Big Beat Steve

Not weird at all, just another example of the helter-skelter unorganized piecemeal reissue policy of the majors in the late 50s and 60s. Throw a platter with 10 or 12 or 14 or 16 tracks on the market just like that, without regard to previously and/or concurrently issued tracks, and still the collector will probably have been happy. After all back then many issues were marketed on domestic markets only; U.S. or U.K. or Continental European issues did not nearly as often find their way onto other markets as they do today so a lot of duplication/triplication/quadruplication of reissued titles occurred (even with releases issued within a couple of years on one and the same market). Of course international exchanges did not exist ot the extent they exist today either. Enjoy the music but if you want to have the music in a more cohesive/comprehensive fashion then you will eventually end up with having all the tracks on other reissues too (even if you limit yourself to older vinyl only).

So it seems I have an unheralded classic among my 78s? Will have to spin this one again ... But what's the story with Dodo on this one? Are the label credits a spoof? Penthouse Serenade says the backing is by the Frank Davenport trio (with Davenport on celeste), and Snowbound (which mentions Lucky Thonspon on the label) says it's one "G. Style" on piano. A pseudonym for Dodo?

Saw him live at a festival in the U.K. in the late 90s, and what a show! I am glad I queued up afterwards to get his signature on the covers of a couple of 50s Capitol albums I had brought along. R.I.P. As for his roots and what JSngry said about his playing, check out a sample of this on the Little Jimmy Scott CD (Specialty SPCD 2170-2) which has Sam Butera as a special guest with the Paul Gayten band on two lengthy tracks recorded at a live jam session in 1951. He sure cooks up some heat on "Dueling Tenors".

Actually that LP is spinning on my turntable right now. To give you another impression in a listener's (not critic's words, "Yardbird Suite" obviously is a tune linked with one particular artist and HIS treatment(s) but here where the treatment by necessity (with THAT instrumentation) has to be different it all sounds "just right" and not forced at all and you are not led into making comparisons with the '"master" version (at least I am not). Of course Phil Woods is key factor in it too.

I have an original of that LP and like it VERY, VERY much. And this despite the fact that I am not a fan of flute jazz at all. I often find it - well, Im going to be rude here now - rather "effeminate", especially when played by those who "double" on flute (their main instrument being one of the saxes). Offhand I wouldn't be able to dissect Eddie Costa's playing (that said, I am somewhat of an Eddie Costa fan too) on this record (would need to give it another spin) but IMHO on this one the interplay of the entire group really is fine throughout and everything falls into place nicely. As for your final remark about Eddie Costa's piano and vibes style, I agree - his percussive approach really hints in that direction.

I know ... but I guess I did not put in enough smilies to make that clear. My answer was not so much directed at you but at those who still sneer at the sax "noises" made by the R&B honkers and shouters (because they feel it's much too lowly for their appreciation) but enthuse in their self-cultivated wisdom about the "sublimity" of the noises of a certain type of "free" jazz ;) Noise vs noise if you want ... Anyway, as for the TV show, no idea if the clip does not provide any details, but if you look at the R'n'R movies of about 1955-56 where a lot of black backing bands composed of R&Bers and jazzers (cf. the Alan Freed movies) are present, there still must have been a market for that in the mid-50s. Maybe among white listeners/watches who'd only just then caught up to it whereas the heyday among the black audience had been a bit earlier in the 50s? That Willis Jackson clip would not have been totally out of place in those movies.

Normal. Totally normal. This was still his R&B period, or at least he quickly revived it once more for that TV appearance. Just as great in its own right as everything else. BTW, if this is "exhibitionistic", then what are certain "free" saxophone noises of a a decade or two later? Cacophony? Or is it fine to wisely nod your head in inner amazement at how a "free" player "reveals the utter torture of his self" or "shrieks out the pains of this world" (or whatever other wise judgments there may be) whereas it is strictly a NO-NO if the energy outbursts of the honkers appeal straight to your inner guts for sheer exuberance, joy and excitement? :D

A bit like the collection of one Robert Nieus of Namur (Belgium) that found its way here through a wholesale jazz store purchase by a local secondhand shop a couple of years ago. As quite a lot of them ended up in the Special Offers bin they now are in the hands of several collectors around here (including mine ) plus probably a lot more casual buyers. Not that he stamped them as brutally as this Mr Gordon but he used an glued-on sticker with his name and address stamped on PLUS another sticker with a (file) number on them that are quite impossible to remove (the stickers, that is), at least not without leaving traces. Though I can sympathize with the idea of marking one's records; ever since starting buying vinyl in the mid-70s I've marked my LPs with my name at the upper edge of the back cover, probably spurred by the fact that I'd often witnessed my schoolmates' LPs borrowed by somebody else somehow never made it back to their actual owners (not me ). So I wanted to make sure that if that fate ever befell one of my LPs at least the ball pen indents would still be indelible even after the culprit had tried to erase my name. And somehow the habit has stuck ... No doubt this might reduce the value of my collection when my heirs dispose of it one day but what the h.... ? At least I've refrained from doing it the way it seems to have been a habit with U.S. owners, in particular (judging from the number of LPs like that I've come across through the years), i.e. the owners scribbling their names with a FAT felt tip pen right into the LINER NOTES on the back!

Like Jaki BYE-ARD and similar to Don BYE-AS.

I wouldn't even DARE to imagine how this came out if pronounced by an English-speaking person of NON-Scandinavian descent. As far as I can see a passably correct pronounciation would be pretty hard or even impossible to transcribe in "writing" anyhow.

You just beat me to it .. And here is the photo I mentioned above: http://images.google.com/hosted/life/f?q=j...c0d86fbef5c408e

I agree about O'Neill Spencer but don't think that second trumpeter seated next to Hot Lips Page is Frankie Newton. He does not look like Frankie at all in the first picture. BTW, sometime late last year somebody posted a link to the online LIFE photo archives where this and other pics from this session (and a LOT more) are accessible. Anybody have a link to that site on hand? I do not have it bookmarked here. This site might prove useful as it includes other pics from that session, including one where "the man between Lester Young and Jo Jones" can be seen quite clearly between Pops Foster, Prez and Buster Bailey (cl) - proving that Buster Bailey was present at that session too, though not in the above picture.

How come nobody has mentioned Oscar Peterson yet?

I bought the French-language edition edited and printed in Switzerland (for circulation over a good deal of Europe, it seems) for a fairly reasonable price on a Swedish (of all places...) jazz online site in the early 2000s. A very nice book indeed. More copies of it circulate here at various online antique booksellers but at quite a handsome price. Seems like everybody is fairly aware of the collectors' value of this book these days ... Even a copy I saw at one of the "bouquiniste" streetside antique book stalls at the "Rive gauche" in Paris not long after buying my copy had a price tag that was higher than what I had previously paid from a professional online seller!

Will have to check tonight: Horst Jankowski did a version of "Cute" on his c.1961 LP "Gäste bei Horst Jankowski" (on Metronome) that was used as the signature tune for a regular jazz radio broadcast on the German SDR (Süddeutscher Rundfunk) radio station for a VERY long time and therefore is bound to be fairly familiar to a certain generation (or generations) of radio listeners. As I haven't listened to this LP for a while I don't remember, though, if a bass solo features prominently in that version. Will report back later. Edit: Just saw the original post is eons old. Let us know, King Ubu, if your friend has found the version he is looking for.

In this second picture the second trumpeter behind Hot Lips Page somehow looks like Charlie Shavers but I'm not so sure when I look at the other picture. My fault I missed that alto sax cue for Leo Parker. :blush2: I ought to have known that if I had thought of those 1944 sessions with Coleman Hawkins.

Thought so too but that horn looks like an alto. Is he known to have played the alto frequently in his earlier days?

The older bespectacled man on the extreme left is Pops Foster. I've often wondered about the identity of the other horn men and onlookers as well. Must have been a gas hearing them all on site! LIFE has quite a few more shots from that session. They might help for idientification. 2 or 3 of them look decidedly familiar but I just cannot pinpoint the names. Anyway, the trumpeter up front at the left looks more like Lips Page to me.

Referring to John S and Bill F's posts, could this be summarized a bit like the situation in other European countries (I can speak for Germany, France and Sweden where I do have quite a bit of period jazz mags which cover this subject too - e.g. in their review sections)? I.e. if there was a licensed issue pressed and released locally by a company for domestic distribution there was no direct import of the U.S. pressing (apart from copies that may have been imported privately - a costly enterprise - or brought over by U.S. servicemen, for example).

Yes the UK covers (and French ones, for that matter) were much thinner than U.S. covers. But on the other hand while U.K. covers tend to show ring wear rather fast they show it in the form of the CONTOURS of the LP only whereas ring wear on U.S. covers makes the printer's ink go away faster than you can say "Oo-bla-dee". And the technique of pasting two fairly sturdy cardboard sheets together with only a thin strip of paper along the edges to turn those two cardboards into a real album cover is something that has never looked too clever to me. Those thin paper strips practically BEG for seam splits! IMHO U.K. and other European covers shave fared a bit better in that respect too, including all those U.K. Vogue 12in LP 50s pressings of U.S. Contemporary LPs that I own.

Amazing that this sort of 80s reissue should set one back 4 quid in a thrift shop of all places. I bought my copy (slightly worn cover but pristine and therefore quite playable vinyl) for 2 quid at Mole Jazz (OK, so this was in the late 90s but still ...). And though the Behtlehem originals that this music was on tend to be pricy, these Affinity LPs aren't THAT rare at any rate so you should be able to get another one in better shape.

"Punk" before its time sounds a bit like it, from what I've seen in more recent rebroadcasts of the 60s b/w Beat Club shows (HR3 ran some a while ago). Maybe really too far ahead of their time, considering that U.S. garage punk bands of the 60s went largely unnoticed - especially in Europe - between the last vestiges of rock'n'roll, Brill Building pop, Motown, 60s Brit Beat and the rock acts starting up c.1968. Lack of accomplishment, on the other hand, is something that might be said of other bands of those 60s. But sometimes raw energy, spontaneity and immediacy make up for all that. And as for "LPs that didn't sell", isn't is exactly those items that are sure to fetch TOP money among collectors of the genre and give cult status to the artists (not least of all in jazz collector circles too? )

If you understand German, then read this: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/musik/0,1518,619377,00.html Strange thing about this, though: In my younger collecting days in the 70s I did do a bit of collecting of British and German 60s beat music (as an extension of my interest in true 50s r'n'r/rockabilly) and grabbed a bit of documentation on that era too, but somehow all the sources on the music of that (by the 70s) not that distant past failed to mention the Monks and their vinyl legacy whereas others that overall were just as much a flash in the pan with limited record releases (but maybe a little bit less oddball) did get mentioned. And this was not the only case where bands of the mid-60s that must have a fairly sizable cult following never made it into the written documentation or record reference works of that era. Strange ... makes you wonder why the music writers of the 70s had such a selective and skewed look on that 60s era though it had only recently come to an end. Was it really so that whatever came along in the 60s OUTSIDE the beat/brit rock mainstream PRIOR to the advent of psychedelic rock, hard rock, folk rock, blues rock, "kraut rock" and whatever else started mushrooming 1968/69 just was off the radar of the music scribes?

As for those doings at the EU assembly ... really a farce indeed but not totally surprising. This has been in the pipeline for a while. Which is why I wrote to the effect of "as long as the 50-year cutoff date still is effective in Europe" earlier in this thread. Let's just see what becomes of it. I dont expect ANY major reissue projects (of music predating the hard bop era) by the big companies to see the light of day then that would otherwise have been shelved because those oh so bad Public Domain labels are around. I'd rather expect this to become a case of even more items gathering dust and rotting in some dark basements (because - P.D. reissues or not - this IS going to remain a fringe market without huge profit potentials to the majors). But if this is what the advocates of the U.S. limits of 70 years advocate and if the musical tastes of those are narrow-minded enough to limit themselves to those "major" artists and "major" items then so be it ...

Carnivore makes a good point. Instead of having the market flooded with reissues I think actually we'll see less re-issues(and re-issues of lesser quality) once this stuff enters in PD. Again, the lack of financial incentive will have a deleterious effect upon the re-issue market. Why should EMI spend the time and money to remaster their Blue Note catalog that was recorded before this date in 1959 if the Andorrans are going to put out a cheaper version using their material a few weeks later? I mean if sound quality isn't an issue for you than by all means go have a party but, if SQ is an issue for you well..... I am sorry but overall this is not true, and besides, it is EXACTLY that tunnel vision I mentioned earlier. I certainly won't condone duplicating reissue projects (launched by "legit" labels) by one of those P.D. labels but again, this is NOT a European or Andorran specialty (please read my earlier post and then tell me you never bought ANY of those all-U.S. LPs I mentioned - if you did not then this probably only was because you did not happen to be that interested in swing-era jazz, but if you had been then you'd snapped some of these up too , I bet ). But what is more, while it may well be that some majors think twice about this or that reissue project of a major artist this is just the tip of the iceberg of the reissue world, and we don't even know if those majors shy away from such projects because they fear a ripoff from a P.D. label or because they just cannot make enough dough on them even if no one else got in on the act. (Makes me wonder why that remastered Louis Armstrong Hot Five ever saw the light of day under these circumstances, BTW ). I guess no matter how well you rule out any ripoffs following legit reissue projects, that kind of jazz would hardly ever be reissued comprehensively by the majors anyway because it's jsut not profitable to them by ANY standards as it is waaaaay too much of a (minor) niche market, and I think it was THIS point Carnivore was making. But the statement "we'll see less re-issues" just is not true. I just picked a few CDs from the nearest stack here, and what do I have? "The Complete Lem Johnson 1940-53", "Felix Gross Complete Recordings 1947-55", Marvin Johnson - Jumpy Rhythm Jive 1946-51", all of them on Blue Moon (Barcelona and/or Andorra), and then "King Perry 1950-54" on Classics (Blues & Rhythm series). Now would you please tell me which MAJOR record company would EVER have considered reissuing those recordings in what you would call "legitimiate" terms? Please name just ONE recent project of those artists (picked totally AT RANDOM, and the list could be continued ad infinitum) on a MAJOR label! Heck, they couldn't have cared less - even in the case of Marvin Johnson who was on Capitol (a.o.)! Where would the collector be if there were none of those P.D. labels? And the same holds true not only for R&B. Would we ever have heard 50s jazz LPs from the Stepheny or other similarly oscure labels again if it had not been for the "Andorrans"? Which U.S. major would have bothered e.g. about the Stepheny label AT ALL? So really now, please rethink your statements! Not to mention the fact that it is easy to see those "Andorrans" jump on other majors' bandwagons (such as the labels previously catered for by OJC), seeing that the OJC reissue policy seems to be going down the drain fast. How many around here had been complaining of the mess caused to then OJC catalog by the current rights holders? And this was BEFORE P.D. labels jumped on that bandwagon. So in case like this you really can't say the P.D. labels had discouraged those rights holders from pursuing a comprehensive reissue policy. Anyway, some of you are really out front and real fast when it comes to breathing down the necks of "the Andorrans" (a pet peeve of some around here, it seems ) but how come I hardly ever hear "Brits" mentioned instead of "Andorrans"? May I remind you how often people have been drooling here on this very forum about a certain British box set producer, despite the fact that their P.D. reissue policy in fact duplicates a LOT of other reissue material on other labels that paved the way (of which some, such as Ace, definitely are the fully legitimate holders of the rights of material that is old enough to have fallen into P.D. a decade ago, and yet they have BOUGHT the reissue rights, and still the same artists crop up on those box sets on that other Brit label, and people keep drooling about it). More blatant cases can be found even in other of those box set projects, e.g. in the case of an "Accordion Jazz" box set. Now what would you guess if I told you about two thirds of another (older) accordion jazz box set issued in France by Fremeaux Associés happen to crop up on that box set too, and the remainder (intended to show post-war accordion jazz) comes from two LPs by one single artist (Mat Mathews), both records of which are past the 50-year limit too? Do you really think this is a case of not enough accordion jazz being around to avoid those duplications? C'mon, I could rattle off more than a handful in the very same vein that have never been reissued. Reeks more of a case of using what's EASILY available for re-reissue with a fairly limited amount of one's own work. Digging out all-new material that would not have duplicated but COMPLEMENTED that Fremeaux Associés project (e.g. by reissuing not Mat Mathews' material over again but maybe Angelo Di Pippo's jazz LP on Apollo or maybe Johnny Hamlin for samples of 50s accordion jazz), now that would have been something else for a change. But it would have meant more remastering work, so ... So the basic difference to the reissue policy of the Andorrans really is inexistent IMHO, yet people have been drooling about that label. Double standards around here? Looks very much so to me, sorry to say ... Postscript: Personally I don't have any problems with those P.D. reissue labels if they respect the 50-year P.D. cutoff limits applicable here in Europe but what I do find a bit annoying is how people single out certain reissue labels to put all the blame on them. If you want to nag about those Europe-based P.D. labels then go the WHOLE way, even if this means you have to forego the pleasure of adding this or that dirt-cheap "non-Andorran" but other "European" P.D. box set or single CD to your collection. And remember a LOT of the "Classics" series dear to the hearts of many U.S. forumists around here technicaly falls into the same category too as far as the P.D. cutoff dates are concerned (and whoever wants to see special protection from P.D. releases accorded to labels like Blue Note but couldn't care less about other original-release labels is definitely using double standards as long as the U.S. P.D. time limits are still being "infringed"). Enough of this rant now but it just had to be said ...