Big Beat Steve

Not to forget that he was active in the session producing and A&R (of sorts) field for a time too. Browsing through period jazz documents, I was amazed at how (relatively) often the name of Cannonball Adderley came up in the context of getting this or that recording session off the ground. So clearly he could connect in more ways than one and was respected on several levels. Are there very many truly greats among the jazz musicians who can claim this kind of accomplishments on BOTH sides of the mike?

Breezy, lively and more than just entertaining (beyond all the information it provides, of course). "El Foggo" -- ha! Hilarious!

Interesting topic (that I so far had missed). Reissue cover botchings of original-release cover artworks must have been numerous through the 60s, 70s and possibly 80s. I am not quite sure, though, where to draw the line between REAL budget labels and just mid-price (or at least well-distributed and therefore omnipresent) reissue labels compared to the original labels or FACSIMILE reissues. A case in point that has bugged me many times: Many of the 80s AFFINITY jazz reissues of 50s/60s jazz LPs (many of which that originally appeared on Bethlehem). Strangely enough they often did reuse the original artwork for their reissues of Capitol LPs. Makes you wonder why ... Another case: No idea if Stan Kenton's "Creative World" label was a "budget" label but at least he did secure the rights to reissue his old Capitol LPs with the original contents and titles. I have many of them but their rather generic and out-of-style covers of course are a letdown compared to the originals. But then this one ... ... is about as bad as it could possibly get. Quite a turnoff compared to the original one. OTOH, MANY reissues by the ORIGINAL labels (particularly in the 70s) were just as inept, careless, unimaginative or just plain cheap. And they have no valid excuse, contrary to the budget labels.

I'll second the recommendation of PJC for shopping for jazz records. Another one that I liked is CROCOJAZZ, 64 Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève (5th arrondissement). It's much smaller than PJC but has interesting selections that might just be up your alley. And the owner is very friendly, helpful and always willing to talk shop with collectors. I checked the internet and recent entries indicate the shop is still in existence. And it's listed here, for example: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187147-d6684563-Reviews-Crocojazz-Paris_Ile_de_France.html https://recordstores.love/4264 But as you never know if all these sites are kept up to date all the time I won't guarantee anything (it's been more than 10 years since I've been able to check on site in Paris myself). But if you walk the streets around Crocojazz then do keep your eyes open for other shops. I remember two other record shops with sizable jazz sections in the neighborhood (within easy walking distance up and down the streets) in that area but do not recall their names (one is/was in a sort of basement).

Same here. @Peter Friedman: Robert Gordon's book must have been a dead heat with "West Coast Jazz" by Alain Tercinet (published by Parentheses, Paris - in the spring of 1986). Of course it is in French but it WAS (is) out there (and it isn't bad at all). I bought the book by Tercinet several years before I simultaneously got hold of the books by Gordon and Gioia so my approach was somewhat different. With the benefit of the "first impressions" covering uncharted teritory, Tercinet's book had a starting advantage with me. Overall I feel the three books complement each other very well. Gordon seems to dwell more on reviewing and analyzing key recordings by the key artists, Gioia provides more additional biographical background, and Tercinet covers (at least to SOME extent) a wider range of artists. He seems to have profited enormously from the accessibility of the WCJ vinyl reissues by Fresh Sound and digs deeply into relatively unknown "connoisseur" artists (off the beaten tracks left by the biggest names) who hardly made it into the books by Gioia and Gordon and places them into context. Overall I like Gioia's book best but to me it is a very close finish between the three.

Concurrence too. As it happens, I am currently re-reading this book. And find it as fascinating as before.

I have no horse in this race (of whether to discuss this at all), but trying to focus the posts I've read here, I think what it boils down to is that if you are sure "there's a wave coming up the beach", then name what the wave is made up of, what beach it is coming from, and where you concretely saw that particular wave. If you cannot or won't provide the hard evidence of the wave then I am afraid the others have a huge point. Speculative insinuations are not the way to go. They might backfire.

There was quite a bit of free jazz going on in the GDR (as elsewhere in the Eastern bloc countries) in the 70s. Check out Ulrich Gumpert, Günter Sommer, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, for example. But I would find it hard listening to that as "Muzak" ...

You summed it up well, and I am surprised that this point needed to be made at all. It's that evident ... As a starter, a brief period (early 60s) look at the jazz market might be found in the "The Jazz Business" and "The Public" chapters in "The Jazz Scene" by Francis Newton. And since you mention record shops, have you seen or read "Going for a Song - A Chronicle of the UK Record Shop" by Garth Cartwright? It essentially covers record shops from the early post-war years to the general demise of record shops. Of course it mostly focuses on all sorts of rock but there are chapters on Dobell's and his contemporaries as well as on record shops important to 70s jazz, funk etc.

No point trying playing the full length of "Invitation". It's the second to last track on side 2 but the crack separates into 2 cracks towards the dead wax and on the final two tracks you'd get two clicks and major stumbling blocks for your stylus. According to the below source there do not seem any other EPs from that LP (Bruyninckx does not list any EP releases). https://jazzdiscogcorner.pagesperso-orange.fr/discographies_%20labels/c/capitol/instrumentals/m/marshall_jack/discography/capitol_jackmarshall_1958.htm

No everlasting work of high art in fiction but it will trigger your imagination ... and jazz buffs who know their music's history will find the portrayal of Bunk Johnson rather amusing ...

Complementary to "Tiger Rag" by Nicholas Christopher? Not a mystery/detective story but a very interesting plot that shows just what MIGHT have happened to the Buddy Bolden cylinder. And as we'll never know for sure ...

You bring up BAD memories .... About 15 years ago i bought this on eBay when I was rather on the lookout for jazz obscurities and oddities from the 50s. But when it arrived it was cracked ... a bad crack that extends tangentially to the dead wax for about 2 thirds of the record! Clearly a real dimwittest of dimwitty sellers was at work when he packaged the record "as flimsy as could be". With a lot of care I was able to coax the record back into near-enough shape and alignment to be able to listen to side 2 (not with the newest of styluses of course) with only a revolving click audible. (Side 1 skips too badly at the crack line so no point insisting ...). What I did hear then (and I just relistened now after having dug the LP from its grave in a far corner of my collection ) was amusing but a bit gimmicky and some of the tunes were a bit low on jazz (even chamber jazz) content for my taste. I am not the biggest fan of flutes in jazz, the cello is no great swinger and the harpsichord was a bit over the top (though it did bring in a nice Gramecry Five feeling in places) - so all in all nice to have but no desert island disc. But of course I was unable to listen really closely as the click did have me worried for my stylus. FWIW, as a bit of "consolation" a couple of years ago an EP extracted from that LP (Capitol EAP 1-1108) came my way. The tunes (Have You Met Miss Jones/Jeepers Creepers/It Might As well Be Spring/Sweet Georgia Brown) are probably some of the more jazzish of the lot, and at least I've now got one third of the LP contents in playable condition until the LP comes my way again. The tunes (e.g. "Have you Met Miss Jones") do remind me of some of the exercises in that vein that Horst Jankowski and Wolfgang Lauth did over here (before 1959!) with jazz-cum-baroque chamber music settings (though certainly not as third-streamish as the MJQ or George Gruntz). And from what I have "heard" from the remainder of the LP I can very well imagine that it will appeal to those who like film music. I can imagine some of the tunes as a sort of semi-jazz movie background ... Re- Jack Marshall, I had not been aware of him before I took the plunge for that 18th Century Jazz LP. But I've more consciously taken note of his presence on various studio dates since. He can do more than he did on that 18th Century Jazz LP, e.g. on the first of the two Dom Frontiere LPs in the Liberty "Jazz In Hollywood" series (LJH 6002). He has a few pleasant solo spots on guitar there.

And this despite the fact that (according to the foreword and apparently to the regret/dismay of the author and fellow researchers) Granz seems to have made a point of destroying HUGE amounts of personal/business-related documents and papers in his later years and before his death so that definitely no one else would ever get to see them ... I took this book along as holiday reading matter a couple of years ago but only got about 40% into the book until the end of our holidays and when we returned I filed it away and forgot to continue. Time to remedy this now after it has been brought up here, I guess ...

Many Skylark releases were reissued on Tampa. BTW, Chewy, I'd love to take that Big Boy 78 rpm off your hands but am afraid shipping costs alone would be prohibitive these days.

Yes you did - thanks!

OOOhhhh .. Chewy ... don't be so one-track-minded ... You NEED to see this in the context of the times. WEST COAST 'n' all ... Of course they were just having a ball doing THEIR version of what Big Jay McNeely and others did on the Coast in the early 50s (R&B and their honkers were BIG there in the early 50s and did attract a white audience too - see the recent discussion of the 1951 photogrpah of Big Jay McNeely by Bob Willoughby on this forum), and Rumsey et al. just tried to show they had the chops to outhonk any WHITE honkers if they felt like it (there IS some gutsiness and down-to-earthness present in the black R&B originals that escapes the white bunch but I for one like what they do anyway - and what Rumsey and his gang did was not "gutbucket", BTW. "Gutbucket blues" would be more like that "blues in the gutter"). There even was a spliced remake titled "M.B.B." ("More Big Boy") by them used on other Skylark releases, and the "Lighthouse all Stars Vol. 3" LP on Contemporary 3508 has another one in the same vein recorded in July 1952: "Big Girl". It all was a bit like what Shorty Rogers and his consorts did soon after as "Boots Brown & His Blockbusters" on RCA (coupled with a group around Al Cohn billed as "Dan Drew & His Daredevils").

Yes, mentioning Joe Rushton sounds more like me. I remember having "explored" his presence on records at some time and this may have been fairly close to when this exchange took place in 2013 (it's one of those discussions that I did not remember right away at all when I saw it again today). So except the line you highlighted in bold everything else was not by me. It's not a big deal but if you could correct it, then - yes, MANY THANKS beforehand. BTW, it's very strange that this happened at the time at all. Because I do re-read my posts as they display and now and then I've had to correct them if the quoted sections did not show up the way I intended them to. The bottom line: Late needs to ask Jeffrcom about that Audiophile LP.

Before this thread fades off into obscurity without having ever got off the ground, here's an additon of something more off the known and familiar ... No, the below LP did not give birth to a bunch of offsprings ... Close to 25 years ago I picked up a fairly "pre-enjoyed" (but very cheap) U.S. original of "Ellington 55" at a fleamarket. A very nice (though somewhat atypical) Ellington record but though the seam splits repaired OK, the vinyl IS rather pop-n-cracklish. So when by chance a full set of VG+++ 45s (U.S. originals) that make up the contents of this LP came my way in the jazz 45s bin at my #1 local secondhand record store I jumped on it ... I still cannot quite fathom how come that jazz 45s with picture sleeves seem to be that rare (see earlier posts in this thread), at least in the US. Over here they can be found, and I have several hundred in my jazz vinyl collection myself (and picked up eight more original - 50s - jazz 45s with picture sleeves at that shop today ...). I wouldn't know where to start posting mine, though .. maybe preferably more obscure ones such as the multi-record 45 rpm albums that were not that uncommon on U.S. RCA and Capitol - and probably other labels - in the 50s but for the most part seem to have been forgotten. After all these "45 rpm albums" marketed in parallel with regular 10 or 12" 33 rpm vinyls ARE oddball formats (in the jazz field and elsewhere) by today's standards.

Sorry to say but this forum seems to have f...ed up at some point. The post from 8 years ago that you referred to MOST DEFINITELY is NOT by me, though inexplicably it is listed under my nick. Regrettably I don't own that record, and what is more, I do not have a "sax repair guy" among my contacts or acquainances as I don't play sax. No idea how this happened but I figure that at some time something in the forum contents got jumbled up during some update (or contents transfer to a new server?). (Not good at all!) Hope there aren't other mixups ...

OK, that makes sense - not "dated" in the stricter sense but less adventurous and less freewheeling. Which just might reflect the "unpretentiousness" highlighted by Nat Hentoff (i.e. just straight-ahead music with no high-flying ambitions). I agree, and to some extent this is the charm of it if you can get "into" that period. Wouldn't you wince (or cringe ) if a typical mid-60s crime "noir" movie were "updated" with a 2020s-ish soundtrack? And this is why there are bands/orchestras out there that take their cues from music of the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s and produce something that (while it is no soundalike carbon copy to fool blindfold test listeners) is unmistakably in the spirit of the era they chose but (obviously) with a somewhat modernized touch. Because even in the "retro" subculture time doesn't stand still.

In fact I found the Coral LP (reissued on Jasmine and therefore widely accessible for the past 30+ years, contrary to others of his leader dates) rather middle-of-the-road-ish too and therefore was somewhat disappointed, compared to other charts he did in the 50s. But I don't think "dated" (with its derogatory meaning) would be the term. Even more adventurous and outright jazz-oriented big bands of the 50s do sound like products of their time and therefore "dated" with positive connotations.

In what way and by what yardstick or point of reference? After all this was some 65 years ago. Two entire generations! The fairly enthusiastic 4-star DB review by Nat Hentoff finds the originals and arrangements are "clean, unpretentios and have a lot of strength. Several of those are also staples in the Basie book and while these Hefti units don't play these scores with all of the charging joy the Basiemen do, they acquit themselves very well for units that are not regularly together." Not that this review needs to be the everlasting final word on it, but maybe it's the unpretentiousness that's "at fault"? Which music hasn't "dated" (i.e. is a piece of its time to this or that extent) if you take CURRENT musical trends as the starting point? With "Lil Darlin'" and its remakes covered (see above), here's a nod at "Cute" and its impact: The small group version recorded by Horst Jankowski in 1961 was a staple on jazz radio in southern Germany for some 20 years or more. It was the signature tune of the "Treffpunkt Jazz" jazz concert re-broadcast show on SDR radio throughout the 70s and into the 80s, long after the LP with the original recording had been deleted everywhere and fallen by the wayside. So it must have been familiar to virtually every jazz listener in the southwest of Germany for at least 2 decades. It took me years from my start in the mid-70s until sometime in the early 80s when I got a cassette dub of the LP owned by the father of a neighbor friend to find out which recording this exactly was. (Sorry, it doesn't seem to be on Youtube - it's on THIS LP:) https://www.discogs.com/de/master/859789-Horst-Jankowski-G%C3%A4ste-Bei-Horst-Jankowski

Those and similar ones would warrant a separate thread ...

At any rate it's weird(o) to see this on a JAZZ EP.