Big Beat Steve

Aw well ... excellent musicianship to be sure (as always with Edelhagen), but jazzwise the selections reissued there are a bit on the predictable, all too clean side IMHO. Technicality and fireworks and certainly a lot of precision and punch behind the arrangements, but from a creative, jazz-oriented perspective, the Edelhagen band made livelier and more satisfying records a bit earlier in the 50s.

Having actively lived through the vinyl era from the mid-70s when I started collecting I can't say the EUROPEAN MCA pressings were bad. The German, Frnech and U.K. pressings I came across all thorugh the 70s and 80s all in all were wuite OK. What bugged me in the pressing quality at that time were some of those late 70s vinyls where the grooves really got very, very close to each other, and there seemed to be huge differences at that time, in some cases - upon looking closer - you could make out each individual groove (those LPs tended to be OK), like it was on LPs from the 50s, and in other cases the grooves looked just like a blur, and those records were much more prone to skip even when new. And I cannot say this was a case of 20-track single LP budget pressings where you had to cram a LOT of playing time on them. Some of these Pickwick (or other) 20-track budget LPs sounded better than some 14-tracks major label close-grooved pressings. As for actual surface defects, and beyond what TTK says about budget and Crown labels, there were some awfully crappy pressings elsewhere too, not necessarily among budget labels. Straight from the late 50s and all through the EP era, I've found an obscenely high share of duds full of blisters and bubbles among SONET pressings (Danish), for example. Strange how they ever made it to secondhand bins where I came across them later on. Any half-intelligent new record buyer would have returned them right to the shop?? Or did they have a habit of disintegrating and blistering later on due to old age? Any Scandinavian here who knows? Among more recent pressings, I still am surprised at the kind of pressing defects that seep even into normally carefully made reissues on collectors' labels. For example, an LP I have from the Swedish Dragon label has a sort of "wart" somewhere that invariably causes it to skip except with the most careful pickup/weight setup. And one of my Tal Farlow "Ed Fuerst" LPs has a nasty blob of some foreign matter (looks like some grain that you can actually feel) that makes the record pop on that side for several spins (no skips, though, though the bulge in the surface feels much worse than on the Dragon LP). (Yeah, failed to check the records close enough when buying them brand new)

Interesting ... I am half-tempted to jump for it unheard-unseen ...

Let's face it - Contador had it coming to him. He had tried to get away and sneak out so many times or, to put it another way, has sneered in the face of those who tried to combat dopimng in this "sports" and showed an attitude that cried out loud something like "you can't get me, I am too big and important for you", and now they did get him by his b...s (well, sort of ... the punishment could have been harder). I have no pity at all for any of those they catch today (or caught ever since they got at least halfway serious about at least TRYING to clean out a BIT of this mess), neither for Jan Ulrich nor for any of the others who got caught ever since.

Thanks very much, King Ubu. Looks like that 2nd set has all the Columbia/Okehs from that period (minus the originally unissued ones that Bear Family DID include in their set) and then the Radio Recorders 1947 sessions on CD 4 are MGM masters (that duplicate the Bear Family "Papas Jumpin" vinyl box set and likely other CD reissues that have been released in the meantime). Pity ... None of the 1944 AFRS radio transcriptions (but I guess that would have been wishful thinking with this kind of box sets ). But nice enough anyway (and affordable) for those who so far have none of the early Bob Wills records.

Since a quick search on Amazon didn't yield too many details, just a quick question regarding the SECOND (1940-47) of your JSP sets: Does this also included cloumbia/Okeh STUDIO recordings only (making them redundant with the Bear Family box set which includes a total of some 257 tracks from Bob Wills' Columbia/Okeh studio years)? Or are there other sources (transcriptions etc.) that have been incorporated into this second set?

I tried doing something very similar once on my show: something like 20 versions of 'Maple Leaf Rag', from a very early acoustic recording -- might have been someone like Vess L. Ossman on the banjo -- to the (then) most recent one. It was fairly boring, to be honest, and I didn't do it again. I found it very interesting at the time, and though some of the tunes were not my favorite staple it was quite instructive. I also remember havnig heard something similar in a shorter (30-minute) jazz radio show many moons ago but cannot remember the tune they focused on. But then again, for my very own listening amusement in my car I once dubbed an entire 60-minute cassette with all the versions of "Jumping At The Woodside" (including MANY Basie versions, obviously ) I had in my collection. And no, I did not tire of listening to it. (My excuses to Durium for those off-topic remarks ... )

Jean-Christophe Averty hosted that "Les Cinglés du Music-Hall" radio show a LOT earlier than the 90s as an afternoon show. I used to listen to it relatively often for quite some time during my University time in the early 80s (I spent my University years in a town close to the French border so was able to catch French radio) when I had the time. It was a funny show ... while it essentially focused on 20s to late 40s/early 50s acts that you might label under "variety" (actually pop of the day) many of the backing orchestras or small groups often provided at least a semi-jazz dance band sound and some were decidedly in a jazz or swing groove (the featured vocalists notwithstanding). Apart from the occasional show that concentrated on more jazz-oriented orchestras of the 30s, some of the musicians working in those singers' backing orchestras really caught your ear and served as a good introduction to French and Europan jazz and dance bands of that era. I think this is where I got my first exposure to very early Django Reinhardt backing Jean Sablon and other singers. Those Cinglés du Music-Hall radio shows were funny shows to listen to. Judging by his speed and intensity of talking, Jean-Christophe Averty seemed to have a habit of working himself right into a frenzy during each show, which was all the more striking because the comments and background info on each tune were set up as a sort of dialogue between Jean-Christophe Averty and a co-host (Jacques .... somebody) with Averty seemingly getting increasingly carried away as the show went on whereas his co-host came across as a sort of relaxed "straight man" to keep things a bit calmed down after all. Amazing ... and a real test on one's abilities to understand French and - above all - catch the key info on the featured artists and the names of the tunes ... The programming format was something else too. Who would expect a one-hour radio show to be made up entirely of nothing but all the available recorded versions of ONE SINGLE TUNE from that particular era? (Every now and then they did such one-tune specials there; IIRC the early versions of "Just a Gigolo" were one such show I caught on that program) Anyway, it did guide me in my buying of the occasional French 30s jazz reissue vinyl that popped up in record stores here and there back then ... Fond memories ...

Ehhhmm ... just out of sheer curiosity: What would be "bitterly cold" in your neck of the woods?

When can one hear the flagwaver version?

I know. I wasn't referring to what's written ON the album but what had been written ABOUT the album. (Or what I must have been reading about that particular album someplace somewhere) The way I listen to albums such as this now, of course I listen to the music as such and for itself - Quincy or not.

Queen Disc Q 003?

As for shipping, while I haven't checked the exact rates at Birka Jazz, their shipping costs probably aren't entirely their fault. I bought from Birka in the first few years after the turn of the millennium (but then gave up as somehow I had exhausted the more essential and nicely priced items they were likely to have for sale ) but did not find their shipping costs inflationary. However, I've bought from other Swedish sellers relatively often (mostly mags) in more recent years and found that the Swedish postal rates for shipping abroad have increased quite heftily through the years.

Yes I was definitely wrong about using the term "big band". I should have written "one of his own BAND albums", i.e. one of the albums credited to him and showing off his own skills. And again - I distinctly remember this particular album being mentioned more than once as one (in addition to "This Is How I Feel about Jazz" and also "Birth of a Band") that really showed off what he could do at that time - even more so than the arranging he did for others. When I read the opening post, my first thought was "You got that album too, so what did get YOU started on that one"? And I checked - and found ... nothing. Not in the printed All Music Guide on Jazz, not in any of the early Down Beat Record Review yearbooks, nowhere in the West Coast Jazz books by Gordon or Gioia, nothing ... It has me stumped, right now anyway ... because I really remember clearly reading favorable comments on it.

But nothing on Thad Dameron? Too bad ...

Any idea when to expect the final results?

The (obvious) lo-fi quality prevents close listening (at least via my PC speakers) but General Moltke's voice is amazing insofar as it quite exactly matches the tyical Prussian voices commonly heard by actors portraying those historic personas in old movies set in the 18th/19th century that were common fare in Germany in the 30s (and even later) and should be quite familiar to most Germans. Seems like the way many actors spoke (or were made to speak and enunciate) for historical roles in the 30s really IS the way typical Prussians sounded way back ...

Strange thing ... getting back to the original post and record: I got that "Go West Man" LP quite some years ago (an ABC original with white promo label too, BTW - how many of those promos did they distribute after all? ). And one reason I went for that one was that I had found his 50s arranging works (and the resulting music) appealing and somewhere this one was touted as clearly being one of his late 50s big band masterworks (along with "This I How I Feel About Jazz"). But now, listening to it again, I still find it very nice, but that "Quincy Jones touch"? Where?? Somehow I feel about it just like Chewy now. And what is more, trying to find how I got hooked on that record, I cannot even find ONE SINGLE trace in the jazz books I have (and that might possibly talk about it) where it is even MENTIONED! So I guess for that 50s Quincy Jones arranger's touch I'll stick with what got me started in the first place: Those late 50s HARRY ARNOLD big band sessions where he contributed quite a few compositions and charts. The bottom line? The man we're talking about seems to have been a comparatively pedestrian trumpet player, could do great composing and arranging but did not do as much of that as it is claimed he did (as he had arrangements attributed to him that weren't his), was a jack of all trades and man in the right place in the business, especially in the producer's field, who could and did pull the right things and could get the right things started. Late 50s to today's Paul Whiteman, Dave Kapp and Steve Sholes all rolled into one? Is that about it?

Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...

In short, this seems to indicate that virtually all of Django's recordings (under his own name and as a sideman, right?) are now both on that Fremeaux 2-CD series and on those JSP box sets? Give or take a few isolated items. Did I get that right? So is it all about the price? How do they compare soundwise? Those JSP box sets I have are all very good value for money but their fidelity is a bit of a mixed bag. The Chet Atkins Early Years set sounds almost too clean to me, whereas others with 20s source material (Paramount Masters, Charlie Poole) sound rather noisy. No surprise there but though I am VERY forgiving with reissues of 78s, I've heard better fidelity on some of those 20s reissues elsewhere. So how would the Django reissues rate compared to other reissues of that material? Anybody out there famliar with the 8-LP Django VINYL box set issued on Affinity (Box 107) in the 80s? I am not going to do away with that but if targeted purchases from one of the above two series will allow me to fill gaps beyond that box set and other Django vinyl I have (e.g. from the Pathé Djangologie series), then ...

Sounded exceedingly obvious to me (though I am not a native speaker) that there IS a crucial difference between "pod" and "pawed". So any "haw" or "paw" example appeared to be rather ill-chosen to me. Just like JSngry said above: "Hawd" rhymes with "pawed" and I don't think that's the consensus here, is it? But then again, some lingos or dialects may interfere in a big way. Just look at the way some Britons mess the vowels of their English language around (sorry, no put-down intended, but sometimes it just too clearly noticeable): The "o" in "London" is not pronounced as a very "open" vowel but comes out as "Lewndewn", or the "hat" that you wear on your head is pronounced like "hut" (as in Pizza Hut), etc. etc.

Sounds like it, because nobody would refer to him as "Johnny Hawdges" (though I have no doubts there are dialects where this would be the case, but could they be any yardstick?)

Unless there is a special kind of dialect involved.

Quite true AFAIK. If I remember correctly, this book... http://www.amazon.fr/Jazz-Societe-lOccupation-Regnier-G%C3%A9rard/dp/2296101348/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327650296&sr=8-1 ... has some interesting insights, including of some close-up contacts with members of the German occupants who were swing-inclined after all. But I guess sensationalism-minded titles like this are all about "sales".

And all this is missing from the Django CD set series on FREMEAUX ASSOCIES too?