Big Beat Steve

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?

I do see what you mean and I can understand that sort of reservations. I just find it a pity that these reservations about his "instrumental embroidery" seem to have invalidated his accomplishments. I can only imagine what that gig was like and I even think that I might have been disappointed too if I had wanted some all-out jazz improvsations but OTOH others may value these displays of fluency and mastery of the instrument in a different way and isnt it utlimately the artist's decision in which direction he might want to go, at least at that moment (AFAIK he had not forsaken all-out jazz guitar playing at that time for good?). As for "pop" routes, this obviously raises the question of which would have been "worse" (or to put it more kindly, more of a pity). Say, if Joe Pass at that time had turned "pop" the way Wes Montgomery or George Benson did? The usual retorts would of course have been "man he gotta eat too", but if this is so, how about Joe Pass' motivations being soemthing like "man he wanted to have some fun too"?

My point was that covering new ground can go into many directions, not necessarily the direction that one wants or expects as a listener but often the ones the artist sees fit to pursue. And even if his concert(s) at that time turned into a sort of guitar seminar and if (budding or active) guitarists in the audience were all fascinated, then why not ... there must be an audience for this kind of performance there after all ... One man's meat ... Besides, MANY musicians have gone down that route, haven't they? I am not sure about Don Shirley and his pianistic chops (the name rings a bell though I can't be bothered now to check the internet to see to what extent the mentioning of this name may have a condescending undertone or not) but isn't it often the case that artists who know their instrument inside out resort to fireworks on that instrument every now and then? How many pianists (particularly in the jazz field) have been out there who have been BLAMED for being "too pianistic" and therefore not jazz-imbued enough? Knowing how to handle their instrument too WELL? Maybe that's what I was thinking of when I spoke of those "noises". Though the comparison may lead off-topic, haven't there been many free players who had nowhere near the chops that many non-free jazz musicians had on that particular instrument but were lauded for every "off" tone ("off" by non-free criteria) they produced for "charting new territory", though somehow I have a hard time believing this always was the result of someone having really exhausted (by playing) every possible non-free music to be played on his instrument and THEN moving onwards into exploring something "new" and not just as often a case of "I can't play in tune, if I do I play beeps and goof notes, so I'll go all goof and join the free crowd". (Yes I am exagerating, but not totally ...)

But isn't that - adapting nonguitar material to the guitar a way of covering new ground too? And who is to fault him for reworking teh source material that way? So who is anyone to blame a musician for going down that road? No, I am not that much of a Joe Pass fan either, maybe for "virtuoso" reasons too (give me Tal Farlow anytime for improvising mastery of the instrument) but don't quite get what you fault him for if you admit the above. Value of the music is not only found in just making noises that nobody has consciously made before and then calling it "innovation" either.

SandSTRÖM! He wasn't quite that tempestuous ...

Gene Harris? Yes that Gene Harris album is quite nice. So what's the deal?

It all depends on which MPS recordings you are referring to (he recorded for MPS outside those "Exclusively For My Friends" 6-LP series, you know ..) so actually you are not saying much there, and given your comprehensive jazz knowledge "my recollection is ..." and "some of the work" is relatively vague, and - honestly - isn't "had its moments" a bit condescending? So what is somebody seriously intersted in exploring specific OP recordings to make of that? I am certainly not one to defend OP (like I said, he has not struck my fancy all the way either) and if you don't like OP per se - fine (others run away when forced to listening to Free Jazz - which HAS to be just as fine too - tastes differ, you know ... and when tastes come into play there is hardly any eternal truth, and what there is involves neither OP nor Free Jazz), but if recommendations are to be given there ought to be a little more to build on, isnt'it? But I guess recommendations to those who'd like to receive recommendations would have to come from those basically sympathetic towards the music (which does not mean you have to go into hero adulation, of course).

I've never been tempted enough to explore OP in REAL depth (beyond his presence on JATP recordings I bought for JATP's sake and his VERY early Canadian RCA recordings which got me interested primarily as ANOTHER document of recorded jazz from that particular period, also happening to show where OP came from) and have just picked up the occasional "typical OP" item here and there as they came my way in clearout bins, but there is one exception (or series of exceptions): His privately recorded (sort of) sessions for Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer (of MPS fame) from the 60s, eventually released in the "Exclusively For My Friends" LP series on MPS. No idea if they are off the radar to U.S. listeners and therefore haven't been mentioned so far here (I know they must have been current in the UK where Polydor released them with the MPS cover artwork and liner notes). I had taken note of a couple of OP items heard on the radio, sought them out, and lo and behold, they were on that series. I don't have all of the vols. from that series but do like those I have heard.

I agree about Bud Freeman (and what ought to have been his stature in the U.S., AFAICS ;)). But the European ones you mention did receive their fair share of recognition and admiration in the jazz circles of quite a few EUROPEAN countries with a thriving jazz audience, which is just about what you could reasonably expect for a major European jazzman around that time. LASTING jazz stardom in the U.S. at that time (not much later on among collectors) would have been out of reach for most Europeans anyway. (Yes I know about Lars Gullin and his impact on the U.S. scene for a while in the 50s, but what was his LASTING status, I wonder?)