Big Beat Steve

Really being realistic about today's world means not paying good money (hell, any money) for cheapass "product" such as these issues. Well ... paying something like the equivalent of one "regularly priced" (and regularly produced??) CD for a set of FOUR to EIGHT CDs does indeed seem VERY realistic to me (limited - presentational and possibly soundwise - value for limited money ). Fresh Sound and their pricing policy may be a borderline case in that respect, but given that Fresh Sound and Blue Moon, for example, do have the merit of covering uncharted reissue territory where no big corporations would EVER tread, there's nothing wrong with THAT segment of their product, therefore, IMO - needledrops or not (hey, how often remastering claims by legit reissuers really are alibi exercises?). (Yeah, I still want some tangible product too, I am afraid )

You don't. You're just being realistic in today's world the way this world it is. But if it helps you to maintain some self-respect, download some Cliff Richard stuff for free. (That much for who is going to benefit from those new EU copyright laws anyhow - certainly not those "po' session hacks having to eke out a living ..." - they won't be any better off than before)

If I remember those colorful Ray Avery mail order sales sheets from the early 80s correctly, they weren't priced THAT far below other, more "regular" LP reissue series. And of course those "blatancy" complaints will then go for those "Sounds of Swing", "Bandstand", "Ajax", "Ajazz" etc. etc. LP series (featuring strictly STUDIO recordings, no airshots) too, right?

See ... that EXACTLY my point I've made a number of times here about the "inherent" value of the Proper boxes vs. the Fresh Sound et al. labels. Provided the recordings reissued that way are at least 50 years old by the time of reissue these reissue sets (Proper, Spanish or any others) just are legit in Europe even if no royalty payments are involved and I do admit I do have some Proper boxes - for reasons of convenience - and some Lonehill items too, apart from a whole slew of Fresh Sounds because they cover uncharted reissue territory) So ... assuming we're talking about recordings PAST the 50-year European P.D. cutoff date that STILL may be shady to illegal by U.S. copyright laws if sold THERE (Stateside): I can fully understand those who rant about cheaply made re-re-reissues of major items that still are in print (or have been reissued only recently by legit labels - cf. UPTOWN reissues), but Fresh Sound et al. at least PARTIALLY have the inherent merit of reissuing stuff nobody but REALLY NOBODY elsewhere would have bothered touching for reissue at any rate. Just because these are recordings that are on minor indie labels that nobody would have bothered about aynwhere else. Least of all the majors. Or can you see many other "legit" reissuer companies falling over each other in a scramble to do a CD reissue of that "Jazz From The North Coast" LP (on the Zephyr label) or like items? WHEREAS in the case of the Proper boxes the (previously reissued) sources for their compilations are really fairly blatantly obvious. To name just one case: Please do go to the trouble to check the track listing of their Accordeon jazz box and then compare this listing to that of the Accordeon box set done by Fremeaux Associés in the late 90s (but still available as of late) and also consider that certain other items such as those by Mat Mathews have also been graced with reissues in more recent times. And now please tell me what your guess would be why they fell back on not so long ago-ish reissues instead of delving into really new first-time reissues of that kind of jazz (and there is a lot of that around!) that would ahve advanced the cause of the collectors by producing a COMPLEMENTARY box set to the FA box set instead of a majoritarily overlapping one. Any guesses? Which approach would be the easier way out? And STILL Proper boxes DID get appreciative writeups here fairly often - apparently from those (this is my guess) who took the opportunity of conveniently covering artists from the bebop (or at any rate the pre-hard bop era) in one sweep that they had very little of in their collections up to that time. Whereas the same collectors would rant about hard bop stuff (even if 50+ years old) that had been reissued by "those Andorrans". Why? Are hard bop artists more deserving of royalties than bebop or 40s swing (remember the 70-year U.S. cutoff date) musicians? This is what I call a "holier than thou" attitude. And it probably is what David Ayers referred to as the "hypocrites" above.

If you study those (im)pending changes to the European copyright law (plus the thread on that subject on this forum) then you will see that this coypright is NOT retroacive. i.e. the cutoff date for recordings that had already fallen into the public domain by the time this "law" becomes effective will remain as itn is - 50 years. Those that have NOT yet reached that 50-year cutoff date will henceforth be copyright-protected for 70 years. So you could nail down those reissuers for post-1961 reordings but not for older ones. As for being a U.S. buyer or not, isn't there rather much of a "holier than thou" attitude involved? (See the eternal debate of "Proper box" vs "Andorran" (in Fact, Catalonian) reissuers, for example).

Off course, but CD's are also tangible and downloads or streams are not. Yes, you can burn a download to a CD. If you have a record or a CD you have something you can hold in your hands. What happens to the entry in the disco if the website that offers the stream disapears? For me including digitital streams/downloads in a discography is a new step of wich I don't know what it means for the feature of collecting. Agreed, fromn that point of view that is something new and a break with the conventional way of indicating the source of a recording. On the other hand and as pointed out above, one parallel with already existing conventional discographies is that those that really are in-depth often include session entries where the "release" column specifies "private tape" or "unreleased". Now one future variation on that theme would be "available via download from ...." I'd really assimilate these download entries with "private tape" entries, i.e. you know the music is there but you have to use a different route than search out a physical record (released somewhere sometime in the past) in order to gain access to that recording. Not really THAT new in principle ...

a) Because you don't like downloads? b) Because you would have to convert/burn your donwloads to CD for physical archiving afterwards anyway and do not feel comfortable enough with doing that, especialy if ready-made CDs are that dirt cheap? c) Because you already have part of the material on CD and would like to get the rest but shy away from it because for some reason one or two particular CDs are either very expensive (for hardly any good reason at all) or unavailable? etc. etc. I for one am not overly keen on cheap packaging and lack of liner notes etc. either but if you have been in this collecting field long enough to have been forced to live through the utter darkness of shoddy repackaging, nondescript covers, awkwardly modernized artwork, lack of liner notes or session info etc. throughout the entire 70s (and often well beyond) you can probably live with the occasional "cheapo" packaging as long as it is only a stopgap and you do the bulk of your collecting with more properly presented CDs (and even many of those PD labels often come u with quite adequate info in their booklets). All in all it's a tradeoff, I think, just like many around here probably would defend their choice of "Proper" boxes as the purchase of them on artists they have huge gaps to fill with would leave them more money to buy "full-price" releases/reissues where they only need to fill individual gaps in a more targeted manner.

Checked the link inserted by Mikeweil above but could not see the Gryce set there. Does anybody happen to know which of the Jazz Lab LPs (with Donald Byrd) is included on this set? The one on Columbia or the one on Jubilee? As far as I can see from my vinyls both go by this same title. Or is it the Jazzland one that goes under the same brief title? At any rate, I seem to have 4 of the 8 but as each of the other four is likely to set me back as much as this set of 8 if I wanted to get a single CD of it now I might go for this set too.

Am I right in assuming that the bajoist on the right is Elmer Snowden? (After all he showed up in quite a few posts by Chris A reminiscing about those years )

What's your experience with previous dealings (promptness of shipping, 100% fulfilling of orders, etc.) with jpc, if any? I am considering placing an order with them for 1 or 2 CDs that for some reason are significantly more expensive on Amazon (even with their marketplace sellers).

I think that goes for just about any "famous" jazz musician who ever emigrated to Europe!!! Except that many of those emigrated jazzmen unjustly forgotten or neglected in their country of origin turned out some darn good (if unpretentious) music in Europe because in many cases they were backed by truly sympathetic rhythm sections or bands that really played FOR (and supported) their "star" soloist instead of indulging in "every man for himself" delusions.

Hopefully that'll wash off. I love the chair, though (we have one with dark brown leather, which is where I'd probably be parked right now if I had a laptop). We have one, too. Desperately needs new cushions, though. Mine neded new cushions too (and new leather on 3 of the 4 elements). Had the refurbishing done the other day by the authorized distributors of the Lounge Chair range. Set me back a hefty amount but compared to the price of an entire chair (which would not have the "period" flair - mine has been in teh family since 1967) it was totally worth it. More furniture:

So this is what Charlie McCarthy used to munch all the time?

These seem to be "rare as rocking horse manure", to quote from a diplay sheet attached to the "rare items" bin at Ray's Jazz Shop up in Shaftesbury Avenue, London.

Same here (more or less, with an accent on European equivalents too). As for the reference resource, IMO reading up on jazz history can hardly ever be more fascinating than if you do your reading in those "period" mags. Jazz seen "as it was" and not always with the benefit of (a historian's predigested) hindsight can be quite instructive. I pull out my late 30s, 40s, 50s and early 60s copies of Orkester journalen and Estrad (Sweden) and Jazz Hot (France) as well as the 50s/early 60s copies of Jazz Podium (Germany) and Jazz Magazine (France) quite regularly and they are a mine of information indeed. 65 issues for $40 at any rate is a very good deal. Congrats!

In that case, is it readable, or is it bogged down by "theory"? That book has been quoted from elsewhere so often that it must be quite readable, informative and well-written. I must admit I've never had a thorough look at it because once you get into that 50s music really deeply this kind of general overview will be a bit superficial for you and will not add much new, especially since every facet of those "early years" and of the evoution up to the beginning of the "British Invasion" have been covered from almost every angle imaginable elsewhere in the years since this book was originally written. Besides, it does dwell too much on the post-"r'n'r era" music up to 1970 for my taste. But you can check the contents through the Amazon preview function here, for example, for yourself: http://www.amazon.com/Sound-City-Rise-Rock-Roll/dp/0306806835/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318316936&sr=8-1#reader_0306806835

Second the "Before Motown" book above! Though I would not only call it "decent", but in fact very thorough. BTW, speaking of Billy Mitchell and looking at the cover pic (and the pic inside that identifies the persons), is it only me or is there indeed a striking resemblance betwen Billy Mitchell and Wynton Marsalis?? Second "Honkers and Shouters", "Nervous Man Nervous" and "Upside your Head" too (haven't had a closer read of Lipsitz' book yet. And thanks for making us aware of the "Chitlin' Circuit" book. Looks like one to check out ...

All of which prompts me to pick up the ball about what might lurk in the elders' belongings to give you a boost in your own collectionitis anyhow (and I am not kidding with this ...) to mention that among the vinyl items my mother passed on to me was this oddity (at last by our middle-European standards) ... An odd kind of party record even by 50s standards, at least in this neck of the woods ... and this from somebody who normally listened to classical music only and whatever jazz there was was essentially confined to the "Third Stream" kind (yet the other day I finally managed to talk her into passing on her copy of that black-label DG original pressing of the MJQ's "Fontessa" on Atlantic to me as at 87 she doesn't really listen to that stuff anymore anyway). But OTOH, in my very early collecting days in the mid-70s she did consent to parting with this catalog of hers ... ... which won't mean much to collectors outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland but ever since that time (the above one was the 2nd ed. ever published) this annual catalog of the Jazz records currently in print and available has served generations of collectors as guidance, and it certainly did advance my awareness of early (c. 1960) jazz vinyl a whole lot in those pre-internet, pre-INTERNATIONAL mail order days. In a way it was more essential than any of those SCHWANN catalogs could possibly have been. Which only goes to show one's elders can advance your own collecting bug in more ways than they'd care to ... :D

Would inheritances from their mothers qualify too?

As Sensation 5 apparently is not on the OJCCD reissue, I guess you are referring to my above post. Am just listening to "Ratio and Proportion" and cannot complain, really. Some minor background hiss but overall quite good presence and sound. Really very nice. Incidentally, the back cover reads thus : "The sound quality on this release has been greatly improved over prerious issues of the material. We have been able to go back to 1948 master and session discs (many of them in superb condition) and remaster directly from them." Coming to think of it, this is no big surprise. Boplicity is/was a subsidiary of the (U.K.) ACE label that has done a HUGE amount of King (mostly R&B and hillbilly boogie) reissues as they have acquired the masters etc. from the King vaults.

I have the Boplicity CD that has virtually all of these tracks (and then some ...). It does list "3rd song" as part of the "Royal Wedding"/"Be Bop Blues" session. The two "Lord Nelson" sesions are listed there as follows: The sessions are split differntly from what your listing indicates, and this discographer did identify the entire rhythm section but evidently (judging from your Zan Stewart source) the recording dates are not any more accurate. (As you can see, I've alreaday scribbled a note about the possibly incorrect date at the margin.) I agree that the final two stray tracks are either duplicate listings or alternate takes released elsewhere for the first time and therefore not immediately associated with the Sensation release.

The text of the bio mentions the session but not in extreme detail and only speaks of the presence of a "horn section" among the backing musicians. If there had been any indication whatsoever that Pete Brown was among the horn men according to the state of knowledge at the time the bio was written and published then no doubt he would have been mentioned in the session lineup.

This is not of Proper's doing ... this is the personnel listing included in the Wynonie Harris bio "Rock Mr. Blues" by Tony Collins (published in 1995 by Big Nickel Publications - not a publisher renowned for sloppy work ). And until DEFINITELY proven wrong, I am inclined to go along with what those who really went to the pains of researching the life and times of the artist in question to the extent of writing a book about his life wanted to see published. And the discography does look fairly thorough and detailed. If the biographer saw fit to publish a listing that is quite different from the Bruyxninck listing that in turn came from the 60s Jepsen discography (with ONE major difference - see below) and appeared on the late 70s Route 66 reissue LPs the I assume he must have had good reason to do so. BTW, Bruyninckx stating "similar to above" (refering to the Nov. 30, 1946 Aladdin session) omits ONE crucial detail in the way he took the entry from Jepsen: Jepsen clearly says about the July 1947 session in referring to the previos Nov. 1946 one: "Similar BUT NOT THE SAME" (my capitals) which IMO does read like the lineup likely was QUITE (and not just a bit) different.

Wasn't it the Dials (including alternate takes) that Saga reissued in those distant 70s?

Would this count? Drums enough? "Native" enough?