Big Beat Steve

I see what you mean, and though I've heard a fair bit of them (thanks to Fresh Sound, for ex.) of course I cannot speak for all of those recordings (and I would not want to come across as a defender of the RCA jazz catalog anyway, I am just trying to put things into perspective). But from what I've heard I cannot really complain about the presence of the musicians from what you might call the "wider Al Cohn circles" on other studio recording dates. In many cases they did raise the jazz level enormously within the framework of that particular segment of jazz. It seems to me that all too may of those who listen to mid- to late 50s jazz (beyond West Coast jazz) seem to judge everything by Hard Bop standards as long as Hard Bop existed. IMHO this is beside the point; there were more facets to MODERN jazz than that, and they all had their own particularities. The criticism of the "same format" being used is understandable and valid to a point but remember Prestige et al. have been accused of more or less the same thing too (loads and loads of "disorganized" blowing sessions, etc.). And yes, I admit that overall I'd much rather listen to some Al Cohn or Zoot Sims or the "older modern masters" such as Dexter Gordon than to an all too heavy dose of certain "angry young horn men" of those days.

But that wasn't always the worst of things as long as the session leaders in whose name the music was released did not have a working band with a fixed line-up at all times. Like it or not, studio lineups assembled specifically for a recording sessions were and are part of jazz history. And many of those backup jazzmen had pretty good jazz credentials and really were a safe bet for quality (at least in that segment of Eastern "modern mainstream" jazz of those times that was often featured on labels such as RCA). I would not want to listen to two dozen of these RCA's (or other similar major labels' jazz excursions) in a row but would I want to listen to two dozen of Prestige or Blue Note "blowing sessions" (where incidentally the session lineups frequently give you the impression that it was a matter of "I play on your date today and tomorrow you'll play on my date", etc.) that ramble on and on and on? I dunno .... Sameness is sameness. (Yes I know this will be heresy to some around here but anyway ... )

Many, many 50s/60s labels did just that, not just "majors" or other labels not focusing primarily on jazz but also Verve (as mentioned above). Musicians mentioned somewhere in the sales blurb disguised as liner notes, no recording dates, etc.

Agreed. That's the kind of 50s jazz I was thinking of when I said RCA wasn't THAT bad in the jazz field at that time. Lou Levy, Pete Jolly, Nick Travis, Tony Scott, Shorty Rogers, Red Norvo, etc.

So it's Beatlemania all over again ... This is a truly funny thread, even to a relatively casual Beatles listener such as me, and particularly for European readers where the Capitol pressings (except among 200% Beatles diehard collectors) figure nowhere and are considered oddball footnotes at best. I remember in my younger collecting days there was at least one among my rock music collecting friends who had those Capitol pressings (due to U.S. family connections), and while listening to those pressings, the reverb or other changes in fidelity were never given any consideration, the George Martin muzak stuff on one half of the HELP album was considered a curiosity at best, and the missing tracks on some US releases made us think that the original buyers of these were shortchanged for their money. So why not let those Capitol masterings lie in peace as long as there seems to be recent remasterings for everybody's taste? Isn't it enough that so many jazz releases are dissected to death for minute sonic differences that in the end are primarily a matter of personal taste? But did I get this right? An ENTIRE book being written about the "Second Album"? Oh my ... So books on single albums such as KOB do need bookshelf companions? Or is a book with a likely working title of "Trashing Dave Dexter While Listening to the Beatles' Second Album" (as somebody else said somewhere else on the net) really that very fascinating? Seeing all the recent huge, huge Beatle anthologies put into print, music writers really leave no stone unturned in search for one more aspect to cover. Ah well, I guess if I want to get a deep, deep look at overlooked aspects of the Beatles' career I guess I'll go back to the "Silver Beatles" by Marco Crescenzi.

RCA VICTOR is a respectible company: did their jazz dept. notoriously lack? or how did it stack up @ the time, comp. to BN, prestieg, etc etc as far as jazz is concerned

It COULD be nice ... but ... I wonder how much duplication there is with earlier album cover books that cover the ground pretty nicely, such as "East Coasting". Even if they did not focus exclusively on Prestige they did include a fair share of "typical" Prestige artwork. So if this new one stops by the typical Miles and nother major artists' covers once more (just because they "are the one to be seen because they are the 'Classics' ") then I wonder ... And I'd also be interested in finding out beforehand to what extent they include the 10in album covers. After all THESE are an aspect that is sadly neglected and in order to fill a few gaps a FULL run of the 10in covers would not be out of place. But could marketing guys be expected to cover something for the sake of historical reasons if these are NOT the album covers that are used for their present-day CD reissues? Or to put it another way, the subject of the book has a lot of merits but I became a bit wary when I saw it was produced by Concord themselves. But anyway ... to each his own ... and in a pinch I can always go back to that Japanese-published Prestige discography book that came out in the 90s (don't have its exact title on hand right now) that includes pics of each and every cover, even if thumbnail-sized only and only part of them in full color.

:tup Of course the tune selection is rather predictable but the interpretations of those "bop standards" are nice.

RVG was the engineer on the Hotchkiss date, but I thought the Nippon cd edition sounded good enough (don't know who mastered the cd's). But I also don't have the original Savoy record to compare it with either. I really don't know what you are trying to get at with these "watered down" remarks. How do you EXPECT him to sound? Couldn't it be that what you hear really was Wallington's style at that particular moment, including his melodic side that may be too "easy" to listen to for some? Do you expect 50s jazz piano to be a hard, hard, hard bop attack all the way, or even Bud Powell-like (in his more disturbed moments )? Listen to his Prestige recordings and you will find that overall there is a straight line in his recordings, with some obvious variations (like with everybody else). I also find he was best served in trio settings, and horns tended to overshadow him a bit (including on the Bohemia date) but still he was his own man IMO. At any rate, among bop pianists, I'd rank George Wallington in a class of his own (along with Al Haig and Dodo Marmarosa) quite apart from the Bud Powell school. And there is AMPLE room for pianists off the Bud Powell tracks IMO. (BTW: If George Wallington isn't percussive enough for you, try some Eddie Costa for a change ).

Well, this only goes to show to what degree jazz as a performing art did NOT enable even seasoned jazzmen to make a living in those days. Besides, some bios have it that even Rod Stewart got his start this way in the 60s in the UK. So if jingles might serve as a stepping stone to eventually propel you into stardom, they can just as well be useful if - regardless of your previous artistic credentials - you decide being a studio hack holds more financial calculability for you than those one-nighters.

Which would that be, I wonder? I have the Bohemia recordings on Progressive PRO-7001 (vinyl), and except for one VERY brief "The Peck" (which come up twice but which I cannot really consider a real tune) I cannot see any alternates. Otherwise, another George Wallington fan here. The Prestige recordings (as reissued on that twofer in the early 80s) are my favorites but everything else from that period comes very closely behind.

Hoooleeee sheeeet ... "I am a jazz historian and preservationist ...." "LP's did not gain popularity until 1915." Like TTK said, digital babies finally coming of age. But calling themselves "jazz historians"? Now really ...

Jim R, items like that are not supposed to be "unloaded", they are supposed to be treasured and enjoyed!

Yes, I see what you mean, but would the other cheapo box sets that ASNL77 mentions really duplicate even half or most of those year-by-year series of these "Tresors du Jazz"? I admit those Tresors series are almost too generalistic for me (as I invariably have a lot of the music on those year-by-year sets in other formats, mostly vinyl) but their contents still follow a special policy and I cannot think of any cheapo sets that go virtually the same route. And if they feel the competition by those "Best of Jazz" or "Best of Cool" (or whatever) box sets then it can only be among those customers who were not searching for the music on those Tresors series anyway? I mean, if you were in the market for a box set of the Keynote or the JATP recordings, would you settle for a "Best of the Swing Era" box set just because it costs only half or one third the price? Only if you you were the most casual listener with a VERY, VERY superficial interest in swing music (or a total newbie). So ... ? Nevertheless, all the best to this project. They deserve it. After all this problem of specialist box sets being ripped off is a common one. I've shelled out quite a bit for Fremeaux Associés sets, for example, through the years (they are relatively expensive for a 2-CD set, but their more specialist sets incude material really very rarely found anywhere else, so it must be bitter for them to see a good deal of the contents of some of their sets being ripped off by other European - not Andorran - box set labels even promoted relatively frequently here on this very site. )

Johnny Devlin? (Nah, just kidding, he'd figure for N.Z. in a country-b-ycountry breakdown of the non-jazz section of MY collection, but I would't really expect to find him in anybody else's country by country listing )

No Excel cataloging here so I just made a rough calculation of the percentages by adding up the running shelf meters taken up by the collection (based on some 4,000 to 4,500 discs of the jazz section): In fact, just like Bev, I found my vinyl collection leaning more towards the US than I had figured: USA close to 85% Europe a bit more than 15% of which the European ranking is (in order of most-represented country among the vinyl): Germany Sweden France U.K. Denmark and then all others OTOH, of all my jazz CDs (which are mostly purchased to fill gaps in what has not been previously been released/reissued on vinyl and are therefore still outnumbered by vinyl about 10:1), more than 50% are European jazz - in order of frequency: France Sweden Germany U.K. Italy all others Which seems to show where the most glaring omissions in reissue programming have been in the past, at least for my tastes ...

NM (Not Much ) ... or else Mosaic would be selling like hotcakes to the general jazz public at large (i.e. MUCH farther beyond hardcore collectors and those to whom having a huge run of Mosaics seems to be some sort of status symbol ). Please do not underestimate the fact that complilations like this invariably put off more advanced collectors who tend to have a lot of the music on other releases (often the entire respective albums). If you have to live with a good deal of duplicates you will only go for it anyway if the price is a steal, making it worthwhile to buy the music for the "remainder". But anyway ... maybe somebody can set me wise: Is there actually a ripoff set out there that undercuts the price of those Tresors series (39 euros or so for TEN CDs isnt' bad in anybody's money and certainly good value for money) significantly and AT THE SAME TIME duplicates even their layout, including the VERY SAME box set "cover" artwork? I remember perusing a few of those sets while at the FNAC in Paris and regretting the huge, huge amount of duplicates with what I already have in my own collection, but the concept really is worthwhile for those who are content with getting a fair sampling and do not want to go for the full albums of all too many of the artists featured. And now, reading all this, I wonder whether I was looking at the real thing or not.

What do you mean by "recordings"? Really individual recordings or actually albums/CDs?

In case you're referring to my hint(s), I have no doubt at all that he acts and has been acting in good faith throughout and that this may not always be the case with certain others who've amassed a huge amount of objects pertaining to the history of jazz as well. I just find it irritating that this point of what others may have done is brought up again and again. What good does it do if this point is stressed again and again and again? From a certain point I just wonder what this picture of "everybody else out there is shortchanging everybody" is intended to prove or show in the long run. And yet ... this constant generosity (which I really did admire in the way it was shown in those "I came across..." threads here) was marred when those threads vanished into thin air for reasons that, whatever they may have been, were grossly unfair to the vast majority of the forumists here.

OK, so let's talk about the blog. I am one of those who bookmarked it too after having found the link here, and I find it very interesting reading and I'll be looking forward to further articles that might appear there. However, there are other aspects that make this reading a bit uneasy and also unsettling for me. I really appreciated Chris A's contributions here on this board and at AAJ (despite some incidents there that were uncalled for) and did regret his departure from Organissimo (and I really haven't figured out completely what the REAL reason and sequence of events was that led to his departure - one says so, the other says the opposite, oh my ...). But what I did not appreciate ONE BIT is the way he not only left the forum but also took his own writings with him (cf. in the "I Came Across ..." threads that really were impressive glimpses at jazz history that for the history-minded reader ideally filled in gaps to complete what could be found elsewhere). Now if you do not wish to visit the park anymore, fine ... But if you insist on not only leaving the park but destroying a good deal of the trees that others strolling through the park would still have liked to look at (and that at one time were dear enough for you to have planted them)? Punish everybody for your disagreement with a scant handful? Making sure nobody else can get anything out of it if you cannot have it all your own way? Is this really all mature? I'll leave that up to else individual to judge. And this is why, no matter how hard I try, some uneasy feeling did creep up when reading writings from the very same person who saw fit to act in such a manner on this forum. Who is the person behind those writings and what are his motivations in such public statements? Maybe it all is because in this internet world I've discovered (and learned to appreciate) forums a long time before that blog thing. Forums can benefit immensely from dialogs and mutual interaction and exchange of ideas, whereas blogs tend to become more of a "one man's showcase". (I've seen it on other blogs where bloggers have started drooling about their own greatness and I have therefore become a little bit wary) I distinctly try to suppress and rule out those feelings but honestly, it sometimes isn't easy, especially in the case of topics that revolve around the apparently ongoing concern of "who is fit to act as a keeper of the keys to the shrine of jazz history memorabilia" (cf. that Billie Holiday thing on the blog, and it also was a subject on this forum here). I'll freely admit that this issue is a touchy one and I do understand some may feel bitter about such objects disappearing in collections not accessible to the interested public (or only against horrendous fees) but if this issue is such a hot one and one where one finds that things are at fault then why does one have to withdraw what's been made publicly accessible on this forum and thereby act in exactly the same manner? This just doesn't add up.

In the 90s there seems to have been a straight CD reissue of the King LP "Big J in 3-D" that includes 12 of these Federal tracks (according to the Big Jay bio by Jim Dawson). If the Classics CD has them all that would be the preferred one, then.

A really amazing life. There really cannot be many jazzmen around anymore whose career stretched THAT far back. I remember when I first came across his name in an ad for his guitar teaching classes in some Down Beat mag bought at the newsstand in c. 1978. IIRC the ad mentioned his "name band" stints but (apart from the fact that at that time I had not heard his name before) his picture in the ad did not look ANYWHERE near as old as he must have been at that time, given his career mentioned in the ad. (Or did they a use a significantly older publicity pic? ) Whenever I came across his name in the decades since, that made me think of that "youngish" ad. And apparently he kept his youngish spirits almost up to the end. RIP

There are some of whom I'll probably never have enough, such as Count Basie. Here I've passed the 50-LP threshold a long time ago, and this essentially only covers the period up to the early to mid-60s. Others, such as Bird, are essentials so you automatically end up with a lot by them. And though I am not a completist, I'll certainly add more by some whose discography is a bit more manageable but who are of particular appeal to me - though I already have quite a lot of their recordings, such as Tal Farlow, Louis Jordan, Red Norvo, Clifford Brown, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, or EARLY Miles Davis (i.e. up to the early 60s). But I'll freely admit I have only a limited number of Coltranes, Mobleys, Morgans. And they will do for me for the time being. On the other hand, there also are some whose recorded and released works are so prolific that you just end up with a lot of their discs if you regularly make the rounds at the usual secondhand outlets, such as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton. I wouldn't have bought each and every one of their recordings I now own if I had had to pay full price but at clearout sales prices, how can you go wrong? Any all in all I haven't been disappointed.

RIP indeed. And yes, like Bill Barton said, there was more to this man than this solid body guitar thing and multitrack wizardry (with or without May Ford) for 50s MOR EP record buyers. Hope his jazz credentials will also be given their proper dues (provided the scribes manage to look far enough beyond his 50s Capitol stuff in either direction). Guess I'll spin that Les Paul Trio (1944-45 transcriptions) LP on Circle CLP-67 tonight.

how is it? while i have huge respect for isoardi's work and am really thankful that he does what he does i found myself enjoying the oral histories on the web much more than the two books i've read (the buddy collette and the dark tree), don't know, somehow those books were rather dry, had a tendency to repeat themselves and i was also missing some hard information added to the information from the oral histories (like yesterday when i tried to find out how long tommy trujillo was with tapscott, all the book says he moved in when he was 18 but not when he was born or which year that was or how long he stayed, where he went from there...)... could have said this better, i guess - simply, while i find the subjects real interesting, the books bored me quite a bit (though at least i could finish them...) Actually I am progressing quite fast, Niko, and find it very interesting. I see your point about the shortcomings of presenting history through ORAL history that focuses on telling an individuals' entire life, though, and honestly, I was a bit wary and disappointed when I found out that this entire subject was presented through a string of individual recollections by a selected and limited number of people. I've read "The World of Swing" by Stanley Dance before (which does more or less the same thing, i.e. highlight the Swing era through oral autobiographical recollections by of a limited number of swing-era musicians) and indeed this book presents this subject of black jazz in L.A. up to the 50s in more or less the same way. Actually I would have preferred finding a book that covers the entire topic much more evenly and thoroughly and from a documentary approach. In particular because such specialized (local) histories fill gaps that really are hardly ever covered thoroughly in other jazz history books. If it was to be in the form of ORAL history at all, then I'd have preferred the way that Ira Gitler's "Swing To Bop" has been written, i.e. with the structure being provided by the authour and the way HE presents the evolution of history, and the oral testimonials are interwoven to vividly illustrate the aspect of history that is being covered at that particular point of the book. IMHO "Swing To Bop" is unsurpassed in the way oral recollections are put to work to make musical history come alive to the reader. That said, I'd still rate it a good and recommended book, but as it is (and as you say too), if you want to have a history of Central Avenue itself (separated from an individual's life, i.e. history) you really have to go to and fro in the book and piece a lot of information on Central Avenue as such together from what the individual persons have to say and remember. And it is to be feared that a lot of undoubtedly important and interesting aspects of the OVERALL picture (but that none of the interviewees happened to remember in detail or that were of little importance to their own lives) probably are not covered adequately. To get an idea of a different approach to the subject (history of a LOCAL or regional aspect of jazz), check out the books on Kansas City Jazz or, as an even more extreme approach, "BEFORE MOTOWN" by Bjorn & Gallert (history of pre-1960 jazz in Detroit). EXTREMELY scholarly (you can easily get lost in the countless footnotes) but extremely thorough and highly interesting for those who want to have a reference work on that aspect of jazz. And this one IMHO REALLY does manage to document and preserve almost everything that might ever be said on that subject for posterity