Big Beat Steve

Yes, stil wondering about that ... But are you sure we aren't talking about Benny Bennet? (After all, this spelling would almost be more correct because the slipups are in ONE word only instead of both )

No, OJC never handled Blue Note on vinyl. OJC is the reissue "header" for the labels of the Prestige/Fantasy/Milestone/RIverside family, so a bit different. Deciding which AFFORDABLE BN's sound best is a subjective and probably a bit controversial amter (at least among label fetishists) so you'll have to wait for answers from BN geeks to get the REAL details. As a "normal" listener and fan, I'd say that the 60s Liberty pressings of the BN LPs offer about the best fidelity/price tradeoff - along with certain very well-done Japanese reissues, of course. But as there have been different reissue series and pressing runs of the Japanese reissues through the years, you will have to wait for word from the fanatics again. Many say that you ought to avoid the quite affordable reissues marked "DMM" (Direct Metal Mastering) and pressed in France that were around a lot in the 80s/90s. I found the sound of these a bit harsh and "tinny" on some reissues indeed but am fairly satisfied with others from that series. So the actual quality apparently varies, probably depending on what the original recording was like and what you are accustomed to. On the other hand, speaking of comparatively affordable BN 1500s, I found the early 80s reissues reissued by "Pathé-Marconi EMI" (indicated in fine print in the CENTER at the bottom of the back sleeve and NOT having the DMM logo) to be quite acceptable and to offer relatively good value for money. Don't know about today's price rate for secondhand items from this series and don't know if I am committing heresy in putting a word in for them but hey ... at the time they cost about one third to one fourth of what a Japanese import LP would have set you back here.

Even then ... Maybe the hep blurb by "The Stomach That Walks Like A Man'" in between the tracks might make for some very "period-correct" amusement ...

Agreed, King Ubu. If it were ALL about ARTIST royalties. I am still awaiting definitive statements that those who obtain licenses from the majors for reissuing products that have already entered the public domain will actually pay money to the artists by obtaining these licenses. I.e. will the majors who license recordings for reissue to one of those reissue labels use the revenue from the licenses to pay artist royalties and the artists and their heirs even once those records have entered the public domain? In a niche market such as jazz? And will they do so now even for those artists whom they haven't even paid at the time those recordings were released and in current print? And is this the case with ALL of the Japanese reissues too? And if they don't then what's the difference between those who don't and ANY of the P.D. labels?

Yes, of course, Hans. And now it is up to each and everyone to decide individually if the fidelity difference warants other complications, additional expenses, etc. Sometimes it objectively makes a difference, sometimes it doesn't. To some the difference is immaterial (because hardly noticeable on THEIR equipment that THEY are perfectly satisfied with, which is a point that is for NOBODY else to judge EVER, BTW) whereas to others it is a matter of principle (for whatever reason ...). And to others the aspect of product presentation (liner notes, booklets et.c) is another important criterion. Now where does the ARTIST royalty aspect come in again THERE? Besides, you ought to know quite well that one cannot generalize in this debate. Fresh Sound is one matter. They may reissue stuff than can be found elsewhere (personally I find the way they have recently been delving into what used to be OJC territory of fairly little interest) but they did and do reissue items that nobody ever bothered about anywhere else (with the possible exception of some obscure long-OOP Japanese reissue that may have popped up briefly and then vanished again and therefore is totally immaterial in this ENTIRE debate of whether there is a "legit" alternative to FS - and like David Ayers said, once the European PD rules are respected these things ARE legal over here). A different matter are those P.D. labels (some of them found way outside Spain, as you know) that indeed just re-reissue easily accessible items that had only relatively recently been released or reissued by those who did all the remastering work. This just ain't right. If you want to reissue stuff then do your own field work, even if you take FULLL advantage of all the P.D. leeway that these rules offer you. Which is why I buy Uptown releases only from Uptown as a matter of principle and avoid those piggyback riders (that follow in the wake of Uptown reissues) like the plague. But is this something that you can accuse Fresh Sound of across their ENTIRE product range? Differentiating in this debate really is way overdue.

In fact I do think this is the main point in what Bear Family actually does about "licensing" stuff. I can't put my finger on it but I remeber discussing this aspect in passing with one Bear Family employee at a record fair when the subject of the way they do their box sets came up. They pick their sources carefully and in a targeted manner and then cover those fields in full. It certainly is no coincidence they covered the MERCURY label's files in all fields of music THAT extensively. They must have made a deal at one point that they have free rein in the Mercury archives and files so they cover the entire field in great depth (I am not talking about jazz, specifically, of course). Makes sense if you are in the reissue field and have access to the source. BTW, for all the uncharted territory that the Fresh Sound label thankfully makes accessible again, one thing that puts me off in a big way is their 2 LP on one CD policy where you indeed often end up having one LP (half the CD) already. I fully agree with King Ubu that this is not exactly to the strictest benefit of advanced collectors. Though I feel one major reason of theirs is that they recycle their past VINYL catalog that way. A lot of those cases where I find I already have one of the two LPs on their reissue CDs are those where I already have the Fresh Sound vinyl they issued in the 80s (I have a LOT of these). It's a policy I don't like and often I cannot be bothered to go for the second half but sometimes it is a pity. But other buyers probably wont even mind because they don't even want to be bothered with vinyl amnymore and have gone 100% CD long since. But FS aren't alone in such recycling practices that don't allow you to fill gaps in your collection in an EFFICIENT manner.

This discussion is getting skewed.. Let me ask a question (again) that seems to be overlooked conveniently by some here in discussions like this on this forum: Do we know for sure that ALL the Japanese reissue labels pay ARTIST royalties? (Never mind what the biggies cash in among themselves, all of you , you are worried about the ARTISTS getting their fair share even once the 50.-year Euroepan Public Domain lable applies, right?). Did the Japanese? Do they? All of them? And if they didn't are those who didn't any better than the much-maligned Euopean P.D. reissues? Greasing the palms of the majors is not the issue, I think - paying to the artists themselves is. Just one example: A couple of months ago a discussion of the JAZZHUS label was started here on this board. Checking out their website made me sit up and note one particular item: "New Jazz from the Old World" by a so-called "European Jazz Quartet". This in fact is the Wolfgang Lauth Quartet from Germany (a "local hero" of 50s jazz in Southern Germany, if you want ...). I'd been aware of this release for a long time, particularly since I read a review of it in an early volume of the "Down Beat Record Reviews" yearboks, as this release on the obscure Pulse lable stands out as a real oddity among the leader's 50s discography which otherwise consistently was on German Telefunken. This reissue gives a U.S. address for the Jazzhus operation (though, as mentioned in the discussion, the Japanese characters on the Obi strip make this look like a Japanese reissue after all) and mentions something of having been licensed by arrangement with the copyright proprietor. No idea what this EXACTLY means on the bottom line - Fresh Sound did use similar terms on some of their reissues too (not to mention those Fresh Sound reissues that are strictly legal and endorsed by the original label owners). But be that as it may - did any of the money from this release find its way (beyond some scheming entrepreneur who might have bought the official rights to the Pulse back catalog at one time in the past) into the bank accounts of the estate of Wolfgang Lauth and his fellow musicians? I really wonder ...

The point is ... it's not only the Andorrans/Spanish if you care to look closely and compare.

You see, that's exactly the point. Good writing and bad writing is one aspect of the problem but is it the only one? Let's assume that a biography is supposed to focus on a person/peronality and his/her life (and therefore on FACTS or at the very least on how these facts are assessed/evaluated by somebody with a qualified opinion/understanding to provide insights into this person that flesh out the picture beyond the bare facts but still are based on the facts), right? Now assume such a biography is written excellently but goes overboard on embellishments, fictional add-ons, etc. that at best provide a picture of "what might have been" or "what could have happened" or "would have been nice if it had happened that way". Would this still be a great biography? Where would you draw the line? Or to put it another way: No doubt you will agree that Ross Russell's "Bird Lives" wasn't written badly as such . Yet it is faulted for many fictional elements that find their way into that book and sometimes make it hard to sift fact from fiction (in the way Chuck said above). So ... where is the line between what's to be considered good and bad when it comes to how HISTORY is presented in an attempt to provide a picture of what HAPPENED and why it happened (but not of what could have happened)? (Note this is an honest question, not an attempt at splitting hairs. I'd REALLY like to know, not least of all because I have to deal with writers - of a slightly different kind - a lot of the time in my job too )

You see, the point really just is that in very, very many cases those Japanese reissues are damn hard to get (at least from Europe) unless you really monitor the Japanese scene day in and day out and are willing to put up with ordering procedures that can be a real hassle. And many go OOP faster than you can say "Hiroshi Tanno". In short, to many collectors over here many of them just as well never existed, really.

:g Several months? And that probably was just before they went OOP? Of course King Ubu was all tongue-in-cheek but isn't the basic point just this: Japanese CDs aren't exactly a prime example of items that REMAIN available WORLDWIDE. Pops up one day, grab it while ya can (if you become aware that it has been relased at all), poof it goes OOP and vanishes off the face of the earth. So many Japanese reissues really are highly IRRELEVANT when it comes to discussing items that remain IN PRINT for at least a reasonably moderate span of time and are at least halfway EASILY available from wherever you are. You know, buying records for one's collection is enough detective work already when it comes to originals and decades-long OOP items. If you need to go sleuthing ALL the time even for new reissues then this can get to be a bit more than what one can reasonably handle, so lots of items actually never existed in reissue form for many people.

I agree with this, but (and how many times have we had this debate?!) if the material is available nowhere else, well, I get it. Example: The John Graas Jazz Studio and Jazz Lab recordings originally issued on (I think) Decca. They're only available from Lonehill. Mosaic has never touched them, and neither, to my knowledge, have any of the "legitimate" reissue labels. So I got the Lonehills. I don't feel great about supporting the label, but I want to hear that music by a (pretty well forgotten) fine jazz artist. gregmo Yeh, I spent years looking for that one. Once bought it as 3 45 EPs. Just for the record, they HAVE been out as reissues on vinyl - on German MCA in the mid-70s (in a series called "Jazz Lab", incidentally). But of course this series is not likely to have been widely accessible outside Germany. And this is one of the cases I mentioned above - Fresh Sound at least covers territories where others either fear or don't care to tread. And I'd guess these are reissues that are not likely to make you a rich man by ANY standards so if you wanted to use terms such as "ripoffs" you'd have to look elsewhere, I'd say.

I won't disagree with you at all on that point. Which is why I for one have always wondered why a certain label could be endorsed HERE even though, for example, it did a box set on one niche subject of jazz and by sheer coincidence this set included about two thirds (or more) of the material from another box set on the same subject that had previously been released by Fremeaux Associés. Coincidence? I had gone into the details of this particular release ad nauseam here too and won't repeat them anymore. But again - double standards in this debate are no way of treating the subject IMO.

True. I am much in the same positon, thankfully. Though, being in Europe, I have no qualms whatsoever buying from PD labels (provided they comply with EUROPEAN P.D. rules as they are) to fill specific gaps if and when I find the price is right in relation to the goods offered for that money. If they comply with those rules they are legal here. End of debate. Which is where I cannot fault Fresh Sound for a lot of their material, particularly because they go in their reissue series where others just either are too cowardly or too greedy to tread. And please (not you, specifically, Sonnymax, but the P.D. label detractors on a more general level) don't tell me this or that CD had already been reissued on this or that Japanese label as late as 1999, staying on the market for all of an immense seven months. Firstly, do we know Japanese reissuers ALWAYS pay ARTIST royalties the way we would like to see it happen (or don't they take advantage of their shares of P.D. stuff too?), and secondly, drooling about Japanese reissues as if this were the "legit" bandwagon that everybody ought to have hopped on blatantly negates acual ONGOING availabilty and accessibility. Finally, the only reason why I often get a bit caustic about those who moan about the alleged "Andorran thieves" is because quite a few of the same have, for example, enthused here about those oh so convenient P.D. material box sets from the UK (you know the labels I am talking about, I guess) as if they were a god-send to those who conveniently can fill gaps in the sidelines of their collections that way. (In fact they often are but they DO take advantage of European P.D. rules any time so no use pretending they are any more legit than those Spanish/Andorran labels and in many cases you can trace the material on those box sets right back to previous reissues that still are available too) This is what I call DOUBLE STANDARDS and that's where I find this whole discussion gets ridiculous. Because in fact you could blame the UK sets just as much as you could blame the Spanish reissuers and there's no point targeting the Spanish labels only if you want to focus on the P.D. reissue label topic at all. So (not meaning you specifically, Sonnymax. but others who might well recognize themselves) if you avoid one, avoid both, or else don't pretend you tower morally that sky-high above those copyright infringements allegedly committed by those labels.

Thanks for the links to the reviews, Brad and Greg M. So if I get this right, the bird book out by Crouch now actually is only one of two and covers the K.C. period "only"? This quote from the review linked b y Greg M. has me wondering, though: "Still, as Crouch is the first to say, this is a life story full of gaps. And so, to compensate for the missing information, Crouch has relied on an imagination that might be called novelistic, if novelists dealt in generic supposition and platitudinous bombast." No matter what praise is heaped on the book in that review, apparently it is not an unmitigated pleasure overall. Well ... Anybody out there who'd be able to judge if there definitely is no risk of this approach turning into Ross Russell-like embellishments if things become THAT novelistic? Yes I know this might be an insult to some (seeing how Russell's book is generally judged these days) but still ... How much imagination can a bio stand before the facts get skewed? And what I do wonder now ... since the Bird bio by Chuck Haddix seems to be strong on the K.C. period too, would one be better off going for that one if one can do without both "novelistic" fantasies and minute details that in the end might add up to speculation only? Any opinions?

Noble enough, but I take it, then, that you never, never, never ever buy ANY of the "Proper" boxes either and would rate them in the same camp.

What are you out for? Asking where to get those sets or just plugging your seller? If there is one who has ("does have them") what you are after ("Is there some"...), then I wonder what you REALLY are after.

He may not really be remembered much for his jazz background because he did lots of MOR pop stuff (even his big band wasn't very jazz-inclined most of the time) but in this he was typical of many musicians during that era. But he did do important things in 50s post-war jazz in Germany and had jazz chops on the piano if he wanted to make use of them. I remember a radio show in the early 80s featuring recordings from the NDR archives that never were released commercially anywhere. Part of the program were mid-50s piano duos of Paul Kuhn and Bengt Hallberg - quite an ear-opener. Would love to hear them again. RIP

Agreed. I figure their approach is "If you do it at all, do it right, cover it in depth, go the whole way". Understandable IMO, because if you cover an extreme "special-interest" subject like this, then those who would want to buy it probably won't go for something that has gaps by definition. And wouldn't this already be the case if you cut things in half (as sugested here). Besides, a "Best Of" compilation is available as a taster anyway. And like you said, would those really interested in this go keep up with a set of maybe 20 two-CD sets individually? (Which may not be any cheaper to produce, BTW) But given the overall scope (44 CDs plus two huge books for 499 europs), this adds up to how much per individual CD? Probably less than 10 euros apiece, considering what a decent book on such a specialist subject would go for. Does Mosaic charge less on average for their individual CDs in a box set? I agree it is big money but what could be the bone of contention about the price? If you consider the Bear Family label policy (like it has always been - and here the price per CD is only two thirds of that of an individual Bear Family CD, which is a price cut you won't always find in their other box sets), it couldn't possibly be the individual price per CD but only the question of whether anybody would jump THAT deeply into such a specific subject in ONE go. I for one won't take the plunge but I realize that it's not the fault of the product but of my insufficient interest in this subject matter that would warrant jumping in THAT deeply. A compilation on such special-interest music like it has been done by the Old Hat label (or maybe the 3-CD set linked to above) would be something else ... So no complaints on my part.

Yes. You had to think about what you wanted to "say," the trajectory of the music within 47 minutes (the length of a side of a 90-minute tape). You had to gauge the gaps between the tracks, adjust the recording levels for each track...it's analogous (sorry) to writing a letter on paper vs. on a computer. It's difficult to erase, you can't really go back once you've started... And there was the plus side, where you really got caught up in the creative act of putting the tape together, making the music flow. For a non-musician, it was as close as we could come to actually making music. +1 :tup My thoughts exactly. Can't even recall how often I stopped in the middle of recording a track and wound back to the previous gap, recording another track instead which I felt suited the flow of the music better after all. Just bcause upon listening to the individual tracks while recording them I found the originally planned sequence didn't quite provide the flow I had figured it would. A bit like a DJ experimenting with tracks beforehand to set up the outlines of a projected playlist.

Very nice. Thanks for linking this!

Hee heee ... That kind of invitation is known from Facebook. A strict no-go.

Good luck, then, with your search. I am afraid, though, you will have to live with the assumption that it is not totaly unlikely that the original pressing run of those LPs has vanished from the market for good because maybe there are diehard Trane adulators somewhere out there among the jazz record hoarding fraternity who otherwise might uphold high moral standards of "no-no-ing the bad bootleggers" much like it was done here in this thread too yet among their vinyl shrine of Traneabilia there happen to sit these two Oberon LPs too ("because after all it is the only way of being able to listen to those utterly formative performances of my dearly beloved 'Trane!" ... ) Can we prove that there are such characters? No. But I'd bet you a nickel that there are some somewhere out there if you somehow manage to look close enough ... BTW, lest somebody twists this statement around: I am defintely NOT implying this applies to those who spoke out against shady releases here in THIS thread but we all know this "condoning bootlegs or not" discussion affects many more people in many areas of the collecting hobby.

Are you really sure it was meant for this rule to extend to items that have been OOP for DECADES? And would you be willing to have the same rules enforced for those currently IN-PRINT items that would have to be considered bootlegs by U.S. copyright standards when sold to U.S. (potential) buyers, particularly if marketed by U.S. retailers? All of them, not just "Andorrans"?

But it's not even a link because nobody put one up for sale anywhere. And again - this is a secondhand affair. Any secondhand LP (legal or not) is outside the reach of any legal matter because the NEW-item sale (that enforceably would have been subject to royalties) has been concluded jezz knows how many decades ago. I dont even think Jim would worry unduly about THIS isolated aspect but it rather seems to me a dead horse is being ridden here.