Big Beat Steve

I put my LPs in racks along one wall of my music room. Not much dust settling there even in those corners where I don't often touch the LPs so they don't get shifted (as it happens, in most of the bottom row). Occasional vacuuming with the open tube will take care of what noticeable dust there might settle in corners and crevices. My 45s are in smaller (open) boxes along the top of the shelves near the ceiling but not much dust settles there either though many of these boxes often don't get shifted (picked over) for a long time.

Now for some a little bit meatier sounds that go with this hat too:

Uh oh ... did Chewy usurp Chuck Nessa's account??

it depends on to what extent you would rate Benny G's larger 1948/49 lineups as "bop" lineups (they do figure on many of the bop-influenced BG reissues), but to the best of my knowledge, guitarist FRANCIS BEECHER also is still around. (He incidentally also was on the April 14, 1949, SEPTET session lineup that also included Wardell Gray, Doug Mettome, Clyde Lombardi etc. so should indeed qualify as part of the "bop GROUP" members). Many of you will unwittingly will have heard Francis Beecher often through the years: In fact he is FRANNIE Beecher of Bill Haley's Comets (do I hear anybody yell "heresy"? ) fame and appeared on most of his hit records as well as in his movies etc. Only a few years ago he finally retired from the lineup of the revived Comets (that regularly toured all over the world) due to health reasons but AFAIK he is still with us.

His album in the RCA Victor Jazz Workshop series (1956) is a very interesting one. His "Just Too Much" album on RCA (1955), OTOH, really is an oddity in places (and I am NOT talking about the cover artwork! ). Not bad really, but talk bout MM never coming to rest anyplace (see the link above) - maybe Hal Schaefer had his own moments like that at that time too. His version of "All The Things You Are" on that album sure sounds restless to me, as if he wanted it to get it over and done with as fast as possible ... And maybe I'm stating the obvious but others of his albums certainly were a lot less jazzy. Got his "Music That Reminds Me Of You" (UA, 1961) among a batch of others one day. Mood music if you're in the mood for it ("Sweet Sue" with strings all over the place and mildly dissonant piano up front and "Alexanders Ragtime Band" taken at sleepwalking tempo - ouch ...). Some previous owner of my copy seems to have had ambivalent feelings about that one ... two tracks got 5 stars, most were marked "SL" for "slows", and "among My Souvenirs" is annotated "Too slow - even for nite time" whereas next to "Solitude" it says "Pure garbage"! (Though I have a feeling TTK might feel differently about this album ...) At any rate, Hal SChaefer sure got around.

Tell the "Studies In Jazz" series publishers, not Vernhettes/Lindström. As for making niche things "cheap" - be careful. Cutting costs/corners will show up eventually too. Very, very sorry to say this but you ought to know THAT from experience too. Just see the number of glaring errors in the booklets to the "Devilin Tunes" CD series. Yes - this CD series IS great for its musical contents, but don't you think too that the booklets could have benefitted from somewhat more throrough proofreading etc.? (Yes I know the quality of those sets is very, very much OK for your selling price and does offer good value for money but doesn't that prove my above point?) And yes, I know this may not be P.C. to make such statements HERE and I am sorry if my reply appears like a rant about these complaints about pricing but it just is so that I really fail to see why you keep breathing down the neck of the self-publishing authors of the above books. There ARE MUCH more "meriting" targets in the US of A, i.e. a much closer point to START. And in case you keep moaning about the cost of overseas shipping from Europe to the US, that door swings both ways too. Some time ago I ordered a "special interest" niche product book from the 'States where they charged a flat shipping rate of $25 for every book, even if you ordered several of them (which normally would cut on overall shipping costs per item by ANY postal fee scheme). Though I had a hunch an effort to put this in a Global Priority Flat Rate envelope or box could have cut costs, there was nothing doing. I took the plunge anyway. In the end the product was worth it. Same case again last year with another niche book from the same publishers. Relatively expensive shipping on top of the book price but that's the way life is. Take it or leave it. In short, if you feel the book is worth the price (including shipping) - buy it. If you don't then don't. No use whining though. Nobody forces such books upon anybody at gunpoint.

Oops .. a hefty price for some minute pitch correction (unless one can snap up one or two of those moderately affordable UK offers).

The original Roost vinyl (LP2224, The Bud Powell Trio featuring Max Roach") too, then, I suppose?

That's the one I was referring to above. Of course, as the other posts here indicate, it all depends on how you prefer your jazz from such a long career. Period recordings from the climax of the career, combos, big bands, solos, mainstream from later periods, whatever ... And if you want to go the whole hog (for his earlier works) in one go, it might be sensible to shell out for this and have the ground covered once and for all:

His late 30s/early to mid-40s big band recordings are a MUST!

As for this being legit or not, that discussion is pretty pointless within Europe. Even with the current revamping of the P.D. laws here in Europe where they intend to extend copyright protection beyond the current 50-year P.D. limit (thanks Paul McCartney and Cliff Richard - as if those journeyman session men allegedly involved in pop hits were to benefit from this copyright extension to any significant degree ...), if you read the contents of the new rules closer you will find that the present situation remains the way it is now even after this new EU legislation comes into force: What has been in the P.D. at the time the law becomes effective remains there, but what has NOT YET been in the P.D. will be protected by the new cutoff date (70 years instead of 50 IIRC). So nothing changes for stuff first released (recorded?) up to (currently) late 1962. As for the 1963 material in the Solar catalog, it appears they are really going far out on a limb and probably are living on the premise of "who'd care enough to sue them". So if they come under fire there they don't deserve any better. As for earlier material, no problem IMO as long as it concerns European sales. After all, why should a P.D. limit of 50 years be any less lawful than a 70-year P.D. limit? Or to put it another way, why should a 1941 recording that legally is in the P.D. in the US be any more legal than a 1961 recording that CURRENTLY legally is in the P.D. in Europe as long as the buyers are within the respective jurisdiction? The shady side about all this P.D. business IMO is not so much the P.D. aspect but stealing previous (recent!) remasterings done by others who put a lot of effort into their own reissues (regardless of whether done by majors or indies). It cannot be a total coincidence if a given recording is reissued for the first time in a long time and then all of a sudden the same reissue crops up on several other P.D. labels as well, nor can it be a coincidence if a given selection of tracks is reissued on a certain specific theme of music and then another packaging on the same theme comes up with largely the same selection of tracks. So I'd not so much be wary about allegedly too "recent" 50-year P.D. cutoff dates (particularly if it concerns stuff that NOBODY has touched reissue-wise anywhere else in recent decades) but about re-reissues of material that very recently has already been reissued elsewhere. Don't know where to classify the abovementioned PJ items in this respect, though. As for U.S. buyers, decide for yourselves and judge your U.S. resellers for yourselves and act as you feel comfortable with. BTW, what's the secret about Pujol having a "Barcelona connection"? That's where he is. See the fine print on any Fresh Sound CD. The Jazzmessengers site CLAIMS that Solar is a French label, BTW.

I think you mean 24-bit; there's no such thing as a 25-bit remaster. :g :g

Did you calculate the overseas shipping costs yourself or was this an automatic process by eBay? You know ... stating U.S. shipping wil be 4.00 but "overseas will be more", and then the Shipping Calculator indicates a whopping $34.25 for ONE sole 45rpm set for shipping to Europe ... wow! That sure IS "more". And that's sure to frighten overseas buyers away. I realize USPS shipping rates have gone up but but THIS...? From previous experience (though admittedly not very recently) this cannot possibly be correct.

:rofl: :tup Gotta remember that one!

Ah, him again ... How about this ... get the publishers of those "Studies In Jazz" books to slash their prices in half and no doubt you will also find a handle on how to reduce the price of those lavishly self-published books that you seem to complain about here again. Because ... like it or not, there is a full-fledged publisher behind those "Studies In Jazz" books (Scarecrow Press) and some shrewd recalculation could no doubt offset reduced prices of that series (many of them ARE expensive after all) by other lines from that publisher if they really WANTED to. Do I hear you (or anybody else for that matter) say "Niche market ..."? "Special interest"? "Scholarly"? "No mainstream"? Right! And offhand I'd agree that for these reasons the prices of that series of books are just what they are. BUT - the same applies to the two books we are talking about here. Even more so, Because ANY SELF-PUBLISHED job as well done as these here deserves the highest respect and support imaginable. Self publishing is not the easiest way to go for sure and demands a lot. Whereas ... if you were to look closer elsewhere in the pricing policies of some ... ho hum ... Anyway ... I have no doubt the calculation behind this book will never allow the authors-publishers to get rich.

I have twenty times as many discs with Louis Jordan leader dates than I have John Coltrane leader dates. So what? One man's meat is another man's poison. Did Brubeck cover that? (Seems like we cannot get away from "meat" right now anyway. )

Uh oh ... that brings to mind another thread on a backstage encounter involving Diz, Valerie Wilmer and T-Bone Walker. Might be interesting to see if ANY of those who witnessed that back then ever dropped in here and told how THEY experienced that ...

Sonic aspects aside, what exactly is there on that set that's new, really new, and never before released that has not been on that fantabulous Bluebird 2-LP set from the 70s ("The Father Jumps") covering the 1939-45 period nor on the TWO 2-LPs sets (Jazz Tribune series, Vols. 5 + 19 on French RCA) from the 80s? The latter ones expand upon the Bluebird set but include little of really great substance (most of the added tracks are relatively forgettable vocal features that hold interest mostly for completists). New, hard-swinging Fatha stuff from that period would be the clincher for me (depending on how much there actually is).

In the same vein, one news item that made the headlines in early 1959 was that Dave Brubeck deliberately passed up a one-week gig that would have netted him $17,000 (not a negligible figure even for a top earner at that time, I'd daresay) in that he steadfastly refused to make a trip to Johannesburg in South Africa that would have required him to dispense with the services of his (African-American) bassist Gene Wright. At the same time, he confirmed rumors that he definitely would cancel an appearance at the University of Georgia as he refused to appear there with an "all-white" quartet. The newspaper item in question quoted him as saying "Even if they had offered me a million dollars I would not have gotten rid of Gene Wright. You cannot buy self-respect". Needless to hint at the fact other stellar jazz names during that period caved in in a fairly dismal way in this respect on certain occasions ...

For along time I dug mostly his early pre-Desmond quartet music (Octet and Tjader/Crotty trio) and came to appreciate his more "classic" stuff (that's all over the place and tends to be taken for granted) piecemeal later on. At any rate, some really interesting music there. RIP and Thanks! You outlasted most of your detractors!

See here:

Ah, so I guessed right when starting to read your above exchange (I haven't followed that other thread) - you're talking about Tommy "Deanie Boy" Dean. FWIW, the liner notes (by renowned Dave Penny) to the Official 6038 LP "Deanie Boy Plays Hot Rhythm & Blues" (released in 1989 - 23 years ago!) state: "In October 1956 and May 1958, Tommy Dean was lured back to the recording studios on behalf of Vee Jay Records to record nine tracks of promising-looking instrumentals with guitarists Grant Green and Lefty Bates, respectively, but both sessions remain entirely unissued." So the word about a connection that's there has been out for a while.

A plug for this one:

Yes, they're the ones, and some come in rather distinguished, uppity packagings (hence my thoughts when seeing that "In Paris" box).

Holy Mackerel! At first sight, though, that Mozart package looks rather like a family box of "Mozartkugeln" to me, if you know what I mean, King Ubu ... Funny, this statement: "For many genuine audiophiles, however – especially those devoted to the classical canon as reproduced on the music connoisseur's enduring format of choice, vinyl – its is the perfect marriage of timeless, tour de force studio performance and premium analogue recording and mastering processes which will forever define phonographic allure..." Wasn't it the CLASSICAL music listeners' fraternity, in particular, who went totally haywire about CDs in the early years of CD marketing and dumped their vinyl collections head over heels, thus accelerating the rapid shrinkage of the vinyl market? At least over here this pont has been made by sellers fairly often when the "nobody buys vinyl anymore anyway" story came up.