Big Beat Steve

Had a run apparently similar to many others who replied. I started buying vinyl (i.e. LPs) in early 1975 at not quite 15, and this continued at a fairly steady pace (my limited funds permitting) to the late 70s and then ebbed off somewhat up to the mid-80s due to another hobby that ate up much of my still limited funds during my University days. From the mid-80s (once I had joined the working population ) my buying accelerated again throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s, though with some ups and downs. Which were dictated by availability at affordable prices (the wave of others shifting from Vinyl to CD in the 90s and dumping their collections did help ), existence of well-stocked local record shops, and opportunities too good to pass up. I did resist CDs for several years in the 90s but eventually gave in as so much became available on CD that simply did not exist on vinyl. For the past 10-15 years my vinyl buying has settled into a more reasonable pace, even coming to an almost complete standstill for a while during Corona (just one single LP in close to two years). Some buying sprees still happen, though, e.g. about a year ago when I had first pick among a 5,000-LP jazz collection a local record store had gotten in ). In fact, now that retirement is upon me I am telling myself more and more often that I need to slow down, not just to eventually ease the plight of my heirs but also because the wall housing my LP collection(now totalling some 8,000) in my music room has been overflowing for some time. Shifting my 78s to an adjacent room in late 2017 helped for a while but now the point of saturation has been reached again. So I had to free three shelves in that adjacent room to accommodate more LPs (luckily there was room in my office to house the special-interest non-music books and magazines that had to make way). I am enjoying the vastly improved accessibility to my LPs (it's not much fun having to wedge LPs forcibly in and out of the crammed shelves). Hopefully my restraint will last ...

To set straight an (inexplicably) oft-made blunder in that title: The ACTUAL song title (as per the flower and the color derived from it) is FUCHSIA Swing Song. ❗ Or just very much tuned in to music from past decades and aware of a lot (which should be a natural to anyone seriously interested in the heyday of jazz - though the above tune admittedly is not so jazz-ish ). (FWIW, personally I had not been born yet when Sheb Wooley hit the charts with that one, and yet ... )

With all these plugs, it looks like I'll have to watch out for that Brunswick 10-incher to come up in one of the special offer bins.;) (Stranger things have happened around here ...) (See, re- your misgivings in that other ("Reddit") thread, reviving this age-old thread didn't hurt at all ... 😁 and this might indeed lead to a new round of discussions ...)

Yes, what he (not wrote but) recycled is rather meager for someone who really ought to take an active interest in subjects like this.

Just did a quick check on Discogs: Indeed - Discogs does list the Australian pressing for Vol. 1 (LAEA 12038), but no Australian ones for Vols. 2 and 3. (Haven't looked for Vols 4 and 5 yet)

@Romualdo: I do not have the details on hand but this indeed seems to be so (if I remember correctly what James Harrod explained on his site). And in some cases the tracks were edited (truncated) on the EPs to fit them onto these 45s. @Jazzcorner: Of course in the end it is just the music that it's all about. My point was just that these EPs pressed in Europe back then are an intriguing side aspect of these JWC sampler releases (and their marketing history) that merits some exploration (in my opinion). I referred to the JWC LPs in the title of my thread simply because the FIVE SAMPLER LPs titled specifically "Jazz West Coast" and their contents were the starting point for my question about which of their contents were also released on EPs culled from THESE LPs. (The "other" Pacific Jazz EPs were an afterthought) So IMO dwelling on what LPs there were overall (this was discussed before in another thread) and stating what LPs one owns seems a bit beside the point to me in THIS thread.

That's all very well, but to me they ARE (of interest). Tastes and interests differ, you know ... LPs are a different topic and have been covered in extenso in numerous publications (and FWIW were not the target or subject of this thread anyway). But EPs are part of the way the music was marketed at the time as well. And they were overlooked for no good reason. Thankfully James Harrod set the record(s - literally ) straight.

Just trying to put every "banana" cliché into that "generic" drawing on the banana theme ...

I think I will be listening to this tune with totally "new" ears from now on. And belated birthday wishes to you.

Nice idea. But are all of them really that specific to the 78 rpm era? (e.g. TOPS or GTJ) And "Brandt" must have been one that found its way into the range because some client ordered a one-off in the first place. (This seems like a REALLY oddball label - with graphics that are not likely to make many - except fanatics of this specific label - go overboard with excitement). Speaking of one-off record label T-shirts, about 12 years ago my better half and me took a lindy hop basics class. One of the side events to liven up the sessions was a "theme" record party focusing on "bananas". So I had the below shirts made for the two of us for the occasion (drew up the banana couple based on a photo of a dancing couple I had taken years ago).

Thanks, Cliff and Rostasi, for these infos. I was actually thinking of a regional or academic/University library. I've had reader cards for both of our local ones but have not been there so long that I probably would have to sign up again from scratch. So I guess I'll have to see how I can contact the two GERMAN sites (shown by Rostasi) via our library. Actually, the other day I was on the verge of springing for an affordable original Danish copy of Rosenkrantz' book available online. But in the end I decided against it - not only because reading Danish is a bit more difficult for me than Swedish, at which I am fairly advanced. But what is more, the English version seems to have been expanded considerably over the Danish original, judging by the page counts. BTW, Cliff, on a (tongue-in-cheek) side note - that "other" autobiography you mention is by Teddy Reig, not Teddi. That "Teddi" might (involuntarily yet incorrectly) allude to a different sex (e.g. Teddi King ).

Yeah, right. And that was almost all the way in the 78 rpm era (1951). Great film. Thanks for the link. Too bad the image is so blurred (14th-generation recopy? ) No way to capture well enough the details (records, etc.) of the scenes at the HMV shop. But the music snippets (right up to Barber, the crooners and Lord Rockingham) are fitting (and hilarious, as you say ...).

When I referred to listening "booths" I was actually referring to such booths. Which did exist, judging both by testimonials from some who were around in those days, period photos and ads and by certain period films where a listening booth was part of certain scenes of the plot. I dimly remember that there even was a Hitchcok crime movie that had such a scene. And I more distinctly remember both German and French movies from the late 50s/early 60s that were geared at a youth/teenage audience where you had scenes with rows to teens listening to record over those "telephone receiver" type headphones (very similar to the record shop from 1958 I showed above). But my MAIN point about these record shops "in the days of old" was about those shops where the bulk of the records were stored BEHIND the counter and you went to the counter and asked the clerk if he/she had this or that record or if they were able to suggest you new arrivals by certain artists or items in your preferred styles of music, and they then pulled them from the racks behind them to show them to you (and play them too, if the customer so wished). And this is where the listening booths (as part of period shop furniture) came in too and were mentioned by me. All of this triggered by the post about the character in L.A. who would not let customers browse the bins but forced them to tell him beforehand what they were looking for. The Technics turntables in our local secondhand shop BTW look and sound OK and well cared for. I agree that the headphones make the records sound incredible - but OTOH I hardly ever listen to records through headphones at home.

By all accounts they must have existed, judging by the tales (tall tales?) of youngsters of bygone decades who cherished their memories of piling half a dozen high into a booth after school to listen to a stack of the latest hit parade platters, and then buying maybe one single or none at all ("ah no, not actually my cuppa") until even the most sympathetic shop owner would kick them out of his place. I don't know how long these booths lasted after (circa) 1960 (if at all), though. Also see the below record sleeve from the 78rpm era.

I can tell you that over here listening facilities at regular record shops (when there still were NEW records to be sold and therefore a certain number of record shops) went out of operation here sometime in the latter 70s. The only one local shop I remember that still had listening facilities (those "telephone receiver"-type thingies at the counter) was a long-established shop but by those later 70s the listening service had been modernized and trimmed down severely compared to the below photograph (which shows the same place in a photo from a 1958 product catalog). No other shops in town offered any possibility of listening in before purchase anymore. To the best of my understanding, actual listening BOOTHS in record shops were phased out long, long before. In the more recent era of shops dealing in secondhand records, listening facilities do not exist everywhere either. Our #1 local secondhand shop is a commendable exception and has a corner setup in plain sight of the counter where 2 Technics turntables with headphones are set up for the customers to listen to the records before purchase. Turntables operated by the customers themselves on the understanding that common sense and discretion be applied ("use the pickup arm lift at all times", i.e. don't put the pickup onto the record with you grubby, clumsy fingers! ), though I am baffled ever so often when I see how hard it seems to be even for so many of the (usually) discerning and knowledgeable clientele of the shop to pull the record out of its sleeve and hold it ONLY with an "octave grip" and not by placing their clumsy thumbs onto the grooves ... So ...

Of course thumbing through boxes can be tempting regardless of the overall layout of the shop. But it all depends on whether records for browsing were in boxes in that shop at that time anyway. I know (now, and knew in the past) more than one shop where record stocks simply were overflowing in all directions and lots of records were in boxes placed outside the actual bins (sometimes even piled for the customers to shift them themselves if they wanted to peruse the contents of all the boxes). So that customer had only himself to blame for being called to order but I'd cut him (and his "record hunter instinct") some slack.

Seconded. Honestly.

Thanks, Mhatta!

The tune programming alone of his "Ellington 55" album on Capitol would make this a "dance album" IMO. I find the "Ellington touch" given to these relatively atypical tunes rather interesting.

Crazy, ths LA place ... OTOH (apart from this nasty "customer disservice"), this somehow reminds me of stories about record stores way, way back a long time ago in the pre-self service shop days when most of the records in stock and for sale (usually 78s) were in racks on the wall BEHIND the counter and the array of clerks manning the counter and you had to ask the clerks for your specific wants and they pulled them out of the racks. But those were the days when you had listening booths too. All quite hard to imagine as a business model today ...

Which concert/release is this? Bruyninckx only lists the studio recording of that title (Feb. 4, 1950) but no live performance. So it must be a comparatively recent release.

Update of sale in above list and an addition: 10) Blues Records 1943-1966, Mike Leadbitter/Neil Slaven, 1st edition 1968 (Oak Publications, paperback), 17 EUR Slight edge wear to spine and page margins from leafing through but overall good condition

Like Dan Gould, I wonder how much of the Vanguard sessions really is new (or how many unissued tracks - or sessions - there are out there at all). In fact, given the almost countless reissue repackagings from the 70s and 80s, I've found the Vanguard sessions are among those where you are most liable to end up with duplicate purchases because there were sooo many different reissues from the US, UK, France and elsewhere (that never were exceedingly rare on the secondhand market) that it is almost impossible to remember exactly the contents of which cover artwork equal those of LPs with totally different cover artwork. As for the V-Discs, it would be nice if they wouldn't limit their (either small group or big band) session packagings to the obvious "name" candidates or usual suspects. The likes of Phil Moore or Loumell Morgan et al. deserve some reissue action too. (Though I really wouldn't hedge my bets as to how far they will venture into THAT territory ...)

Yes, interesting as a list of fairly recent music books. The Berry book might be interesting. Will keep it in mind. I was puzzled a bit about that "In Search of Billie Hioliday" title. How many "In search of" approaches are there (and are there needed) to write a biographies? 😁 (Cf. "In Search of Robert Johnson", and it seems there are many other cases like this). Is the life of Billie Holiday as elusive to subsequent generations as that of Robert Johnson, for example, I wonder? Excepting "Saxophone Colossus" which by all accounts is a monumental opus (in the truest sense of the word ) but at the contents of which I've only glimpsed so far (but its time will come ), I hope none of the other books "suffer" from a tendency I've noticed in other relatively recent music books (as if this was a trend that has become more frequent in the most recent decades), i.e. the contents reading as much about the actual subject as about the self-perceived greatness of the author (i.e. "see how great I am at writing about my subject"). Which can get tiring ...

+1 Too bad it's rather short (because Teddy Reig died before he could be questioned in even gereater detail).