Big Beat Steve

The downhome stuff drives me down the wall into the gutter - the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar the same lowdown lyrics the same guitar ... (... no, not really, there is a time and place for everything, but there's more to DA BLOOZ than just that "Black Snake Moan" etc. ... ;))

Whatever Jostber, Jazzbo, kh1958 and KH Russell said ... :D With one slight exception: Ella Mae Morse ain't bad, but IMHO she's a bit in the "Hey-I'm-a-pop-singer-but-I'd-rather-do-swing-and-R&B-anyway" bag. Nice to listen to but compared to the real gritty stuff it's a bit watered down and cleaned up. That said, Mikelz777, your purchases certainly aren't bad at all, but if really dig much deeper into that genre you'll end up being sorry for all that money spent on multi-label compilations as you invariably will end up with a LOT of overlaps, duplications or triplications (probably most of it, in fact). If you want multi-artist discs, it might pay looking at more focused compilations that concentrate on specific labels, e.g. that Jumpin' Like Mad set recommended by Jazzbo. Or have a look at the Delmark reissue program. Their material does not overlap all that much with other multi-label reissue programs and therefore fills a few gaps quite nicely, e.g. their "Honkers & Bar Walkers" CDs. And BY ALL MEANS grab these - or drop dead! :D http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?pa...amp;release=428 http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?pa...mp;release=7409 All FOUR "Mellow Cats" CDs (scroll down to the bottom of the page for details) are the bees knees - and you're NOT likely to find very much from those discs on ANY other reissue program! And the Ace catalog is worth a second look anyway - their West Coast (Central Avenue) R&B compilations are really fine if you do not have them on LP yet. Finally, if you make the rounds at secondhand outlets and dont mind vinyl, it also pays to go for the "Roots of Rock'n'Roll" 2-LP sets released on Savoy in the 80s. You'll probably have a lot of that on your "Stomping At The Savoy" compilation but these 2-LP sets should explore the subject in much greater depth (so there you are with your duplications ). Enjoy!

I largely agree with King Ubu's review of the Jean-Claude Fohrenbach 2-CD set. Leaning very much towards pre-free 50s modern jazz (which is what I picked up this set for as Fohrenbach's 50s recordings have fared rather badly on the reissue market so far), I was pleasantly surprised to see how his later recordings proved to be a seamless evolution of his earlier work. I'm usually a bit wary of latter-day recordings of 50s jazzmen as you often end up with funked-up, contrivedly free playing, droning, overrecorded basses and other sounds clearly geared to prove they were able to "hang in with the younger cats" but IMHO this one presents a sound and logical evolution of the music. The comparison with Gil Melle (from all I've heard of Gil Melle, which is far from exhaustive) seems to be quite apt.

That one isn't all that recent. I've had my copy for way more than 10 years. Very nice stuff for sure, even though the overall sound and arrangements (especially if you take in the entire CD in one go) is just a wee bit clean and tidy - as was customary for major-label releases of this kind of music (that catered to white tastes in the Alan Freed package show vein too) - and not quite as gritty and down-to-earth and frenzied as a lot of the indie label releases for predominantly black consumption. As for Blowin The Fuse, I agree with Ragu all the way. That set has an awful lot of duplications and overlaps with lots of other reissues so it pays to check the track listings VERY carefully before shelling out (unless you're a total newbie with that kind of R&b, then you can't go wrong anyway with this).

So I guess the Savoy twofer "Signals" (SJL 2231) includes the full reissue of the "sax added" 12146 LP, right?

So - to the minds and ears of those who may have listened to each and every re-re-remastering - how do the two Fats Waller LP boxes and the additional individual LPs (Black & Blue LP series) reissued bvy FRENCH RCA in the 70s/80s (and including his entire studio output, so it seems) compare to all these CD sets? They are not THAT elusive either and they do sound OK to me (though I admittedly am a vinyl nut ).

The Harlequin I have, but it's material from 1942-44. What are the records or disks you are talking about for the 1938-41 material? Thanks so much! I'm not sure we're talking about the same Harlequin disc: The 6 tracks of her London session of 20-05-38 are on "Safely Locked Up In My Heart" (Harlequin HQ 2076, also fetauring Lil Armstrong sessions and 2 tracks from 1939 featuring Una Mae Carlisle as pianist with Danny Polo etc.) 6 tracks from her 02-08-40 and 13-11-40 sessions are on "The Greatest of the Small Bands Vol. 6" (RCA FXM1 7124, Black & White Series Vol. 141) Her 10-03-41 session (4 tracks incl. Blitzkrieg Baby) is on "The Greatest of the Small Bands Vol. 3" (RCA 741 117, Black & White Series Vol. 106) and on "Swing Vol. 1" (RCA LPV-578), and others. Which makes a total score of 16 out of the 21 tracks of the 1938-41 Classics CD. Maybe worth checking out (if that CD really proves elusive) unless you have most of the other (fine!) music on those LPs anyway.

Any yet the stuff on that 1938-41 disc (including the RCA material such as "Blitzkrieg Baby") is among the most widely re-re-reissued material by Una so basically most of the music should be around (offhand I can think of 3 or 4 RCA LPs plus one on Harlequin) if you don't shy away from secondhand sources. The 1941-44 fills a much more obvious gap of recordings that have not been recycled that often.

What do you mean "Alvino Rey or some weird artist"??? His big band (including his Hindsight transcriptions) wasn't that bad at all and could hold its own with quite a lot of SWING-era (not sweet) big bands. I suppose you know June Christy's vocals can be a mixed bag too ...

One never knows, do one?? (As a famous subject of that "other" discography" used to say...) BTW, please note this key statement from the above link: "Discs degenerate in all adults as we grow older" :D CD owners, heed this warning! And indeed - the longer we play our vinyl (as we grow older with our vinyl) the more it invariably degenerates.

Don't have my discog handy but that sounds like a "compilation" rehash of other Tamps LPs (both Oscar Moore and George Redman had LPs of their own on Tampa). But a steal at 99c anyway.

O.K., so far, so good. And now??

Yes it is a pity that there will never be a Vol. 3 (actually I had had little hopes - if any - for it anyway). I read "The Swing Era" in the early 90s and was very impressed (though the transcriptions are beyond me too) and I still refer to it to this day. No matter whether one agrees with all of his judgments it is a very important reference work if you want to get a quick yet in-depth and to-the-point assessment even of acts who are off the trodden track of the usual bi-gstar suspects. Gunther Schuller managed to pull strings together that others seem to have become aware only recently. IMHO "colored judgments" are no issue in such books at all; I think any collector with reasonable collecting experience and a musical taste of his own will not take such books as the pure gospel anyway but rather as a source for FURTHER thought. (After all, we are not talking about extremely biased writings here such as those by Panassié! :D) The Swing years seem to have been prone to a lot of controversies as to who would qualify as a "jazz" swing musician (to be included) or a "pop" swing musician (to be excluded) anyway, and no matter what concrete complaints Brownian Motion etc. have here, he definitely is more objective than other respectable writers on the Swing era (cf. Brian Rust and his arbitrary exclusion of swing bands in his discographies, etc. etc.).

Even if he were not violating any copyright laws (with the +50-year old music being P.D.), he did misrepresent the item because if he burnt a CD-R off an LP then this is not a "CD" (as pointed out here countless times before). And even less is it a "collector's item". How can something you can make countless copies of be a "collector's item"? (Hey, if it were that easy ANYBODy with a decent laser/color photocopier and a couple of collectible original paper objects would be in the business of trading with "collectible" printed matter!!) If he had represented the item correctly it would have had to be a legit CD reissue that for some reason is really impossible to find in this very version (release, pressing, etc), maybe because it was an extremely limited run (but pressed in a proper pressing plant, not something burnt at home through the grubby hands of some geek). But as it is it is just a case of misrepresentaiton IMHO and that would be reason enough to give him 'ell. A CD-R burnt off a possibly collectible original LP is nothing but a token or favor done by somebody to make the music itself available to saomebody else but not something collectible (not by any stretch of the imagination) in the sense that we all have come to understand the term 2colectible" in THIS context. Sorry, Baker, that this has happened to you from a German seller. As a German buyer I've off and on encountered U.S. ebay sellers with highly doubtful selling and description practices who clearly tried to get away on the principle that "somebody from overseas is never going to sue me and does not have a legal handle here anyway". but still it's sad to see reverse happening.

What book would that be exactly? Cannot possibly be a belated German version of his "The Big Bands" book (belated because this major opus was released some 40 years ago!). And this book DOES have an Elliott Lawrence entry in the main section of the "major" big bands. So .... Anyway, thanks for the info. Though I am a bit wary of German translations of this kind of book (especially if the editor is Hannibal) I'll have to check out my local 2001 store, I guess. As for Elliott Lawrence discs, I personnaly did not find that companion volume to the Gerry Mulligan arrangements album on Fantasy (i.e. his "Plays Tiny Kahn and Jophnny Mandel arangements") that much of a letdown compared to the Mulligan disc. But will do some aural comparison later tonight! Also, for those who're into vinyl the earlier Eliott Lawrence recordings/airshots on the First Heard and Big Band Archives labels are interesting listening too. Great stuff to show where this band came from!

I think two aspects need to be distinguished there: - Agreed that "hate" towards other persons (including fellow forum members") isn't the way to go and can be counterproductive to one's own goals but OTOH - I felt he often had a bone to pick with the music industry at large and certain superficialities of artists, producers, the music-consuming public, etc. IMO some clear-cut language isn't always the worst thing to choose if you want to shake people out of their consuming attitude (and get them to reflect on whether the hullaballoo about this or that act maybe is just a case of the "Emperor's clothes").

Good point, MG. Some people sometimes need a kick in the you know where so they realize they'd better reconsider their positions, even if it only comes to musical preferences. Complacency and/or being stuck in a rut is not tackled by lulling people in further. I admit I often did not get the point that Clem tried to get across either but it was always obvious to me that there was something there that would warrant deeper thinking. Not that I could always be bothered to give the matter THAT much thought to investigate, but on those occasions that I did I very often had to agree that he had a point.

Sounds quite alright to me (for what you can expect from mid-40s 78rpm indie labels) on the PRESTIGE LP compiling all the above Joe Davis master takes. One of my 40s small-group swing favorites ever since I bought this one in my early collecting days.

Don't worry, Michel, I am not talking about auction characters like "ondemand12" etc. They've been around the block, that's for sure. :D But every additional far-east newcomer hipped to certain items slims the perspectives down for us over here.

Well, check eBay or German fleamarkets. I own one of those three EPs and in fact found it at a local fleamarket (though sometime in the 90s). As a matter of fact I've seen another copy of this EP I own on eBay several years ago but the winning bid price was kind of silly... You're not the only one who's on the lookout for items like that (I've been aware of these ever since I got hold of a 1960 issue of the "Bielefelder Jazz Katalog" (no doubt you know what THAT is) in my early collecting days in the 70s). But of course with "Eurojazz" it's a chancy thing, and maybe we're both doing ourselves a disservice by discussing those items in public here because as you might know there has been a FATAL tendency for certain Asian speculators (I cannot use the term "collector", seeing how they ruin the market - sorry) to snap up ANYTHING that reeks of European jazz from the 50s/60s. And that automatically makes those items (which are part of OUR OWN jazz heritage) quite unaffordable for anybody outside those Asian places. I've never heard of any reissues either - sorry. But it might be high time ...

Isn't music history full of such "borrowings" throughout the entire history of jazz, blues, country music, etc.? ;) If it is a case of borrowing (or more) at all in the sense that "stealing" is persecuted in court today, even if it boils down to 2-second snippets only (as seen in recent cases in the pop music field).

Sad ... another one from the golden age of jazz who's gone. RIP. Time to pull out his Sextette album on ABC Paramount or "The Mitchells" album "Get Those Elephants Outta Here" on Metrojazz and give them a spin.

This was out on two Prestige LPs back in the 80s. Haven't listened to them very often yet; IIRC the fidelity is just so-so but the music is fine and does have a lot of "blowing" atmosphere. If you like on-location recordings from that period, go grab it!

Snapped up an original of this one a couple of years ago on eBay and liked it a lot. Modernized 50s cool-school swing a bit like Al Cohn on alto, with maybe a hint of Lee Konitz thrown in (Dick Johnson is his own man, though, but this should broadly describe his stylistic position within the 50s jazz styles). Been a while since I listened to it, so thanks for the reminder!

No matter what his later recordings may have achieved, his definitive recording of NIGHT TRAIN will grant him a place in jazz and R&B history!