Big Beat Steve

Yes, please! +1 :tup

I have yet to complete reading Larry Kart's book but from what I have read so far, I can second the recommendations. Getting back to your post, John, AFAIK you are a person of fine credentials in the jazz world and "have been around" no doubt - do you have any opinion on the books I mentioned? And anybody else with any thoughts on the books I mentioned?

The recent book sales ad by Pete B where many forumists gave their recommendations on specific books prompts me to launch this topic as I have come across a few books recently that I have either sprung for or am very much tempted but have not found too many evaluations. So your opinions are welcome (not many reviews out there on the web and wading through countless sites for "buying all the books by XXX" with always the same sales blurb is not much fun). Sooo ... Firstly, I recently bought a copy of the original 1971 printing of Dicky Wells' "The Night People" at a relatively good price, I think. While I am still waiting for its arrival, your comments on it are welcomed. I seem to remember having heard good things about it but cannot put my finger on them. Secondly, are any of you familiar with this book which was released not that long ago? "A Golden Age of Jazz Revisited 1939-1942" by Hazen Schmacher and John Stevens. As this period falls squarely into one of my preferred periods of jazz I am tempted getting the paperback edition through amazon (I can do without the 2 CDs of the hardcover edition as the price gap is pretty huge and I must have about 99% of teh tracks listed in my collection anyway). Any comments and opinions on it? Are the discussions of the tunes and that particular jazz era insightful and stimulating enough even to advanced collectors so they can get a new angle from it? Or is this strictly newbie fare? Thanks a lot in advance.

You can't do wrong with Tiny Kahn with me either, so ...

Interesting to get feedback about these two Uptown releaes. Amazing, though, that both amazon.com and amazon.de have a release date of mid-June scheduled for the Chubby Jackson CD and of 20 May for the Howard McGhee CD. So are theses CDs out (through INTERNATIONALLY accessible channels) or not, I wonder? Both sound like must haves, despite the duplications. And from Allen's remarks I guess that the live cuts previously released on vinyl have been improved soundwise (they are quite listenable on vinyl too but I would not enthuse as much as Allen did).

And it seems that Jasmine not only has competition but duplication on the Acrobat label. The 1955/56 "beer" tracks by Jimmy Deuchar that were released in the US on that "Pub Crawling" LP on Contemporary are also on JASCD 616 and 621, as are some others of those Acrobat sessions. I am not familar with these Acrobat modern jazz reissues at all but have a couple of Acrobat CDs featuring early post-war R&B reissues and they are very well done.

Which would make a "needle drop" as close as you can get to the original source material with any of them anyway.

Just to explain this: The Tempo label IS a CULT label in the UK, but do you happen to know if any sort of master tapes of Tempo recordings would be around anywhere at all? I wouldn't be surprised if there just wasn't anything but vinyl copies to start with for most of the recordings from the Tempo catalog.

Well, by definition and according to the European P.D. laws even in their new form pre-1962 source material slated for a reissue can only be P.D., isn't it? But would that necessarily keep a label from doing quality reissues? So ... P.D. or not, it is the quality of the final product that counts IMO.

Back in the 80s, they did a huge lot of vinyl reissues of material orignally released on Decca (or other labels that later came to be owned by MCA) in the 50s adn theys were all over the place in record shops. The sound always appeared quite OK to me. The LPs usually said "Manufactured under license from MCA Records" in the fine print on the back cover, so ... I also have quite a few of their more recent CDs that reissue British jazz (often from the long-defunct but legendary Tempo label), and though I cannot compare with Tempo orignals (due to their scarcity), they do sound OK to me too. Paul Pelletier (who is often named as the producer) is a huge name in reissue and collectible music circles in the UK and beyond and the presentation sounds like serious business. And the CD booklets clearly refer to the copyright existing in the Jasmine recordings too, BTW. Or to put it yet another way, shady reissues exist everywhere but are definitely not limited to one continent, nor are well-produced reissues.

The compiler of the info in that link I provided above more or less tears this book to shreds in his brief asessment. Could it be that Richard Cook did that much worse there than with his "Jazz Encyclopedia", for example?

I am not familar with the Verve book but am wondering if this BN book maybe has conceptual similarities with Richard Havers' books publiashed by Cmopendium a couple of years ago: - Jazz - The Golden Era (mostly 40s, swing and bop) and - The Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll (50s, of course) Both are nicely done, include lots of photos, record cover and label shots and "ephemera" too but, honestly, their written contents, while well done, are more of the "introduction for starters" type and therefore not essential to long-standing collectors and fans of the music, so if you come across these books at cut-price bookstores, then, fine ... I do suppose Richard Havers will have gone far, far beyond this level with the BN tome. @fasstrack: If you can read Japanese , check out the book listed at the end of the sources mentioned on this site (The Complete Blue Note Book ed. by Toyoki Okajima): http://www.plosin.com/milesahead/BluenoteLabel.html It's useful as a source book for the record details but the narrative unfortunately is in Japanese almost completely throughout.

Thanks for that info. Wolfram Knauer is very, very competent but I wonder what there is on this particular subject that has not already been said or compiled elsewhere. So I wonder what new ground will be covered or what new angles will be explored and to what extent this books serves a purpose other than finally prividing some in-depth reading on Bird in German (Ross Russell's book was translated at the time but oh well ... ). And somehow, I still have a feeling that the German language just is not always that well suited to writing about jazz and its musical aspects. In the long run I all too often felt somewhat uneasy with many jazz texts I read about in German, particularly those that related specifically to U.S. topics where English material on the very same subject existed too. But YMMV and possibly that's just my personal impression because the Jazz Podium mag and many scribes of the Zimmerle/Wunderlich etc. era have (to me, anyway) had a way of writing that often just sounded a bit too awkward and stilted for THIS kind of music and seemed way too much influenced by that typical German "Bildungsbürger" attitude. I'll keep my fingers crossed Knauer breaks new ground here (and I will take a closer look at the book at a local bookstore that carries this sort of books), so by all means do let us know about your impressions when you get around to doing some reading.

OT on: Allen, I think that case of "principals" falsely used for the "standards that you have" is a typical case of just plain laziness and couldn't-care-lessness that has been creeping in of late (because I keep noticing this at alarming rates in relatively recent years,much more so than in past decades). All too many out there in journalism clearly need to get their act(s) together more thAn ever. @TTK: I tried not to nitpick too much. OT off.

Assuming that Matt Shipp SAID this (and did not write this), maybe those who transcribed what he said might check out the MAJOR difference betwen "principals" and "principles". Might lend a bit more credibility to the thoroughness of Shipp's statements if they cleaned up their act for his sake. Or were they all in school (where principals are a BIT MORE likely to be found. My oh my ...

Interesting! As for the Aristocrat sides, a tiny bit of information and some label shots are here: http://myweb.clemson.edu/~campber/aristocrat.html

Thanks for wording succinctly what after reading that piece I felt was the bottom line of it if you look at it reasonably. I doubt any of those "feds" at any time ever said "We're gonna shove some methanol-poisoned alcohol their way to teach them a lesson when they drink it". It was those who misused that stuff for making bootleg alcohol who were responsible. Like JSangrey said, if you are dealing with illegal/illicit substances from illicit sources, you are running a BIG risk at your very own peril. Like those in even lower strata of society did with "canned heat" and the like. Probably the key problem of this responsibility of substance abuse is that nobody probably ever fored the abusers at gunpoint at any time to drink or shoot until they became addicted in the first place. It was their very own decision. And then, at some point it became hard if not impossible to turn around and head back. But the original, initial responsibility that led them up that path remains with themselves, not with any third parties. Which to this day remains the key problem of addiction and how to get the addicted out ouf that vicious cycle.

Looking forward more than ever now to receiving mine but of course around-the-world shipments do take longer. Thanks in advance anyway, Pete!

Sounds quite plausible that this sort of pressing plant prioritizing is penalizing the small ones but I hope this isn't like this everywhere. I must admit I had not consciously heard about this Record Store Day thing at all until this year, though it must have been around even here for a while. Our local paper yesterday even ran an article about RSD and our (few remianing) local record stores and their activities on this day (and in past years). One (that I have often checked out actively as it is the only remianing one with a sizable jazz and blues section) did have a few special vinyl releases out for RSD, i.e. by small (regional) labels and bands, so I figure THEIR pressing plants were alright. I did not go there yesterday, though, as whatever special they had on was way outside my preferred styles of music.

Actually there have beens scribes who (correctly or incorrectly) have pointed out that his LP "The Thrill is Gone" had rather a programmatic title because his albums of that time had already become heavily overproduced and his music by that time had lost a lot of its original impact - and that was in the early 70s!! Am no expert on B.B. King's music (even less of his "later" days) so won't judge this but there seem to be some to whom B.B. King has been going downhill for 40 years!

Considering your nick I am a bit surprised that in your "fudging" you excluded the heyday of bebop.

But everybody who was around in the 70s and 80s and was actively listening to music then could/can relate to those scenes of "Hi Fidelity". I could, anyway ... - I made quite a few mix tapes for others - and received some -, not so much for proselytizing but just for exchanging tunes - in the form of personalized playlists - that others did not have among their vinyls. I remember, for example, the time I made a "mix tape" for a buddy who was mainly into r'n'r/r&B/country from the early postwar period and then out of curiosity one day asked me to tape him a C-90 selection of bebop just to expand his musical horizon a bit. I think he was pleased because I mixed in liberal doses of bebop/R&B "crossover" tunes (Jug, Leo Parker, Frank Motley et al.) to "ease" him into the idiom. It was fun ... And of course it was a thing of its time and has been superseded. But should that keep ANYBODY from keeping on indulging in it just for personal entertainment as long as the "raw material" is still available?

I am willing to tackle CD-Rs and accept the "learning curve" for "mix CDs" but basically I agree with you, and those mix tapes are about the main reason I still use those cassette decks every now and then. (I've never liked buying albums on cassette or copying entire albums to cassette to "archive" them, though. Winding made listening all too uncomfortable for me) Depends on the period. Jazz became chic in the 80s. Those people the dealer was talking about probably hail from thereabouts. MG Well, that discussion took place in 2002/2003, and the moment when this dealer was called upon to "compile" that oh so sophisticated set of BNs happened a couple of months before that. So pretty late AFTER the 80s.

As I have to limit myself to TWO decades, I'd say this: Jazz, Blues/R&B, Country/Western Swing: 1935 to 1955 Rock'n'Roll/Rockabilly (i.e. REAL rock'n'roll, not the US definition of "rock'n'roll" extending past Beatlemania to include what would otherwise just be labeled "rock";)): 1954 to 1964 and then again 1990 to 2000 (though the latter might move forward or backward in 5-year intervals depending on my mood)

I have a hunch - like others said above - that this cassette thing may indeed be going on as an individualist way of marketing the music in some strata of undergrund/subculture bands. I've heard such statements in passing here and there without paying much attention to the details (cassettes are of - now limited - relevance to me only as blanks to record), but I'd believe right away that there IS such a thing. As to how far widespread, well ... Agreed that the sampling methods may have been odd and that having no intention of listening to the items makes these cassette buyers less than credible, but these problems of being "show-off" characters only exist elsewhere too. You know, ever since a secondhand record shop owner told me of one of those well-off yuppie apartment owners who, as part of furnishing his designer-furniture equipped apartment, asked this very record dealer to compile him a set of "must have" hard bop Blue Notes (Japanese pressings on upwards, but leaving him largely free rein as to which actual records to include as "must haves"!), I am a bit wary of some of the hype surrounding Blue Notes and their objective desirability too. Because ... how many like that who view BN's above all as a means of DISPLAYING their "sophisticated finer tastes" potentially ARE out there?