Big Beat Steve

I have far from all the CDs from that series (I have mainly concentrated on purchasing those by FRENCH artists) but I remember purchasing one other (with a street scene with a 30s-50s Paris bus on the cover IIRC) that featured accordion music that I found I could do quite well without (though I really like Gus Viseur etc.) so I gave it to a friend who had taken up accordion lessons.

Oh yeah ... Having liked some of the other Crollas from that series of course I picked up that one too and was BITTERLY disappointed. And still am.

I have the "Piano à la Mood" (the one with the poodle jumping the fence on the cover) LP. It is nice but rather ... well ... mood-ish tinkling indeed. Not the most out-and-out hardcore jazz LP ever. Not sure if it is that essential on the reissue market.

Yes they did here and there - towards the end of the 78 rpm era when vinyl had already been going strong for a couple of years. This 78rpm marketing gimmick was revived elsewhere too. I remember one particular release by a Dutch rockabilly group named The Chevy Cats. They released one of their 45s concurrently in 78rpm format at the end of the 80s. As far as I recall it sold out pretty quickly (collectors are easy to assess after all ... ).

Considering the really out-of-this-world reputation that JRT Davies enjoys (rightly so IMO), what would be the (technically valid and justified) point in applying additional noise reduction? No doubt JRT Davies in his mastering did go as far as he could in restoring fidelity and reducing noise without sacrificing range. Maybe those more familiar with the finer (technical) points of how to ideally remaster recordings from the 20s could set me wise?

So if he scores a sizable hit in one of the current musical styles, do you think he will rename himself DON IS? (Yeah, I know, this one was (is? ) a predictable one. )

At any rate now Dick Clark can meet up with Alan Freed again up there at that DJ's Turntable in The Sky and they can both discuss it out as to who was shrewd enough to make token admittances and therefore back out of tha Payola business in time and save his butt before everybody started to dig deep enough to hit pay... no, not dirt but ...smut.

@Clunky: Any vinyl-only releasse/reissue of interesting collectible music deserves to be supported, but would you happen to know which would be the best buying source for this? I've seen it on Amazon UK at 27.99 GBP which is a bit ... er ... steep (but admittedly not totally unlikely for such a collectors' release).

Ouch ... duplication time again - I already have the original Heliodor LP with tracks 1 to 6 of CD2. But as the price seems to be right CD1 should be reason enough ... Thanks for the info!

Bought a lot of these back in the day (introduced me to Eddie Laguna's label, Jay McShann as well as affordable (!) reissues of the 50s modern jazz recordings on Storyville, among others). And the German pressings I came across (both those by Intercord in the 70s and those by Deutsche Austrophon in the 80s) always sounded quite decent to me (and still do). So no need to shell out like that. BTW, what' that strange format of combining 33 and 45 rpm records in one pack? Who needs that kind of duplicate packagings - just a gimmick, or did I miss a point there?

I'd think so too. Jepsen lists only two tracks under this number (the sole entry as a Chocolate Wiliams leader date). One of the two tracks (Lady Gingersnap) is on the Savoy twofer "The Modern Jazz Piano Album" (SJL 2247), whic AFAIK is not a particularly rare album. Two more tracks from that date (on Hi-Lo 1403) which are also on that Savoy twofer start the Herbie Nichols leader entries in Jepsen's discography.

A lot of what was released on Bertelsmann (e.g. Johannes Rediske, Oscar Pettiford) seems to have had its (more or less simultaneous) "non-record club" release on Manhattan (which was a subsidiary of Ariola). I myself have - Sadi's Vibes (Fats Sadi, of course, feast. Jimmy Deuchar) (66133 C) - Jazzing In Stuttgart (Horst Jankowski Trio) (66026 C)

True for 100% of all reissued music but just look at what loads of BN fetishists drool about, just because the very item they have got hold of now sometime back in the 50s had already been in the grimy hands of the then owners. Surreal, irrealistic and unreasonable but that's just what the core of any "original item/issue/printing" collectionism is all about so it's just part of the game for those willing to play it ...

Is that record really THAT rare and is this a common price? Of course we know prices started skyrocketing ever since the Asians all went haywire about anything reeking of "Eurojazz". But this is a bit hefty anyway. I bought my copy several years ago (through eBay too, IIRC) but at a fraction of that price and that already struck me as a "collectible" price. Strange seller indeed, BTW. Those other comments sound alarming indeed ... BTW, checking out his other current listings, this Lucky Thompson single actually isn't THAT overpriced, really. Asking 29.99 or 39.99 for German pop records from the 60s that should not go for much more than, say, 5,00 or maybe 10,00 if they come with their picture sleeve is certainly over the top ...

Yeah, I think that's happened to a lot of us. Bought some of those Everests (with Period stuff, incidentally, that seemed to be fill gaps on the reissue market at the time) through the years but at other times I found many of their reissues being compiled in quite a helter-skelter manner so passed up other Everests countless times, including this one, IIRC.

RIP. Will certainly spin some of his his Coral/Decca/Prestige/RCA LPs during the wekend (don't have his Bethlehem, it seems ...). But how about moving this thread into the ARTISTS section where it will get noticed the way it derserves?

CrocoJAZZ, you mean ... I remember coming across a bunch of original Ahmad Jamal Jazz LPs in a secondhand shop sometime in the 90s but passed them up as the vinyl was really beat up. But I did pick up Shorty Rogers' "Chances Are It Swings", Herb Pomeroy's "Band In Boston", Kenny Dorham's "Jazz Contemporary" (Time) and The International Youth Band at Newport 1958 that all clearly came from the same original owner. But on these last ones the vinyl was in far better shape and plays quite nicely. So again ... the Jamals must have been pressed into service a bit more at parties (or wherever ...).

Not sure what you mean by that. The common practice these days seems to be to push up the sound level and reduce the dynamics. In quite a few "modern" recordings and remasterings there are hardly any dynamics left... My mistake, certainly. Poor choice of words. What I meant to say was indeed that the sound level is pushed so everything comes across louder. "Dynamic (sounds)" in the sense of "sounds that blast you away", if you know what I mean ...

Remembering that among all the MOR, VERY EASY-listening stuff churned out on AFN FM radio by such "name bands" as Percy Faith, Mantovani, Hugo Winterhalter, Bert Kaempfert, etc. there was bound to be an Ahmad Jamal item coming up relatively frequently amidst all those MOR pop band sounds, I am not at all surprised to see that his LPs apparently were abused so often by "non-collecting" music consumers of the day who spun the records at their parties.

Seems very much like this is the key question indeed. At least as long as the "majors" (or "officials" or however you care to call them) are less likely than ever to get their act together and really, really do something conscientious (!!) for the collector. Being used to what inevitably is common practice in the case of reissues of 78rpm releases, though, this needle drop business doesn't bother me all that much most of the times. After all, there are needle drops and there are needle drops. Not to mention the practice (from which "official" reissues do not seem to be immune either) of altering and pushing up the sound level and dynamics of the recordings to suit "modern-day" listening habits (which they say are geared to listening to "louder" music, it seems??). Sometimes some reissuer who clearly can't be bothered with doing any remastering at all might almost be the lesser evil. OTOH, that FS practice of combining one item that has also been reissued before (by FS, particularly on vinyl) with one that is all new in its reissue form is very galling indeed. A punishment to those who've bought FS in the past. Being a NON-completist (at least in most of THIS field of jazz) helps, though ...

Care to share a link to that thread anyway?

I rarely use the View New Content function but rather visit my favorite forums fairly regularly. Those I really very rarely look at are the following, in particular: Album of the Week (just off my radar somehow) Blindfold Test (I won't particpate anyway) Classical Discussion (am not really into classics) Live Shows & Festivals (live events in the US are a bit far for me to attend) Musicians' Forum (am not a musician so cann ot contribut - or realte to - musicians' "shop talk") Hammond Zone (not interested in organs, in general)

The stuff on the Swingtime label? I have some of that but they are relatively early ones. Which sessions/recording periods are you specifically thinking of?

As if there weren't any out there whose sexual behavior matched their sexual orientation 100% ... And for those anyway, Pete C's ( a bit tongue-in-cheek, so I take it ) clasification is spot-on.

Yes, great piece. And a nice (and certainly well-merited) stab at a certain type of "experts".