Big Beat Steve

Just for curiosity's sake: A question to those of you who have this record and have it on hand: Which pressing do you have? (Note differences of label and back cover address) This one? Or this one? Any experts on the RKO Unique label in the room who might be able to shed any light on what these differences mean? (chronology, etc.)

In my quest for obscure 50s jazz I found and got this LP on eBay some 10 years ago. Condition VG+ or so, but the price was right and it plays very decently. Very nice stuff that moves effortlessly, no regrets having bought this at all. And then, a short time later a really, really dirt cheap second copy of this came my way through eBay again and ended up here. Would have liked to pass one copy on but they seem to be two different pressings. Slightly different RKO company address on the back, diferent color of the label on the record, and then the sleeve of one and the vinyl of the other are slightly better. So if I kept the better copy I'd end up with a mismatch both ways. So both records will remain. BTW, this record has since become available as a reissue via Fresh Sound (in one of their "2 LPs on one CD" reissue packages)! So much for FS' greed for reaping utmost financial rewards, because OBVIOUSLY there's BIG BUCKS in reissuing items like this! (Yeah, I know that's another story so no more OT ...)

I've got that Asch 78 album, and posted the question of CD reissue - probably two years ago. Someone (King Ubu?) said that those Asch sides were on the Verve Complete Early JATP box, even though they didn't come out on Mercury at the time. I don't have time to look for that thread right now. They are indeed (unless the same lineup recorded the same two tunes from the above Stinson LP at another occasion in 1945). They are on Disc 2 of the Universal Italia-issued 10-CD box.

Yes, France Musique is nice. Some of their shows are (or used to be) during in the middle of the weekday, though. I remember one occasion driving home through Eastern France on my way back from Britain and catching a radio show featuring Jabbo Smith which had me spellbound until the reception faded after I had passed the border towards Germany. As it happened I had bought the record featuring the very same tracks the day before at Mole Jazz! Too bad the days of Jean-Christophe Averty's radio show "Les Cinglés du Music-Hall" (which often featured early jazz and hot dance orchestras) are over. He sure was a fast talker and projected real excitement in this show, sometimes bordering on being frantic ... A fine way to immerse you deeply into the French language!

Went to a local record clearout sale (any LP just 1 euro!) and, apart from various 50/60s rock & pop finds, came home with a stack of jazz LPs that may not have been on your all-time top priority wants list but were just too good to pass up at 1 euro each. And these included the 3-LP "Boogie Woogie" box set (PM 42395) released by French RCA in the late 80s, featuring RCA-owned boogie classics from the old piano masters via big bands up to 50s recordings. Very clean condition but NO booklet (though who am I to complain at 1 euro for THREE LPs?). Can anybody who owns this set check if a booklet came with this box and maybe provide me with a scan? At the time these box sets were current I bought the two Lionel Hampton 1937-40 3-LPs sets as well as the Swing to Bebop set and both had boklets of various thickness, but who knows if this applies to all the sets ... Another box set where I am missing the booklet is the 4-LP set "Fats Waller & His Rhythm - The Last Years 1940-1943" on RCA Bluebird NL90411(4). Bought this new but discovered only after having returned home that the small print on the back says "Includes 40 page illustrated booklet" (maybe that explained the relatively low price ...). So in case anybody has an orphaned copy of this booklet lying around I'd be glad to free up the storage space (at a price to be agreed) and return it to its box home. 40 pages would be a bit unwieldy to scan but if anybody somewhere should be able and willing to anyhow, then ... Details and/or returns of favors to be agreed by PM. Any leads wil be appreciated. Thanx!!

Stan Kenton?? (or so George T.Simon sayeth ...)

Ah, so your stay there explains that VfB avatar you used to have ... WoM is not worth a visit for niche music fans anymore. Zweitausendeins is fine from time to time, including for music books. Einklang has select items but prices .... whew ... The Vinyl West shop closed not long after Lerche too. Tom only does internet sales and auctions anymore. (BTW, we may well have unknowingly bumped into each other at Vinyl West. I used to buy a lot there in the early 2000s.) Second Hand Records took over the less collectible Vinyl West stocks and sold them off through their special offer bins over the years. Some mighty good finds to be made there for swing and mainstream fans (quite a few ended up in my racks ), but these days their special offer bins don't hold much of interest anymore. The regular sections hold some interesting stuff in the modern jazz (and of course rock) bins but the staff know what's collectible ... (if you know what I mean) So much for an excursion into the "last shop standing" topic ... BTW, getting back to the topic, I had taken a liking to GG's "The Latin Bit" when they happened to played it at Mole Jazz when I dropped in there in the late 90s. Never was able to find a VINYL copy at Vinyl West nor SHR in the ensuing years though, and finally had to settle for a CD when a run of BN reissues came up at the low Zweitausendeins prices locally ...

Ha, so you sneaked into my home shopping turf!! Must have been more than 10 years ago or you caught them at the tail end of their existence. Lerche went into receivership in June 2003 and closed down their shops for good in January 2004. Not surprising they could not find that CD you wanted, though. I remember running into a similar problem like yours in their final years. Wanted to buy the Nocturne box from Fresh Sound but the booklet was missing. They DID manage to dig out another copy from their still unpacked shipments but only after a long (and insistent on my part ) search ... For decades Lerche had been a fantastic record store, particularly for niche markets such as jazz and blues as well as reissues and imports of all sorts (and I'd rather not calculate the kind of money I left there all the way from c. 1975 to 1995 and even thereafter), but things had been going downhill for quite a few years before their closure. Steadily dwindling stocks, haphazard selection of what they carried or did not carry and would not get back in stock ever, less and less knowledgeable staff in the record/CD dept., etc. etc. The usual story (but still a shame) ... End of OT ...

I may be mistaken in interpeting this but my LP copy (Japanese Verve MV 2614) does have a slight distortion at the very begining of this track (during the first 2 or 3 notes played by the sax). Even after repeated listening, I am not quite sure whether this is a tape or pressing distortion or a fluff of Stan Getz' reed (or both), though.

Feb. 4, 1936 Originally on U.S. Decca 7171

I have the 1944-49 JATP 10-CD set from Universal Italy. Nothing to complain about the sound, but the booklet is just a 12-page affair giving the session details, and that's all. Got it through Amazon Germany a couple of years ago for a very low price which was so low that I did not mind ending up with a share of duplicates with what I haved on those Verve vinyl twofers from the 70s/early 80s. At that price the remaining (new to me) tracks still were a good buy at any rate.

In hindsight, I bought far too few from that "Classics" series but it seems I acted smart in buying THAT one back then ... (though I already had the 60s LP from the "Vintage" series and later obtained Vol. 2 on Harlan Lonard from the French Black & White RCA lp series).

HEMP? Reminds one of that Cheech & Chong car with its body made entirely of "grass" ("weed") that they tried to sneak across the border ...

Which will probably keep PJC in business for years (possibly decades) to come, regardless of wether their rent is going to skyrocket or whatever else may happen in that corner of Paris (real estate-wise or otherwise).

A subject well-covered by now (recommended reading: "Different Drummers" by Michael H. Kater), and that picture has indeed been printed often. Though that uniform is not that surprising and may actually have been a sly move to get any bloodhounds off the trails of certain jazz activities in France. He may have lent a degree of occupants' "officialdom" to those in his immediate vicinity where they were likely to be seen by other 3rd Reich officers who may have been far less sympathetic towards jazz. And there were other occupant solidiers who sympathized with jazz and who more or less openly went to the jazz events that took place in occupied France. Recent French books on jazz in occupied France mention this in several places. Sometimes this seems to have led to strange scenarios. There is the story of a letter that Charles Delaunay received (during WWII) from a German soldier who asked him where to obtain another copy of his "Hot Discography" - because this soldier had been forced to abandon his copy when his tank burnt at the Russian front and he barely made it out of the tank but could not salvage his discography that he had carried along ... At any rate, whatever this Kubrick article linked in the opening post says about that abandoned project, maybe it is for the better that the story behind Dr. Schulz-Köhn (who was very active in jazz all his life and whose jazz activities in the 3rd Reich and in WWII weren't all reported correctly by Zwerin - so Dr. Schulz-Köhn himself had asserted later on) was not mutilated by Hollywood. Would we have needed another "Clint Eastwood let loose on Bird" or another over-the-top "Swing Kids" à la Hollywood or worse examples of what could have been done? This man's biography and life was a complex and multi-faceted one. And if Kubrick would have been genuinely interested in the first place, no doubt he could have talked to Dr. Schulz-Köhn without any problem in 1985 - "Dr Jazz" was still alive and active then (incidentally I remember listening to his jazz radio shows ever so often in the 80s - authoritative and highly informative for the collectors ...).

Another link severed to that past era of jazz. RIP. Gonna spin the Amram-Barrow LP later tonight.

Bill Birch's address and phone number are given at the end of this review of his book: http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/NRB/keeper_of_the_flame.htm @Hardbopjazz: I have the e-mail address of Julian Birch (I exchanged a couple of mails with him when I bought the book directly from him in 2011). PM me if interested.

BTW, since this has evolved into a thread discussing international shipping rates in general: Daniel, it seems like the USA aren't the only country that has inflated shipping rates in recent years. I have the impression that international shipping rates from Sweden have gone up considerably too. I've been buying through Tradera here and there since about 2005/2006 and have noticed in the past year or so that rates for sending parcels or larger letters have increased quite steeply. Or am I wrong and have only been lucky in the past in that I might have stayed below certain weight thresholds by coincidence? At any rate, close to 7 euros for sending one (thin) mag within seems to be pretty hefty to me and I cannot recall it has always been that way.

Just like the "new gadgets for new gadgets' sake" and "anything not brand new and the latest fad is just like yesterday's papers" industry. Though THAT industry may actually be a lot worse in its milking for profit - because there are FAR more of those who go down THAT route all the time. And they go on and on and on and never even pause to stop for a second, lest somebody might call their "emperors' clothes" bluff. Glad there are options indeed. BTW, I agree with your "hearing affected by nostalgia" point. That may be behind a lot of it. Though OTOH that "updated for today's listening habits" remastering trend is just the opposite coin of the same medal, i.e. hearing affected by an unwilingness to adjust to what music orignally sounded like and how it ought to be listened to in the context of the way it originally was recorded (not talking about pre-electrical oldtime recordings before c.1926, of course, but rather about a lot of 50s recordings).

IMO the point is this: In the CD era remasterings cover(ed) a far wider range of the good, the bad and the ugly, and unfortunately (at least to a LOT of ears it seems) the bad and the ugly aren't exactly scarce. Relatively speaking, there seem to be too many CD remastering characters out there who can't seem to resist the temptation of tampering with the overall sound, the brightness, harshness, basses, trebles, clicks or pops (on less than perfectly preserved vintage souce material) or whatever, and all this just in the name of adapting to "today's listening habits". Not all of these remasterings were objectively "bad" but I guess to many they were just found to be "ill-suited", and this "today's listening habits" stuff is no argument IMO. Whereas vinyl (in the case of music originally issued on vinyl) just sounded the way it always has ever since Day 1. And those who've grown accustomed to that do not always see the necessity of changing all that (I am not talking about vinyl reissues of pre-vinyl music vs CD reissues of the same - in the reissue field vinyl had its share of duds too, and needle drops on either vinyl or CD may be a different case again). I find it easy to understand there are many out there who are very picky about such things. Hence this ongoing feud, maybe? But though I am definitely a vinyl man, I have no trouble listening to most CDs either. As a huge part of my music on vinyl and CD dates back to the pre-vinyl era I can appreciate the pros and cons of both media for the time being. And those differences I have noticed on my "non-high end" equipment time and again (i.e. CDs sounding "brighter and clearer", vinyl sounding "warmer and fuller" if you know what I mean) often are a case of the listening mood you are in, at least to THIS listener ...

Being too lazy to think hard about any such shortcuts, even with the old system I used the following purely "mechanical" method to break up quotes when I wanted to reply directly but separately to several sentences in a lengthy quote: I open the same topic a second time in another window of my browser, access the "quote and reply" feature by clicking on "Quote", then I mark the quote in its entirety with my cursor (including one line above and one after the quote to make sure the entire quote is marked) and copy it to my original reply post with Ctrl-C and then Ctrl-V. You can even copy the quote directly in the post you have accessed via "Quote" to reply to a quote (so no need toopen the topic in a second window to access the quote). But IF you open the topic a second window this allows you to reply to quotes from several different previous posts in one go by copying the previous quotes into your reply post. This I can do as often as I like and then have the quote more than once in my post and can now delete unwanted sections from each of the copied quotes and reply to what's left of the quote directly underneath the respective quote. Like this: Here I could now comment on whether king ubu's method is indeed clever. And here I could state that I have no idea how to handle this either. Not the most elegant way but it works each time.

Interesting! Recommended reading to accompany this: http://www.allbookstores.com/Sins-City-Real-Los-Angeles/9780811823197 ;)

How about this: "Jockey Jack Boogie" by Johnny Wicks Swinging Ozarks feat. Preacher Stephens on tuba, reissued on Pearl LP 13 (Delmark) About as odd as they comme ... but fascinating ...

Ah, should have thought of that ... Thanx!

My point is that unless you are a subscriber (or take out a "free one-month suscription" or some such - which of course one is liable to forget to cancel in time and then gets signed up for good) you cannot read the story beyond the first few lines. See?