Big Beat Steve

Boy, how I envy you all ... How do you manage to keep that much free space for framed pics and artwork? My house isn't THAT small but the surface of 2 of the 4 walls in our "music room" is taken up by records, more records and then music books, more music books, etc. Walls in other rooms have been covered (partly by shelving for other books) to the DESIRED (!) extent so what is there left in the music room? A narrow strip of wall surface both sides of the window decorated by framed copies of a few Herman Leonard pics (Dexter Gordon and Terry Gibbs), and ONE measly free wall surface accentuated by a framed poster of a 1998 (ex-Bill Haley's) Comets concert (courtesy my better half as to her it holds fond memories) and a copy of the 1960 JAZZ KALENDER (obviously no pages get torn from that one anymore) - and even that sole remaining surface is diminishing as another row of CD shelving is crawling up from underneath.

1) Kenny Dorham tp, Julius Watkins frh, Billy Mitchell ts, Milt vib + p, Curley Russell b, Kenny Clarke dr N.Y., Jan. 25, 1949 3) Bill Massey tp, Julius Watkins frh, Billy Mitchell ts, Milt vib, Walter Bishop hr. p, Nelson Boyd b, Roy Haynes dr N.Y., Feb. 23, 1949 All according to the liner notes of "Bluesology" (LP), SJL 1130 Will have to dig a bit deeper in the Savoy discog. by Michel Ruppli for #2 Till later!

IMHO you are dead right there. The cover of "Exploring the Future" may be an attempt to cash on on the Sputnik fad but a bit of fun that marks the cover as a sign of its times is in order sometime, but I've really never understood why everybody (DB, Gordon, Gioia, AMG) seemed to see fit to put down this particular release in their reviews. It definitely ain't THAT bad and it's a nice, straightforward blowing date, even if the music isn't as adventurous as the album title suggests (but doe sit have to be? The reviewers ought to know best about marketing forces at work ). Seems to me like with all of them the reflex of "This is not on a renowned jazz label, it's on an indie that has got almost no jazz credentials to speak of, and what credentials it has are in the field of the oh so lowly R&B - ouch!" was at work here.

I thought the 'Rare as Hen's Teeth' selection was pretty pricey - but there again it always was. OK, there was a Roswell Rudd 'America' French LP but at £50? I'll stick with my 'Free America' CD. Just as pricey as the items in the "Rare as Rocking Horse manure" bin that Ray's carried downstairs in the Blues section for a while. Hens' teeth upstairs in the middle of the jazz room and Manure downstairs back at the wall. I remember the first time I came across this downstairs rare items bin I noticed one of the rare items they had was a copy of the Cyril Davies LP released in the 70s on Doug Dobell's Folklore label (and bought new by me back then at Dobell's) - now (late 90s) going for 40 quid! Whew ... but I knew that in THIS case I definitely had done something right in my purchases!

Me too. Based on a mention in a recent thread here. Am really looking forward to that one. And then Amazon has received orders for more from me that should be on their way to me by now: - The Music and Life of Theodore Fats Navarro: Infatuation (Leif Bo Petersen) - Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (Patrick Burke) - How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Roberty F. Schwartz) (again further to a link in a recent thread here) - Country: The Twisted Roots or Rock'n'Roll (Nick Tosches) - Blue Rhythm. Six Lives In Rhythm & Blues (Chif Deffaa) - Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll: The Birth of Rock in the Wild Years Before Elvis (Nick Tosches) (long overdue but that's how it is sometimes ....) - Group Harmony: The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm & Blues (Stuart L. Goosman) Looks like a long reading winter ... In the meantime I'll try hard to extend my bookshelves in my music room.

Da bees knees, you mean? :D Thanks for the reminder, might spin it again tonight, seeing how it's being plugged here. Remember those greyish/light brown cover Blue Note twofers (and single LPs) that were around for a long time? This one was out as a single LP reissue in that series. Amazing that Blue Note hunters should have missed THAT !

Which is why wrote the above re- sjarrell's recommendations. Glad to see I am not the only one who is interpreting the thread that way. And to push things a bit further along those lines, if you want to look a bit beyond the Pacific Jazz and Contemporary labels (where there's a lot to discover, of course), try to check out the MODE label catalog (much of it reissued by VSOP or in Japan) or the Liberty "Jazz In Hollywood" series (only part of it actually was taken over from Nocturne). Some of my personal favorites from that Liberty series are the two Buddy Childers LPs ("Sam Songs" and "Quartet") but I don't know which would be the most easily accessible recent reissues.

Yes the above really are nice enough but don't you think you are about to fall back into what might be termed "West Coast Hard Bop"? Kind of redundant if - above all - one is out to grasp the essence of relatively "cool" West Coast Jazz, isn't it? Or to put it another way, IMHO many of the above records tend to fall into one SIDE aspect the West Coast "jazz scene" of those times. Just like the Central Avenue scene of the late 40s was one aspect of jazz on the West Coast (an important and fascinating aspect and yet it was not at the core of West Coast Jazz per se - note the slight difference between the "jazz on the West Coast" and "West Coast Jazz" tags ). Shorty Rogers, Howard Rumsey, the Gellers, Jack Montrose, Jack Sheldon, Bill Perkins, Shelly Manne, Bob Gordon, Bob Cooper, Russ Freeman, Hamp Hawes, Richie Kamuca, Marty Paich, Lennie Niehaus, Harry Babasin (and many more) - this is (a bit more) where it's at.

Thanks for linking that story. That ties up a few loose ends of who was where with whom, and seeing the connection with Camden Town I now know (and am much less surprised) why I was able to dig out quite a few very interesting jazz EPs (and also some nice original and reissue LPs) at rather fair prices in the vinyl basement of RHYTHM Records during my stopovers in Camden Town in the late 90s. Seeing that Rhythm Records was the original Honest Jons Camden Branch carried on by one of the partners it all makes a bit more sense now.

That 4CD European 'Complete Joe Maini' box is definitely worth seeking out. Speaking of box sets, may I give a big plug for THE COMPLETE NOCTURNE RECORDINGS - Jazz in Hollywood Series (3-CD box set Fresh Sound NR3CD101 - and NO, lest someone come up with the worn-out "Andorran thieves" argument again: NOPE, this set was endorsed fully by Nocturne co-founder Harry Babasin!)

That is correct, although frankly I think the Short Stops collection works better without the Count album. I cannot recommend the Johnny Mandel/Gerry Mulligan "I Want to Live" highly enough. It is quite natural for tastes to vary, although I for one do see the continuity between those first two 10-inchers and the "Courts The Count" album. To me, the EP with the "Wild One" score would be much more of an "intruder" wuith all its rather dramatic film score ingredients. If I wanted to listen to the "Wild One" score in context I would not so much choose the other music from that album but rather the "Wild One" score (and then some more) by Leith Stevens on Decca (and reissued on Fresh Sound, for ex.). which brings me too name this Leith Stevens album as another recommendation for an interesting WCJ project and contrast with Shorty Rogers' treatment (the "All Stars" that Leith Stevens assembled for that recording really are just that - ALL stars: Rogers, Guiffre, Shank, Cooper, Bernhart, Freeman, Manne, Childers, Geller, Pena, Bunker, etc.).

Those Shorty Rogers tracks are great (and excellent as an introduction into WCJ, both musically and chronologically) but the CD version of "Short Stops" would be only second choice compared to the 2-LP set of "Short Stops" as the CD omits a lot of music (it has only 20 out of 32 tracks of the vinyl). So you will have to shop elsehere to find the "rest" (AFAIK his "Courts The Count" album is missing from the CD and that's a real pity). The above list by Peter Friedman is excellent as a (longish) starter, and the Shorty Rogers "Cool and Crazy" album is on the abovementioneed "Short Stops" set, BTW.

By the yardstick of this forum, that thread linked above is an ANTIQUE one. Can't find more recent ones right now but there was one not long ago initiated by Chewy, I think, which mentioned a lot of goodies across the whole field. BTW, do NOT use Stan Getz or Gerry Mulligan as your main focal points! They were/are lumped in commonly with WCJ but Mulligan, for example, HATED that, and there definitely is a "cool" school that is NOT the most typical WCJ (just check out the farily huge share of 50s Stan Getz that was actually recorded in the East). So if you really want WCJ and not just "cool" 50s jazz (as opposed to the hard boppin' angry young horn blowers of the late 50s ), the by all means DO look way out West. And do use the West Coast Jazz books by Ted Gioia and Robert Gordon (and Alain Tercinet, if you can read French) for some vital background info and therefore written guidance.

Thanks for making me (us) aware of this book. Sounds highly fascinating. My Amazon order went out right away!

Hey, MG! Good to see you back here!

Yeah, thanks, I hadn't thought of that sort of restricted googling (though I use it VERY often for other searches). My site search on the site itself ("search on this site") after having opened that website had not yielded any matches.

Holeee sheeeet .... I had checked this very website on Chicage postwar R&B labels (Red Saunders Archive) this morning in the hope of finding something there but word searches did not yield anything so I gave up ... Thanks for checking this, Niko!! So let's assume this really MAY have been the CLub Society in CHI. And no, it doesn't bug me beyond that statement. Anyway, my main question was about the identity of the musicians. THAT's what I'd like to find out.

Somehow I seemed to remember one of the "name" clubs from New York had a sort of spinoff in Chicago and it might well have been Cafe Society (disregarding the one that exists today) so I did not question that caption but I have been unable to find any written proof of this so my memory may be playing tricks on me. Maybe it really is so that the title of that Shorpy photo was not meant to hint at that particular club but rather at the "society" to be found in (night club) "cafes". Yet this leaves the question about the musicians' identitfy unanswered. The recent comment on Shorpy claiming that the dude at the mike looks like Earl Hines and naming a lot of women drummers cited in "Swing Shift" certainly is way off the mark. BTW, I feel the attire of the woman drummer isn't all that out of the ordinary for those times and in those settings (check period photographs of Moms Mabley and Gladys Bentley, for example). Any clues, anybody? Any experts on black Chicago jazz of the 40s around here? I guess if there'd be an extremely thoroughly document book like "Before Motown" (on pre-1960 Detroit jazz) the wuestion would be far easier to settle.

If you'd really had a closer look at the Hawk's discography then you'd have seen this just ain't so. Just look at the huge number of labels his Commodore, Signature etc. recordings of the forties or some of his recordings of the late 50s (e.g. his Felsted session or some of his live recordings) have been reissued on.

Amazing ... wasn't Red Mitchell living in Sweden at that time (and for many more years)?

Caught in a time warp? :D And seriously ...?

Can anybody identify the musicians shown in this picture? http://www.shorpy.com/node/6866?size=_original No idea about the singer, but somehow the pianist bears some resemblance to Cliff Jackson, the sax man looks a bit like Jack McVea, and I wonder if the drummer could be Jackie "Moms" Mabley on some "special assignment". But I doubt it's any of them. Anybody got any clue? And BTW, you better disregard the comments relating to that pic on that website. Most contributors totally miss the point of the image, it seems, and even fail to see the picture within the framework of ITS time instead of judging it from today's point of view (all that transgender nonsense, etc.).

I guess the EMI dinosaur's ass is waaaaay to big for them to notice anything even if they get kicked by a hundred O members at the same time! Sorry ... I know how you feel, especially with you Amazon Marketplace buyers, this has often kept me from buying from certain vendors with oh so attractive prices (and I'm not even talking Mosaic there ).

Sounds very much like some of you were among those business-dressed, deep blue-suited tie wearers in the 50+ age bracket that I'd occasionally bump into upstairs in the vinyl department of Mole Jazz while patiently working my way through ALL racks from A to Z on those Monday afternoon intermissions spent there on my way back to the ferry at Ramsgate or Dover. :D

That is very good to know. So, do LPs that have been newly remastered for the LP release say so obviously on the packaging? Or do you need to do more investigation to know? Reissue LPs that have been remastered usually say so in the fine print on the back cover and give the name of the remastering studio and/or engineer. But what does that tell you about the quality of the remastering? Nothing much - except for certain "quality" remastering engineer names such as John R.T. Davies for certain classic jazz/swing reissues. Some people can't even seem to agree on whether all RVG remasters are THAT good. Ears and listening preferences differ, you know. The same, incidentally, goes for CD remasters. In short, impossible to answer your question on a general level. But generally speaking, do not make too much of a mystery of LPs and their mastering quality. It's the MEDIUM that's the main and basic difference vs CDs, not the mastering. There are goods and bads both sides of the fence.