Big Beat Steve

Actually. MG, it's pretty hard to compare these styles in such generalized statements (exceptions to the rule abound). I'm not that the biggest fan of swing-style vocals, BTW, but what would make a lot of instrumental swing less tiresome for me than a lot of hard bop is the general feel, maybe. I may be wrong or not open-eared enough but there is quite a bit of hard bop the intensity of which DOES sound aggressive to me whereas even in intensely played tunes in swing and even R&B the general feel is not one of aggressiveness but of exuberance. A lot of Lionel Hampton's 50s live recordings, for example, ARE formulaic but the mood and feel they convey just is vastly different from that of similarly intense hard bop.

An interesting topic , and I agree with your observation. I've never considered myself a dyed in the wool hard bopper (but interested enough to add a representative cross-section to my collection through the years); at any rate, swing (and other jazz styles) rate higher among my personal jazz styles than hard bop does. Some time ago I picked up a selection of BN CD's currently on special offer at my local Zweitausendeins store as they had a few items that you might want to have in your collection. But when I got home I couldn't really bring myself to listen to any of them right away (except Horace Silver's "Song For my Father, and "Dial S for Sonny" a bit later on). Somehow I just wasn't in the mood for any "hard blowing" at that moment, and I haven't yet pulled those CDs out since. But the time for a "hard bop blowing spell" in my listening preferences will come again, so what does it matter right now? Overall, I'd say a lot of hard bop "all-out blowing" just gets to you in a way that's quite different from swing "all-out blowing". I know for sure Roy Eldridge's blowing (either his 30s Three Deuces or his 50s Verve material) won't wear me out in the way relentless hard bop horn blowing does from time to time. Yet I don't think you can pin this down only to some jazz styles being more "demanding" than others. I know I'd not tire of mid to late 40s Bebop (certainly not an "easy" jazz style either) as rapidly as of mid to late 50s Hard Bop, so ...? Maybe the formulaic, repetitive blowing character of many of those blowing sessions that Prestige has been blamed for wasn't just limited to Prestige but included a certain amount of BN's too? Or was it the "angry" character of a certain kind of Hard Bop as conveyed by those "angry young men" of Hard Bop that is still getting to the listener today and might set off some neg vibes if you're just not in the mood for that angriness? I don't know ...

A drummer who did an LP under his own name for the MODE label around 1957 too. Nothing earth-shaking but quite nice (the lukewarm review in Down Beat was a bit too harsh).

did you know that every time i buy this sort of thing i think of you by now; you've posted this dozens of times and i agree it's so annoying there's not really a reason to stop posting... (ditto for the ethical divide between proper and lonehill) You know actually in most cases I am well aware beforehand of records that I now buy for only one or two tracks (because I WANT those tracks AND because those records are dirt cheap to begin with) but the ones I was thinking of within this thread are others: I.e. those records you once bought in your earlier collecting days and then, later on, you "upgraded" to other pressings/issues that are more comprehensive and more methodically organized and STILL when you do a track-by-track comparison you find there STILL are one or two tracks on this record that you DON'T have on others so you still cannot dump this LP and relegate it to the fleamarket/swap meet box (at least not until you've found those remaining tracks on other discs that fill this and other voids in a better way in your collection! Happened to me a couple of times last week when I brought home a huge stack of 2nd hand vinyl so the question came to mind here ... And no doubt it's a dilemma faced by many other collectors too.

Went to a record clearout sale the other day, and among a host of 60s/70s/80s jazz reissue LPs (mostly Swing) I dug out a bunch of very nice EP originals with picture covers and in very clean condition: Terry Gibbs - Terry (EmArcy) Lennie Tristano - Capitol Jazz Classics series Lee Konitz - Inside Hi-Fi Benny Goodman - B.G. In Hi-Fi Vols. 1 to 4 Sonny Stitt (Roost masters issued on Sonet) Harry Arnold big band on Metronome Jazz West Coast Vol. 4 Buddy Collette (on Sonet) etc. etc. Sure, some tracks duplicate what I've already got on LP/CD but at 1 (ONE!) Euro each, how can you go wrong?

Would albums that duplicate others in one's collection except for one (or at most two) tracks and that you keep for this one track anyway also qualify for this thread?

Thanks for that info, Jack. Admittedly that adds a bit of a new twist to it all. So maybe I ought to file my Ellington Orange disc under D like Maxwell Davis?

It's not a Kenton disc, it's an ELLINGTON-related disc (and it WAS filed at the end of my Ellington discs). And my record racks along the entire wall of my music room are ALL rather crowded by now (if I want to keep them at least halfway in proper order).

Exactly!! (On both counts! ) This character that Durium (who I hope does NOT have these reservations towards Slim & Slam and Slim & Bam etc.) quotes fails to realize one MAJOR aspect: Those 78 rpms were NOT intended to be listened to in one single series of 16 LP tracks or, what's worse under these circumstances, 24 CD tracks one after another. They were self-contained miniatures to be "consumed" and taken in one pair (A and B-sides) at a time. The same holds true for a LOT of early (pre-war) blues records, for example, that might otherwise sound fairly repetitive on first listening too if you just looked at the superficial structure and instrumentation of the songs and listened to a huge bunch of them in one uninterrupted row. It seems, though, that today's CD and Mp3 completist listening habits prevent the listeners more and more from grasping the essence of the music of some 60 or 70 years ago - at least as long as they don't really open up their ears and minds and listen to the music individually and on its own terms. Remember this was a LONG time before all those LP-size "concept" albums came along. Besides, a point could be made for a lot of hard bop (on LP) tunes sounding like all alike blowing to all those who don't take the time to get into the finer points of the music. Not to mention other more modern jazz or rock styles and their musical output ... That aside, Slim & Slam rule (and Slim with post-Slam Bam too )! And as for the music being all alike, that character quoted by Durium who said that clearly hasn't done his homework. If he had listened e.g. to the live recordings of basically the same repertoire by Slim & Bam released on the Hep label he'd see how that music was worked with and elaborated on when the musicians stretched out on stage.

As for that "Bright Orange" item you mention, I guess they did a whole set of cheapo cash-in LPs in the 60s/70s. In fact I have similar item featuring Duke Ellington tunes (played "...by members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra") which also lists a lot of fairly prominent jazzmen in the lineup, including some Westcoast men but also some ex-Ellingtonians. Probably a studio band affair. Actually I removed that LP from my LP rack yesterday and relgated it to the "Odds and Ends" corner as the D to H section of my Swing LP rack got overcrowded folliwng a huge recent purchase. Re- the names in capitals you mention, most of them are familiar from the big bands, etc. They probably all held various studio jobs at the time these records were made.

Chris, may I just add another question regarding those 2-LP sets you did back in the 70s? I have the material from those LPs on a 10-LP box set (CBS Special Products LSP 14100) which at the time was available in this box form only from the Zweitausendeins mail order service. The overall presentation was slimmed down compared to the individual 2-LP sets but on the back of the box it says in small print: "Produced by John Hammond, Chris Albertson" I therefore assume that what you said about mastering of the 2-LP sets also applies to this box set and that the same masters were used?

Went to a local vinyl clearance sale today and among a huge stack of jazz LPs and EPs by sheer coincidence also I picked up a 45 with another instrumental version of "Madison Time" recorded by one "Eddy Williams" on the Philips label. The flipside has a track called "Madison Beat" with calls (with a typical dance school teacher's voice) in GERMAN! Boy, you ain't heard nothing corny about The Madison until you've heard THIS!! :excited:

E.g. the vinyl albums from the RCA "Black and White" series (released in the 70s/80s) that might/should still be around in 2nd hand record bins (wherever you still have these ).

@Hardbopjazz and your change of the title of this topic: Aren't you being a bit rash about this?? These reissues may be non-interesting to you BN freaks/geeks out there who pride themselves on having first pressings of the entire 1500/4000 and possibly 5000 series of BN's on their shelves and who do nothing but drool about ears in wax, markings, addresses on covers, hues of blue on labels, etc. but believe it or not - there ARE others out there with other priorities and other focuses (including the fact there is a LOT of jazz beyond Hard Bop and Blue Note to listen to) and who might welcome the idea of adding a few vinyl items of decent pressing quality (and who DON'T buy the idea of despising any pressings all the way from the Liberty era on up to the present as being unworthy of keeping and listening to , etc.). Besides, the price I've seen aint that bad for a vinyl PLUS a CD copy of those sets (for those who want that combination) - though I've a hunch by the time these offers reach European shores/retail outlets they will be far less attractively priced ... In short, to each his own, but no reason for excessive snobbery ...

Well, you only can agree with everything that's been said here, but leaving the sales blurb aside, it IS nice to have some of those items widely available in vinyl again. I know I'd been looking around for a vinyl copy of "Song For My Father" (I admit I AM a vinyl nut) for quite some time but to no avail, at least not within the price bracket I was willing to shell out for a secondhand reissue. Not only Liberty and Japan pressings but also other later reissues seemed to command (relatively speaking) top bucks so I'd passed them up and finally bought a CD from the BN offerings at Zweitausendeins. But it STILL isn't the same thing.

That alone would leave room for at least 2 issues as DB was published every 2 weeks, not monthly. For those who want to know really exactly and if everything else fails, a good idea for checking would be to observe Ebay. Old DB issues come up fairly frequently, and if the subject of the blindfold test is not listed in the item description it might be readable on the pic of the cover that usually goes with the description. So watch those 1958 issues coming up for auction! I can also check my copies of the Swedish jazz mag ESTRAD later on. They ran blindfold tests taken from Downbeats, and it just might be that the Miles test is among the 1958/59 issues that I have. Update: Just checked my Sept. 58 copy of ESTRAD which has the Miles blindfold test. However, the tests published in that mag must have been abridged slightly. No reference at all to that character in Miles' comments on that Tiny Grimes track.- Apparently too exotic and unknown to be understood by Swedish readers. Sorry - therefore I can't give the actual quote.

Now that's strange ... I'm far too you young to have witnessed that Madison dance being danced but based on writeups of the early 60s pop/dance craze scene I was aware of its existence (before my time) for almost as long as I've been collecting records (i.e. since 1975/76). And in fact I did pick up TWO different period pressings (with pic covers) of Ray Bryant's 2-part Madison 45 at local fleamarkets/garage sales (and have seen more copies) so it must have been sort of a hit tune over here (not all of those copies can have been dumped by G.I.'s, especially as they were German/European pressings). And as another indicator of the hit status of this dance, there were a couple of other Madison tunes recorded by local artists to capitalize on the fad (I remember a "Madison Time" version from Italy sung in atrocious English but still fun to listen to ). Now could Europe really have been hipper than the U.S. outside of Baltimore, I wonder?

Read his autobiography "Good Vibes" and you will easily see where that exuberance comes from! (BTW, isn't there a story around that on crosscountry one-nighter tours, when Shorty Rogers wanted to call home he had Terry Gibbs make the calls because Terry would be able to get everything across that Shorty would have wanted to say but in about one tenth of the time it would have taken Shorty? Saved quite a bundle on those long-distance calls! ) As for the Dream Band, I have the two commercially released albums back then plus the Vol.1 and 2 LPs of the Wally Heider material first released in the 80s. They were comparatively expensive when I bought them secondhand in the 90s but I will definitely have to get the other volumes too.

Sounds very interesting! Got any more detailed info? (Website, buying sources, ISBN, etc.) I guess if I can work my way through 30-odd years of Orkester Journalen and 25 years of Estrad as well as through "Gata Regerings 74" and "Göteborgsjazz" I should be able to cope sufficiently with Danish too. Mange tak! As for your Buddy Stewart list, I think you've got the ground covered pretty well with what's around. Will check and compare with what else might be buried among airshot recordings, though.

Coming back to your original question, Victor: I do remember Buddy Stewart (and have some of his recordings on various LPs too), though he was dead a good many years by the time I was born (so I would qualify as being far too young too ) - BUT: That question in your first post is impossible to answer as long as nobody knows what exactly you've got on that home-burnt CD you say you've got. I've noticed vocals by him cropping up on LP (re)issues of airshots by name bands here and there, but if nobody knows what gaps you need to have filled, where do we start?

Charles Delaunay compiled his New Hot Discography in the late 30s, reedited it in the 40s, then (in the 50s) various Brits and Americans tried an update but only ever got through the first third of the alphabet, in the meantime Jörgen Grunnet JEPSEN did a labour of love with his post-1942 discography in the 60s and eventuall had A to Z completed, at the same time Brian Rust did a comprehensive discography of jazz recordings up to 1942, and a lot of work and time went into all these as it's a job that is virtually never finished, and then (70s/80s) Walter BRUYNINCKX combined everything first into books, then onto CD, adding a lot of his own work, (and then there was Erik Raben - I think Chris A will be able to tell more about that) and then LORD (Tom) came along, and as for what he did and how this is seen by the discphile fraternity, do a search on this forum and read for yourself ... ;) But there are enough of these discographies around for somebody to look up the info (sorry, hope I'll remember to have a closer look tonight at home).

Sorry, was kind of busy those last evenings, but will write down what's in the discographies ASAP. (BTW, anybody else around here and reading this got a Bruyninckx or Lord discography handy to give Chewy the lowdown on this?)

You are right about the Crown reissues of the Moderns, of course. As for the recording dates: Like I said - the dates I gave are those listed by Jepsen and Bruyninckx. But if there is CONCLUSIVE proof that these are wrong (including the one for CLP-5012) then I'm fine with that. Maybe CROWN label collector nuts (they DO exist) will know for sure but OTOH they usually concentrate on the R&B releases on Crown/Modern and tend to bypass the jazz stuff.

Will check my Bruyninckx tonight.

Actually that story was circulated often - with the spelling being AIMEE CAMUS and some French links in her genealogy. Sorry to say this but somehow I am inclined to agree there is some truth in there, with this "ancient inca heritage" being a giant put-on and/or a clever marketing gag on the part of the producers and wishful thinking on the part of the fans.