Big Beat Steve

I've deliberately preserved some of the stickers on the covers of the LPs I bought secondhand if they were there from "way back", sometimes showing the names of local record and radio shops long gone but still remembered by those in the know or interested in such local business histoires, even if they happened before one's time. They have become part of the "history" of the album.

Thankfully Dobells' seemed to have stuck many of their price stickers on the BACK of the covers so they don't do much harm. Quite a few of those secondhand LPs I bought at Mole Jazz in the 90s have older Dobell's stickers and I've left them in place; reminds me of my stays in London in '75 to 77 when I dropped by at Dobell's (with far too little money to spend...). As for evil stickers, I've come across them too, especially one bright red type stuck on clearout sale LPs in a local record store. Their principle seemed to be "If we let you have a record at 1 euro each we'll make sure you won't get the cover without further damage because the sticker just WON'T peel off without taking a chip out of the cover!" . The glue residues of certain "Special Import Services" stickers (large round ones) that used to be stuck no new LPs sold here in the late 70s or of the one shown below were rather nasty too.

I'd say so too. At any rate, he's the third from the right in the front row (standing) in the other pic linked above in the second post by Marcel.

Enjoy your stay, Jim. Your gig on July 1 will be just 2 hours away from me but unfortunately I am taken and cannot make it there at such short notice (attended that festival some 12 or 13 years ago; nice atmosphere ...).

Maybe these pics taken during that particular tour would help by comparing the band members (beyond the obvious) by the way they looked then to rule out those who cannot be Brownie in the Finnish pics? That should narrow things down. They come from the October, 1953 issues of ESTRAD (most) and ORKESTER JOURNALEN (final one).

IIRC these were two different series that were on the market almost concurrently. The white ones where "I Giganti del jazz"; the black ones were "I Grandi del jazz". As far as I remember the white ones came first but the IIRC black ones came not too long afterwards. They were all over the place in the budget jazz bins here in the early 80s, and I remember buying a very decently sounding Fats Navarro compilation incuding the most essential Savoy/BN stuff from the black series as well as a few of the white ones that had obscure stuff that (at least at that time) was unavailable elsewhere. I bought one for several tracks by Harry The Hipster gibson (only several years later was I able to snap up a Musicraft reissue LP) and that one also had two tracks by Cecil Gant ("I Wonder/"Cecil Boogie") as well as four tracks from a 1961 Benny Carter band. VERY odd company ... The booklets inside the black ones actually were quite nice for beginners (if you can manage Italian and have not seen the - mostly familiar - pics elsewhere yet). Was glad to be able to upgrade my Fats Navarro to the Savoy/BN twofer reissues but kept one or two of the white ones for the odd tracks I still do not have elsewhere.

Depends on what exactly you like from that era. It's a wide field. Not everybody goes for doo-wop, not everybody goes for honking saxes ...

Aaah, so THAT's where the rights to the name went ... (or stayed ...) ;) Still, a bit ambitious if you consider that name probably hasn't rung a bell with active buyers of contemporary music for close top 50 years. Family sentimentality (which probably cannot be judged by usual marketing yardsticks anyway) aside, what would today's music buyers associate with that name that would make them take the plunge in huge numbers and shell out in the manner some today's artist's affiliation with good old Blue Note maybe would?

Wardell? :lol:

IMO it's just an attempt at cashing in on the old name (what for, I wonder ... DOH and RIH were soooo long ago and there can't be that many 50s R&B collectors who are just as much into Rap...). If the rights to the name have become "free" (or available) who knows what some shrewd whiz kid in search of an image may be up to? Maybe it's primarily the "Hollywood" image that counts to them? Happens all the time in marketing. Or why else would someone want to revive (of sorts ...) the BUGATTI car marque, and there sho' ain't no connection between the REAL Bugattis and Volkswagen (backers of the Bugatti marque now) either .

This may be against the usual "wisdom" in this field and I would not claim I have read enough in this field to be able to make a definite choice, but from what I've read (including some Chandler, for ex.) I'd say that a good dose of REX STOUT would have to figure high on any "top whatever" list.

Thanks very much for these infos, folks.

And for Europe? Anything in the pipeline yet? To be honest, trying to import from Japan on an individual basis is almost always just way too much of a hassle for a private end consumer, all things considered.

So this one here (2-part version, too) .... ... definitely is not the same version as on the 4-Star label?? Though recording the same tune in a 2-part version in each case is odd indeed. Ths would make it the third version of the three that Mosaic mentions. Jepsen says these are different versions, but like you said, he may have been mistaken, so who knows?? Especially as you claim the 4-Star recording seems to come from a different session if I got you right. Am playing it now - the tenor man blows a relatively fierce horn (not unlike what Flip Phillips did) and the bassist does hum some Slam-Stewart-ish lines behind the guitar solo towards the end of Pt. I and later on in his his solo in Pt. II. @all: Sorry for derailing this thread even further ...

As always, a great addition to the accessible information about that era. Keep it up.

For a while the softcovers and hardcovers coexisted. I have the first four as softcovers and the fifth one as a hardcover. Fine works! Unfortunately rare and fairly pricey on eb.. and elsewhere. Wish they had started doing that series a bit earlier ... Just so you know what to look for, Colin:

Some discographies list the drummer as "Claude Cloud". However, I guess the real leader on this date is probably Leroy Kirkland. My guess too as far as Leroy Kirkland goes. But why would some list one "Claude Cloud" when the identity of Panama Francis seems to have been established? Does a drummer make for a "token" leader figure? Strange things happening with THAT pseudonym ...

Thanks Jack - I had a hunch that If I'd get a reply it would come from you. Haven't got the line-up I mentioned on hand now but I remember that strnagely enough one "Claude Cloud" figured there. Your combination makes much more sense, of course. Now who made up the brass section, I wonder?

Actually it's a relatively flattering one ...

BTW, can anybody enlighten me to the REAL identity of CLAUDE CLOUD of the "Claude Cloud & His Thunderclaps" fame (10in LP on MGM, variously entitled either "Rock & Roll" or "Let's Get Cat-Static")? The general concept of that LP is similar to that of Boots Brown (Shorty Rogers) on RCA and a line-up I have seen includes REAL names such as Sam The Man Taylor and Leroy Kirkland band members, but Claude Cloud figures in between (on drums, IIRC), though I have a HARD time believing there really was person by that REAL name.

:D If "common or garden names" were a criterion then Andrew Hill would have had to "pseudo" his entire recorded output IMO ... As for the earliest examples of this, would all those pseudonym band names used for many of the 20s jazz band recordings also released on other (often budget-ish) labels count, or are these excluded because they were marketing ploys and you want this to be limited to "cover-ups" only? One of my favorite ones is Dizzy Gillespie's apearance as one "Hen Gates" on some 40s Charlie Parker session on Savoy. Which is what has caused considerable confusion or wishful thinking among discophiles ever since as a few years later the "Hen Gates" name was used as a bogus artist credit on several R&B LPs, some of which actually featured the Freddie Mitchell band (but there were other LPs where that name was used for other recordings too). Also check this: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article_print.php?id=1405

That's the one I was immediately thinking of when I saw the title of this thread (which I hadn't seen the first time around as I was not aware of Org. yet in 2004). In fact the secondhand copy of this I bought in London in the 90s had a handwritten correction on the back cover that stated the actual identity and lineup. No doubt Specs Powell was nowhere within earshot of that studio in Cologne (Germany) where that music was recorded in 1957. And what could his involvement with that Strand BUDGET label possibly have been at a time when he was a studio musician? BTW, my (U.K.) Fidelio label pressing of the same record (with the same front cover) clearly says "Specs Powell and his Band" on the back cover (which of course if b.s. and does not hint at anything like a producer's or presenter's role ). Otherwise, I'd have to agree with what Michael Fitzgerald wrote earlier. Being a leader means more than "just" arranging tunes or being given ample solo space. As for eligibility to this thread, would reissue packagings (the above Strand LP was one too, BTW) of material originally released on 78 rpms or very early in the LP era qualify too? There were/are plenty of these where the original leader credits were all jumbled around just because someone else in the lineup had come to prominence in the meantime. This would be one classic case: The leader actually was trumpeter Hall Daniels and the record was originally issued as such as a 10-incher on the Jump label in 1955.

Why oh why is it that the derailed looks of that chick make me wonder if she maybe is some kind of offspring of notorious German rock songstress NINA HAGEN?? :lol:

Good luck Shawn, and do stick around anyway. I hope things will work out for you.

OMG! :wacko: You really think so?? Whatever happened to your ears?? :blink: