Big Beat Steve

Your description sounds like one that I have as well: MUZA L0159 feat. the Emil Mangelsdorff Swingtett on the B side playing "I Got Rhythm", "Blue Room" and "After You've Gone". My copy has a generic Polskie Nagrania Cover, as do several other 10" LPs from the Sopot (Zoppot) 1956, 57 and 58 festivals that I have. So this seems to have been common practice. Emil Mangelsdorff playing ina style reminiscent of the Benny Goodman small groups wasn't uncommon (or to put it another way - it was something to expect ). See his "Swinging Oil Drops" LP from 1966 on CBS (later reissued on L+R). The cover you show above seems familiar. I may have seen it before. This must be the "export" sleeve. Contrary to the generic Polish label sleeves.

AM is "Mittelwelle" (MW), FM is "Ultrakurzwelle" (UKW). And AFN is "American Forces Network" (the radio station for the US soldiers stationed in Germany - though of course other local/regional AFN stations broadcast for US soldiers stationed in other countries too).

A telltale A telltale sign of how Ahmad Jamal was rated by some in radio - at least over here: The AFN radio stations in Germany of those mid- to late 70s had great music programs on AM that even catered to specialist and niche tastes with a heavy dose what then likely was called "nostalgia". But AFN radio on FM was an altogether differont matter, with background music doodling all day long in the style of "music to twiddle your thumbs off-duty in the barracks by" . The program largely consisted of MOR orchestras and (very occasionally) singers, and just about the only small group regularly featured (at least in those cases where I tuned in out of curiosity) was AHMAD JAMAL! Programmed right in between orchestra fare by the likes of Percy Faith, Mantovani, Hugo Winterhalter (yes! evidently some retro programming) et al. And in that context he did sound easily palatable enough ...

I wonder if that was Brötzmann that Volker Kriegel caricatured! 😁

Very nice, your cartoons! 😄 As for the "Flot Foot Floogie" (or "Floozie"): I may be mistaken but I do remember more than one slang-laden text from the 40s (or thereabouts) where "floozie" was used to refer to an "easily wooed chick" (to put it very politely). "Straight From The Fridge Dad" (The Dictionary of Hipster Slang) by Max Decharné defines a floozie as a "tart, dancehall doll, streetwalker". But with no "race" connotations in any of these uses. Or did you use "racy" just in the sense of "explicit" ("suggestive", "lewd" or whatever ...)? Didn't know about THIS meaning of "floy floy", though.

Some that certainly can't be googled via "jazz joke cartoon": Maybe a bit dated, but here's some mild fun from the pages of ESTRAD (1940 and early 1941):

Yes this IS odd. Looks like spuds indeed.

Actually at first sight the hairdo of the female figure in the bottom right corner of the 'Holiday in Trumpet" LP makes her look like a rear view of Billie Holiday (there are photos of her wearing a smiliar hairdo). But not nearly all the tracks (from the Keynote label) on the record are tunes that Billie Holiday ever recorded (except standards like "My Man" and "St. Louis Blues"). The artist credits in the small print are "Bedno - Siegel" on the "Holiday in Trumpet" LP and "Ed Bedno" on "Holiday in Trombone".

Juliet Prowse - a name probably best-known in many circles for her co-star role in Elvis' "G.I. Blues".

That would be a sure candidate for a topic(-to-be-created?) about "oddball/bizarre vinyl record cover inserts/inlay sheets". 😁

😁 I wonder if the Swiss audience of 1975 grasped the lyrics and (sexual) implications of the "Jelly Jelly" vocals (that were ultra-current and up to date in the 40s - in the Black community anyway - but certainly not much later anymore) or if they took this purely as a piece of nostalgia ... at most ... Luckily no Swiss radio would ever have been hampered by puritan airplay bans of so-called "explicit" lyrics 😄

It seems, then, that - seen from a jazz arranger's approach - with his "sketches" he had already "progressed" beyond later, fully written-out ragtime compositions.

Could it be that they had musical dealings with him primarily in his later years when he may have mellowed with age?

That's what I meant to refer to with my above comment - "not that I would have doubted it - given his account of the 1962 BG tour of the Soviet Union". I've downloaded this essay several years ago and immediately printed and filed it.

Am about to finish his book "From birdland to broadway". A great read indeed. And VERY refreshing to see a jazz musician who is also very articulate with WRITTEN WORDS (not that I would have doubted it - given his account of the 1962 BG tour of the Soviet Union) and can do his memoirs without having to be ghosted (to a greater or lesser extent). After all that's about as "straight from the horse's mouth" as things can get.

OK, understood ...

"EC album" = House of Blue Lights album? So that would have been Paul Motian. Now when did that story take place?

You are referring to his 1954 recording? His first album (the 10-incher from 1954) was named after this tune. I pulled it out the other day to refresh my memories, and this tune may have become a sort of signature tune of his. According to Bruyninckx, he recorded it again in the 60s.

It IS worth finding. I offered myself a copy for last Christmas (when a copy came up at the lower end of the "too much money" price span ). But like others mentioned before, it is relatively slim, so I guess everyone's eternal regret is that Teddy Reig died before his memory could have been "milked" in much greater detail.

CROWN (the "early reissue/recycling" subsidiary of the Modern/RPM label stable) is not exactly top-notch vinyl. 😄 But I guess those who buy them anyway have learned to live with it. One period-original label I (sadly) have come to be a bit wary of and better look twice is the (Danish) SONET label from the 50s/60s. I have had several cases where the records (particularly 45rpm EPs) display more or less numerous warts and pimples that extend randomly across the vinyl surface. Like acute cases of vinyl acne. Worse still - I am under the distinct impression that these warts show up over time as the vinyl "ages" - from no particular age of the record and at an unpredictable speed of degradation. I have been caught out occasionally when I had failed to inspect the EPs before purchase (probably because the records were cheap and I bought them mainly for the picture covers) but I remember buying a copy of the "Message from Newport" LP by Maynard Ferguson on Sonet and am really very, very sure it did not have any noticeable pimples when I bought it some 10-15 years ago. However, when I pulled it out again about 2 years ago (after a longish period of disuse) to spin it I was shocked to see to what extent it had grown warts on both surfaces! Strangely the record still does not skip but it has a very distinct and irregular background rumble and of course this is not the kind of abuse you want to subject your stylus to. Another similar case was the Sonet EP of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" which I bought back in the 80s at a fleamarket. The surface definitely was OK (though not NM, of course). Recent inspection relevaled it has grown surrface irregularities too - not really warts and pimples but what can best be described as streaking, as in the case of some wooden surface where an insect had dug a path directly underneath the surface. As I have not pulled out this record too often during those 40 years of ownership I have no way of judging this ageing process but it does seem that the vinly of these Sonets somehow just starts disintegrating (like a car panel beset by rust underneath the paint) from a certain age, and once the process has started it tends to accelerate. (It seems like very occasionally this can also happen with early (Swedish) METRONOME EPs) However, this is NOT always the case. Other 50s/early 60s Sonets I have are fine. The other day I bought a period-original copy of the "Count Basie Presents Eddie Lockjaw Davis" LP on Sonet which is in perfectly okay VG+ condition. So I am keeping my fingers crossed it will remain that way now that it has reached that age without deterioration. Close inspection pays anyway - even where you do not expect to find defects of this kind. My copy of the Tal Farlow "Fuerst Set" on Xanadu 109 (not a label that has a bad reputation for poor pressings AFAIK) has some kind of foreign object embedded in the vinyl that shows up as a sort of "floating rice krispie" on both sides and causes an annoying click. I had totally failed to notice this before purchasing as a very quick glance at the vinyl revealed a shiny NM surface and you do not really expect that kind of defect on a collectible label with this pedigree.

I wonder what the artwork people were up to with this one? Doing a (toned-down) Jim Flora imitation? Anyway ... looks like an interesting item to look out for ...

My pleasure.

Still quite an event ... I do hope the "objects" went to someone who appreciated them.

Was this just staged for the TV series or do you actually mean to say he ABANDANED his storage container and it was auctioned off that way?