Big Beat Steve

Low bitrate for samples put online only? Hopefully so. Because if used for the actual remastering, then - OUCH! But I think this will be impossible to be settled before one has heard an actual set as released. Afterthought: @Allen Lowe: I have not listened to the respective online sampes but since you initially said you were going to get this for the Dodo: What is so bad (comparatively speaking) about the Dodo recordings on that Spotlite LP? I am not a musician nor a sound engineer nor did I ever care to find out what would be technically possible in the digital age but that Dodo LP has been spun countless times here and within the way I tend to listen to 78rpm-era reissues I overall cannot fault it for anything.

You know how it can be in the minds of some. Only the bigwigs among the "majors" can hold such rights - or only esteemed, revered collectors' labels such as Mosaic. European copyright laws? Not valid when there is an occasion of blasting the labels involved, but when it is convenient, we buy'em anyway. Japanese reissues marked in small print "For sale in Japan only" (guess why?)? Doesn't matter, the Japanese are the good ones, per se. Holier than thou.

I wonder what Google Translate would come up with if somebody tried to retranslate the above back into Japanese (or whatever language) ... Now what does a roach sound like?? No, no P.C. needed here - I am not being tasteless, that quip was made decades ago in some song lyrics where "a roach named Max" was mentioned ....

Basically I wouldn't disagree about the convenience of having a "complete opus" like this in one place, but seeing that just about all the Dial one actually needs is either on the usual Bird discs or on that series of Spotlite LPs done all through the 80s (and pretty nicely done IMO), this is not a case like the Keynote recordings, for example, which really were scattered piecemeal all over the place (even for seasoned collectors) unless you had that 21-LP Japanese box set. But, of course and as always, YMMV (like some are constantly wont to say here )

One of the most inflationarily used words in recent human speech (at least in the Anglosaxon world of lingo). Probably because nothing is "held in awe" in the original sense of the word anymore these days.

Ah, the eternal debate of how to listen to 78s, even as reissues. I am not familiar with the Schaap-produced BG Carnegie Concert (I still am quite happy with my CBS twofer) but I'd almost bet that reissue has nothing on "Benny Goodman on V-Disc" (Dan Records VC-5022 - yes, JAPANESE reissue!) when it comes to hiss and crackles - not by a LONG (ear)shot! No difference of opinion here as for Davies' and Kendall's remastering of all those UK (etc.) reissues, but even they often had (to retain) that certain amount of typical 78s background noise and/or slightly muddied overall sound (to confirm, am listening to a Jazz Oracle CD remastered by Kendall as I write this) and it certainly does not detract IMO. It's just part of the game unless you have access to pristine source material. You just have to make allowances for a modicum of background or (carried-over) surface noise, depending on the source material, and even more so in the case of obscure and rare indy label 78s where the pressing quality may not have been the best in the first place and no metal masters or acetates are available anymore anyway. I'd prefer a moderate amount of surface or background noise in 78s reissues anytime to all-too-clean reissues where for each stellar remastering job that brings out unheard details you get 100 where all that tidying up has made the sound all too sterile and cuts off specific frequencies. Maybe some (or possibly many) collectors who usually listen to hi-fi era (and beyond) source recordings may just have to attune their ears to 78s listening and/or get a different set of ears altogether - not least of all because some listening expectations of today's buyers maybe don't even correspond to the way people used to listen to 50s/60s hi fi recordings back then anyway (hasn't there been endless talk and complaints about many recent CD remasterings just being too loud - does this sometimes even mean "shrill", I wonder? - compared to original releases? ). (Always talking about POST-acoustic era 78s - acoustically recorded 78s up to c.1925 admittedly are a different story, of course)

Looking for both the CD set and the book. Several years ago a book on the pre-war and post-war history of jazz in Belgium was released under the above title, and a multi-CD set followed not long afterwards. Durium (Hans Koert) tipped me off about this a couple of years ago and I tried to get hold of these through all the channels I could find online (including bookshops in Belgium that stated on their site that they had the CD set available), but to no avail. The Book and CDs seemed to have gone OOP in the meantime. I had meant to ask Hans about this again for some time but never got around to it and now it obviously is too late. Any info from anybody on where an affordable copy can be located would be much appreciated.

Many grooving, soulful returns, MG!

A side remark ... (yeah, late, I know, and a minor point, but if it was a case of setting the stage ... ) That remark by Condon has often been quoted but the situation when it was made according to most reports was nothing like this but rather a case of Condon not having been named among most notable jazzmen by Panassié and/or not having been invited to participate in one of Panassiés U.S. recording sessions. But above all, Panassié never was BELGIAN nor active there to any great degree. Don't know what Raksin was thinking of but if he went in that deep he ought to have been able to tell Panassié and Robert Goffin (or Carlos de Radzitzky) apart.

Understandable that the BN diehards are touchy about someone possibly messing with their holy grail, but what would be so "fake-ish" about this particular record? The few BN 45s that I've got look totally different - like this: And so do those you find in online listings. Wouldn't "counterfeit" imply something that imitates the original much more closely? Somebody may have been playing around with that name, but using such an uninspired label design that you had zillions of in the 50s/60s? This is not some kind of not even superficial "similarity" likely to fool too many fans of the "known" BN, IMHO. Anyway, there have been lots of cases where several small 45rpm labels had the same name so who knows what's behind all this for real?.

Which ain't worse than many of those US-born Boris Rose (??) 70s LP reissues of swing-era jazz (you know, "In Disco order ..." etc.) . They fill a gap in the market by including long-unreissued CDs in a package that (even if you have 4 easily available ones out that total of 6, for example) makes it worthwhile buying the set at that low price for the remaining two. if only to throw them in the car CD player. And they are in better sound quality.

Oohhhh .... This IS a shock. Hans was very knowledgeable and his blog was great. My deepest sympathies ...

Yeah, considering how much flak this exact reissue series got from the keepers of the grail around here when it was first discussed (in connection with Gigi Gryce, for example)

"We don't flat our fifths, we drink'em!"

Is it a fake? Isn't it a duplication of names from a time when exclusivity and copyright were not really enforced? After all, how many labels with identical names were there that existed simultaneuosly at various parts of the country? Particularly small labels with such utterly nondescript label artwork as this? Quite a few.

Well, compared to other styles of jazz it sometimes can be, can't it?

The novelty of false starts wears thin extremely fast IMO. It may occasionally be interesting for a "key" recording in some artist's recording career to see how that recording evolved, but overall ... ho hum. And like Kevin said, having to wade through one or more alternates though every track of a CD (or several) just is too much. Particularly if the alternates aren't all that different ALL the time. I can understand, though, that the compilers of this box had no choice. Hans't there been the oft-reported story, for example, about Bird's "Cool Blues" being so different from one take to another that the issuers at the time issued those takes as "Cool Blues", "Hot Blues" and "Blowtop Blues"? And once you get started on that track (and quite a few alternates by Bird merit inclusion) you cannot stop halfway because other collectors might whine "why this but not that?"

Glad you said that. Maybe it's because I come from a slightly different angle but to me they seem like a very 80s CIRCLE records LP thing. Apart from the occasional others like that 10-minute version of some tune on Sonny Boy Williamson's "Bummer Road" LP (Chess) marked "not suitable for airplay" on the cover back in those prude 70s days because Sonny Boy can be heard in the studio chatter to burst out "M****fu**er" and "B**ch" etc.

I'll pass. Except for many of the Garners, I have at least the master takes (and part of the alternates) of about all of the tunes included here (and all in all am quite satisfied with what Spotlite did with the source material for THEIR reissues) and I dont think I'll need that many alternates of that many tunes. But tastes differ, I know ...

So I had figured - cheap budget label with poor playing time and (not necessarily poor but at any rate) filler-type "product" (you mean music, right? ) that is OK for the price paid but not necessarily more. Which is why why I had sprung for these two discs mentioned above that DID fill gaps in an otherwise exceedingly skimpy reissue discography (at that time). But how come, then, that quite a few seem to be drooling about those Ellington and Armstrong releases from the same series - artists where on the face of it you ought to be able to easily rehash much more material (from known and released sources) to sell to the unwary from the grab bins? Why the (relatively speaking) "gems" here? What WAS their overall (re)issue policy after all? Really only hit and miss? THAT was my question.

What about these LASERLIGHT CDs (Jazz Collectors Series) in general? I have two (picked up YEARS ago): One feat. the Louis Prima orchestra of the Majestic period, and one which is a split feature for the Chico Marx orchestra and the Desi Arnaz band. Both bought rather cheaply, and I never thought of them as major items, just as impulse buys (at least a period version of "Oh Babe" by the Prima band (omitted on the Savoy twofer), and the first reissue of the Chico Marx band I ever had come across up to that point - novelty interest, for sure ... ). Now how does this LASERLIGHT CD series rate in general? If these Ellington CDs are such major and apparentyl well-programmed gap fillers, then what about issues by other artists? Is Laserlight universally known for picking really heretofore unissued live or radio items from the vaults?

According to LP reviews, the LP "Basie and Friends" (Pablo 2310925) has a couple of Basie-Peterson tracks that are not on any of the others. The liner notes, unfortunately, do not give any accurate session details.

Sure, shit happens. But if you knew how many areas there are (in areas universally considered to be part of the core of industrialized countries) where the outcry of "no commo" (including lack of REAL high-speed internet) becomes valid again (particularly if you are moving about), then you might moderate your adulation of the cloud just a wee bit, maybe, just maybe ... If my car breaks down (rather, should break down) then I eventually make a careful assessment of whether the tradeoff betwen the price paid (= level of service expected) and the number of breakdowns still works out OK for me. If it breaks down too often then I might actually end up feeling that I might not be worse off riding a horse-drawn cart or a bike. Particularly since I would not have expected the same level of service from a cart or a bike in the first place. Which, again, seems to be what has been hinted at in that other post that you "huh"ed, IMO. Nothing more, nothing less. BTW, ever heard of intentional exaggerations in exchanges of "arguments" (rather, points of view) like this? In short, take it easy.

I do think that what jcam_44 hinted at was that the expectations of the cloud are UNCONDITIONAL access at ANY time (as promised by the sales blurb) and not some intermittent access at the whim of outside influences. That would be a somewhat threadbare form of progress. My, how "old school" must I be that I can healthily survive a 2-week holiday without (except for a scant handful of CDs in the car) any access to all my favorite platters!

Easy. In the analog age, if your home (and record collection) was in place A and you were in place B (away from home), you had no acces to your records (unless the period of the analog ge you are thinking of is the one where walkmen already existed ). Expected, to be reckoned with, accepted. Now in the digital age they lure you with the promise of unlimited access to whatever you have stored (particularly all your "favorites") wherever you go, are, drive, eat, work, sleep, etc. Starting with doing your googling, ebaying, etc. on the go wherever you happen to be, with the specific premise that there just is NO limit to access regardless of where you are. Unlimited flexibility at any moment. Now if THAT don't work (even if it only cuts out unpredictably) - well, sh.t ... the KEY feature of all this progress goes out the window. Some fine progress ... ;)