Big Beat Steve

Do I get what I pay for (in the sense of REAL and GOOD value for money) if I shell out for a Japanese reissue at FULL price if this Jap. reissue contains only the equivalent of ONE measly 10-inch record? I get what I am willing to pay to get my hands on a specific item I want by all means and so I for once am willing to be shortchanged. But would I moan and complain if the same contents (plus additional and fitting material to make up for maybe at least 60 or 70 minutes playing time) hit the market from a label like Fresh Sound, Blue Moon, Lonehill, Proper (who are exactly in the same P.D. boat, BTW) or even Definitive? Nah! Particularly since they are likely to keep the stuff in print far longer than those Asians do. BTW, who knows for sure that Japanese reissuers always pay all those ARTIST royalties in full and in manner that the artists and/or their estates get them straight on? Speaking of which, this royalty business (when paid through the "official" channels) is a big-time sham in my book anyway as far as total niche music releases or reissues are concerned. Those who pay to the "mechanical royalty" processing companies (like GEMA in the case of Germany) are not likely one bit to get back the money they OUGHT to get IMO. Case in point: A friend of mine who as a part-time project of his occasionally issues 45s (EPs) in one-time runs of 500 copies (not more) with rockabilly bands from that "niche" underground club circuit told me he had to pay something like 241 euros for this run of 500 in GEMA royalty payments for one particular item by a band from the UK (with all the songs on the EP written by the band, BTW). And guess what? The other day the leader of that band told him in passing that he "recently" (i.e some 12 months after the release of that particular 45) received the royalty statement from GEMA: A whopping 8 GBP!! Now where DID the royalties go that were paid for this particular 45? Greasing the palms of the pop music bigwigs? Now who's kidding whom? And I know of other cases with similar record release projects. So don't give me that royalty "argument", particularly if Public Domain music is concerned.

By and large, the problem wouldn't be one if the original reissues (particularly the Japanese ones, in this case Stateside) didn't make a habit of making international sales such a hassle and going OOP before you can say "pow". Use (i.e. keep marketing) it or lose it ... That's what it boils down to in the Public Domain sector. Quite simply ...

Took the plunge last week and bought the Hank d'Amico CD from that Japanese eb.. seller some of you mentioned - ftfym65. Ordering and shipping confirmation came immediately but I guess I'll have to keep my fingers crossed and see when it actually shows up on my doorstep and in the meantime I will probably send a mail to ask if and when it has really been shipped (hoping I get an intelligible reply, too ). .

Well, though I have the Mopaque LP (which has the above March 12 AND March 5, 1949 live recordings, BTW), I do need that CD anyway! So .... thanks for the info (and for the track listing of the Howard MCGhee CD too - enough new material there too, though I have the Philo and Melodisc studio dates - too bad with these overlaps but I guess one of these days the barrel of new and never-before released discoveries from that era just is bound to be exhaused ... )

You mean they knew or sensed they wouldn't? (Liittle surprise in the case of Bix, but Tesch? Wasn't his death accidental?)

That's not the fault of Fresh Sound but the "fault" of your importer. Over here it sells for even a wee bit below what it would cost to have ONE single CD shipped directly from Fresh Sound (not very cost-effective anyway due to the postal rates from Spain and not so much the CD price).

The stuff that was out before on MOPAQUE CJR-300? The cover of that LP, at any rate, looks very Boris Rose-ish. So which is now out next? This Chubby Jackson CD or the Howard McGhee CD discussed elsewhere in this forum?

Wow, a subject matter you could carry on about forever. No doubt this has been explored and written about by blues and "roots music" researchers before but where to find the sources and wuotations in a hurry? Trixie Smith recorded "My Man Rocks Me ("With One Steady Roll") on September, 1922 for Black Swan. A pretty allusion to where the term originally came from. And no doubt there are other cases in blues lyrics from roughly that period that "rock and roll" too.

You understand this one better, then?

Agreed with Scott. This is not a discussion of people like Marlene Dietrich, Howard Hughes and their ilk who shied the flashlights like no others. At best (or worst) pictures like this are a mirror to our own selves who have aged in the past 30 years too. And if those who do not like facing that fact when looking in their bathroom mirror each morning gain a little bit of comfort from the fact that, hey, the bigwigs and "celebs" age just as well - then who is to blame them for it? Particularly if people like you and me (and the honestly ageing celebs) get more and more wrinkles but still fare better than those who try to evade the inevitable via botox or surgeons and end up with botched, caricaturesque faces that REALLY make them the laughingstocks of their surroundings (if you'd be honest). And besides, who hasn't snickered at the faces of the "undead" such as Keith Richards and STILL admire them for the energy they still can muster? BTW, hasn't this subject has been discussed with jazz artists too?

Yes, that's been the key problem to a lot of the entire "Japanese reissue" debate for a very, very long time, unfortunately. It simply is discouraging ... And with shipping, etc., prices still add up anyway. So the situation IS a bit difficult for buyers from this neck of the woods. As for those Y1,000 CDs, if you get one 10-inch LP's worth of music that tends to be not quite that "budget"-priced compared to other items with significantly longer playing times. (I've thought long and hard about items like the Hank d'Amico reissue myself ...)

RIP. Another one gone. His stage presence up until a very advanced age with the JOdimars/COmets lineup that toured Euope often during the past 20+ years was quite a sight to see. BTW, Benny Goodman fans wil have noted him as "Francis Beecher" in the lineup of quite a few late 40s sessions by the big and small bands.

Yes indeed, and somehow I have the impression that pic. no. 8 showing Lionel Hampton was taken a wee bit later than 1954.

Anybody have any idea if the musicians listed are the better-known names of the collective personnel on this CD or the actual line-up throughout (3 horns + 3 rhythm would make sense but such a stable lineup for studio AND live dates during the entire period??) The lineup listed earlier only matches one entry in the McGhee discography in Bruyninckx - an AFRS show from the Hi-De-Ho Club in L.A. in March, 1947 (3 tracks previously issued on Jazz Showcase 5005 - "California Boppin"). But how much of a full CD would these 3 tracks account for? Anyway, none of the "known" (and relatively easily accessible) McGhee studio recordings on Philo, Modern Music, Melodisc and Dial from 1945-47 match the above lineup (Roy Porter and Teddy Edwards crop up most frequently) so this leaves you wondering what else there might be in "new" studio recordings or what the actual studio lineup is or if the studio recordings included are either oft-reissued tracks or alternates of those known items. I'll keep my fingers crossed there actually ARE new discoveries. AFAIK so far similar Uptown releases from the bebop era always have included a lot or even a majority of music never heard before, so ...

Not wanting to discourage anybody (least of all myself), but following my initial enthusiasm I checked the Uptown website and surprisingly cannot find any trace of any announcement of this forthcoming release there. Where did you get your info, Thirdtry?

Must have! Will make a note to grab this as soon as it's out.

Well, this particular example is so very US-specific in every respect of the persons, media and historical background involved that I don't think anybody outside the US can really relate or judge - but ... ... the basic underlying problem is one that occurs everywhere in the media (here too): IMHO it is a matter of scribes showing off with half-baked, half-researched, half-understood half-knowledge splurted out just in an attempt to show off and impress a notion of "backgrund knowledge" on their public, based on the (unfortunately often correct) assumption that the vast majority of their public will know even less and just marvel at this hint at something else to maybe know or have heard of out there ("yeah, Custer, him ..." in your case) whereas the tiny minority of those actually know better and can and will call their bluff can be shrugged or laughed off as being "nitpicking", "irrelevant because nobody will care to know THAT exactly" (or whatever ...). "YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE AS LONG AS IT SOUNDS GOOD"

:D When was this cut? Not that long ago, no? But how long ago was it that the "Kosher Delight" satire was on the Dr Demento show? 35 years or more? Must be a real evergreen ....

I am afraid this is going to turn into a highly subjective affair. One man's nuggest is another man's stinker. One area that I find hard to swallow is when R&B heroes of the 50s (or even 40s) tried to stay with the times in the 70s and 80s and re-recorded funked up versions of their original classics and/or hits. Neither flesh nor fowl and very, very often a matter of throwing together elements that just did not fit together and an ear-ache to those who knew the originals, starting with thumpety-thump electric basses and drums. I fully understand the desires and attempts of those heroes to grab a bite of the market at a time when this market was much more open to recognition and commercial success of black artists, but still ... Happened with a few white artists too, btw.

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.