Big Beat Steve

Quite flattering to most of them and always supposing they had taken very good care of themselves and not suffered from a (not so rare) ageing process where your flesh just becomes puffy and sagging beyond certain limits without you being able to really control it (short of chirurgically lifting), thus distorting your features almost beyond recognition. Not likely , for example, that Elvis could have slimmed down again from the way he looked post -1972, and started ageing again with the features he had in 1956 or so. Wonder what his old-man picture would have been like if they had used a picture from 1975 as a starting point for the subsequent imaginary ageing process. After all, you cannot really "unlive" the life you have actually lived. In short, idolatry at its best but only moderately realistic ...

Will have to pull out both "Stereophonic" and the Touff-Kamuca PJ date to follow this up, I guess ... Of couse the 30s/early 40s Basie band had a groove in a class by itself, but what I meant to say is that 15 to 20 years later a reworking is bound to end up somewhere else and it is there that I find those recordings quite appropriate and in fact an interesting contrast and addition to the originals. But of course I can state this only with the benefit of hindsight. Maybe the impact at the time would have been felt differently. But Basie sound copycats would not have met with critics' approval either. And I don't suppose you meant to say a rendering of the old Basis tunes as done in the mid-50s should not have gone beyond what one of the Nat Pierce-led bands would have done at that time? (Not that I would call him a "copycat")

This "semi-bashing" of Shorty's "Courts The Count" prompted me to give this LP anaother listen. I really cannot find that much Kentonesque pomp and grandstanding there and in the context of the big band evolution of the 50s this LP actually sounds fairly "mainstream"-ish to me (mainstream by 50s big band jazz standards, of course). Even the high-note excursions in "It's Sand, Man", for example, resemble fairly typical trumpet section licks of many big bands of those times. Without wanting to go into who was first where, it sounds like fairly common (i.e. "mainstream") big band vocabulary to me. Not willing to academically dissect the individual big bands' styles (just listening and enjoying!), but just compare with the general tendency towards dominating brass sections, and after all even the 50s Basie band successively gained more and more volume and brass gymnastics compared to their earlier periods. No, to me this "Courts The Count" really sounds like like a fairly appropriate modernized 50s rendering of the old Basie warhorses without being all that disrespectful to the character of the source material. But of course YMMV (as some are wont to say around here ).

Not that much crazier than what a music scribe once stated in mockery: "No doubt there are fans out there who will be all excited to go out and buy a 24-LP box set of Elvis brushing his teeth." (Jazz lovers might like to substitute Bird or Miles here )

:g :tup Thanks for putting things into perspective, Flurin!

Same here. "Louisiana" Johnny Allen was born in 1938 and his Wiki entry lists him as living in retirement in Lafayette, LA. So hopefully he still has some good mileage left. BTW, "Motown" Johnny Allen is mentioned in Bjorn/Gallert's book "Before Motown - A History of Jazz in Detroit 1920-1960" - mainly for his Club Congo big band, so those from outside Detroit who've read the book will have come across his name too.

Agreed - had thought of bringing up that one when the Bird w/Stan Kenton tracks were mentioned earlier. I bought this Alamac LP close to 20 years ago at Mole Jazz in London, and while I am no Bird live recordings completist (but love the Herds from that period very much anyway) this combination had struck me as being so unusual (including for the track selection) that I just had to have it. And I haven't regretted it, of course.

Bird in Paris (the jazz festival recordings) is very nice but fidelity is so-so. (Or has the fidelity improved that immensely on other reissues since CBS released their LP?) Bird in Sweden is nice - yes, but are there any reissues out by now where the solos of the Swedish jam session participants (at least some of them) have not been clipped away? I have an older Storyville LP and the liner notes that openly admit these splicings are slightly unsettling, to put it mildly.

See ... If it had only been about the current "no politics" criteria then why could Larry Kart's sensible explanation (IMHO) not have been accepted as such? After all this still is quite an innocent discussion (IMHO again) compared to how REALLY political discussions could evolve. So why not just have left it at that? Pete Seeger was a political person and to appraise his life the political involvement of his invariably would come up and be discussed. So what? BTW, @Larry Kart: Thanks for that link above on "Pete Seeger before Pete Seeger". Highly interesting. In fact this "Songs for John Doe" album also was discussed in the liner notes to the oft-mentioned Keynote box reissued by Fresh Sound recently as this album was one of the first major releases by Keynote founder Eric Bernay on his Almanac label at the time Keynote was in its infancy. Further Almanac singers releases were on Keynote, BTW. As for "Overnight neither for love nor money could you find a trace of John Doe in any radical book or record store" in the link above, the liner notes to the Keynote box state that "Bernay quickly pulled "Songs for John Doe" from distribution and reportedly destroyed the remaining inventory to avoid possible repercussions". So this explains that, oned might guess ...

Do you really feel that comfortable in unyieldingly riding a principle to death instead of letting a modicum of common sense prevail, as suggested by Larry Kart?? My my ... Whatever political topics come up here in THIS thread - they are part of discussing the life (and times - yes!) of the (deceased) person in question and of evaluating the life of said person and with THIS person in particular they cannot be separated from the person and his artistic opus IMO. As for where to draw a line - would discussing the outspokenness of this or that musician against, say, Southern racism, or against Apartheid (in another RIP thread, for example) within such a thread be off limits too (now don't tell me these aren't highly political topics)? Please - RELAX!

Besides, it is a discussion about HISTORICAL events/actions/statements that are/were of a political nature.

I hope not; just checked my "saved for later" lists on the various Amazon sites and they contain hundreds of items... Time for some sorting and deleting, I guess Uh oh ... same here. Maybe not hundreds but about 50 to 80 any time. And not all of them get bought eventually.

Never seen that box set anywhere around here when we still had well-stocked record shops with staff that cared (even about their jazz sections). Though I remember the "Bean and the Boys" individual LPs which were quite current for a time in the late 80s/early 90s around here. I only picked up a scant few of those LPs (though they were not that expensive), no doubt because a fairly high part of the "non-commercial" recordings issued in those volumes were (very) "later-day Bean" (no doubt a mistake in hindsight but then I was focusing on 40s or very early 50s Hawk all the way).

Ah, THAT one ... I've got that too (but had not thought of it before because I figured TTK was referring to a compilation album featuring various bands).

RCA Camden CAL12 featuring Domnérus, Wickman and Theselius? Somewhat after-hours/lounge-ish cover art - yes ...

I think you got something wrong there, bdamusic. This is a book that features the personal photographic recollections of trumpeter Jan Allan from the way HE witnessed the 50s and the musical scene that he was part of. Which is why the title of the book is "Jan Allan remembers his Fifties". He had just turned 16 when Bird toured Sweden in 1950 - small wonder that Jan wasn't present at those sessions, isn't it? There is a time and place for everything, and understandably and expectedly - from the intentions of THIS book - there is no place for Bird there.

Isn't it quite natural that tastes differ? And exaggeration sometimes helps to convey a message too ... Though it was spurred in part by one of the Beatles' (Ringo??) much later admission that they indeed had gone wildly overboard with all their Guru and psych stuff in the second part of the 60s.

No, you're not. Here's another one. But I was sort of late to the game anyway - started listening consciously to music at 13 in 1973 and bought my first LPs at 14 1/2 years in early spring of 1975 so when I got into music the Beatles had already passed into history. But of course you still were exposed to them everywhere. While many of my schoolmates (who of course were into the then current Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Krautrock, Psychedelic Rock and whatever ...) tended more towards the later Beatles albums, my own rock tastes from Day One leaned much more towards REAL Rock'n'Roll, i.e. Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, et al. So to the extent that the Beatles sounded that essential to me at all, it was obviously their early albums that struck much more of a chord with me whereas I neither could nor would really buy into that screwy, weird Sitar, Oriental, pot smoking, high flying, zonked out stuff of the past-Rubber Soul era, just like out-and-out psychedelic rock and similar genres never were for me. I liked my music a bit more gutsy, immediate and down to earth (but I therefore also understand those who find some of the Beatles tunes on the very early albums a bit girlish). Another reason why the early Beatles albums should not be belittled IMO - it was THOSE albums that created the huge impact of Beatlemania outside the UK and changed the course of rock music forever (imagine white U.S. pop/"rock" would have been stuck in a Bobby Vee, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Valli etc. rut for much longer ) whereas the later ones were done when the Beatles already were an ultra-established act worldwide and (again IMHO) the impact of those albums had more to do with everybody in the rock or pop world waiting for the next word from the Beatles and the Gospel they would preach therein. Sort of "you can't go wrong with the latest Beatles release" thing ...

I suppose they had to gloss over the fact that Trane is present only on some of the selections. Apparently Trane sells - but Byrd, Farmer, Quill, Rehak, Cohn,. etc - much less so.

Another suggestion, David: Keep a watchful eye on www.bokborsen.se This is an antiquarian, secondhand, remainder stock and OOP book site that may have a copy coming up now and then. The books put up for sale there don't have to be decades old so you never know ...

Are you sure you posted in the right thread, Niko?? Why not in the "Hate Hard Bop" thread, if at all? So let's back on track on the subject ON HAND ...

Well, I wouldn not have minded a full bilingual version either (particularly since this would have meant more pics, more period publication repros, etc. spread throughout the inlcreased numer of pages )) but I do think they had their budget constraints too and figured such single-country box sets would sell largely on the domestic market anyway.

About the liner notes: They are essentially Swedish (no major reading problem for me, I'll admit..) but they include a summary in English that is far shorter than the Swedish liner notes but still comparatively detailed (i.e. not just a single-page brief rundown).

Yes, the booklets that go with those CD sets are real gems. And, BTW, they once again show what a pity it is that comprehensive booklets really became a WIDESPREAD addition to collector discs in the CD era only. If you compare the booklets of the VINYL versions and those of the CD versions (like I said, Vols. 1 to 4 were first issued on vinyl) then the LP-size booklets win hands down, of course, because the (numerous) illustrations are significantly larger overall.

Ah ... those .... I have Vols. 1 to 8 (Vols. 1 to 4 on vinyl, Vols. 2 to 8 on CD) and I find them all excellent (if CDs would really wear out then some of the would be worn by now ). Evidently my tastes differ from those of King Ubu (and I am biased in favor of Swedish jazz from the 1935-60 period anyway), but while Vols. 6 to 8 would be most fitting as musical illustrations to Jan Allan's book, I'd certainly advise not to downplay or shrug off Swedish jazz (even pre-1945) unduly. They did have their own thing going, and while some vocals and some big band arrangements are indeed relatively stiff (but not more so than the average German oreven English ones), there are a fair bit of individualistic voices to be found there that make for interesting listening. But of course, to some extent you DO HAVE to be able to listen to this music in the context of its times in order to be appreciate then on their proper terms. Blah about them being "derivative" etc. won't do the matter justice.