Big Beat Steve

Done.

Now THAT sounds like an original way of adapting tunes. Why limit yourself to hearing "King Porter Stomp" played by Westcoast jazz musicians, for example, or Steve Lacy's first recordings for Jaguar? Why not the other way round, for once, too? Cannot recall having heard about them "at the time" (but probaby I just did not pay attention). Time to make up for that oversight.

As per their CD covers (those I own, anyway), I've filed them under "H"?

Just curious: What do you mean, "The BN story isn't that lengthy ..."? What makes up the bulk of the pages of that book, then? Thanks beforehand. Apart from that, anybody got any impression on the following: What is the balance of the contents like between the heyday of BN from its beginnings up to the end of the Lion/Wolff period and today's BN reincarnation with Norah Jones etc.? Where is the emphasis and to what extent? To typical hardcore jazz fans today's BN would only be an afterthought, but to those who would market the BN "brand" today, probably the reverse would be true. Hence my question.

There IS your cover: (and you may well classify Western Swing under a sub-species of jazz, incuding the original recording of that song )

No need to go to Brazil to fill the Q's in such lists if you do not focus on the leader's family name but include the names of the groups referring to the number of group members. Italy, for example, ABOUNDED in quartets and quintets in the 40s, 50s and early 60s that made many pop and sometimes semi-jazz recordings, starting with the Quartetto Cetra Quartetto Radar Quartetto 2+2 Quartetto Enzo Gallo Quattro Caravels Quintetto Fantasia as some of the more notable ones. Not to forget the orchestra of Bruno QUIRINETTA. (But no, speaking of qurtets/quintets, the Quintette du Hot Club de France really ought to be filed under Django Reinhardt and nowhere else. So who'd you pick for X in an A to Z show based on (jazz-oriented) ARTISTS? ;) Why? How about "XYZ" by the great Fatha Hines and his Orchestra? Some instrumentals could never do any harm in between and this one COOKS! Or in a much more modern vein in jazz programming, "Xenobiosis" by Albert Mangelsdorff, "Xibaba" by Donald Byrd or "Xlento" by Hank Mobley.

So nobody's got this?? (or another one by the same man)

Amazing ... considering how very, very PC-ish soooo many discussions run in the US, it is surprising nobody has considered THIS in "bad taste" yet ... What's the point of dragging the deaf into this and making fun of them?

Not such a big surprise, these records. Understandably someone who would have owned such records even after WWII would not have made them too conspicuous, hence the cover-up inside a different record album. If you know a good bookbinder (or are one yourself) you can do a professional job even as a one-off. I've seen examples of such cover-ups e.g. of 3rd Reich items (more recently thrown on the market as "antiques") that survived the 40 years of Communisn in Eastern Germany. But these records themselves have been around in numbers and there was nothing secret about them being pressed that way as they came as part of a book published soon after Hitler's rise to power. Actually I owned that book years ago (it had come as part of the estate of some distant relative who was of adult age in that period) but without the records; and since I did not really fancy keeping that sort of stuff around I sold it off along with the other books of that type long ago. Helped me finance a bit of my own hobby interests so they did do some good after all.

Is it sort of comforting that they don't drown you in an avalanche of the Billy Vaughn sax section? Or that tweeting of Curtis Stigers?

Sure (indeed there ARE many other more interesting works of music to buy), but then you wouldn't be among those who say "You can't do this with (or to) KOB", right?

Maybe THIS is exactly what bugged some? Those who have put KOB on a sky-high pedestal or in a sacred shrine to be worshipped all year round?

Excellent choices to commemorate him. RIP.

Will do - like his contributions to the Basie band, of course. Though he is not totally up to snuff on that "Basie Reunion" LP from the late 50s (but of course that was extremely fast company).

I didn't really get the original KOB for years, not until i'd been listening to Miles for a long time. It's one of the reasons that i rail against the conventional wisdom that it's a great default entry point for introducing people to jazz. At least it wasn't in my experience. My opinion exactly about that "default". I, for example, got into modern jazz more or less chronologically, starting with the 1945 BIrd and Diz recordings and venturing further and further onwards, easing my way in. My first Miles obviously was BIrth of the Cool (which I found totaly logical from the 1st minute) and I had no problems getting into all his Quintet recordings from the Prestige/Debut era (in fact I'd rate some of these recordings in that "space age bachelor pad" corner too, considering in what settings and moods you tend to listen to them), so what could KOB possibly have done for me when it came to "introducing" me to jazz? Not that I don't "get" KOB - I have listened to it time and again, and like others have mentioned here, I also find that lots of its elements crop up elsewhere in the overall "sound of jazz" from a certain stylistic phase in the evolution of jazz so KOB sort of set the "soundtrack" for part of what came later, but because it is so omnipresent and touted wherever you look and go, I never bothered to get myself a copy - knowing well that whenever I actually wanted one, i would be able to get some reissue/pressing in whatever format suited me at an instant's notice - day or night ... Reminds me of a chance encounter with a German jazz pianist this summer (he has records out though I had never heard of him; friends brought him and his wife along to our summer barbecue). Obviously we got into "talking shop" about jazz at length, and eventually we got to how people get into jazz. Sure enough, when I mentioned that I had never bothered to get a copy of KOB for the above reasons he was sort of baffled because KOB had been one of THE key entry points for him (though by his own statements he has wide ranging tastes and I cannot find traces of KOB in the CD of his he gave me, and he must be in his late 40s so by the time he could have gotten into jazz KOB was not "contemporary" anymore either). Totally different strokes, I guess ...

No, why? He came along AFTER Gullin, didn't he? So he is automatically less important? And/or less of a baritone saxophonist? My .... who says he is less important? Do you actually, really expect EVERYBODY here to rattle off the same who's who of baritone saxists of close to 100 years of jazz all alike? Each and everybody names his personal favorites of the styles of jazz he prefers and listens to most intently, not more, not less. There may be lots of deserving musicians who are off the radar to some but it is not always the same musicians that are off the radar (luckily ...). Remember the recommendations that the thread starter asked for always boil down to very personal matters and judgments. It is not (or should not be) about finger wagging of "you MUST listen to this (or that) one or else you are nowhere ..." It is only the SUM of all recommendations that fleshes out the picture. Besides, how many smiles does one have to put up to show the tone of a message? So PLEASE, relax, OK? ... ;)

Considering the extreme and numerous reactions this "other" thread has triggered, I wonder where you have been these past few weeks, Hardbopjazz?

No, why? He came along AFTER Gullin, didn't he?

Why hasn't anybody named LARS GULLIN yet?? Re- Serge Chaloff, do NOT overlook his "Boston Blow-Up" LP! Re- Sahib Shihab, no matter what some may think of that label, the 2-CD set "Complete Sextet Sessions 1956-1957" on Fresh Sound is a fine roundup of his work from that period IMHO. And then there were his Danish sessions with Brew Moore, etc. And another plug for Ernie Caceres and Leo Parker.

Happy birthday from me too. Enjoy the music and the musical discoveries when you make the rounds at all the jazz venues.

Tell me, all of you .. When you make such fantastic (and numerous) buys over in Japan, how do you get all the stuff home? No doubt packing it all in your luggage might make that luggage largely overweight (and expensive)? Do you send parcels home to your own address? Would that be worthwhile financially? Assuming that you do not suddenly have somebody on hand who happens to move from Japan to Britain right now and still has space available for odd'n'ends in his 20-ft container, right?

As "things WRITTEN on LPs" that we have picked up, do "things stamped or glued" on these LPs count too? One example ... years ago I picked up a clean secondhand copy of Mose Allison's "Young Man Mose" on Prestige (period-correct Metronome pressing) and according to the stamping on the back cover it was previously owned by Hans-Wolf Schneider (HaWe Schneider to those in the know) of Spree City Stompers fame (well-known 50s-60s German revival jazz band of whom HaWe was the leader) and active as a jazz impresario. Just like other contibutors here, I also have quite a few of those where previous owners have carefully annotated each title on the back cover with their individual Down Beat-style rating of stars or dots, and in at least one case (which I cannot locate right now) one earlier owner was displeased enough with part of the LP that he wrote out the words RUBBISH next to one or two tracks!

Yes, so do I - if I hear people (whose tastes I know to be similar to mine) talk about stuff that arouses my curiosity. Has cost me a bundle just reading here through the years ... Let's not make too big a fuss about that above statement anyway - I was just puzzled about how I was to give anybody a recommendation if I don't even know in which direction his tastes actually run. And like I said earlier - in the case of the bebop output on Dial (beyond Bird) I'd find it really hard to clearly rate any one recording/leader much above the others.

Wha ....?? I would have had an exceedingly hard time recognizing Lars Gullin in that 70s video! Ouch ... But really nice playing.

What would make me wonder is what makes Dyer think Coltrane lacked conviction (seeing that he was so "passionately intense"). Which makes me, in tun, wonder what purpose this Yeats statement could serve there at all. Because to me it seems, then, that not only this "Yeatsian oppostion" is false. As a very minimum it seems irrelevant in THIS context and Dyer's turnaround of intensity (allegedly) covering up conviction would be just as off. I am not nearly familiar enough with Trane to pass any sort of judgment but I'd believe anytime that he was very convinced of what he did or attempted to accomplish and believed in it. Regardless of whether this particular performance would rank high among his musical achievements or not. A dangerous thing to do, making such sweeping generalizations for the "general public" (who just might pick up that very statement as a "fact" to be repeated elsewhere in a most inappropriate way), and I can understand that this is galling to those who believe in the music and know the finer details of it.