was a sign of the times, though I wouldn't call it intentional ignoring but just different priorities regarding importance. And I'd venture a guess that the inclusion of so many second or third-rate (white) big bands from post-war years (that may be fine to include for completists but a bit of overkill and leading to a distinct bias if they are included to the exclusion of other, more notable black bands) reflects the personal experience and career of Leo Walker who probably was in the midst of things in the years after WWII. But of course the 40s/50s were a time when you often still had a blind spot when it came to what happened "across the tracks". Overall, with all the books out there the information you have available TODAY is quite O.K. (and internet helps too ;)), though of course the IN-DEPTH history of black territory bands still is not covered THAT well. There IS one book that balances the score somewhat: "SWING OUT - Great Negro Dance Bands", by Gene Fernett, first published in 1970 and reprinted later with unchanged contents (except for an "updated" cover). Certainly far from exhaustive but very nice in the way it is done - if you can live with the fact that we take information for granted in this world of the internet that was hard or impossible to come by in those pre-internet days. OTOH the fact that 1970 was a time when many of the old bandleaders were still there to be interviewed helps too, of course

NOW I know why Gringott's struck me as so unmistakably British and why I felt I had experienced that atmosphere myself before! That said, I cannot complain about the depth of their stocks. My hit rate during my stopovers there in the 90s was comparatively high.

Yes, Dave, these are the ones I was thinking of. But also this one: "The Big Band Almanac" by Leo Walker published by Ward Ritchie Press, Gardena, CA (at least the 1978 first printing I have was; later editions if those existed - may have been published elsewhere) The book complements George T. Simon's book well, though I have a feeling that the author is a bit biased towards white and commercial (not necessarily very jazz-minded) big bands and digs deeply into what was left in the way of big bands after 1945. Or to put it another way, all the bigger names among the black big bands are there, of course, but the coverage of the white bands is much more in-depth, right down to really obscure or local bands. Example: The (black) Floyd Ray band (a fine swing band, though underrecorded) does not figure there but Barney Rapp and Carl Ravazza are (right where his entry might have been too) - huh?? A useful book anyway ... And for somebody interested in the music of that period (particularly if not only all-out jazz big bands) they are all pretty essential reference works. P.S. Re-Guy Lombardo, no put-down intended, his commercial success speaks for itself, but don't expect him to rate highly among those who favor swinging (JAZZ) big bands. All I meant to say (using him and Horace Heidt as examples) was that during the swing era jazz (i.e. the swing style of jazz) was indeed pop music but not all pop music played during that era was swing. See?

No, it definitely was not Foyle's. I did shop at Foyle's during my stays in '75, 75 and 77 and a.o. bought Ross Russell's "Bird Lives" as well as Bill C. Malone's "Country Music USA" there. Not sure that I was stumped by the way they arranged their books because I remember I had no trouble finding these two books coming from totally different publishers (and was very pleased with my finds, particular with the latter which I had perused at the local Amerika Haus library prior to that trip). But now that you quote it I seem to remember that multiple queuing before taking away the books and heading down in their rattletrap elevator. Overall Foyl'es hadn't changed that much when I went there again throughout the 90s. The shop I mentoined above (possibly on Regent Street) was totally different - huge, much more modern sales area on the ground floor. No multiple stories to the best of my recollections.

I KNOW we'll never get a box set along these lines... Yet offhand I'd not mind such a box set that includes THESE, for example: LD 045 Willie The Lion Smith LD147 Raymond Le Sénéchal Sextet: Modenr Jazz in Paris LD182 Alix Combelle avec Buck Clyaton LD 184 Geo Daly LD 203 Beryl Booker with Don Byas LD 209 Frank Foster LD 212 Fats Sadi Other reissues may already exist but these might not be the most "obvious" choices for such box sets and might therefore fill some gaps worth filling .

You are probably right but what I meant is another box in THIS format compiled in order to plug holes. Honestly, casual buyers would not notice (some of the material of #1 is already too obscure for superficial listeners-in anyway) and advanced collectors would enthuse ...

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 ...?