Big Beat Steve

Same thoughts here. RIP

As I have almost all the Vanguard material on vinyl this box set would be too much for me (and I guess I can live without alternates), but being able to get a copy of the booklet (as some additional in-depth background info) would be nice.

Further to my post of 16 June 2017, in the intervening years I have found (and added to my collection) a copy of the 1972 UK reissue of the original LP (all eight tracks of the session, compiled and annotated - by Albert McCarthy, no less - in a distanctly non-haphazard way 😄) on Vanguard VRS 8514 (distributed by RCA UK according to the fine print). So they did have their reissuing act together in the vinyl days at least ... and there would have been no need to reinvent the wheel (and goof - as Larry Kart pointed out) for the CDs ...

I'd have to check closely to locate LP compilations that clearly have been made obsolete by more thoroughly "curated" CD sets (but no doubt there are many). BUT - I'd disagree with your above statement. I remember there were many 2-LP sets from the 70s/80s that were part of "complete" reissue programs, but the playing time of each of these clearly exceeded the CD time limits. And at least for quite some time the majors owning the music did not see fit to go to the trouble of doing corresponding CD reissues that REALLY would have made the LPs 100% obsolete. Some of these included IIRC those 70s Bluebird twofers of RCA reissues from the Swing era.

Thanks for your numerous and always highly instructive writings on jazz. RIP

Agreed overall - from what I've heard by him. At times he may have been a bit too "eclectic", though. I have an original of the one linked below (where Hyman is on a lot of tracks in very different settings) sitting in my "to listen to before filing" crate (after a brief initial listen I decided to postpone closer listening to all 4 sides until I really was in the right mood for it all ) : https://www.discogs.com/master/1509825-Various-The-Seven-Ages-Of-Jazz-A-Live-Concert-Presentation @Gheorghe: I think you need to judge these rhythm sections a bit more from their period perspectives. What one would expect (particularly as a musician) style-wise TODAY is not necessarily what would have been the final word then. And above all, didn't Bird play with countless pickup rhythm sections (of no doubt dubious credentials in many cases) after 1950 when he was booked most often as a single but not with a regular band? So that rhythm section (probalby chosen not least of all for their versatility) cannot have been that inappropriate overall.

Google and Wikipedia (to start with the most evident sources) are your friends ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher_Henderson You know, there WAS a history of jazz before Bud Powell et al. More seriously, anyone else among the forumists with any opinions, impressions, knowledge about whether there is any more recent (and relevant) Fletcher Henderson research on the web? P.S.: I am aware that there is a book on Fletcher Henderson by Jeffrey Magee but I have never seen it and - apart from what I've discovered just now about this book on the "jerryjazzmusician" website - have no real impression of in what way it goes significantly beyond "Hendersonia". Anyone out there, by any chance, who has read BOTH books?

Thanks, Niko, for reminding me of this website. I discovered this site last year when I searched the internet for info on some ultra-obscure recordings from the 20s where (according to the liner notes on a 70s LP that I had bought) personnel identification was hazy. And lo and behold - the compiler of this site had gone to extreme efforts to shed some more light on these obscure recordings. I will check what he has to say about the Fletcher Henderson bands but would be surprised if he had not relied primarily on "Hendersonia" himself. But he may well have useful additional info on the Henderson discography.

I bought "Hendersonia" at a rather affordable price several years ago from a German online bookseller via the German branch of Abebooks, but except for browsing here and there I so far just did not muster the stamina to read through and digest that huge, huge mass of information included in its pages. But a while ago, prompted by a dip into the "A Study in Frustration" box set, I finally tackled that magnum opus on Fletcher Henderson again, promising myself to gradually work my way through the book (with no time limit, though ). But one thought has come up now: This book was completed and published some 50 years ago, and no doubt the author left no stone unturned and dug a mile deep for even the minutest snippets of information. And of course he had the advantage of being able to speak to a lot of key persons from the life of Hendetson who still were around then. Yet I wonder ... In today's world of the internet availability and exchanges of information are almost boundless, accessibility of source documents is greatly enhanced and much easier than it used to be in the pre-internet days. And no doubt amateur or pro researchers on almost ANYTHING are around somewhere out there. So I wonder - Have there ever been any sources (websites, blogs, publications) that may have added to the contents of "Hendersonia", maybe even correcting or adding information to that book (even though this likely would amount to details only, but still ...)? Or is "Hendersonia" still the very definite, 100% final word on the subject of Fletcher Henderson in each and every respect imaginable? Any opinions, findings, experiences, anyone? Thanks in advance.

Certainly not as extreme nor as dirt cheap as in your case (judging by what you told here in several threads). Many of the best purchases in the 90s happened at Mole Jazz in London (where I spent a couple of days each time during trips back to the Eurotunnel or Channel ferry after having attended festivals in Norfolk). In general Mole Jazz wasn't that cheap but during two of my visits their stocks had increased to the point of forcing them to rent another shop to display the items on special sale, and while I was there a clerk marked down the price tags on the entire stocks AGAIN. So the totals at the counter were very, very affordable. And what they sold off there visibly were collections unloaded by people having switched to CD (for example, sometimes you could tell from the selection of LPs by certain artists that someone had snapped up the Chronological Classics series that were all over the place then). OTOH some even better buys came my way later on when certain local record stores started holding annual clearout sale days. But that's hard work each time because NOTHING ís sorted by artist or genre there. You have to wade through it all ... At any rate, it's amazing what still hits the market. Just last Saturday a fellow Swing collector from my area told me about a collection of allegedly 10,000 jazz 78s that had come up for sale only about 30 miles from here. He told me he missed out (apparently sold to a specialist shop outside our area) but he admitted that if the price per record had been right he would have taken the plunge ... (But then he is much younger than I am.) I was glad to feel not even the slightest envy inside me when he told me all that. Hope this feeling of sanity lasts ...

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 ...