Big Beat Steve

Untangling the discography of John Lee Hooker (particularly his early recordings) is a MAJOR effort but according to the John Lee Hooker special issue of the (French) SOUL BAG magazine, "Coast to Coast Blues Band" is United Artists 5512 and "John Lee Hooker's Detroit" is United Artists 3-127. Glancing quickly through the discography in that mag, both LPs seem to consist of originally unissued alternate takes of his recordings from 1948 onwards, mostly for Modern, some for Sensation. They have all been re-reissued on Capitol CD 33912 (Alternative Boogie - Early Studio Recordings 1948-52) and one or the other volume of the "Complete John Lee Hooker - Detroit 1948-1950" CD series on Body & Soul.

In a way I agree with you, and in a way I don't. I agree in that I have been through this "getting rid of" thing too after my father died (and even before that when he scaled down). He had huge masses of books, not only fiction (all the classics) but also architecture, art, history, etc. Hard, very hard to shift for many items because those who value that kind of coffee table art and history books either have them all themselves or are approaching an age where they'd better start downsizing fast too. Though the receipts often were less than anticipated I was able to make quite a few buyers happy at fleamarkets, etc. (and had no regrets unloading others at charity insittutions). And YET - there were some ((older) architecture books (that he himself had inherited from an older colleague) that went for BIG money (though I did not auction them). And when I sold off the final ones of those better ones (at a quite OK price ) they went to a professional dealer who evidently was totally dumbfounded finding items like this at a FLEAMARKET, and on sale by somebody who knew what he had! Her recurrent question while we negotiated was "What estate did those books come from?" - as if she was dead set that private libraries coming from estates of professionals like this were AUTOMATICALLY meant to go to professional antiquarians and not onto the free market for DIRECT sale to the next generation of FINAL customers who'd value them for the years to come. ("Avoid the middleman" - remember? ) One more experience that spurred me into cautioning my loved ones (against being too blue-eyed when dealing with professionals after I've bowed out). I don't agree, though, when I look at my own collections. Should I really let my collections of 40s/50s jazz magazines or that relatively full run of all the major pocket-size U.S. hot rod and custom car magazines from the 50s (I must have some 300 or 400 of them - anybody out there among you from the US who remembers them first hand?) go to dealers who'd pay just peanuts (pretending they are too "obscure" over here to create much demand) or shouldn't I rather make an effort making lists of the more interesting items and of potentially interested parties beforehand who are into these fields of collecting themselves and are able to VALUE them at a fair price to both sides? It's not just a matter of antique items, BTW. I'd try the same with part of my LPS and CDs which at first sight might be just LPs and CDs but cover a variety of "niche segments" of collectible music (jazz and non-jazz) so I'd know where others who are into that but don't necessarily have them all can be found and who might be candidates for "first pick" if interested. Many of these are from genres and labels that you hardly ever find in secondhand record shops (at least over here) ... there msut be a cause for this ... Not least of all to make sure my heirs at least make some decent money out if it all, even if it is going to be less than what I once paid. That's what I was getting at - but of course that is a field that is for us collectors to prepare and we cannot leave all that work to our heirs. And if the "mass items" remaining at the end then go to garage sales or to charity, then so be it ...

I see your points mjazzg and ejp626 - totally so. And yet it is something where you cannot generalize. I too am glad to hear Laurie found a solution that suits her well. I just wanted to point out this is not something for everybody, least of all for those at the buyers' end who might have been quite interested in taking specific items off her hands. At prices no doubt higher than what any dealer would pay. I for one am glad I was able to buy select items from such Excel lists (at prices which were very decent to the sellers too) when collections came up for sale here in collectors's circles, either due to death or due to massive downsizing. Not likely I would have been able to get these items at the same prices once they had ended in the stocks of professional dealers. I hope I still have some mileage left until I have to give all this serious and final thoughts and in the end (after I've left the building) I cannot definitely steer things in the direction I prefer anyway, that's for sure. But this matter has been given some thought here and it seems like I would be able to nominate one or several trustworthy persons (friends or very good acquaintances, in fact) for EACH part of my collections (which do go beyond records) who know their way around in these fields (not least of all because they are collectors themselves) and either would be honest enough (so I firmly believe ) to offer fair prices for items THEY want or would be able to advise on what pitfalls to avoid in order not to be shortchanged when selling part of the collection elsewhere before hauling off the remainder (or should I say remnants?) to some dealer. Am I such an isolated case?

To put it in a somewhat simplified manner: Bear Family reissue records of labels that they have bought the rights to lock stock and barrel - regardless of the European copyright cutoff date of 50+ years (which CONTINUES to apply to pre-1962 records here because the cutoff dates do not shift retroactively even after the new 70+ year cutoff date to protect Cliff, the Beatles etc. became applicable in 2012). Noble though Bear Family's attitude may be (not mentioning the fact that this has been their policy since way back when Public Domain was no topic yet so it rather seems to be company policy, not some specific anti-P.D. policy), it is a two-sided affair to collectors and buyers: Sometimes they tend to milk the cow until it's bone dry by reissuing any dross that there ever was (you CAN overdo reissuing each and every note when you pack in ANYTHING that was churned out by Nashville on a given artist or label). Scraping the barrel anyone? And sometimes you have to stretch your packaging immensely in order to keep your marketing gag running, e.g. in the "Gonna Shake Thist Shack" series allegedly compiled to market the uptempo, rather more rocking side of 50s country artists you unfortunately sometimes get CDs where 3 or 4 of the tracks might actually fall into that bracket whereas the rest (i.e. the majority!) is either country tearjerkers of the more unbearable sort (that has NOT stood the test of the decades with most of today's collectors) or syrupy teen nonsense where those country artists have tried (and failed) to grab a slice of the late 50s teen market. Lame stuff and nothing to shake a shack. The plight of having (or wanting) to market everything that you hold the rights to, though the packaging invariably is excellent. With all due respect and admiration for most of Bear Family's products (discounting the above letdowns that ARE out there), I therefore agree all the way with Allen's statement above: "I just think that if this were left up to the majors we would know virtually nothing about our musical history. And it is not as though Sony/BMG or Bear Family are paying the Ma Rainey and Charley Patton estates. and, as I said, it is the little reissue labels - the OJLs, collectors classics, Arhoolie. Yazoo, et al, who have kept the market alive. There is no doubt of that." BTW, referring to the above hits at royalties to the Rainey/Patton estates, and as for obtaining the rights to the labels they reissue, I do wonder a little if BF have actually BOUGHT the rights to the recordings by Clff Bruner on the AYO label that they processed in their Cliff Bruner box. AYO is pretty obscure anyway, and if there had been rights to buy we would have seen other compilations of the AYO label recordings (gotta market what you paid for, don'tcha?). But have we? Allen, I cannot offer any concrete pointer towards European PD labels unfortunately, but please do keep me posted on the progress of that project too. I might even be able to round up one or two other (diehard country/rockabilly) collectors who might be interested too.

Congratulations to you for being able to get this off your soul with a minimum of fuss. Just one final note, though: If you sell to a professional dealer he will give you only a fraction of the actual value of the collection and ALSO only a (somewhat larger only) fraction of what you would have been able to get from "end customers" to whom you might have sold the discs directly at a price that would have been quite attractive to them (i.e. less than what a dealer would charge) and still would have netted you substantially more than what the professional pays you. It's a tradeoff between getting less money and having no fuss to worry about and getting more money but having to invest quite a bit more work to get the goods sold. So if it works OK for you, perfect! The dealer, OTOH, will have no qualms about charging whatever he can get (i.e. not too little) out of that bulk and turn a buck. Sure, he is in the business to make money and gotta make money but in the end the collectors will not necessarily profit from such collections that beocme available after the death of their owners. So to the collectors this may not be the best deal overall. In short: Remembe the age-old principle in any such transaction: "AVOID THE MIDDLEMAN!" We all will have to face up to that problem of how to prepare the field for those who will still be around to clear out all our hoarding mess (aka "collections" of this'n that) when we have bowed out. And I've already taken some ribbing form my better half about that too. But I know for sure that when the time approaches I will stipulate that the "records/music" part of my collections will under ABSOLUTELY NO circumstances be sold to the local second hand platter shop! I've bought quite a bit from them through the years but they certainly won't give you top money when they purchase collections and I don't see why I should grease their palms by providing them with the opportunity of selling the same goods over and over again. After all, that would be too easy for them ...

I know what you mean and agree... nevertheless, there's a nice contrast between the image of DeArango conveyed by your post and the 1973 trio live date which can be streamed on the page medjuck liked to... here is another discography btw which looks better on first sight: https://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g51092/DeArango.html I know what YOU mean too ... but look at De Arango's leader and sideman discography from before and up to his EmArcy date. There is a HUGE gap, so wherever you find his name in a pretty long period of jazz you automatically know where these recordings belong to, even if no rcording dates are given, and I must admit his later recordings have been totally off my radar. In fact we probably are talking about two different "Bill de Arangos" altogether.

Don't know, really. Apart from some of his sideman dates such as those you mention I've had his EmArcy LP for a long time and like it a lot. He is one of those characters from the history of jazz (particularly form the bebop era) who AUTOMATICALLy conjure up images of music from a VERY specific era to me because most of their commonly accessible recorded output is limited to a specific period, such as in the cases of musicians such as Dodo Marmarosa, Al Haig, George Wallington, Margie Hyams, Mary Osborne, etc. so I'd grab anything by them I'd come across (though I'd not been able to listen in beforehand) and I'd very, very seldom be disappointed.

Euhhh ... one question: Why can't I, even when connected with my Org. nick, view the jpg attachments (i.e. open the files)? Something I missed there or is this a glitch in the file linking? Please advise.

@Luciano: See Michael Fitzgerald's post of 10 March 2003 above. He answers it all.

GA, I was in no bad mood at all until I read your initial post (and not even then ... just a little taken aback by such sweeping generalizations). Your one-sided slant against "scammers" specifically outside of N.A. (of all places) was uncalled for and unfair. Talk about impertinence ... If you are THAT worried about shady characters, would it have been totally unfathomable going for some sort of balanced statement to the effect that "scammers may be everywhere in this business, so beware"? (No, I am not trying to write your posts, just trying to get some common sense across ...) BTW, I have been on eBay since the middle of 2000, and the ONLY occasions (two in total) I have been scammed were by U.S. sellers. Taking yer money but no goods, and clearly not a matter of postal screw-up. Am I now holding all those from the US responsible who do business either way on eBay or similar platforms? Of course not. You cannot generalize, and shit happens. So all I was really asking was to be at least halfway balanced when making statements like that. Particularly when trying to give advice to the uninitiated. Finally, I admit I did have to look up "exceptionalism" (a term I had not heard before) but at any rate, that very notion is ... oh well ... why bother ... Oh yes, as for beer ... no dice. But some other brew might be quite feasible. @Laurie/jazzkats: My sincerest apologies but maybe you will understand such generalizations need at least SOME straightening out. Whatever you do with that collection and wherever you want to sell them IF you want to sell at least part of the collection item by item, please remember the prices you might fetch will be higher in other regins of the world. Though today's postal shipping rates don't help at all. It might be worth a try not ruling out buyers from outside the US from the outset. (No, I have no personal interest in this but am dead sure others would be more than interested in what would be the right items to THEM)

I like a good snaggle tooth.

Are you sure there are no scammers IN North America? Or if you want to advise against SPECIFIC regions of the world to deal with, then please say so and be specific. Otherwise you might do a huge and unfair disservice to honest collectors from outside the US of A (remember there IS a world of decent people and jazz fans out there) who might even be prepared to bear the huge shipping costs for the right item, and/or you might unnecessarily discourage newbie sellers on the forum who maybe have not dealt with buyers from abroad (or maybe even people from abroad at all) before. In short, please let's be fair.

Google is your friend: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_Jazz_Ramwong

Your "stated" intent is and remains ridiculous the way you put down others for allegedly buying too much music (that IS what you do - re-read your post). And who are you to judge if those others are able to digest the music thoroughly enough before moving on to the next one? As if your way of listening was the only one. Besides, nobody put you down for taking in the music the way you do. It just is that preferences differ widely, and why not say so in an open discussion? Like it or not, but it was rather pointless focusing that way on Ligeti. He stated his opinion, that's all. BTW, thin skins are were there are those who feel they by all means need to defend their own modus operandi (like with that initial "cutting edge rebel" retort that comes acorss very much as an underhanded put-down, just because there is somebody who states his opinion that these Spotify gadgets are just "Emperor's clothes" to hin - understandably so IMHO)

Aweigh!! You might need that anchor some other time again!

Who says you immediately have to move from one to the next just because you bought several in one go? What would be keeping you from buying a load at one time (if only to take advantage of shipping all in one go or of special offers available for a limited time only? There may be a dozen reasons to group purchases) and yet listening to them one after another, keeping the "next ones" on hold until you've really digested the one before? From what I've witnessed with others who do streaming I can fully understand what Ligeti says about becoming less discerning and finding almost anything worth a partial listen. Listen in here, listen in there, and out the window goes the tune after some consumptive listening ... on to the next ... it happens too easily if you are flooded with items and don't even have to make an effort to select. About all this being detrimental to one's overall appreciation, maybe streaming is the final step in everything in music being at your fingertips indiscriminately. It a way it is the "culmination" of an evolution that in some pensive moment I've been wondering about every now and then ever since CD reissue (and issue) programs have mushroomed to the extent they have now: It is nice and convenient for music lovers and collectors to be able to access their wishes much more easily but do we really get that deeply into the music anymore? As deeply as, say, in the 60s when you were oh so happy to find a reissue LP of your favorite artist with 16 tunes that had been unavailable for years and years, with everything else by that artist being OOP, or one import LP of a contemporary artist out of 5 or 6 LPs he had already out? I believe those LPs were "ingested" with much more intensity (because they were all there was to the avid listener) than later "complete works" series that you can buy at the click of a button somewhere and hop from one to aniother at will when listening ... And now streaming has taken this accessibility to yet another level and you might take much too much for granted and lose your ability (or willingness??) to discern?.

I for one just wasn't aware of that side of him up to that point. And his spoofy antics just need to be taken piecemeal, lest the novelty effect wears prematurely thin. As for Prima, Scott and all the other "rest", as far as I am concerned you're preaching to the (long-)converted! Nothing academic here. After all I can find some enjoyable swing interest in Fred Schnicklefritz Fisher too!

Search out the "Murders Them All", ""Murders Again" and "Can't Stop Murdering" 2-LP sets from the same period if you like that and come across these records cheaply. I can only take Spike Jones in small doses and until I came across the above sets very cheaply I was firmly in MG's camp (see above) Yet Spike Jones is an intriguing character and as hinted at above, must have been quite jazz savvy - in more ways than one: I remember a record hop at some rockabilly concert almost 20 years ago where the DJ spun a catchy big band swing tune that had everybody up and jiving. I asked him who exactly that was and to my surprise that tune came from the Spike Jones LP released in that "The Uncollected..." series on Hindsight. Can't recall the name of the tune and needless to say so far I have been unable to find a copy of that particular LP from that series at a nice price but anyway, there you are ...

Label? Record number? This has me stumped too ... the edition of Bruyninckx' discography I have does not list anything like that by him either.

Very pertinent question. :tup

I am far from being sufficiently famliar with that stream of jazz to make profound assessments but I do think I see what you mean. A bit like what had been said in arecent thread about many jazz recordings that came after KOB and quite obviosuly trie4d to recreate a KOB mood throughout. If you talk about "quotes" found in latter-day recordings that clearly refer to earlier ones then you might find such examples wherever you look closer. I remember quite a few years ago I caught a lengthy piano concert recording of Michel Petrucciani on TV and by coincidence not long afterwards I spun some 50s hard bop records and upon listening to the piano player's comping and soloing my immediate thoughts were "you heard this just the other day", and sure enough when I closed my eyes the TV images of Petrucciani came floating back. And now certainly nobody will question Petrucciani's place in the annals of jazz ... Just personal influences coming through? Or is a lot just much closer together stylistically than you'd imagine upon first hearing? I'd vehemently disagre with THIS statement of yours, though: It's almost a deliberate (maybe it is deliberate) attempt to make a statement that anything even associate with the "out" or "avant-garde" never existed or doesn't exist and us somehow outside of that "mainstream". I think I know what you mean but I'd see this rather as a statement that DESPITE "far out" or "avantgarde" there is a place for a continuum of other (non-free, more "traditional", relatively speaking) forms of jazz to go on after all. Not to pretend avantgarde had never existed but to insist that avantgarde is not the only and mandatory course of jazz once avantgarde had started. And IMHO they got a point ... (but OTOH this does NOT detract from avantgarde, it just says avantgarde isn't all) There's more than one way to skin a cat, as they say ...

Thanks for that info, Larry ... apart from the solos you mentioned,this must be some of the fastest baritone sax playing on record in more recent decades ... will certainly be on the lookout, though I had not intended to go that far back style-wise. And if so, then that recent thread on the Anachronic Jazz band has aroused my curiosity from a different angle and made me purchase their 2-CD reissue. Amazing ... but that will be a matter for that "'other" thread ...

Thanks very much for taking the trouble to reply in detail, and I will hand it to you anytime that you in your position and with your background have a more in-depth perception of the finer points of all these artists so if I may explain ... I mentioned Hamilton and Vaché only as two examples of jazzmen who played throughout their jazz careers in a jazz style that was no longer at the modernist forefront of the evolution. Pars pro toto ... Other jazzmen could have been named as examples for the same purpose ... Bob Wilber/Kenny Davern, maybe? Also, "legitimate" (due to its multiple meanings) was maybe not the most fitting term I used to hint at the "rightful" place (IMHO) of this group of musicians in the evolution of jazz. No connotations at all meant with classical music ... As for "mainstream" jazz, I understood this always to refer to jazz that was neither among the most progressive forms of jazz of the 50s (when the term was coined) nor among the most nostalgic forms (traditional jazz) but somewhere in between to describe the style of those who still were around from the swing era but had not jumped on the bop bandwagon (nor gone all "trad"). "Mainstream" in the sense of NOT being part of the stylistic extremes in either direction therefore appeared quite fitting to me but maybe "MIDDLE JAZZ" would have been more apt if that term had been used more widely? (Some have doubted that term here when I mentioned it in an earlier debate but that term WAS used to describe this jazz in many FRENCH publications throughout the 50s and certainly beyond so must have had some background in jazz circles). As for the "tradition huggers" and their preference for the warmer, mellower side of the swing era, this is something I cannot judge and cannot confirm from my own experience (which may not be representative one bit), but in TODAY's discussion of whether one wants to embrace the "far out" styles of jazz, I feel that a lot more than just "mellow swing" is relegated to the traditionalist camp. Looking back over my close of 40 years of involvement in jazz, there have been those to whom jazz rock and/or fusion was all that jazz (ALL jazz!) was all about, then there were and are those to whom anything free and "avantgarde" is the epitome to the exclusion of most everythign that came before, and of course there is a larger group of jazz fans (including today) whose own STYLISTIC jazz preferences by their own admission seem to START with hard bop (maybe even the end of hard bop, who knows ...). Mention Fats Navarro or early Howard McGhee (or even early Chet or Jack Sheldon) to those hardbop-and-beyond fans and you draw a comparative blank. Stylistically it is all Lee Morgan and onwards to them ... This leaves out a LOT more than just "mellow swing" (and what was around before swing) in the "tradition hugging" camp. Which IMO is quite a lot of blind spots when it comes to appreciating where one's (chronologically more recent) idols came from. Anyway ... all I meant to point out is that when it comes to belittling certain styles of jazz one doesn't like in an attempt to justify one's limits of taste then this is a door that swings both ways ... because for each traditionalist who denigrates avantgarde there is one avantgardist (or "post-whatever-ist") who denigrates, say, most of what happened before Hard Bop or Trane or KOB or whatever. Not ideal, either way ...

What he said. This is the sort of discussion that runs in circles and does not really lead anywhere anymore. I can understand the above statement (certainly also aimed at the Marsalis faction ) but (admittedly because I certainly am far from "all avantgarde" in my own tastes ) it seems to me there is another side of this very coin: For every one at whom the above statement is aimed there has been at least another one who goes all overboard when it comes to free, avantgarde, post-"you name it" and considers this beginning and end of ALL jazz in a kind of "If you don't dig avantgarde you are nowhere in jazz" attitude to justify the limits of HIS taste. No, I am not referring to key forumists here, but if you look around and observe closely, those of you who feel concerned by my assertion, isn't it so that in all the decades since the avantgardish late 60s/early 70s there have also been more than enough of those to whom anything that came before hard bop is old hat (there even was a time when even anything that came before fusion, etc. was lumped into that bag, with the possible exception of some fashionable Trane etc.). To this circle of the jazz audience Bird generates maybe some fleeting interest but is not in the center of their radar at all, and whatever styles of jazz existed before bop were definitely considered "moldy figs", and even some listening to Pops or Duke could hardly offset their somewhat unbalanced perception of jazz and their lack of interest in the wider fields of the more "traditional" styles of jazz, regardless of the fact that the evolution of jazz has not only progressed towards free, avantgarde, post-whatever but has evolved concurrently in different directions ever since. In short, Scott Hamilton and Warren Vaché etc. have always been just as much a legitimate part of a LIVING evolution of jazz as Ayler, Brötzmann et al. It takes both streams to jazz to form a whole, and while it is understandable that not everybody can and wishes to embrace ALL forms of jazz, each faction ought to be very, very careful when it comes to dismissing as irrelevant or inexistent whatever one doesn't like. Just my 2c.

A side question to those familiar with production matters of this book and/or living in Germany: Does anybody happen to know if a German translation of this "Uncompromising Expression'" history of BN has already been done and published? The other day I came across a stack of this one ... http://sieveking-verlag.de/novitaeten/blue-note/ (published by Sieveking Verlag) ... though all of them shrink-wrapped and no browsing copy available so was not able to leaf through it and therefore really am not sure. Anybody had a look inside to see what is given as the "original" of that book? Richard Havers seems to be a sort of real Jack-in-the-box when it comes to churning out books on musical styles and label biographies (not necessarily a bad thing or sign of superficiality, it seems ... will get his Verve book shortly) but TWO different Blue Note books simultaneously in the offing by the same author or a German translation of that book available as early as the publication of the original edition (or even a bit before)? This is VERY unusual, particularly since German editors are notoriously reticent when it comes to publishing German editions of US/UK coffee table books (as opposed to French ones where mastery of the English language is sort of NOT taken for granted, hence a larger domestic demand is anticipated there ).