Big Beat Steve

Hi Allen Can you make a listing of the acutal issues (numbers?) that you have? I'd be very interested as the run of copies i have before early 1994 - no. 86 - is very spotty, but I do have some so would like to check what there is. And would there be any reasonably priced way of sending these overseas at all these days? Thanks beforehand.

Like others mentioned above, not all that rare. I don't buy records through the web that often anymore so my BAD experiences (usually eBay-related, and all of them involving shippings from the USA) all in all date about 10 to 15 years back. But still ... 1) Would you believe a 50s LP arrives safely overseas if it is put between two layers of crumbly polystyrene (each of them about 0.3 to 0.5in thick only) with no other protection (least of all cardboard) and just some tape around the edges? No? Well, it didn't. The corner of something else visibly dinged it at an angle so the record was cracked from the edge to almost the center hole. Took me a while to find another affordable copy on eBay. 2) A case like the one mentioned by others where just the flimsiest of flimsy packaging was used - cracked again. Not a major record, just a "nice to have item" but anyway ... WTF did these geeks do when common sense was distributed? Gaze into the great white open all day long?? 3) Or that other case when - taking the plunge EVENTUALLY - I DID bid on 78rpms on U.S. eBay and actually won 4 of them, and then after payment nothing happened. Inquiring ... complaining ... seller said sorry, am in the middle of some deep personal trouble but will sort it out alright at once - I swear and I promise, and so on. And within a couple of days around that very date he racked up a total of some 30 or 40 NEGATIVE feedbacks with extremely outspoken comments (apparently some US buyers were less patient). Pretty soon afterwards his account was barred but needless to say the goods NEVER arrived. Personal shit can happen but this is no excuse. I remember a similar situation where I had won an auction for Vol. 5 of the Down Beat Record Reviews (year)book (fans know how expensive and sought-after they are). Again, nothing happened, and then all of a sudden a mail came from a third pary saying sorry, my dad who had put these up for auction had died and now I cannot get the estate sorted out with all that heir business etc. O.K. so we'll wait .... sometime later still nothing happened and the promised update on the state of affairs did not happen so here I am asking again. Things went to and fro a couple of times, but eventually the book DID arrive and I thanked when leaving feedback. Though judging by the feedback from others even intra-US shipping had been very slow. Getting hung up in estate clearance matters about just some stack of old books if you're the only daughter and therefore just about directest relative to the deceased, though, I dunno ... I won't mention all those cases where airmail shipping was promised (and paid for) but surface shipping was used and shipping therefore took ages because in the end the items all did arrive (apparently surface shipping ain't that bad - or wasn't then, service-wise). In these cases I never bothered to raise hell about a shipping cost refund because it was not worth the hassle to me (and in most cases did not even leave negative feedback either because in these days retaliatory feedback to the buyer still was something to be reckoned with on eBay) but yet I wonder if these were just attempts at cashing in fast on shipping or utter cluelessness as to the ways of the world outside the US ...

Way too muich. The master takes of the Dials and Savoys fit on about 5 LPs.

Amazing ... Though I have all the master takes (and PART of the alternates) from both labels I just might be tempted for that set (upgrading ... ;)) but am wondering what kind of money one will have to shell out ... Checked out the Savoy web site linked in that article ... on a totally unrelated side note, amazing to see that Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is still around ... Now whaddayaknow ...

So that's how tastes differ too. I've always HATED them (including on the Bluebird vinyls from that period - not the 70s twofers - that were omnipresent for a time too). Pointless naivity based on existing photographs. One of those many cases during that period when you bought records/CDs DESPITE the cover "art"work.

Ha, thanks for lumping him in among the "middle aged" (at least sort of)! Makes me feel really, really young again!

I have no concrete or up-to-date info but it seems like the tapes must have gone somewhere after the demise of Tampa. A few Tampa LPs were reissued in the 70s/80s on a U.S. budget label (with pretty garish covers, BTW) called "AJ Records" (subtitle: Archives of Jazz) which still said "Supervised by Robert Scherman" on the record labels. So if ex-Tampa boss Robert Scherman had a hand in these later reissues he certainly did not work with needledrops.

Exactly. Same experience here. And then there were both the similarly-produced ONYX LPs on early 40s swing and the 50s live recordings (Bob Andrews! The Jerry Newman of the 50s!!) on Xanadu that added importantly to the discographies of the key artists and leaders. Compared to that - sorry to say - those latter-day recordings (70s onwards) on Xanadu always appeared a bit like fillers to me. They may have been (and are) nice to ALSO have, but the essentials dated farther back and were milestones in the appreciation of the music from the bebop era by a wider audience who had not been around when the 78s were current and accessible.

Yes it IS the same logo. As for "Vogue", the French and UK record labels were sort of brothers. Don't know about the Vogue mag, though. That may may well have been "legit", but as we all know by 1960 the nipponese were well under way raiding everything copyable (and sellable) in the world for copying and plagiarizing, so why would they stop short of a mag that looked promising?

Interesting discovery. I didn't know DB ran a Japanese spinoff. Was this "legit" and endorsed (maybe even co-published) by DB or a ripoff/freeloader trying to cash in on the famous name?

Same here. But wheras in the past the old search function at least was a hit and miss affair (sometimes it did work - which was tedious because I could not detect a pattern whwn it would work and when not ... I therefore switched to Google too, as recommended by others a long time ago in a thread on this matter) the search function as it is now really is bunk and useless.

Hopefully. Forever.

Thanks for making my point so eloquently. Different strokes ... clash of cultures ... whatever. I remember my first experience of watching "Mon Oncle" was slightly unsettling due to the seemingly unfocused, confused, blurred dialogues - but that was when I was aged about 15. A bit later on I caught up with what he was all about, and all the finer points of his wit. And I have LOVED Jacques Tati ever since. Though that's a different part of the spectrum away from Louis Malle (including Zazie) again. And - yes, I find neither Al Bundy nor Seinfeld (what I've seen of them) all that funny, for example. Nor a host of others I am just too lazy to look up now.

Clearly a clash of cultures. Firstly, "Ascenseur pour l'echafaud" was not about Miles Davis in the first place but Miles Davis was subordinate to the plot and contents, and I feel there is a lot of him in there to create the atmosphere that pervades the entire film in a very fitting way. It should be remembered in what era the movie was made and what extent of "specialist" soundtrack was current or feasible then at all. Louis Malle did go very far there. And that "silent" Jeanne Moreau just is part of the plot as it unravels so those longish silent periods certainly are not a fault. I like the film and its atmosphere very much, including in the somewhat subdued plot of the film that the spectator pieces together as the movie proceeds. BTW, I'd also disagree with Tom Perchard's view on the film in his recent book "After Django". IMO it has less loose ends or doubtful intentions than is claimed there. Secondly, considering what Hollywood had foisted on the movie-going world through the decades in the way of blatantly unfunny "comedies", "Zazie" IS funny (OK, some speeded-up segments in the latter part of the film are a bit over the top but that's a minor point overall). At least by (Continental?) European sensitivities, particularly to those who have a feeling for that particular French way of portraying their own temperament as it manifests itself in certain everyday situations (give or take some exaggeration for effect), plus that "period" feel, of course. So I do disagree here too. But then again I rather am one to immerse myself in the setting and mood of such films (both "Ascenseur" and "Zazie" and others) and am not one to dissect their elements out of context.

97 years. Wow ... RIP. He was a musical catalyst who made things happen.

But did he regress back beyond his bebop style later on and went back to swing and R&B? Honestly, can you really say somebody REGRESSED if he stuck to his guns throughout his career and did not feel like jumping on the free or electro-jazz or fusion or post-whatever bandwagon that came (and went, BTW) after the hard bop era? He may have stagnated (at most) - but regressed? IMO "modernity" is not an end in itself (in jazz, in particular) to be judged by what is just the current and most "modern" fad, or else any modernity would be just a gimmick. The tree of jazz branches out in many different directions and these stylistic branches can and should coexist. And actually, I find his remark about and to Ornette Coleman about the pointlessness (for HIM) of playing "free" quite to the mark, given the niche character of jazz and the problems of making a living there. Besides, who was Ornette Coleman to tell Lou Donaldson he (quote) "needed" to play "some of this free music"? Why venturing out into something that you don't wholeheartedly believe in? And if you played something just because you felt (or were told) you "needed" to play this, then doesn't this sound like trying to follow a fad again? Yes I am nitpicking a bit, but I find this automatically taking swipes at those who have their own take on the "holy cows" of jazz a bit over the top. There is no "right" or "wrong" in this, just opinions. Particularly if it's the musicians among themselves.

Somehow I have always been under the impression that Lou Donaldson constantly played in a style of jazz that went BEYOND that, so .... ? Besides, just looking at the excerpt in the opening post: If you just take the core of one man's opinion and observations from his presence on the scene and even take them with a bit of salt, there STILL is a grain of "emperor's clothes" truth to it after all. Acquired wisdom (of what one - at large - is supposed NOT to disagree on) isn't always where wisdom really is.

Ronnell Bright.

Very interesting. But wouldn't it have been quite appropriate to give a BIT of airplay to EARLY African-American residents in France too? E.g. Big Boy Goudie, Garnet Clark, Willie Lewis ? After all they played an important role in setting the stage for the jazz climate that attracted Americans after the war.

I have it (released on Roulette, rec. July 7, 1961). The solo is there alright - a sort of "trading fours" with the band (or sections of it). Nice and effectful but not all that spectacular. It might well have been a sort of prearranged and written-out part for Green IMO.

"Tilt", right? (Swing 30.058)

According to the index. both are mentioned in the introductory chapter, Guralnick is mentioned 4 times elsehwhere throughout the book, but only with brief quotations form what he worte no Johnson, really just passing quotes, and Charters is mentioned on two pages a bit more in depth relating to his Folkways activities. Both do not figure prominently in the book, though. I read that book (and the one by Marybeth Hamlton) a few years ago but think I will need to re-read it now. What you wrote in an earlier post in reply to Larry Kart ... "f Columbia deigned to put out two 16 cut albums of Tampa Red in 1961, the world of music, sound, lyrics as poety etc would not in any way be diminished and arguably it would rather more interesting. ... got me thinking, though. From all I have observed (later on, admittedly, in mags and record catalogs from those years) about the reissue market of that period, select and limited availability no doubt shaped the perception of this music from much earlier periods to a large extent. This select and limited access to long-OOP music no doubt could make or break a myth of any given performer beyond what widespread access to the entire scope of recordings and artists (as we enjoy it today) would really have warranted. At least over here in Europe (including the UK, I'd guess). And sometimes it can only help re-reading period reviews and praises with the benefit of hindsight and the inevitable grain of salt IMO.

So .... what is this jury's current verdict on "Escaping the Delta" by Elijah Wald, then? (Just curious, really ...)

But how likely is Ray's to sell them SOON at that price?

Exactly. That's the one. But that series - desite its awkward covers - was just great. I cannot recall having ever been disappointed with the ones I bought from that series untried, untested.