Big Beat Steve

Couldn't possibly be so. The Fats Navarro bio is significantly lighter than the Bob inman Scwing Era Scrapbook but isn't THAT much cheaper. : Anyway, the sample pages from the Ladnier book linked above look promising so I am really looking forward to receiving my copy which hopefully should be on its way by now.

@RJ Spangler: Check this: http://www.scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/Mult...1&AllReqd=T As you can see they are masterminded by Institute ofr Jazz Studies at Rutgers Univ. so that spells quality. But they are not exactly cheap (which was the point made above). I have only a couple of the books published in that series (Terry Gibbs autobio., Bob inman's Swing Era Scrapbook, and the recently published and much-cited Fats Navarro bio. comes from that series too) so I cannot comment on the whole series. But if you check out the series of books they published (they are at No. 59 or so now) you will see it's a VERY eclectic series that is not afraid to go where hardly any historian/publisher dares to tread (ever expected to see a bio on 20s orchestra musician Sylvester Ahola?)

@Big Wheel: Isn't the irony rather in the fact that some seem to claim that the outfit doesn't matter yet sneer at those who really take care of their outfit? Note the fine difference: Tom S. was referring to those who sneered at musicians wearing suits and NOT (necessarily) to those who sneered at musicians wearing suits and having not much to say. That's a HUGE difference. I'd venture a guess there are many who do take pride in appearing well-dressed yet have a LOT to say on their horns. So those who sneer at THAT would be well advised to rethink because if the outfit doesn't matter then a smart outfit per se doesn't matter either and there is nothing to sneer about. And it's not about being ironic yourself. The irony comes from what you do, regardless of whether you meant it to be ironic. Splitting hairs? I'd rather say it's a fine line that can make all the diffrence.

Thanks! Corrected it in my (as yet unread) copy.

Je rejoins les autres: Joyeux anniversaire! All the best and many happy returns

Be that as it may as far as forum policies are concerned, but THIS: is a very, very valid point IMHO. And it shows how absurd the said board rules are.

I don't like Kaempfert's music and could never be bothered enough to get any of his records into my collection at all but following his TV documentary and listening to some of his music afterwards it just has to be said he did have guts in his musical convictions and in what he aspired for in "popular ORCHESTRA music" (note the difference between "Orchestra music" and jazz/r&b/rock etc "orchestra" music). Not my cuppa tea at all but still ... So there's no more need to put him down than there is to put down contemporary bandleaders (AND jazz sellouts to boot) such as Horst Jankowski and his silly "Black Forest Sleigh Ride" nonsense (that still seems to dim the minds of befuddled U.S. ebay sellers who regularly list his MOR pop platters as "jazz"). Unfathomable over here ... Not to speak of the even more blatantly commercial U.S. MOR, easy listening, background music orchestras that plagued the music scene of the 50s, 60s etc. that were REALLY, REALLY, REALLY awful stylewise and yet are often being touted as being oh so great in giving hungry jazzmen ample bread to eat when they were called in to put their craft (NOT their inspiration ) at the orchestra leaders' disposal there.

Hey, just kidding ... and I suppose you know.

Yeah, nice story. But please, MG, don't keep on spilling the beans from that book in public! I've still got to continue with "How Britan Got The Blues" before I can make any serious progress with "Record Makers and Breakers" which is awaiting me on my bookshelf! :D Anybody seen Bop Girl Goes Calypso anytime in recent decades? It's one of those flicks that crops up in books about r'n'r/teen/JD movies of the 50s but seems to remain off the screen otherwise. I mean, the very idea hatched by music music moguls at that time, i.e. promoting calypso as the next biggest thing that would immediately oust r'n'r, was as dead as a doornail by the time the first calypso records hit the TEEN record stalls back then. Sure calypso had a certain following and still has some oldie appeal, but considering it was supposed to replace r'n'r as an even bigger TEEN fad then it really just was a (minuscule) flash in the pan.

If it is fiction - yes. Otherwise - no (virtually every time anyway).

Ah, that must have been the one who wrote the song that Fat Navarro etc. recorded on Blue Note 559. :D

Ha, soulmate!! OT and just for you: You know that one (passed on to me by an engineer, but still ...)? What's it that dogs and engineers have in common? They both can't express themselves. Yowza! Now back to the topic.

Oh, I like that one! MG Me too! Great and fitting name. There is a shop in Frankfurt (Germany) that used to specialize in punk etc. underground records and goes by the name of SICK WRECKORDS It has since expanded to all sorts of subculture music, including R&B and rockabilly, but still quite a fitting name. And would anbody venture a guess as to who was the favorite artist of that Munich jazz record shop called BIRD'S NEST RECORDS?

Last time I checked, that was how life in general works... I know but I also seem to remember there was a time (still is, upon the most recent checkup) where the WWW platforms such as forums and discussion groups were hailed as THE huge outlet for direct democracy, for direct exchange, for giving people a voice as a way of direct communication and interchange that specificyllly undermined the tendency of silencing voices considered obstinate or undesirable by the powers-that-be in more more conventional communication channels etc. etc. etc. But boasting about installing "commonwealth" forums out of purely altruistic motivations that were only supposed to serve the general dialogue of those who share a common interest/hobby - where upon scrutiny (which isn't even that much closer) you realize it's all about commercial or personal interests and trying to channel and streamline those who still won't fit the pattern, then ... ho hum ... Not that I was really suprised about the outcome of what I described above. Long before I was actually ousted I realized it was actually only a matter of time but what really galled (and alarmed) me was how many others in the forum complacently let themselves be lulled in and dragged along by a nose ring.

Here is another one who's been kicked off a forum before. Though a forum on a totally different hobby/interest, not music-related at all. In a nutshell, the key problem with that forum was/is that it is run by a bunch of people who have vested commercial interests in that particular hobby (which has a lot of sellers and service providers) though they kept repating their commercial acitvities and the forum were strictly separate. At one point the clash of interests culminated between their commercial interests and certain general trends and evolutions as their practices in the long run would have been to the detriment of the individual consumer/collector as he might have been exposed to a near-monopoly situation (where again the originators of that forum would have had a hand in). On several occasions I objected both to the forced silencing of those who openly spoke out against such practices and also queried any conflicts of interest on the forum bosses (conflicts of interest that were manifest to those who were willing to see). Upon being admonished in a private e-mail by one of the bigwigs that I was to refrain from questioning the appropriateness of the ousting of said forum members I made it clear in no uncertain terms that I still vehemently disapproved of their ousting. And bang - my account was blocked. And I was one of a lot of forumists who shared the same fate. By now that forum is reduced to a pretty dreary affair as a lot of others quit on their own. What you state, Allen, is typical for a lot of internet forums, I am afraid. Get in the way of the bigwigs and their doings and you'are out. Too many forums are considered good and appreciated only as long as they serve the purposes of those who originate them (i.e. by drawing off the constructive input of the forum members) but as soon as it becomes clear that the main forte of any forum, i.e. providing a platform for people to speak their minds publicly on controversial matters as well as on matters of common interest where on a one-to-one basis they would be all too easy to be silenced if they go against the grain of the bigwigs then out the window goes the openness if it becomes blatantly clear that that openness challenges the commercial or personal interests of those who set up the forum in the first place. I therefore really appreciate the decent way this O forum is handled in a way that is not overbearing in the way it is all too often the case elsewhere.

@EKE BBB: You mentioned earlier a chapter from this book has been published in the IAJRC journal. Was this an unabridged, unchanged excerpt of the book? (I assume you have seen the entire book too) If it was in fact reprinted more or less verbatim then I'd say what's good enough for the IAJRC can't be that bad.

First of all, you are wrong. Not counting shipping, it its 40 euros for the book itself, not 55. Secondly, given that reasoning, most book publications in such highly specialized fields (epsecially in ours) would be pointless and overpriced and a ripoff. I don't feel that way because it always is a tradeoff of what you get for your money, i.e. how much went into it. And I am willing to reverse my advance judgment and trust if (IF!!!) upon receipt of the book the contents were sloppily thrown together and the lauding seen here and on the website are way over the top. But I doubt I'll have to. But I guess in the end we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. BTW, yes - I did have to swallow deep when I first saw the price tag of the Fats Navarro bio. And by comparison with what that Noone bio seems to offer in the way of illustrations alone (which no doubt account for a good deal of the production cost), the Fats bio falls way short. And yet no one (don't remember if you intervened in the debate) seemed to have complained about the price when it was discussed here at length. If it therefore is a matter of one book being considered more essential than another then why reduce this aspect to a question of price? THAT is just matter of personal preferences and of how much one si willing to shell out for any given product but that definitely is not a question of a price being OBJECTIVELy too high, so why bother?

MY order went out at noon. Hope I won't be too late for this limited run. In what way? In view of the fact that this book is virtually published PRIVATELY without any huge publisher's backing behind it, I find this price rather decent. And how would you rate the price of the the entire "Studies In Jazz" U.S. publications (very likely run by a better funded publishing organisation and with more resources to offset or cross-fund publishing costs) by comparison then? As for shipping, do you have any idea of what many US sellers charge for overseas shipping of books that do not happen to fit the Flat Rate Priority envelopes? So things really aren't worse than the other way round. In fact I have a hunch you overseas buyers are being subsidized by the publishers by upmarking rates for European customers on this anyway. 11.50 euros just for Economy shipping from France to neighboring Germany is pretty hefty - would be so even for that (in international shipping) useless "Colissimo" shipping which does not even apply here as this is an "Economy" rate only. Compared to that 21 euros for worldwide priority isn't that bad. I don't really mind in this particular case as to me the overall final price is what counts (and to a point I can even understand those publishers' point if they picture a huge share of their takers as being from overseas).

So you did take up the matter with him and set him straight? Did he dare to admit his fallacy?

Not unlikely one bit. This expatriate's presence at Kaempfert's sessions was well known, at least over here, and he was interviewed extensively on his envolvement in a lengthy Kaempfert TV documentation done a few years ago and recently aired once again on German TV. The Youtube stills and clips actually come from that documentation. Nothing unusual as such anyway IMO. I guess the list of major jazz musicians making relatively good bread (ya gotta eat, you know) by participating in pop, easy listening, MOR, Muzak (you name it) studio orchestras during the 40s, 50s and 60s would be as long as anybody's arm without being exhaustive.

This will probably focus on editing and proofreading errors of the original author's work but anyway ... Not long ago I had the (mis)fortune to read the GERMAN translation of the biography of Kenny Clarke by Mike Hennessey (and published in German in 2004 by Hannibal). The bio itself is quite sympathetic but suffers a lot in the German version if it is read by somebody who does speak English as well (which happens to be my case and really struck a sour note as very often the German stuck really all too close to Englisjh idioms, makign it often sound awkward) and is also passably conversant with the history of jazz (as should be expected from any buyer of such a book). I did not bother highlighting the errors so nothing to share right now (might update this post if I find some nuggets, though). The book did remain readable if you made concessions or were fatalistic about it but the instances where clearly the woman who translated it was totally unfamiliar with the finer points of either Kenny Clarke's life or jazz history at large were all to evident. A real pity, not the first such case and one more reason why I hardly ever can bring myself anymore to buying German translations of music books originally published in English, even if they are available dirt cheap at Zweitausendeins. What pisses me off, though, is that proofreading of the translation evidently was done so sloppily.

Thanks for the liner notes, MG. Ground well-covered by the BF box (and previous Krazy Kat vinyl) but nice to have for comparison. But are you sure about the Duke label? I understand they were from Houston. And Martin Hawkins does not list any Duke label in his two works.

Just got myself the 8-CD box "A Shot In The Dark - Nashville Jumps /Blues and Rhythm on Nashville's Independent Labels 1945-55" on Bear Family. The HUGE book (not booklet, really....) has lots of info on Randy Wood's Record Shop and later Dot venture. Also check out this (got my copy yesterday too): http://www.amazon.com/Shot-Dark-Records-Na...4803&sr=8-1 Same title, same author as in the case of the Bear Family box set book but in fact not that much duplication so a great addition, not only for the info on Randy's Shop (and Show) but also on the music scene at large. Judging by both books, Tennesseeans of those times would also have been able to pick up the R&B show on WLAC by DJ Gene Nobles (who had at least two tribute songs dedicated to him so he must have been sumpin'). Just music-wise, must have been a fascinating moment in history when Nashville still was well away from overproduced mainstream. Edit: Ha, MG beat me to it. Seems like you got farther ahead in reading "Record Makers and Breakers" than I did yet. Will go and spin the Gene Nobles tribute "Nobles Suffle" by Jimmy Milner now.

That's close to 60 dollars per EACH single CD/LP! This dude is sick!!

I have a VSOP facsimile reissue of that Wig Tampa TP-33 and also seem to remember (discography isn't on hand right now) that this one actually was a rehash INDEED. IIRC its contents match those of "Wiggin With Wig" on the DIG label owned by Johnny Otis. And apparently the DIG release is the original.