Big Beat Steve

Strangely enough, this seems to be true for other areas of specialist music journalism too today. I've noticed this in certain rock and Metal magazines (that I once or twice glanced at in my son's room). And a friend of mine runs a very "home-made" fanzine for today's rockabilly (and closely related musical styles) subculture, and although far from all is gold that glitters in record releases even within this subculture I found that he seems to shy away from voicing his dislikes in print. I know him well emough to know he has strong opinions (that usually do have a valid point), but his record revies are nowhere near this level. I once asked him and to my surprise he was sort of evasive, stating that he simply does not review what he doesn't like. So I guess his reviews to the tune of "not really my cuppa but to each his own" must be considered a one-star tear-up and write-down. And this although his fanzine does not have commercial considerations with powerful advertisers. But loyalty with anyone who gets something going within the subculture (even in the case of those of their items that - fairly objectively speaking - are turds) seems to be the thing to do throughout. Pity ...

The latter is one name that can easily be confused with another one among scribes from that era: Steve Race. From what I have seen by and particularly about him and regardless of what he apprently did himself later from the 60s onwards, he was a consistent pain in the butt for many on the trad/skiffle/rock side of the British music business once R'n'R started to gain a foothold there in the 50s.

I see your point. I was just figuring on the "multiplier" factor of the 60s Soul subculture within their own environment (they don't all live in a subcultural bubble of their own in their everyday lives, you know ).

It would be interesting to find out. I have quite a batch from the mid-50s to the early 60s but not a full run. At one point I stopped perusing ebay.co.uk for them due to skyrocketing shipping costs but in the end of course on online source just for reading woud do fine. BTW, while we're at it, anyone know of an online source for old volumes of "Jazz Journal"?

"Internet Archive", that's which site exactly? archive.org? I wasn't able to find it in the "Periodicals" section of that site. Did I miss something? Thanks from me too. This one seems to use the same files as archive.org. It will be interesting to see which site is better or speedier for pdf downloads.

Hoping for a really speedy recovery and keeping my fingers crossed.

Amazing! Thanks very much for that useful link. I have a fair share of the 1954 and 1955 issues of DB; so now I can check out (or even download) the missing ones too. (Better postpone it to the winter months, though, when spare time is more plentiful )

It depends on the audience/dancing crowd or subculture you are catering to. I'd have my doubts about this kind of danceable jazz being the right choice to really attract those never exposed to anything even vaguely reminiscent or those only weaned on the currect chart hits. But with those who are into 60s Soul music and the subculture of retro "Northern Soul" (to the extent this is still happening in Britain?) I can well imagine that some jazzier sounds won't frighten them away at all but rather expand the musical horizons of at least some of them. The entire field of Soul Jazz should provide a lot of musical options too. (Paging MG - where are you? )

Re- the Soho Scene - Jazz Goes Mod reissue series, check them (and their track listings) out here, for example: https://www.discogs.com/label/1218176-Soho-Scene

At a time in the 90s when I bought a huge batch of OJC reissues through a channel that carried them at a good price (and with me figuring that was the time to stock up on vinyl before everything shifted to CDs), I also picked up the "Presenting Ernie Henry" and "Last Chorus" LPs. As I recall, when first listening to them, I found his playing somewhat raggedy here and there but -superficially speaking - not totally out of keeping with what happened in recorded jazz of the latter 50s. Then, several years later, I became aware of reviews of these records (through the Down Beat Record Reviews books), with Nat Hentoff commenting on "Presenting ... " (3 1/2 stars) like this: "Henry, deeply molded by Bird, plays with passionate force, but his voice is not yet a wholly distinctive one. His tone could advantageously lose some of its frequent stridency and he would be a bigger musician if he were to blend more lyricism with this cragginess. He is, as the notes indicate, a man strong in the blues. ... The five Henry originals are attractive." The year after, Martin Williams, however had this to say in his DB review of "Last Chorus" (2 stars) and on Ernie Henry, in particular: "What is one to say about a man who did so much work - even in recording studios and even when men like Monk and Golson might have spoken up - so out of tune? And a man whose lines suffer so often from faulty execution (the solos on "Someone" and "Things" are obvious but hardly isolated cases) and bad fingering - a man whose work suffers so constantly from an apparent lack of the dexterity and musicianship to play both the style and the very runs he chose to try to play? And about the frustration of hearing an occasionally fresh idea or individual way of using a less fresh idea (especially and appropriately on the several blues here) breaking through phrases and motifs that almost anyone uses and executes better? Many profess ot hear a kind of passionate and personal beauty in Henry's playing. I confess I hear strain and incompletenes, the strain and incompleteness of a man who was not translating his feeling into music but straining at the act of playing itself." FWIW, John A. Tynan's 2-star DB recview of "Seven Standards and the Blues" was even less merciful: "If this album must be considered a legacy of Ernie Henry ... then it is most unfortunate. Were it not for the fine, all-around performances of his rhythm section men (hence the rating), one would be compelled to write off the record as almost a total loss. Throughout, Henry's playing verges on the childish (indeed there must be many high school child musicians - at Farmingdale anyway - who acquit themselves in much better style any day of the week). Kicking off the album, Henry, instrument is horribly out of tune. Then there is a constant painful straining perceptibly felt in his wholly uncultured tone and the frequent lack of necessary technique to express facilely the ideas he reaches for. The few stimulating moments, as in the blues, "Gravity", unfortunately fail to compensate for an otherwise pretty pathetic performance." Relistening after this (and as always trying not to let my listening be overly colored by reviews but just trying to take them as added impressions and food for thought) I nevertheless did see how one would conceivably arrive at such an impression of "Last Chorus". Of course tastes vary - and isn't it always a matter of taste how any music is perceived? One man's meat is another man's poison, and the benefit (or plight?) of today's knows-it-all hindsight in dismissing any such period reviews outright as "the reviewer missed the point anyway" is a highly debatable stance IMO. Not every recording matures with time or is understood only generations after and (beyond all personal preferences) later generations of listeners or scibes don't automatically or in each and every case know better. But it does make me wonder how to take such music. Was Ernie Henry's out-of-tune playing and his raggediness a personal quirk of someone who really knew what he was doing or was it really (or rather) a sign of him overstretching his abilities (even when discounting any period judgment yardsticks such as, for example, George T. Simon's obsessiveness with "tasteful playing" and "playing in tune")? Or are are there others out there now who (again in hindsight) would see these recordings as an early example of someone venturing onto the "anything goes" direction of free playing where playing in tune certainly is no criterion anymore? It IS odd ...

@Rabshakeh: I realize "overplayed" is a relatively vague term (depending on one's familiarity with or exposure to this or that style of bebop and post-bebop era jazz), but did you check out the "Soho Scene ... - Jazz Goes Mod" CD reissue series on the (UK) R&B Records label that covers (year by year - from the late 50s to sometime in the 60s) a wide range of US and UK recortdings that should hold quite a few bits that are right what you are looking for. I have only a scant few of them but find a lot of these tunes should have a groove even for those with a 60s music vibe but who claim they are not "into jazz".

Time to listen to his "Down In the Basement" compilation again now, I guess. With sort of fresh ears. BTW, did anyone ever attempt a comparison of the collections of Joe Bussard and John Tefteller (in those areas where their periods of interest match)?

Leafing once again through my archive of the Swedish ORKESTER JOURNALEN jazz magazine, the other day I came across an item (in the "Reports from the USA" column) in the February, 1956 issue that made me take note: "Fantasy Records seems to be run by gentlemen with a sense of humor. When they mail their new jazz releases they also take the trouble to include funny accompanying letters not even strictly related to the items in question. The other day we received a promo letter where Fantasy announced that in order to compete with RCA Victor they had now set up a subsidiary under the name of RCA Irving. Which of course was a joke, as the hilarious list of the titles of the initial batch of LP releases clearly indicated ...: > IRV 1 (three 12" LPs): "The Toscanini Story": - Toscanini Plays Pretty - Tosacanini at Oberlin - Toscanini with Strings > IRV2 "The Definitive Debussy" by Big Jay McNeely > IRV7 "Tristan and Isolde" featuring Chet Baker and Edith Piaf > IRV8 "German Lieder" by Dinah Washington >IRV9 "Music to Listen to LPs By" >IRV10 "Kostelanetz Plays Brubeck" >IRV11 - "Our Best" - including a.o.: "The Chase" by Gregor Piatagorsky and Pablo Casals "Four Brothers" by The Budapest String Quartet "Moody's Mood for Love" by Ezio Pinza >IRV14 "Stan Kenton Plays Music" >IRV16 "The Original Score From Up In Dodo's Room" by La Scala Opera Co. " Quite hilarious - and fun to imagine what these recordings would actually have sounded like ... The obvious question now: Has anyone ever seen this promo leaflet or a similar item from Fantasy from that era FOR REAL? It might be amusing to see how this looked in complete form, typeset and all, or what else there was from them in the same vein ...

Keeping my fingers crossed that things will improve for you and you will be on the up very soon and over this ordeal of treatment (half-witnessed this kind of treatment three times in my family through the decades - not nice ...). All the best and hang in there - beyond from your playing, your writing ON music is still being needed a lot as well! (I am writing this as I am continuing - part-time - with vol. 2 of your Turn Me Loose White Man)!

Seconded. Overwhelmed by the wealth of info (right up my alley of interest) that this site holds, I went ahead and printed out some of the chapters on "key" labels and artists one day in late 2007, but after several hours, having filled two entire ring binders and feeling kind of dizzy, I had only covered a minor part of the site contents. Then, some time later I of course became aware that these pages were still being updated every now and then so whatever I had printed out tended to become a bit outdated over time. So in the years that followed I checked out the site for reference from time to time, and then, dreading that this site might go belly up one day (it would not be the first excellent collector research site that this has happened to), during the Corona lockdown period in the latter part of 2020 I took the plunge and sat down and downloaded the contents of the entire site, copying each and every chapter and subchapter using the "Select All" Firefox feature into Word files and saving them on my hard drive and on a USB stick. Some 59 files or so in all ... Pity, though, that some of the photographs (mainly label illustrations) are no longer being displayed online. Of course I now know I have to do it all again eventually, depending on updates happening in the meantime, but at least one not all that old version has been preserved for offline posterity.

Unless you have all the singles, i.e. 78s (unlikely ...)´, don't dismiss "comps of earlier singles" outright. If you want to go the vinyl route, the three "The Thundering Herds" LPs on CBS (BPG 62158 to 62160 / CL1959 to 1961) that have the key Columbia items from the 1945-47 period are a very well-compiled package. AFAIK they exist both as 3 individual LPs and as a 3-LP box set. Other releases from the stricter "LP era" (roughly chronological) that I tend to revisit are: - The Woody Herman Band (Capitol T560) - Jackpot (Capitol T748) (Not that I would dismiss "Road Band" but I don't own that LP - yet?) - Woody Herman '58 (Verve MGV-8255) - The Herd Rides Again (don't be put off by the fact it's on the budget-y Everest label - LBPR 5003) The "1963"/"1964" LPs on Philips are also fine.

Yes, she was very high-profile in Germany back in the 70s/80s (and even later in the space that the UJRE occupied) and was considered a fixture of the German jazz scene.

See here:

I guess, then, I was a bit luckier with that label. Some time after I had bought my very first bebop LPs (the Dizzy Gillespie "In The Beginning" twofer on Prestige with his Guild and Musicraft sides from 1945 onwards which (for me) proved to be just about the ideal LP for someone trying to get into (and "get") bebop) I came across copies of the "Bird Symbols" and "Bird Is Free" LPs on the Charlie Parker Records label (real US pressings) in a local record shop that wasn't even particularly well-stocked in jazz. No idea how these LPs (which at that date - 1975 or 1976 - normally would have been long out of print) ended up there and at the right price to top , but anyway... I grabbed them (along with an LP of the Dexter Gordon Dial sides on Storyville) and my bebop exploration continued ...

Does any forumist have any information on whether Jazzmessengers in Spain are likely to get this box set in stock?

Wrong. When the EU copyright laws were revised in 2012 to extend the copyright period to 70 years instead of 50 one key element of the new copyright law was that this extension did NOT apply retroactively. I.e. whatever had exceeded the 50-year copyright period by the effective date of this new EU law in 2012 and was in the P.D. then (i.e. everything prior to that same day in 1962) was going to REMAIN in the public domain. (No, can't be bothered to search online for links to the relevant legal texts but they are out there on the EU websites, e.g. EurLex). Interesting to re-see this thread after all these years. I did not even remember I had let myself get THAT involved in all that. I must have calmed down some since ... but basically IMO it's still this (in line with some of the points raised by David Ayers): Feel free to blast Pujol but as long as his reissues are recordings prior to that date in 1962 (or as long as he DID acquire the rights to recordings past that cutoff date) they are legal by the laws of HIS country. If you don't like that and blame those who sell them outside the applicability of the EU copyright laws, OK - so tell DG, for example, to remove them from their offerings (or else ... ), but OTOH, don't be hypocritical enough either to (for example) buy Japanese reissues that state explicitly on their packagings "Not for sale outside of Japan" (such as the run done by or for Solid Records a couple of years ago).

Ted Daigle. Bob & Lucille. Ray St.Germain. Les Vote. Bob King. plus the amusing occasional R'n'R excursion by Ted Benoit ... etc ... But of course Ronnie Hawkins was right. Being American (and therefore coming from the "right" country for R'n'R) must have given him a big push.

I was of course aware of who he was on the Rockabilly scene of the later 50s almost from my early collecting days starting in the mid-70s. Though at the time it took some filtering beyond the usual comments on him and his backing band The Hawks that became The Band, an aspect that of course was blown up out of proportion in any accessible info on him back in the 70s when info on those 50s acts who were more than just footsoldiers but certainly not kings (to paraphrase one publication by Wayne Russell) relied on accessible facts for readers weaned only on then-current acts. Not much later I managed to grab a reissue LP of about half his original 50s Roulette recordings and was really smitten by his drive and punch. Some time before (groping for anything available at all by those 50s acts beyond the usual big-hit suspects in my youthful urge) I had taken my chances on a copy of his 1971 "The Hawk" album on Cotillion but cannot really say I agreed with one (capsule) biographer who claimed he "rocked better than ever" on that album. It wasn't bad but to my ears it remained a somewhat uneasy mix of Hawkins trying to straddle the fence between modernized reworkings of rockabilly classics, relatively contemporary country sounds and Southern "hard" rock backing band overtones. An "evolution" that tried to cover too many bases at the same time IMO and somehow neither flesh nor fowl overall. Anyway, I may well spin this in remembrance again (for the first time in decades) - so ... RIP; Ronnie!

Too bad ... If I had known abouot this book at the time I'd have loved to get a copy without hesitating (though it is U.S. cartoons only), but now it is firmly out of my affordable price range.

True, but the Sauter-Finegans (or Nick Travis' "The Panic is On", for instance) would be in a different league? And admittedly the "faux Floras" above are at least "nice" (IMHO).