Big Beat Steve

Too bad, then, these were buried in that orchestrated Paul Weston et al. crap. Sorry, and I realize might get stoned for saying this on big band forums but it still baffles me how diehard jazz fans (that I assume to be around here) can get so excited about this dreary, unswinging pop orchestra fare. Having listened to quite a few of those Mercer 78s in recent times (as mentioned elsewhere, they were included in a batch bought from an estate), I find that even by the standards of the somewhat more commercial SWING (as opposed to sweet) big bands this music is just nowhere swing and jazz-wise. You really have to make a LOT of concessions style-wise to file them under "jazzy" or "jazzed-up" music. Hey, there even are Jan Garber records out there that can outswing this Mercer/Weston stuff!

Jazz Kat, may I respectfully suggest this thread for further reading? http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?t=22983

Sounds promising indeed. Ordered my copy today and will keep my Dream Band records handy when the mailman delivers the goods!

Indeed! I like both Hampton periods - the Victor sessions for their all-star virtuosity, and the Decca recordings for sheer exuberance, vitality and powerhouse energy. Though admittedly they touch different parts of your musical innards , to me both swing to the very same extent, both in their very own way. BTW - J.A.W., check out the jazz photo book by Ed van der Elsken published by Nieswand a couple of years ago (I think the original this book is based on is rare as hens' teeth). It has lots of pictures from Hamp's mid-50s tour in the Netherlands. Hamp's powerhouse music literally jumps out of the pictures!

Yeah, I'm so old I bought it new. Liners by Stanley Dance. I wonder if he held the record for the most liner notes written by one critic? They're good liners, but I'd bet the Mosaic will be at least as good, possibly better. It would be cool to reprint them, but that's not Mosaic's style. Oops ... am I THAT old too? Bought my two 3-LP sets on French RCA new too, and still like them immensely. Agree about everything else said about this set here and cannot see why this set should NOT be snapped up REAL FAST if it became available at the giveaway price like Clem's copy. Where's all you discerning collectors? Given up collecting vinyl for good?

J.A.W., strictly speaking you are right, though these periods were consecutive rather than different, but I take it from tranemonk's question that some associate even older Lionel Hampton recordings with his big band (hence, his Decca band). So a glance at the original label (as stated in some reissue listing, for example) might help for quick reference. But that's a minor point anyway ...

Are you sure there isn't some ethnic minority out there who'd resent being referred to as "goyim"?

To take things yet one step further re- Hamp's output during that period: Just refer to the original release label: Victor = small-group recordings (mostly studio pickup groups) Decca = working big band (mostly; a few were combo recordings)

Indeed one more reason to add a sentence or two in the liner notes to provide some background info on this but certainly no reason to blacklist it forever.

Could anybody please check and clarify once and for all if Clarence Williams actually wrote the ENTIRE lyrics (as shown above) or only part of it and some of it was a later add-on by another (white?) author? BTW. re- Ghost of Miles et al: Taking Charlie Chan movies off the screens for the reasons indicated above is one of those things where you wonder where this is ever going to end. What's the next step going ot be, then? The 70s (80s?) Charlie Chan remake feat. Peter Ustinov being considered off-limits too for the very same reasons? Not that I would insist on seeing them that often (I remember seeing the late 30s Charlie Chan movies a couple of years ago and found the first ones mildly amusing and innocent fare of the day but the sequels were sort of cheap cash-ins on the same basic formula) but you can really carry things too far. So what's gonna happen next? Take the "Thin Man" movies off the screen too because the only black actor(s) are found in servants' roles? Or is "Hellzapoppin" about to be blacklisted too because that FANTASTIC scene showing Slim & Slam, Zutty Singleton, Rex Steward (I think), etc. plus the entire Whitey's Lindy Hoppers troupe doing their sensational dance act are shown in servants' dresses and therefore highly stereotyped in a subservient role?? Sorry, but I find this kind of p.c. really silly and hope to God this never spreads to Europe to THAT extent. Real equality is obtained elsewhere but not through such symbolic acts dictated by overzealous p.c. This is not to condone anything that went wrong in the past at all but how can you learn the lessons of the past if you refuse to be confronted with it and if you refuse to see things within the context of their times?

@king ubu: I have the Savoy twofer LP (which I guess includes the same material) - early to mid-50s trio setting with Vinnie Burke on bass and (I think) Joe Morello on drums (will have to look it up tonight at home). As for recommending it, I bought most of my Savoy reissue double LP's when they came out or at Mole Jazz in London, i.e. at more or less standard prices, but never ever saw this one (or hardly any other reissues by Marian McPartland's early recordings) so I grabbed it when I saw it on the list from a shop in the States and never regretted the extra shipping expense. Swinging trio jazz that is always fascinating to listen to and very far from those cocktail piano trio recordings of that time that pretended to be jazz but were in fact easy listening. Lovers of Cecil Taylor piano jazz will find it fairly conventional but if you like Jutta Hipp's "At the Hickory House" LP's on Blue Note you will like this one too.

You are right that a 2-sentence explanation or commentary (note that I did not say "disclaimer") could not have done any harm, but the point about comparing Britney with Johnny Mercer is not about popularity but about the fact that what is in those lyrics unfortunately reflects/mirrors the state of play of those times. And if it actually was Clarence Williams wrote the lyrics in the first place, where's the problem? Would it be insulting only if a white vocalist sings these lyrics but would it be OK for a black recording artist to have sung them? Or would it be a strict No-No from today's point of view too because any black who would have sung that would be accused of minstrelsy, caricaturing members of his own race? If you were to whitewash this for reasons of P.C. in a context like this you'd get very close to censorship and brainwashing on a very large scale. Remember, there'd always be another step that you could take in order to take things yet further for the very same reasons. Have a look at the recorded R&B output concurrent with Johnny Mercer's recordings. What do you find there? A huge amount of lyrics that have been considered lewd, obscene, lascivous, obnoxious, filthy, derogatory, etc. by the white establishment of the time, not to mention texts that might well be considered discrimatory towards women, for example (see my example given above). Or how about that blues song line "I'm gonna kill that woman": Would that be considered an attempt at promoting violence? Where would this end? Would it stop at all? Wouldn't this amount to falsifying history on a large scale? Sorry for rambling on for so long, but all those song lyrics ought to be seen in the context of their times, and if this were done, that would settle the entire debate, I think.

Nothing (well, nothing that I really am familiar with) beats the BEAR FAMILY box sets. Can't find anything wrong with the packaging, and the liner note "booklets" that are more like an LP-sized coffee table book really are something else that sets them apart from the crowd.

May I throw in a word or two as a NON-American? I haven't heard that particular song but wonder if there are any references in the lyrics that make it 100% clear that the singer is referring to "colored" people (to remain in the language of the day) and not to ugly people at large? Even if Clarence Williams wrote the original (or was this really a turnaround by Brunis?) it might not be obvious, and white people have and had ugly women too, you know ... That said, tranemonk and everbody else who feels offended, would you advocate banning ANY vocal version of "Darktown Strutters' Ball" from any reissue program on the same grounds? (And there are others like it - what was the name of the song again that contained some reference to "Darkies" and was even recorded by Louis Armstrong?) Or to remain with the not so nice to look at women, what would be your feelings about that "Ugly Woman" recorded by the Ike Turner band (with Billy Emerson or Johnny O'Neal on vocals - haven't got the record right here now to check it out) for Sam Philips' Recording Service at the very beginning of what became Sun Records? The lyrics are VERY outspoken and not really flattering. And this is only one such song of times gone by. (Anybody feel offended by "Onion Breath Baby"?) Or how about "topical songs" that are clearly VERY dated? Would it be mandatory to ban that "We're gonna have to slap that dirty Jap" from any reissue of the collected works of Lucky Millinder? In short, times have changed, and music is a sign of its times too and has a right to be documented as such. Mature listeners should be able to place it in its context. That said, and like I said on that Mercer Mosaic thread (my comment was among those that disappeared when the forum went bust some time ago), I dont really see what Mosaic (a jazz reissue label AFAIK) would find in dedicating an entire reissue set to Johnny Mercer. 2 years ago I purchased a lot of 78s from an estate and it included some 2 dozen Johnny Mercer Capitols (some with and some without the Pied Pipers and most of them using Paul Weston as the backing band). Some of the songs may be fairly light-hearted and therefore more bearable than an lot of the crooning of the day but by jazz/swing standards they are just nowhere. In short, IMO there is more rewarding material out there that BEGS to be reissued for the FIRST time. Just my 2c

Seems like I did well to snap up those two original EmArcy Jazzpickers albums at quite a moderate price on eBay a couple of years ago. Listening to them from time to time (along with the third Harry Babasin album on Mode), I enjoy them very much each time. Good luck with your projects, and I'd love to see any unreleased material from the Nocturne vaults (beyond of what's on that Nocturne box set on Fresh Sounds) too.

Yeah - having read the BEFORE MOTOWN book with great interest I'd like to get that one too!

To sum it all up, I guess the two statements above ought to have been the guideline from post #1 both here and over at AAJ (where some apparently encountered Boots Randolph in a way to have something genuinely positive to say - as opposed to some quip that happened some 35 years ago in surroundings that probably were quite different to the way things are today). Maybe at least in obituary threads like this one this might be a fitting guideline for the occasion - if only as a minimum sign of final respect. Gay people being the target or not, I repeat what I'll said elsewhere: A lot of persons in the eye of the public (not least of all jazz musicians) do not always behave the way we onlookers would expect them to. Would it have been appropriate e.g. to recall that backstage incident involving Dizzy Gillespie and that female jazz critic (I forget her name - it was discussed here some time ago, and from what I recall it escalated to the point of causing T-Bone Walker who was on the same tour to step in and knock Diz down) in a thread mentioning Dizzy Gillespie's passing? A lot of people sometimes act in a way that they might regret later - do we all know for sure, that the original subject of this thread never regretted his somewhat cheap joke later on? If in doubt ...

Up ... with a few additions and deletions. Above list is up to date as of today.

Maybe so (and that one hit Yakety Sax can get to be a drag even for those who are all into late 50s/early 60s r'n'r instrumentals), but Boots Randolph sure has his participation in a lot of hit sessions in the country, pop (and maybe even mainstream jazz - of sorts) field to his credit, and that's no mean achievement (like his style or not - I for one don't). At any rate, "good riddance" under these circumstances is quite uncalled for too. Offhand there are quite a few other msicians who didn't exactly always behave the way "political correctness" would have expected them to, and yet they are held in high esteem, and there would not be any shortage of excuses for their personal shortcomings . BTW, who TF is or was Jim Nabors? He certainly is nowhere on the map in the musical/"celebrity" memory outside the States anymore, but Boots Randolph certainly is.

Man, that's a great album. I just got the CD last Winter. Agreed! And another one that goes very nicely with it and has a very early "crossover" line-up (before this term existed at all) is AFTER THE RIOT AT NEWPORT by THE NASHVILLE ALL STARTS on RCA LPM-2302 (reissued on Bear Family) As for the rest, as I never really liked fusion (fusion was all the rage in jazz when I got into jazz in the 70s and sort of crowded out all the "straight-ahead blowing" rest, leaving you kind of dizzy, wondering what jazz in some people's minds was supposed to be about after all ;) ) I never felt any urge to get into G.B.'s "later" work. My loss, maybe, but there is soooo much jazz to listen to anyway.

Hardly surprising ... Bill Holman's "In A Jazz Orbit" was originally issued on the ANDEX label. No connection with the MODE label (that I suppose this Japanese CD reissue series is supposed to cater for). This is the kind of record that VSOP or FRESH SOUND would be more likely to reissue.

Any extra material (previously unissued tracks, etc.) included vs. the originals and/or VSOP/Jap VINYL reissues? Or is this for CD fetishists only? (In that case, playing time would be a bit on the short side)

I can see your point, and I would not want my heirs to be taken advantage of either. I have made similar provisions like you have (except that my "trustee" is slightly younger than I am, yet not that much younger that a "Plan B" would be totally unnecessary). Yet none of us really have a hand in all that after we are gone, and one thing is obvious: Unless your heirs invest the time to sell off each and every item they have inherited for the best price possible they are very likely to lose money (compared to what oyu once paid for each item in your collection), especially so if they tried to get the whole collection into the hands of a discerning collector (which to the unknowing often sounds like such a smart idea because "they will be able to appreciate the value"). Discerning those collectors may be, but have you ever heard of anybody of these paying the market price for each and every item in a sizable collection? Obviously if you buy an entire lot the price per item will be FAR less than if you sold each item separately (even more so if the discerning buyer happens to be a record DEALER). It's up to each individual concerned to decide if the lower overall price is worth the tradeoff against NOT having to invest the time and effort to sell each item separately. Better not think about it, because you won't be able to do too much about it after you're gone - even if you attached a tag with the average collector's market value to each of your records before you bow out. And in the meantime, maybe it's not such a bad idea to get some really good purchases the same way - that might help reduce the eventual financial losses for your heirs.

Japanese facsimile reissues of the original Mode LP are around so this should make it unnecessary to run after beat-up originals that may be original but just too poor to be worth much. The music is nice and enjoyable but not overwhelmingly groundbreaking. If I remember correctly Down Beat rated it only 2 and a half stars for that very reason (lack of originality, "derivativeness", etc.).

Ken ris right. Another aspect is that even the seller should make out O.K. if he manages to sell a batch of items in one go at a lower price per item as this will save him a lot of extra work (listing, shipping, etc.) that he would have to put in if he had tried to sell each item separately. Why should auctions be different from the way things like this are handled at garage sales, swap meets, etc.? So per se I cannot see anything wrong with listing entire lots of somewhat related items (such as these Mosaics), and most of my best buys have been when I bought entire lots of related items (even if I did not particularly care each and every item included in the lot, the price per individual item often was almost ridiculously low so this more than made up for those items I did not like or already had). Of course the abusive handling charge policy in this particular instance is a different thing and this may be what caused the auction to be removed.