Big Beat Steve

All the better, then ... But what I wanted to hint at is that if you exclude the word "blue" and therefore the color that highlights the title and motto of the album you just as much risk ending up with GENERIC reissue covers such as in the case of the ones I showed (where the color is pure coincidence ).

You asked for it so this is what you get ...

And then ...

I remember those days too, particularly the Lester Young Story twofer (that I bought at once from high school student's money). I remember I also wondered about this being Vol. 1 but nowhere any Vols. 2 etc. in sight. Until years later (at a time my buying priorities had shifted somewhat) I found out they did in fact exist but somewhow never got distributed to any significant degree here so you just never saw them. Looking them up on Discogs now I see Vol. 1 was released in 1976, Vol. 2 in 1977 and vol. 4 in 1979. Not that excessively delayed, it seems ... (And to be honest, in hindsight I am glad I never got my hands on these later volumes back then. Buying the music in different packagings - particularly the Basie Columbia sessions - made much more sense to me) As for Bird, I don't know about reissues generally available in the US in the mid-70s, but I remember I bought a Bird twofer over here from the Jazz History series on German Verve plus another LP with Verve masters on Dutch Mercury (Jazz Masters series) rather early on (1977 or so). So these were some of the starters. As for you not "longing for the good old days", I get your point, particularly in today's reissue world where you can get almost anything not just as downloads (if you go for that medium) but also in a zillion different "Complete" CD box packagings at almost any moment you want them. But honestly - didn't you ever reflect on how you approached and explored the music back then? Sometimes I do - and it makes me wonder if we actually still enjoy, absorb and digest the music as intensely today where almost everything is at one's fingertips (and earbuds 😁). Whereas back then, you felt incredibly lucky after having gotten your hands on this or that 12- or 16-track reissue LP of any earlier favorite artist or band of yours that had been OOP for ages. And then you went on to really absorb each and every tune in full, and over and over again. Just because you knew this was what you had and nothing more - for the time being. It may sound odd but I still can feel that vibe of the "good old days" when I peruse old record catalogs that list these items (or when I spin the LPs again). I am far from sure we always appreciate the indivdiual tracks to the same extent in today's world where you can let an artist's complete work flood your ears in one longish session at any moment. (Sometimes to the detriment of the music and one's listening experience, to be honest, because quite a bit of music from the 78rpm era was not intended to be listened to in one go but piece by piece at (release) intervals. ) Just saying ...

Re-reading this thread now, with a lapse of close to 1 year, this reminds me that last fall I locally picked up really chep clearance sale NM copies of the "Basie & Eckstine" and "Basie & Strings" LPs on Roulette (to - almost - complete my run of the Roulette Basie series). The other day I spun the Eckstine LP again. The Basie band pulls it off well, and Eckstine fits in better than I had feared from a swinging point of view (playing it passably safe repertoire-wise may have helped). But I still cannot quite warm up to his "declamatory" singing style in such a jazz setting. (Can't quite put it into words why I like the "declamatory" singing of Joe Williams better ...) But it's OK for me the way it is anyway ... Rhough certainly no "desert island" fare.

Ooh ... Some time ago I bought a used copy of Jazz Solography Series Vol. 4 (Charlie Christian plus Robert Normann and Oscar Aleman) that had come up at a giveaway price in the music book section of a local used records store. It's very thorough, to say the least. (Though maybe outdated in places by now due to more recent discoveries.) RIP and thanks for your untiring work that many others have profited from.

As far as I recall (reading about it) this mixup was between Red Mitchell and Red Kelly.

Great news! Thanks for the link. Actually, I could not resist the temptation and saved it "for eternity".

Re- the "Afro-Cuban Influence": I took the plunge and picked up the mono copy of that RCA original today (neither the mono nor the stereo versions of the record had shifted since I saw them in the store 11 months ago). To make matters even better, the price had been downmarked to 10 EUR in the meantime. Spinning the suite now - nice!!

And Steve Jordan, the Norteno/Tejano accordionist. (OK, fringe of jazz, but anyway ...) Another (much earlier - Big Band era) "near miss" where you wonder if maybe the second one picked up his nickname after the untimely demise of the first one: Corky Cornelius and Corky Corcoran And another "classic" and oft-goofed mixup (Swing era): Joe Thomas the trumpeter vs. Joe Thomas the tenor sax man And then there was Johnny Smith the guitarist (recording for Roost a.o.) and a bit later the soul jazz organ man Johnny Smith who wisely billed himself as Johnny "Hammond" Smith.

Agreed. I picked up that album as a "File under Buck Clayton" item, of course, but Frankie Laine fits in well enough to make it very palatable in that setting. Arnold Shaw dwells quite a bit on this aspect of Frankie Laine in his "The Rockin' 50s" book, using his "Mule Train" hit as a starting point. I never did quite make that connection and found this assessment overrated compared to the Black shouters as pre-rock'n'rollers. A batch of his 78s (all on Mercury) that ended up here when I bought a larger 78 collection (mostly jazz and R&B but with a sizable dose of 40s and very early 50s US pop too) almost 20 years ago did not do much for me either and almost all of them ended up in the "78s fleamarket items" crate. But I must admit I never explored his discography in depth. Two of Laine's Atlas recordings are on the below CD, BTW (yes, the Yurpeen PD labels have been at it again 😁 ) : https://www.discogs.com/release/8803423-Various-Boogieology-The-Atlas-Records-Story Probably not that surprising that he was thought to be Black by some, considering that on these recordings he was backed by the Three Blazers.

Discogs is your (tentative) friend: https://www.discogs.com/artist/1678801-The-Missourians?superFilter=Releases&subFilter=Compilations One CD on VMP, one on JSP. But with almost total overlaps.

Putting a face to a name: 😉 Al Morgan was with the Condonites on various occasions in the early 40s (probably because he was a member of the Zutty Singleton trio at that time - Singleton is on drums in the first of the two C. Peterson pics below):

Meaning that - simply put - the aural difference does not go beyond the "stereo effect" and depends on how effectively the stereo separation has been handled?

This is one of the cases where it is welcome to see an age-old thread revived (as it happened recently here, though for a question not related directly to your initial posts). I had not paid much intention to this thread the first time round. But in fairly recent times I've "accumulated" both stereo and mono original pressings of Bill Holman's "Great Big Band" LP (Cap. (S)T1464) and will now put them on my "to do" record listening stack for a listening comparison.

Will have to dig out certain LPs from my stack of early Ellingtons, I guess ... (Upo to ca. 1930 they are filed in the "Classic Jazz" corner).

Aaahhh ... different "strokes" indeed, then. And me was thinking that all these "different" comparisons might just as much sum up the differences in approach by the Ellington band vs the Basie band. Pity this name did not come up many years ago here. It might have been interesting to see if Chris Albertson might have had something to say about a comparison between Fred Guy and Elmer Snowden.

More than Freddie "Mr Rhythm" Green? Just wondering ...

Well-earned ...

Perfectly true. Not that enforced commitments to care homes do not happen, but in most cases it really is as you say, and then you can only count on the cooperation of the elderly concerned ... I witnessed a similar case with my father-in-law in 2018 (then aged 79). After he had caused two not so minor car accidents in totally uneventful traffic situations his children (my wife and my brother-in-law) urged him to undergo medical exmainations - and sure enough, dementia had set in. So action was required (particularly because there was a medical history in the family). Thankfully he immediately agreed to move into an assisted living facility (for his own good ...). But of course there are plenty of cases where the persons concerned balk in such situations, and then things get awkward and more or less impossible to handle. (This would have been true in "our" case too because his kids - who have their own fulltime jobs - lived about 300 miles from his town, and he did not wish to move from his town either.) So it is good to see that things in the case of Larry Kart seem to have straightened out for him now, whatever the story behind it all may have been ...

A bit of a stretch calling this a car wrecking yard, but it's a nice photo anyway. A variation on the "Cadillac Ranch" theme? 😁

This sounds really creepy. I've witnessed a coupe of cases of people moving into assisted care homes in my parents' generation (under vastly varying circumstances) in past years so I guess anything can happen. But luckily I've never heard of such enforced cases. Keeping my fingers crossed now that everything works out perfectly well for you from now on.

Careful ... There seems to be more than that. What French RCA reissued (in their Black & White single-LP series released prior to their Black & White twofer series) was made up of the 24 LPs of his "Complete Recordings" that you mention but it appears that these were COMPLEMENTARY to TWO 5-LP box sets (Fats Waller Memorial Vol. 1 and Vol. 2). I have never done a track-by-track comparison between all these LPs but the fine print on the individual LPs says: "Fats' Complete Works will not include the same tracks as the ones on the two sets 730.570/574 and 731.054/058." For those who can do with a smaller helping there also was a 4-LP set "Fats Waller & His Rhythm - The Last Years 1940-1943" on RCA NL90411. This set roughly duplicates Vols. 19 to 23 of the individual B&W LPs (minus certain alternates). I cannot recall having ever seen any Bluebird twofers on Fats Waller (though these 60s Bluebirds invariably caught - and still catch - my attention) so they cannot have covered his entire output.

Following the "reactivation" of the below thread ... ... how about taking this one step further with THIS thread ? Such covers do exist (so please don't "water down" this thread with covers showing one single junked out car only ) Here are three to start with: Not many cars to be seen at first sight but this IS a scrapyard - and a handful of wrecks (including a mid-50s Rambler) are discernible in the background at the upper edge of the cover. The next one is a more typical sight: And this one may be about as far as you can go on ONE album cover (front cover first, back cover next): More to come?