Big Beat Steve

Me too, and also quite a few of those black Mole Jazz plastic carrier bags. BTW, while browsing through those copies of B&R, I was surprised to see Dobell's still advertised fomr that 21 Tower St. address as late as late1991 in that mag. Didn't know I had missed the closure of Dobell's THAT closely when first got back to London in the spring of 1993.

It probably was. Monmouth St was on my route - its location was a bit further to the South on the Eastern side. Sometime in the 1980s I think (or maybe even early 90s). It was definitely still 'Collets' back in the late 70s. Like I said above, ads for Collet's were still run regularly up to mid-1989 (in "Blues & Rhythm"). But their ads are conspicuously absent from the 1990/91 issues of B&R that I have.

I remember Colletts moving to Charing Cross Road but for the life of me I cannot remember it having a music section, but I am sure that is just my memory failing me. I must admit my memory of exactly when Collets morphed into Rays is very hazy. Collet's still ran ads in "Blues & Rhythm" in the late 80s.

Ha, I can imagine that ... Though that might work out to your advantage. I remember one time ('94 or '95) when I went there after having made the rounds at Mole where, among other items I had picked up Vol. 2 and 3 of Hampton Hawes' All Night Sessions (UK Vogue/Contemporary originals in VG+ or better condition for 5 or 6 pounds each) and lo and behold, at Asman's there sat a copy of Vol. 1 for me - pristine vinyl but cover just a slightly bit more worn - and priced at one quid! That made my day (and maybe Asman's too as they got rid of that bummer :D). As for Dobell's, does anybody remember if they still had the listening booths in the mid-70s? For the life of it I don't remember (maybe because except for one long-established shop they were a thing of the past in my hometown so i did not expect to find them anywhere else).

Maybe I am romanticizing things a bit because I was EXTREMELY overwhelmed by what I discovered in that "Aladdin's cave" at Dobell's back in '75-77 (remember I was 15 to 17 at that time) but I cannot remember the staff as being that off-putting. On the contrary. And I was there several times during each of my 2-week stays in each of these 3 years but (due to lack of funds) left with very few purchases after lots of rummaging that must have seemed endless to the sales staff. Or maybe I obtained bonus points due to the fact that during one of my visits I lilterally jumped on that Cyril Davies LP released on the Folklore label (a Dobell venture) not long before that I figured I just had to have (after reading about it in a book on British Beat). I guess the (to me) elderly chap at the counter (Doug Dobell himself?) never really figured out why a student youngster from "the Continent" would jump on that one like I did .... Thinking about it now, somehow I must have felt and acted like the penny-pinching browsers in the record shop portrayed in Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity".

The original Dobell's stood in a block known as "the buildings" which was demolished in the late 70s/early 80s and replaced by a new block now full of tourist trash outlets. Back in the day it was said that the ultimate in cool was to live in a cold water pad in the buildings "within the sound of Do-Bell's". I remember in 1993 when I made it back to the City of London for the first time since 1977 I wandered down Charing Cross Road, trying to track down Dobell's at their original address (either unaware of their disappearance or maybe I could not believe the rumours of their disappearance that I may have heard) and of course did not find any trace of the buildings that looked like they might have held that old shop front. But I also remember the buildings that were there at that address definitely did not look like they were only some 10 years old. Maybe it was just the general dirt and neglect? At any rate, London certainly managed to run down their buildings in record time in those years.

Yes it was not too far off the Leicester Square tube station in a small side street but on the east side of CCR and according to the address I have that was St Martins Lane (consulting my London A-Z, actually a few steps off St. Martins Lane proper). So probably Honest jons was just around the corner from there but AFAIK when I was there in the 90s there was no Honest Jons branch anymore. I think I did fine-comb the area because once or twice I did get lost in those little side streets and as I always had a double reason for going there (the MOTOBOOKS motoring book shop where I also left fairly hefty sums was in the immediate vicinity) I did try to make sure I did not miss the right turn to get where I wanted.

Yes, that's exactly how I remember Dobell's at 77 Charing Cross Road too from my visits there in 1975-77 (during 2-week Easter holidays stays there organized by our school - which often found me vanishing from the class day excursions all day long to go out on my own checking out places like Dobell's, the Bloomsbury Book Shop of John Chilton and lots of others that I somehow managed to discover really fast, and when I rejoined the gang in the late afternoon the usual standard question would soon be how much LP's I'd bought on THAT day. Far too less, unfortunately, high school student funds dont permit much ...) Anyway, the relocated Dobell's was at 21 Tower St. , to be exact (I recently picked up a bunch of 80s copies of "Blues & Rhythm", and ads by this one and other fondly remembered and sadly missed shops figured prominently there). However, are you all sure it was Honest Jon's that was in St. Martin's Lane? I distinctly remember the jazz record shop I checked out there during my trios to London in the 90s was JAMES ASMAN'S RECORD CENTRE. A pretty small shop that sort of acted as an old-time (aka "classic") jazz outlet for Mole Jazz (both shops confirmed this and the shops's addresses figured back to back on the shopping bags). It did have the advantage, though, that non-oldtime vinyl jazz usually went fairly cheaply there. I only remember Honest Jon's from their shop waaaay up on Portobello Road (near the railway flyover). That book that Bev mentions in the opener really would have been tempting but that one-shop-per-town policy of course makes it of very little interest for me as a furriner who'd never get much beyond London. Disregarding jazz shops, the shops around Camden Town alone would have made for quite some stories. Anyway, those shopping trips I was able to make to London from 1993 to 2000 are priceless memories but I regret to this day I did not manage to go there far earlier in the early or mid-80s to catch up on what I'd missed during my 1975-77 stays.

I may be missing a finer technical point but there is one aspect of that "commercial" CD-R "on demand" that seems to be on the rise as a replacement for CDs that are actually in print and regularly available that's been baffling me for some time: Ever since there have been CD-R blanks that you can use to burn your own CD copy off another "regular" CD (or that you can compile yourself to customize your own choice of tunes), those purportedly in the know keep telling us that while these CD-Rs may be lossless in audio quality (and therefore detrimental to CD sales as shady copying is soooo easy) at the same time these CD-Rs are not likely to last nearly as long as factory-produced regular audio CDs will and that one should expect the data surface to start disintegrating after 5 to 10 years (or so), making the CD-R unplayable. But now who is going to GUARANTEE me that those "on demand" CD-Rs marketed (at apparently relatively steep prices) through Amazon or elsewhere will last as long as regular, factory-rpoduced CDs? At THAT kind of money you don't want to see the music data bits disintegrate on that CD-R that you shelled out so steeply for. Can anybody explain me the fundamental difference (including the diference in expected "service life") between those 2 types of CD-Rs?

I agree all the way. I never understood how any real jazz fan and record collector could ever shell out any money for those Time-Life series. Note-for-note carbon copies of the original records probably made just because some hi-fi geek managed to convince the casual mom and dad record club subscriber of those 50/60s that the sound of the originals was oooh so bad and hi-fi was all the rage and the way to go. How could those records ever pretend to be the real thing anyway to collectors ...? As for the Maxwell Davis series, they are indeed much more original. The Bright Orange covers really make them look like budget cash-ins and it's taken me some time to warm up to this series but eventually I've learned to appreciate them on their own. As for the high-end pressings, I have the Charlie Barnet album from this series on Crown CST 131 (with full "Stereo" and "Technical Data" liner notes on the back) and red vinyl (black Crown label). Now would this be the first pressing or a somewhat later budget pressing? I cannot see any "Recorded at Sound Enterprises" mention.

That's something I'd really like to know too. BTW,@Niko: Thanks for those links! I am currently reading the "Central Avenue Sounds" (though I am kind of stuck right now, interviewing all THREE of the Woodman brothers - who more or less have the same kind of things to say about Central Avanue - tends to get very repetitive and not very stimuling) and these additional transcription no doubt will add a lot to the story!

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. )