Big Beat Steve

Brownie, thanks very much for the link to the previous thread. I guess I'll resurrect that one and add a comment to a few questions that have been asked there. GA Russell, Southern Germany doesn't equate Bavaria (not nearly!) and I'm not from Bavaria. And even though almost all U.S. tourists coming to Germany seem to think otherwise, there is life in Southern Germany outside Bavaria, and Heidelberg, for example, is not located a few walking minutes from Neuschwanstein Castle. :D (And no, indeed I didn't get that joke ... )

The name of Virgil Gonzalves that came up in the link posted under the Trésors du Jazz thread brings up a question that I had meant to post for a while: I have the "Complete Nocturne Recordings" 3-CD box set released by Fresh Sound that reissues the original 10-inch Nocturne albums of the "Jazz in Hollywood" series plus a few unissued recordings. However, this box set reads "Volume One." My question now is: Is there any Volume Two, and what would this contain, I wonder? (Seeing that all the Nocturne output has been released on Vol. 1) Or would Volume Two carry on with some "Liberty - Jazz in Hollywood" reissue? I really like this box set - nicely done and thoughtfully compiled in a way that fills a gap in almost any collection (who would have all the Nocturne 10-inch originals or even the few that were reissued later on Liberty)? Not one of those many CD sets that invariably duplicate a lot of what was fairly easily acessible on vinyl reissues or other CD releases so you just have to buy items for only half the music's worth because you already have the rest.

I may be mistaken but that RCA Camden CAL9 release may have been a 60s LP made specifically for the Swedish market. In the same RCA LP series there was Camden CAL4 with a reissue of 1956/57 recordings by Arne Domnerus and I remember seeing that one on a website as a specific Swedish pressing (I have a U.S. pressing of the same music released at about the same time and this is Camden CAL417, i.e. not the same number sequence).

@Brownie: Quote: --One of Tony Scott's best blowing date was the album he recorded in Sweden at that time Swinging in Sweden It was a minor hit in Sweden at the time but has remained unissued outside the country.-- I agree with your assessment of this session but are you sure it was released in Sweden only? The original EP I have of this session clearly is a German pressing (with German liner notes, German label text and all). Maybe other European pressings existed too ...

In the liner notes to Tommy Dean's LP "Deanie Boy Plays Hot Rhythm and Blues" (Official 6038) Dave Penny wrote the following in Jan. 1989 (i.e. 17 years ago!): "In October 1956 and May 1958, Tommy Dean was lured back to the recording studios on behalf of Vee Jay Records to record nine tracks of promising-looking instrumentals with guitarists Grant Green and Lefty Bates, respectively, but both sessions remain entirely unissued." Sounds pretty concrete, and I'd say Dave Penny is somebody who knows his stuff in this field of music.

If a CD set exactly duplicating the "Works of Duke - Complete Edition/Intégrale" series on French RCA is available somewhere then this might be easier to get today than the LP series. However, if - as you say - the upcoming Mosaic set covers Oket/Columbia sides only then this will not help with the RCA sides. Those French RCA LP's should still be around in secondhand record bins if you are preared to search. It all depends on whether you have any dealers or record fairs with a good selection in your area. I have several LP's of this "Works of Duke - Complete Edition/Intégrale" series (mostly covering the 1934 to 1941 era) and picked up those volumes very cheaply at a local secondhand record dealer. I may have a lead where more of them will be forthcoming soon. If you want to stick with vinyl, ditch the Indispensable B&W double LP and go for the "Complete Edition /Intégrale" series. @Brownie: What kind of money would Paris Jazz Corner demand for each of these "Intégrale" LP's, I wonder? ;-)

Although my jazz record collection mostly focuses on 1930 to 1960 (ca.) recordings (with all styles represented fairly evenly), I plead guilty to owning - only ONE John Coltrane ("Blue Train") - NONE of Oscar Peterson's recordings for Verve released under his OWN name (both cases of "you can always buy them anytime anywhere anyhow once you have explored all those rarer items that may be deletde lamost faster than they were released")

No, not the trumpeter. John Chilton mentions in his "Who's Who of Jazz" that Walter "Foots" Thomas had a brother named Joe (born in 1908) who played tenor saxophone but he also explicitly says that this is NOT "THE" Joe Thomas (the tenor saxophonist) who was with Jimmie Lunceford and co-led the band for a while with Ed Wilcox after Lunceford's death. And neither was he related to Joe Thomas the TRUMPETER who was with Fletcher Henderson, Willie Bryant, Claude Hopkins, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson (but never with Lunceford as far as I know) and freelanced a lot in the 40s. According to Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz, Walter's "real" brother Joe (the less famous of the two sax-playing Joes) was with Blanche Calloway and other name bands in the 30s and gave up playing to become a vocal coach in the 40s. He later worked as an A&R man for Decca and directed countless R&B dates. I agree that the these Walter "Foots" Thomas "all-star" recordings are great indeed. I bought the Prestige LP shown above in my early collecting days while still in school in the late 70s and it got a lot of spins on the turntable (I later even considered buying the Harlequin reissue as a "replacement" copy but somehow never did...). Re- Walter's teaching activities, an ad in an April 1945 music paper reads: "Walter Foots Thomas - Teacher of Saxophone (formerly with Cab Calloway) - Special instructions for Improvising and Ad Lib Playing - Correspondence Courses on Improvisation now Available"

I've wondered about that too when I read both Ted Gioia's "West Coast Jazz" and Robert Gordon's "Jazz West Coat". Both devote chapters to "LA Hard Bop" and "California Hard", respectively (according to the authors, Herb Geller, Hampton Hawes and Pepper Adams are others that would fall into that category, as would Frank Rosolino's "Free For All" I mentioned above). It all depends what you think of the categories they use. Some music just isn't that easy to pigeonhole, it seems.

Even if he had seen you that wouldn't have helped. The Mole Jazz bags were all black. Impossible to see what's inside!

The Shorty Rogers "Short Stops" (especially the "Courts the Count" material on this twofer) and the Shelly Manne records ("West Coast Sound" and "Blackhawk" are really recommended. You might also like to check out Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars, especially "Sunday Jazz At The Lighthouse", "Music for Lighthousekeeping", "In The Solo Spotlight". Reissues should be available in the OJC series. (On the other hand, I am not too fond of the "Oboe/Flute" Lighthouse All Stars release in this series. This is a bit effeminate for my taste and may be one of those releases that gave West Coast jazz a bad name back then.) Another item that may be hard to find but is some sort of revelation: Frank Rosolino "Free For All" (Specialty SP 2161 - a 1958 session that remained unissued until after Rosolino's death)

Agreed - Red Mitchell seems to be one of those unjustly underrated jazzmen. Maybe the fact that he spent much of his later life in Europe (Sweden) was a contributing factor. At any rate, he is one of those names that make me think "the session can't have been bad" when I see his name in the line-up, and I always enjoyed his "Presenting Red Mitchell" album on Contemporary and his "HappyMinors" and "Some Hot Some Sweet Some Mild" albums on Bethlehem, for example, not to mention his work as a sideman (with Red Norvo, etc.). As for him having "the cleanest chops on the West Coast", I don't feel qualified to judge that but this might get you into an argument with Curtis Counce followers ...

Here is another one who admits he likes West Coast jazz (though this does not prevent me from digging other jazz styles too). I sure am glad Fresh Sound Records made so many West Coast goodies available again. Some of the West Coast stuff is stiff and overly formal and precalculated indeed but as you rightly say a lot of it swings in a way that is "light and open and intense in an understated way" (that sums it up quite nicely). By the way, though, according to period reports Gerry Mulligan resented being associated with the West Coast movement!

That's because when I bought my copy of this record at a secondhand record store a couple of years ago I took the car to get home, not the bus!

A fine collection (and not all that overpriced). And the music from the other two 10" Vogue releases is nice to have too for those who are into this kind of early 50s European jazz as the 10" originals usually go for big money on eBay (the Japanese buyers' syndrome and their fondness for "Eurojazz" again ...).

The other of the two Straight Ahead Jazz LP's (Vol. 1 - SAJ-1001) gives May 31, 1953 as the recording date for the final 6 tracks of the above listing. Is this definitely wrong? Have both LP's been recorded on March 30/April 1, 1953? Just wondering ...

Still that CD has one big drawback: It's a CD only Nothing beats good ol' Vinyl - that one's gonna last forever (and who knows what future umpteenth-generation CD players might do with present-day CD's one day - "data format not recognized" etc. ) No, seriously: At the time the two LP's were around (even as secondhand items) the CD might not have been on the market yet so there was no choice. Finally, thanks for the line-up, Chuck Nessa. Will note it on my copy tonight after work.

Brownie, I agree that the French RCA releases of Fats' material were a mess insofar as they did the two Memorial box sets first and then put the other or alternate tracks up to 1939 on 18 or so LP's in their Black & White series. So most sessions were split over several albums. But - generally speaking - do you find all this strictly chronological reissuing of music fom the 78rpm era (such as on the Classics series) always all that fascinating to listen to it - fillers, duds, all too commercial or downright forgettable ditties and all included? Maybe a nice approach if you do your collecting strictly from an accountant's point of view, but at times there is more to it (much as I deplore the lack of coherence of some former reissues programs of the vinyl era which you could only make up for more recently with the Classics series and similar CD reissue programs). Maybe it's also a matter of principle of which medium one prefers (I do buy CD's to close certain gaps in my collection but I also admit I quickly got rid of some CD's again when I got hold of exactly the same material on vinyl after all ;-) ).

Does this series cover ALL his works (i.e. including those tracks recorded during his stay in Britain, for example, that I think were not included in the various French RCA box sets and Black & White single LP's from the 70s?) I, for one, won't get rid of this good old vinyl, that's for sure, but maybe the British tracks will make it to a separate CD in the series.

Thanks Peter - I'll have to check this one out!

You're talking about the "World of Jazz" series LP (EMI-Electrola 1C 056-85609)?

An endless subject ... Referring to "Silver's Blue above", this seems to be a case of different sleeves being used for different countries where the original issues where released and pressed locally and not as imports. The one on the right seems to be the Dutch release, and the second to the right is the French one. Back then the French seem to have had a habit of doing their own sleeves that were totally different from the original U.S. releases (same for certain Dutch labels such as Phillips). My French "original" of Harold Land's "Hear Ye", for example, has a cover totally different from that of the U.S. Atlantic pressing. And there are MANY more like this (such as NUMEROUS different covers of the Buck Clayton Jam sessions originally on Columbia). But once you get into REISSUES you tend to get lost totally, especially if ownership to the rights of the original label has changed in between and if you live in Europe where numerous national branches followed their own policies. When the 50s Vanguard 10" LP's were re-released in the 70s, for example, some of the Vic Dickension stuff was reissued in Britain on a twofer with modern artwork on the resurrected Vanguard label (distributed by RCA) in 1973. Not long afterwards exactly the same material cropped up (in Britan again) on a Vogue twofer (this time distributed by Pye) under the title "The Essential Vic Dickenson" (yeah, you guessed - I ended up with both because when you try to remember in a record shop about 600 miles from home if you have any particular music those totally different covers can get you pretty much hung up). When you buy Fresh Sound reissues with their nicely done repros of the original covers you better remember that some of the stuff that originally was on Coral had already been reissued earlier on German MCA in their "Jazz Lab" series with totally bland covers. So you better check what you already have first. Another case in point are the '80s Affinity reissues of Bethlehem LP's. Totally different covers but probably on the market at the same time as the Fresh Sound repro reissues. The same goes for Fresh Sound repros of RCA LP's from the 50s that might duplicate some of the material in the French RCA Jazzline series reissues of the same material (which had modern, uninspired covers). And so on and so on ...

Goldmine seen to reword their grading from time to time. Anyway, the gap between their VG+ and VG grades does not seem to be as large (anymore?) as it seemed when taking the wording of the grading given in the 2nd edition of the Collectible Jazz Albums 1949-1969, for example. There is one thing that bothers me a bit about those Goldmine grading criteria, though. As far as the COVERS go, the description of typical wear is all too exclusively geared towards U.S. originals with their typical cardboards stuck together by the paper layers across the seams that practically invite seam splits. Take any British or French original from the 50s or early 60s for example (e.g. British or French Vogue releases). As the sleeves of these European releases are made of thicker laminated PAPER that overall is far thinner (but does not necessarily wear faster) than the U.S. cardboard sleeves, some of the criteria used for the U.S. covers just do not make sense. For example, no matter how good one of these thinner sleeves is, the contours of the record will almost always have left an impression in the cover. Now does this mean "ring wear" with a corresponding downgrade of the sleeve condition, although this is nowhere like the typical U.S. cover ring wear with wiped out printer's ink? And then these covers typically suffer from other types of wear than U.S. covers (e.g. lamination starting to flake around the edges, and the corners get dinged much faster than the U.S. cardboards, etc.). Hard to judge and leading to more discussions again ... Or is there a universally accepted European version of Goldmine ?

Care to name any? I've bought records in Paris before too (and a bit on eBay) and can say that they are not all alike. Some really do give good service and are helpful (to foreigners who speak their own language, anyway ). At any rate, the nationality probably hasn't that much to do with the way you're being treated on eBay, and on the other hand there ARE a few U.S. online sellers out there who seem to look down on those "Yurpeans". You get the good and bad guys either way ...

Another thought on this often-used VG+ grade: If I think the Goldmine grading criteria closely over, somehow I feel there is a HUGE gap between the Goldmine quality grading of an "infrequently played" VG+ and a VG with "countless spins" (as well as their "loss of gloss" criteria, etc.). I'd figure that A LOT of well-played but well cared for LP's fall into the range in between these two descriptions (maybe even the one that Daniel A bought?). How to grade these? Is there anything like "VG and a half"? Note that I am no record dealer at all but I guess records in this condition aren't easy to grade if you neither want to downgrade your own stuff overconservatively (seeing that many buyers seem to think anything "VG" is totally trashy and worn out beyond recall) nor want to fall into the nitpickers' traps .