Big Beat Steve

Ha! Excellent! I have had this among my Youtube donwloads for quite a number of years and enjoy it every now and then. Butch Stone is a gas anytime. At the same time I downloaded this (which I had caught in a jazz history program on TV close to 30 years ago but never have found it on LP anywhere so was glad to get it there at last): Pretty much arranged through, but very crisp and driving, and some nice Dave Pell too.

In a way - yes, but apart from the fact it depends on where you draw a line between copying and just "playing in the idiom", if you (not you, Paul, but those who make statements like the one you refer to) exclude from the start all those routes into jazz that will help to EASE people into jazz in an entertaining way (what's wrong about entertainment anyway?) and to provide them with an incentive to venture further into other RELATED fields of jazz step by step and if you insist instead on wagging your finger at your target audience and lecturing them about what they are supposed to like then you should not be too surprised if they turn their backs on you. After all, given the wide field of music and the wide field of tastes, music (including jazz) is a buyer's market, not a seller's market.

Very true, John L. (Just the same here.) The only young people getting a taste for jazz nowadays are the tiny handful who learn about it on music education courses in colleges and universities. And another group: Those who get into jazz from a DANCING angle. From alI I have heard and seeen online and (to a more limited extent) witnessed locally, the subculture of Swing dancing and LIndy Hopping is going strng, including among younger people. I have taken a few classes with my partner in early 2013 and I was among the older ones (sad for me, good for the scene ). Yes I know, many will dismiss that kind of jazz (swing, jump blues etc.) as pure nostalgia, but those dancers do become aware of swing-style jazz and for all I have witnessed they search out the music on CD or via downloads - and bands who play that music for this audience at live gigs ARE around - and one thing may well lead to another and incite them to explore other forms and artists of jazz GRADUALLY and step by step. At least as far as danceable jazz is concerned. No doubt forumist Swingittrev (if he drops by here) wil confirm this because he likely has a much closer experience of this than I have. Obviously those swing dancers are not likely ot embrace "challenging" avantgarde/free styles of jazz outright where what avantgarde fans experience as "challenging" will be experienced as "alienating" by many others. But is avantgarde (or world music free-for-all or whatever) all there can be to the wide field of jazz today, and is being able to enjoy your jazz through dancing - including at concerty featuring those "neo-swing" bands - really too low-brow to many "serious" jazz fans"? Maybe this explains that, as far as OVERALL popularity is concerned? And after all - does this mostly young crowd look like they are not enjoying their jazz? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL28h1SS7qw

I find these theme-specific record covers amusing - up to a point: If it were all about each contributor showing record covers only from HIS OWN collection that match that category - then, OK . Picking a record cover from an internet site - particularly if it is a record the contents of which you could not even stand listening to if you were forced at gunpoint - is not something overly original or even creative, OTOH, particularly since googling such covers is no big deal these days anymore. So you can round up any amount of record covers on any subject just via the internet. Or beyond ... By coincidence, last weekend I had a talk with a colleague from the classic car field who told me (I had been totally unaware of this) that he collects records too and has come 3,500. And what does he collect? Records with cars (any age, any country, any style) on the cover! Never mind (in most cases) the music ... If you were to take the file of his scanned record covers (which he has) you'd be just one step from flooding such a topic to death forever ... And yes - the repetitiveness of what is posted in these threads is a problem too. Which is why I visit those threads hardly anymore either, though I have long been a fan of those record cover art books that were arranged by theme. But to each his own ... Now as for advancing the appreciation of music, I can see that point, but aren't there quite a lot of discussions going on in that field at any time? Or is it about the complaint that people are not appreciating enough of what they are SUPPOSED to appreciate? I guess THIS is difficult to achieve, because tastes do differ. though I can understand the zealousness of those who feel this or that contemporary artist ought be more widely appreciated. But still ... And in this context it is not helpful either if whenever certain artists, records or subcategories in the wide, wide field of jazz are mentioned you can almost set your watch to see how soon the detractors from among the partisans of "jazz as high art" rear their heads and dismiss the music outright as not being substantial/serious/advanced/musically complex/aspiring/challenging etc. (take your pick ..) enough. Not a very constructive attitude either if it is all about getting today's jazz out of the corner of a scant few followers, even if this means EASING people into jazz through something relatively accessible that they can already relate to right from the start.

Well ... is it really just fetichism if one is pleased to find an interesting record from way back at a very good price that allows you to enjoy ALL aspects of the record (inlcuding listening to the music, but not only so), i.e. all the artwork, from the sleeve to the inner sleeve to the label in its original form as originally thought up and intended by those who published that object (record)? I'd agree it is nothing but fetichism if you pay insane top, top, top money (up to 4-digit figures) for an original/first/early pressing just because it is a platter that some geek had in his grimy, grubby hands way back in the 40s/50s/60s. No music can be THAT great if you pay something like 10, 20 or 50 times what a decent later pressing or reissue goes for (particularly if it is a well-produced facsimile reissue that evne gives you a decent reprodution of the orignal artwork). But if you find an original or early pressing at a very good/affordable/low price in spite of what the "market price" would be then why not enthuse and share your enthusiasm with others? And isn't that all that THIS thread is about? @jcam_44: As for obscurity, Chuck has a point but only to a very limited degree. At least as far as collecting goes. If it all were about only going after the big names, big artists, big disks, then a lot of valuable music would be unjustly overlooked and forgotten and history would be all the poorer for it. Besides, a lot of deserving music was unjustly neglected and overlooked back then and therefores is obscure now. 'bout time to resurrect some of it now if you can. Or else you might as well dump all those "Complete Works" box sets by all the major artists because - by that reasoning - why should anybody want or even be be entitled to collecting even the lesser and less successful works or even outright duds (even most major artists have been guilty of some of these)? No doubt a lot of those "obscurities" by obscure artists would be better and more deserving than the duds comited to wax by the major names on a not so good day. Anyway you look at it, this sort if swiping dismissals is a door that ALWAYS swing both ways.

I agree all the way with Jeffcrom, and would ask you, Jeff, to stay around, and keep posting. Please! Yes, this thread IS about antiquarian obsessiveness, and I enjoy it, though I am thousands of miles away from where many of these finds can still be made at all, and yet I am not envious (well, hardly ever ). I don't see any point either about dismissing the joy one experiences in finding an old, original, rare or otherwise desirable (PERSONALLY desirably, or else the one who make the find would pass the item up!) record, particularyl if you are able to find that item at an unbeatable price. This is part of the joy of ANY collecting hobby in ANY field out there. So - sorry, Mr Nessa, I don't quite get your point (or your sore spot) in this discussion either. Like Jeff said, the "Great Finds" title pretty much sums up what one likely would talk and report about here, and rightly so IMHO. And like corto maltese says, the excitement in finding a CD just is not the same. Finding a CD with music you have been looking for is nice and can be a satisfying experience, but unless you are all focused on CD or even newer methods (download etc.) it still remains "second best" to those who still treasure analog media. BESIDES: How come I have not heard this kind of complaints or dismissals in those endless threads about "upgrading" the umpteenth re-re-reissues of this or that CD that had already been around the block a zillion times and YET masses of CD buyers droool about the (alleged) virtues of this or that latest/newest/best/superlative mastering/digitizing etc., although the sonic improvement often is marginal at best on most sound systems? Is it always about the music in THOSE discussions or isn't there some navel-gazing going on too, and isnt it often just a case just being able to say "Hey I got this latest of all latest remastering of this CD and the issue that YOU have is just old hat"? As for it being about the music or not, are finding the music you have been looking for (and finding it at a good price) and finding it on the medium you prefer (here: vinyl) mutually exclusive? So it IS about the music after all, and as for the music being good or not, that is for the respective buyer and for no one else to decide. One man's meat is another man's poison, and certainly it its not for anyone to proclaim that what others are supposed NOT to enjoy.

FWIW, Phineas Newborn was indeed not on the "Rocket 88" session (so the Sun discographies say) but at the time that record hit the shops he recorded with B.B. King (including on King's "She's Dynamite") at the Sun studios and later that year (1951) was on Brenston's follow-up record "Tuckered Out").

Silver didn't single out a specific pianist. Rather he said, in Down Beat in 1956, "I can't stand that faggot-type jazz," by which it was understOOd that he meant the predominant West Coast jazz style of the time. Horace said that, not me. And I was responding to post #69, which brought up what Horace said but got the quote a bit wrong. Talking about depth, if Horace Silve actually said that (referring to "West Coast Jazz" in one swoosh), then this shows a pretty evident lack of depth of musical perception. You certainly can fault SOME West coast Jazz for being "faggoty" - but that entire style? Musicians with open ears and minds ought to have known better. Anyway, by those "angry young men" hard bop standards there must have been "faggot" jazz from other coasts too.

This should not be a point of contention anymore anywhere today anyway. And if it still is with some then everyone else should be entitled to shoud out loud: "Crow Jim!"

This album would let me know that I stand right in front of a cutout/clearance sale bin and drop this right back where I had inadvertently pulled it up from.

Don't tell us this is in the "I WANT TO RE-LIVE MY YOUTH" corner of your record collection!

Bill Grauer, 40, Dies Suddenly, Billboard, December 28, 1963 https://books.google.com/books?id=SwsEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA4&dq=bill%20grauer%20riverside&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=bill%20grauer%20riverside&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=AUUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA16&dq=bill%20grauer&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q=bill%20grauer&f=false Now, is it "possible" Keepnews was the 'brains' and 'soul' of the operation and he considered Grauer nothing more than a useful hustler? And is it also possible Keepnews rarely spoke of Grauer out of politeness, not egotism? Seems highly unlikely but... Makes you wonder, though, what Billboard, politically correctly (??) tried to hint at by stating "The mistakes he might have made were done with the same boldness he built the firm".

James, hats off to you for that discography! I am impressed indeed!

So just to get this straight: Some of this has previously been released on the "Tribute from Sweden" LP mentioned above (some of the song titles of which must be fictitious, and the non-existent discog info won't help any either, except that the Swedish text - apparently taken from a "Swedish phrases for tourists" book - is hilarious in this context) and on Hep 36 ("Benny's Bop") under the "July 1948" recording date given there? But the recordings on Dragon DRLP 16 ("Swedish Pastry") are all different, or are the dates and lineups wrong there and at least some of the recordings on that LP ARE in fact from the above two dates?

'Bout time for an UPTOWN release of all this material!

I learned a lot from it too but isn't it overdoing that "oral history" bit somewhat if you ramble on about this or that musician who "got in a nice say too" (or something like that) when you refer to his solos on recordings or at other shows over and over and over again? Doesn't it blur the focus on the contents if the reader has to wade through repetitive statements like this that don't do much to sustain the story which could well be an exceedingly colorful one? And there are lots of spots like that. A bit of a pity IMO for such a highly interesting subject matter. Oral histories are all very well and do have their merits but are they the optimum way of presenting a full book-length topic if the narrator is not the most outgoing, extrovert, dynamic person in the world? Nothing wrong with not being all that, but how do you get the story across in a manner across that sustains its momentum all by itself throughout instead of making the reader DIG for the nuggets that certainly are there? The very early years were quite colorful to read indeed but somehow I felt that the momentum fizzled out a bit in that story after the Kansas City period, i.e. even before the chronology had reached the post-war period.

Sure, anyhting is possible. But let's picture this for a second: There goes that guy thinking "Hey, me and my huuuuuge colection, they want to take a picture of me in front of my collection showing a sample of my huuuuuge, unique, extraordinary collection.... So what do I pick to hold in front of that camera?" Dou you realy think he couldn't care less about the record he chooses to pull out? When STAGING this pic for everyone to see? Would that be likely? So I don't find it totally unlikely that JSangrey's hunch is right with this being a sort of put-on.

I think the "problem" with the Chambers/Twardzik bio (which I enjoyed reading, BTW) is - Who ELSE would have been out there to tackle the subject and come up with the same amount of findings and "hits"? And no doubt some "misses" such as the ones quoted above will inevitably find their way in along the way. And there is BOUND to be someone out there who will be diligent and/or knowledgeable and/or sensitive enough to single them out. But does this invalidate the (overwhelming) "rest" of the book? What would be the quota of errors that would be accepted before the majority of the readers with average "jazz fan" knowledge would - like a man - discard a book as unusable? And would the errors be seen as equally important by everyone in the wider field of the targe readers' audience? I remember the bio on Tommy Dorsey by Peter J. Levinson which I read a couple of years ago (not my no. 1 favorite swing-era jazzman for sure, but the bio was available really dirt cheap at the local Zweitausendeins shop so you just couldn't go wrong at that price). Well-written and insightful IMO and a good read. But then there came that swing-era expert (probably one who had witnessed the era, at last its tail end, in person) who - on some big band forum - gave a scathing listing of factual and interpretational errors in that book that really left little room for counterarguments. Not that the book was faulted in its entirety but it was good to see somebody did some fine-combing there to make you aware of those errors or oversights. But it just shows you always have to use a grain of salt. (Wish I had that listing of errors - for future reference - but unfortunately I did not copy it at the time and that post is long gone) Yet I wonder how many of those who would have picked every sore spot of any Miles or Trane (or Twardzik, for that matter) bio would have bothered to take note of those errors in that Dorsey bio at all - or would they just shrug things off as being not that important (because TD wasn't that important to them anyway) ... Which IMO only goes to show that if you look closely enough you will always find room for improvement, and depending on the importance of the subject to you these errors found are considered either more or less severe and this invariably has an impact on your final judgment. BTW, about that Chet/ballad wuote, I agree it is misleading. But what about the way Chet Baker appeared to the public at large for quite a bit of time? Did they associate ballads or even his singing with him in the first place, or did they judge him primarily by his "Crew" album, for instance? Maybe some of those Zieff charts would have shifted his "public image" and maybe this was what Chambers hinted at

Indeed ... just thinking of it one really couldn't disagree with you ... There must be hundreds of records that an obsessive hoarder must own and KNOW that thousands of savvy collectors out there would be frothing at their mouths if he held one of THOSE in front of the camera ...

Uh oh .... So whenever the better half of any of you starts complaining about all them records taking up all that wall space then go ahead and show them the above statement as well as the page linked initially - just to prove once and for all you "could be doing much, much worse and much, much more obsessively!"

A minor point but what struck me about the picture above is the typical look of the spines in his record racks. Looks very much like a 70s (and post-70s) album collection. Those albums where the colors/artwork runs right across the spine from the front to the back cover (often as part of gatefold covers), and all this in typical 70s U.S. pressing cardboard covers that got ring-worn, dinged and flaky round the edges pretty fast. I remember a lot of the (comparatively modest) record collections of my 70s buddies (who were into the then-current bands) looked just as colorful but also just as dinged, worn and flaking as this one - even back then. Quite a difference to the 50s/60s albums (or reissues) where the spines usually are white and the arrays of album spines provide a quite different look.

Yes it's a nice book but I must admit one single protagonist's "conversational" autobiography can wear you out a bit if that protagonist is not THAT consistently articulate (no, I DON'T expect an autobiography to be as full of wit and entertainment as Terry Gibbs' "Good Vibes"; for example ). Though I am a huge fan of Basie's music I found this "conversational" style sometimes a bit distracting in the way it apparently has NOT been edited/honed out a bit for printing here because some phrases that Basie seems to like to fall back on make the contents sound a bit vague and repetitive more than once and the story at times just rambles on. And this although the contents MUST have seen some editing - by Mr Murray? - considering how little balance there is between the various phases of Basie's career. While the details of the early years are interesting I was a bit disappointed in the way part of his post-war story was rushed through, as if in an afterthought

Also in the Jazz Masters series, Martin Williams' "Jazz Masters of New Orleans" and Richard Hadlock's "Jazz Masters of the Twenties." Could it be that the "Jazz Masters of the 40s" volume by Ira Gitler is being given short shrift here? Why? I may be biased because this was the first I read from that series (haven't read all of them yet anyway) and this was in my "formative years" so it had an impact but at any rate I Iike to revisit it from time to time, even though some of its findings may not reflect the latest state of the art anymore.B BTW, @Larry Kart: What exactly is it that you find faulty with Gunther Schuller's "The Swing Era", apart from the fact that he doesn't seem to appreaciate Art Tatum correctly, as you say? Really curious ...

Don't have the BN one, but had the Verve one given to me for x-mas and while it's certainly not a thrilling read or anything, I find it quite interesting, regarding the entire story of JATP, Clef, Norgran etc. The Granz book might be a better read, who knows, but the photos and stuff in the Verve book is pretty amazing, too - and different from BN, there were so many Verve covers around (so much stuff got re-packaged and re-compiled) that I really feel like I don't even know half of 'em. "I want to fight against racism, to give listeners a good product, and to earn money from good music." Fair enough, I'd think. I have both (though I am only partially through the books by now), and I think they complement each other well. I agree that the Verve coffee-table book is not the best read in the world but it is quite OK anyway IMO. I have seen others that were written much more badly yet had much higher pretenses. The capsule bios in the Verve book are quite OK for the primary target audience, and the illustrations (and their layout) and sheer amount of data are stimulating enough, though I would have appreciated a bit more detail on the often-overlooked artists (who also were part of the Verve LABLE history) outside the trodden paths of the biggies but then I suppose you could not have marketed that book that easily to the more casual listeners who have a handful of Ella and Oscar records and now want to get something to look at while listening ... As for the Granz bio, I agree about the fair enough "making money from a good cause" angle, and in the way he acted on numerous occasions Granz certainly proved that he did stand up for the rights of the artists he worked with. Remember the times most of this took place in. Like or face it or not, but from today's state of society a lot of this was the "dark age" and those who did not live through those times sometimes are a bit rash in faulting people like Granz for not going farther than they did or for not being more radical in their actions. And I have a feeling any bio of Granz by necessity falls short on what it could have accomplished simply due to the fact that Normal Granz went out of his way to destroy documents and evidence from his life and his business so a lot that would have been of immense interested for the evaluation by historians just isn't there anymore. What I don't like about the Verve coffee-table book, though, is that tendency (by THIS author??) to milk over and over again those William Gottlieb photo files at the LOC. The Gottlieb pictures ARE geat but as they have been used before in many cases and are publicly accessible on the LOC site they must be pretty well-known to anyone seriously interested in the music from that era by now, and besides, how many devades of jazz can you illustrate with photos from 1947 exclusively?? IMO this way of rounding up pictures from the same source over and over again is an wasy way out for the author and editor to save them the effort of doing some real searching for views from that era not seen too often before (which no doubt MUST be out there ...).

This must be more or less the equivalent what I don't like about a certain type of books about music usually written by the sociologically inclined ... They've got an agenda and stipulate their "findings" (in accordance with their personal agenda) FIRST and THEN present the facts and evidence in a way that reeks very much like they go out of their way to make that evidence fit their intended "findings". Not very convincing and certainly awkward to read in many cases ...