Big Beat Steve

"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 ... ;)

I suppose what he meant was that Mingus got a lot more publicity (for whatever reason ...) and may have been established better in the "insiders' circles". "Commercial" can be a very relative term you know ... Anyway ... I guess I finally need to search for "All About Ronnie" again. It escaped me when 2001 had that run of Japanese Savoy reissue CDs in their stores in the early 2000s at giveaway prices and all the copies I have seen since were just beyond reasonable in their pricing. As if that platter had become some sort of undergorund cult item since ... As for any possible connections, you invariably make them up entirely in your own head and go with what you assimilate in your own personal listening experiences. I don't think to today's jazz ears Tristano is THAT daunting anymore anyway ... I, for example, find Tristano's Savoy Oct. 23, 1947 session (Supersonic/On A Planet/Air Pocket/Celestia) extremely accessible and appealing for its light, airy "vibe", probably also due to its melodic base. In fact a number of years ago I made up a cassette tape for summer, sunshine car driving where that session was mixed with the likes of the mid-40s George Barnes' Octet etc. (Now some may fault me for not listening closely enough if I digest Tristano that easily but hey, why try to find rocks in your way where there ain't? )

So I figured. But you just sounded so anxious about these. Triggered by this thread, i spun that Rex Steart double LP last night. Mighty fine IMO if you are in the mood for some straight-ahead, unpretentious no-frills, blowing for partying. Yep, Bird, Diz, and Flip in the front line. There are three takes of "Hallelujah," two takes of "Get Happy," two takes of "Slam Slam Blues," and five takes of "Congo Blues." That's it for the first disc. Spotlite SPJ127. It's all been out before too. Including all the alternates. Larger group? That "Dialated Pupils" session with Howard McGhee etc.? Spotlite is your label there too. Just in case you're wondering whether filling the few gaps in what you already would make more sense than shelling out for 10 full-price CDs after all.

Coincidcentally, those past few days I've pulled out my 1961/1962 copies of ORKESTER JOURNALEN to read up on some first-hand info on the jazz happenings of those times, and the July/August 1962 issue had a piece about the "Tristano clan" where this was said about Willie Dennis: "The only brass players in that company were trombonist Willie Dennis and trumpeter Don Ferrara. Dennis' only recording in the Tristano idiom is on an LP from 1955 where he is part of a group led by Ronnie Ball. His playing is so engaging that it seems unfathomable that he later preferred to work with Charlie Mingus' Jazz Workshop. But maybe this was triggered by economical reasons. When the abovementioned record was released it never received any particular recomendations by American critics. Nevertheless it contains music that ought to be reason enough for quite a bit more renown just for the soloists' work. Among the best is Ted Brown's "Little Quail", a medium-tempo melody.The recording is nine minutes long and provides rightfully liberal solo space that goes with the material's quality. Here we find Dennis' best solo, an astonishing experience in its own way. Despite his rather relaxed playing, his phrasing in places is rather distinct and it is surprising that he has not been given more attention among the "name" trombonists." Some DID take notice back then.

I have the Buck Clayton session (rec. on Oct. 10, 1949, BTW) on THREE vinyl reissues: 1) Part of it on "Buck" (Jazz Selection LDM 30.021) 2) All of it on "Buck's Mood" (Vogue DP.73 double album), and 3) All of it again on "Buck Clayton / "Jazz Tracks" (Bellaphon BJS 40181) If you are desperate for this session you han have #3 cheaply (its contents are all on #2 too so it is in my duplicates/sale/trade bin). No doubt there are more reissues. I also have the entire Dec. 8-10, 1947 sessions by Rex Stewart on "Rex in Paris 1947-1948" (Barclay 80.972/80.973 2-LP set) as well as part of it on the Jazz Legend label (Jazz Legend No. 6) - surplus to me too, so you can have that Jazz Legend LP too if you want to.

Sorry but this can't be true just like that. That is, unless printing on non-coated paper (which was the standard type of paper for decades in book printing) has RETROGRADED immensely in recent times. A look at some examples of notable (and comparable) picture-heavy books will confirm this. Example 1: Keepnews/Grauer's "Pictorial History of Jazz" which saw several editions and printings through the 50s and 60s. Early printings from the US were pretty atrocious at times. I remember comparing a 1955 US printing (printed in Yugoslavia IIRC) to a c.1962 UK-edition (printed in Czechoslovakia IIRC) and the 1955 edition really was pretty bad. You can see the difference at a glance because most of the contents are strictly the same - many shades of grey present in the 1962 edition just turned into blotched-out black in that 1955 printing (there may have been other early printings, though, which turned out better). A UK edition from the later 60s that I have is again pretty OK for the state of the art of the times. The paper was and felt the same in each case. Certainly not coated paper. So the problem is not a new one. Example 2: The photo reproduction quality in this book ... http://www.amazon.com/Swing-Era-Scrapbook-Teenage-1936-1938/dp/0810854163 is pretty abysmal. Many photos are way too dark, no contrast, far too little gray shadings. Non-coated paper - OK, but this ....?? And this even though the book comes from renowned Scarecrow Press and isn't that cheap. Example 3: OTOH, this book here ... http://www.amazon.com/Country-Music-Originals-Legends-Lost/dp/0195325095/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1-spell&qid=1411385071 in its orignal hardcover edition is printed on non-coated paper too and overall the whole presentation and "feel" of the book very much has a "vintage" (circa 1960s) touch to it. (Intentionally so??) But the photo reproduction quality really isn't bad at all. In fact, I'd consider it very, very satisfactory. Sky-high above the black blotches in example 2 above. So it CAN be done .... Even without being a printing expert, it looks to me that care taken by the printers (including the prepress stage) is the prime ingredient in coming up with good results.

Hats off to you, then. At any rate, that garb and that wig, that's really odd.

Indeed. Dig this: Anybody out there qwho would have recognized Barrett Deems, former drummer with Louis Armstrong's All Stars??

Not wanting to sidetrack this thread further, but while the Dial set sounds exceedingly tempting, I am more or less in the same situation that Paul Secor has mentioned, so I wonder what there would be in hidden treasures beyond the obvious stuff that most collectors of bebop probably have (i.e Bird, Dexter Gordon, Dodo Marmarosa, all the stuff reissued on Spotlite, e.g. Berman/Harris, Hermanites, McGhee et al)? What remains beyond that? Erroll Garner plus some bought-in recordings that probably were not released on Dial first? There seems to have been a lot that was recorded in France (Blue Star) and then (re)issued on Dial. I'll gladly be proven wrong about the share of truly new items but would be interested in finding out beforehand.

I remeber there was a series of budget-priced pop/rock LPs in the mid- to late 70s that were marketed with the explicit statement that each LP featured 60 minutes of music. I cannot recall the label but to the best of my recollections the records (most if not all of them "Best of" reissues) came from the UK and one of them featured Lonnie Donegan. EDIT: Coming to think of it, the title of this album series was (fittingly): Golden Hour"

veer? Actually, I was imagining from the outset your core tastes run in an essentially different direction but I hope I managed to get my point across to you at least somewhat better. It just is so that I'd find it unfortunate if the problem of how to get people interested in jazz were limited to an approach that says "No you are not supposed to get into jazz this way - you need to get into jazz THAT way and no other way because if you don't then you won't see the light of what kind of jazz really is worthwhile". And this is an attitude that I unfortunately have come across ever so often when it came to getting people interested in jazz.

@A Lark Ascending: As for jazz being danceable, I just meant that jazz had/has to be danceable to that particular segment of "newbies" who got/get into swing (and, by extension, jazz) through other music where dancing is part (in fact, a key element) of the way the music is taken in. Inclusing the lindy hopper scene where, of course, swing jazz is there to provide music for dancing in the first place. There is nothing wrong with just sitting and tapping your feet to the music (I am no all-out dancer myself either) but the music and the beat ought to get your feet tapping intensely and make you want to jump up and "move" (even if you are too "self-conscious" to do so as you put it). That's what I meant. @Steve Reynolds: Yes, I've experienced that sneering attitude vs the "retro swing" trend on that "other" forum and also in quite a few publications from the "serious" jazz set when they commented on that "new fad". What I meant to get across in my initial sentence that you quoted needs to be seen in context with the paragraph that followed in my above post. To paraphrase it: Jazz people complain about outsiders being unaware of jazz and not being able to connect to jazz to increase the jazz audience, and now here would be a jazz-related style - that retro swing movement - that could get people introduced to swing-style jazz and maybe, hopefully incite them to explore what came/comes after swing, and the "serious" jazz public doesn't know better than to denigrate those who go for this style of swing. Believe me - if, like I for one happen to be, you feel to be part of both camps (i.e. "serious" jazz listening AND the rockabilly/early rock'n'roll circuit where many of the "retro swing" bands came from) then you feel the vibes from the respective "other" camp very, very distinctly. Because you basically are very much involved in both sides and notice immediately if one side of what you are into sneers at the other side of what you are into just as much. Get it? As for that "sitting and nodding your head", well ... of course you could easy blame me for over-generalization and I am not going to comment on the free or avantgarde public because I have never been into those events to a huge degree so I won't judge. But yes, I have come across a certain kind of public at jazz events of all sorts who IMHO more or less have been show-offs when exposed to jazz of the "post-danceable" styles of jazz, ... but even swing-oriented mainstream jazz played to a seating audience. I'll freely admit they are not the majority but they do exist and in my experience they are the jazz version of all those well-to-do "good citizens" here who attend classical music or "serious music" events etc. because they perceive it to be "part of what we owe to ourselves to engage in as culturally mature people". Hence that unfortunate tendency over here to try to assimilate jazz and classical music in order to get jazz to be "respectable". Maybe it is hard to get this across to you in the US because the basic approach of the jazz public likely is different in the Us even today and I do not expect you to understand it in full but over here there is such a part of society. Typical of some representatives of what is referred to as the "Bildungsbürger" in German. The somewhat younger version of those people, BTW, would be those who - and this is a true story I got straight from the horse's mouth - would ask a (local) record dealer specializing in jazz to compile them a selection of Blue Notes to go with the designer-style furniture they just had their apartment furnished with. Nuff said now?

Well, no doubt that's true but part of that lack of awareness really is due to the sneering attitude of "pure" jazz fans themselves. Remember how almost each and everybody sneered at the "retro" swing revival of the 90s? I remember some discussions about this maybe 8 years ago when I started out here and on the AAJ forum (where one or two very, very open-minded jazz connoisseurs tried to "blow the horn" for the positive aspects of this retro swing movement) and the reactions by the self-appointed "real" jazz fans on AAJ were, well, condescending to say the least. And this was at the TAIL end of the initial wave of the retro swing movement which was quite a bit stronger in the 90s everywhere, yet I cannot remember the "serious" jazz world was that much more receptive to this retro swing in the 90s. OK, some of this mixture of swing and (Las Vegas) lounge AND punk is a bit cliché-laden, some of it leans a bit too heavily towards punk and is more punk than jazz (but hey, so what?? Why would a mixture of punk and swing be worse per se than a mixture of 70s rock and 70s electric jazz? It's just one brand of rock mixed with a certain brand of jazz serving as a relatively accessible introduction to bridge the gap between rock and jazz, then as much as now) but there were and are interesting bands out there that do add a new twist to the way swing has evolved through the decades. The gist of it: All those retro swing bands did and do provide an introduction to jazz to a LOT of listeners who eventually found out about Basie, Jordan, Waller, Ellington, Armstrong, Goodman, etc., and later bands too. Yes, the Brian Setzer Orchestra or the Cherry Poppin Daddies or the Royal Crown Revue (or whoever ...) did accomplish that ... Happened often - I've witnessed it myself ... not that I am that much of an accomplished dancer but I am close enough to the Lindy Hoppers circles in many contexrts, for example, and there ARE bands that play live gigs in these circles and look beyond the classic big band sound and come up with very interesting combinations, e.g. incorporating gypsy swing, and strangely enough, the swing bands that play this (subculture) circuit include (from all I have seen on stage) musicians who quite evidently find playing to a DANCING audience (of ACCOMPLISHED dancers) definite fun compared to their other gigs playing to the typical seated audences in typical jazz clubs. But then again, the kind of jazz that would attract this kind of listeners not yet imtimately aware of jazz would have to be DANCEABLE. I.e. a music that fills the prime and original purpose of jazz of providing straightforward entertainment. Not some "far out" music where you just sit and nod your head in pensive contemplation, marveling at your own sophistication for being there ... (that kind of listeners is out there too, make no mistake, all those of you who can rightfully claim to be part of the understanding, knowledgeable, appreciative fans of the more avantgardistic kinds of jazz ....).. Mind you, there is a place for contemplativeness and/or "far out" sounds in jazz too, of course, but if this is the kind of jazz that newbies are confronted with for the very first time then it is no wonder many of them are frightened away upon their first contact with jazz. It's just too inaccessible for an initial exposure to jazz. Food for thought ... which needs to do away with any notion of which strain of jazz is obejctively "superior" or more "rewarding" than the other, though. Because, in the end, it is more a subjective matter of which kind of jazz does what for which jazz fan, and after all, one man's meat is another man's poison.