Big Beat Steve

At any rate, Cannonball Adderley is off the usual tracks of what Cary Ginell would have been expected to cover. It certainly is a surprise to see his name there (to me, anyway). His work for the "Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing" book was exceedingly detailed, and as the author of The Decca Hillbilly Discography 1934-1945 and co-author of the Discography of Western Swing and Hot String Bands, 1928-1942, he left no stone unturned either. Not to mention his numerous liner notes for LP and CD reissues of Western Swing. Not that I would want to pin him down in the Western Swing corner only, but Cannonball Adderley is sort of "far" removed from that field, right? So maybe this explains that? P.S. Forgot that he also brought the words and recollections of Terry Gibbs for his autobiography into book form (but I guess Terry Gibbs was an easy assignment to handle, judging by the contents of that hilarious and light-hearted work), and judging by his personal bio on the Origin Jazz label website Ginell has been an all-out hillbilly and roots music man for a long time and has only relatively recently moved away into modern jazz fields. Makes you wonder ...

I'm currently re-reading this: One question I've been wondering about for some time (I also have the K.C. books by Ross Russell and by Driggs and Haddix): How come all the history and writings about Kansas City jazz were always about Kansas City, MISSOURI, but never any explicit mention crept in about next-door Kansas City, KANSAS? Was K.C. (Kansas) really "the pits" and nothing shaking there throughout these decades, and if so, was this all because there the reign of Pendergast did not extend beyond the MO. state limits, or was there a blind spot in the coverage somewhere? If the Southwestern territories around it (Oklahoma etc.) were bubbling with musical activity, something must have happend in Kansas (including "their" Kansas City) too? Any historians who can can shed some light on this?

When I first saw the headline of that post I was afraid this was about a discovery of the remnants of another raging narcotics gang war down there.

So I am one of the 7, then, I guess? And agreed on the 80s Savoy R&B twofers (and singles too, often) - and the bebop twofers too. Those Savoy reissues were some of those that i bought unheard-unseen whenever one came my way (funds permitting). OTOH, I cannot really recall those Bird Roost LPs on Savoy made it to our local record shops (though the major ones had glorious jazz and R&B sections throughout the 80s) - or maybe the few that did were snapped up lightning fast ...

Take out the Traditional to Swing guide if you should ever do a(nother?) radio set on the heyday of the Lionel Hampton BIG BAND and read up on what Wilson (et tu, Brute ... ). had to say about the Hampton big band then. (Sorry, we are getting off-topic )

Well, from what I was able to decipher on Discogs, the left column (at the very least) of these liner notes on the Metronome EP came from John S: Wilson's liner notes on the Atlantic LP (and it was there that I was able to check up on the missing "neurotic" word.)

What do you mean - "pedestrian"? Remember the era and the target group of these books. I have "The Collector's Jazz - Traditional and Swing" (1958), bought on a whim through eBay in a job lot of papers. Sure, it is no "All Music Guide to Jazz" thing - but could there have been in the 50s? To be honest, I find it quite in the tradition of "The Jazz Record Book" (Smith and Ramsey, 1943), and certainly other guides such as "Jazz on 78" and "Jazz on LP" issued as a (obviously biased ) guide by the Decca Group were not more enlightening overall. Products of their time but interesting time capsules anyway as they allow us to observe how the recordings were seen then. Come to think of it, and browsing through that "Traditional and Swing" volume right now, I find some of Wilson's comments on the artists and recordings quite enriching as well as amusing as they put things into perspective (at times a quite candid one). That said, and as for "pedestrian", if OTOH you can give me a hint on the existence of an "overdrive top gear jet-age motoring" record guide from those late 50s (catering to a similiar public) then please do let me know and I will go out of my way to source a copy for my "old paper collection".

Well, I certainly wouldn't have searched there ... No wonder ... My LP of this is the French pressing on Versailles - totally different cover and French (and France-specific) liner notes. And an EP excerpt of this that I have (below) on Swedish Metronome has severely abridged liner notes that begin way down on lthe left column of the original LP liner notes (as displayed on Discogs) which isn't immediately apparent if you haven't seen the LP notes. No gallimaufry, no guile for us "Yurpeens" ... (And search me why a previous owner of that EP blackened out the "neurotic" in Konitz' "neurotic relationship ..." with his alto ) P.S. Did you really mean John S. Wilson was hitting the "battle" and not the bottle? Anyway, the liner note portion you gave reads like fun.

Why? As far as I can see Catesta refererred to the Baltimore postmaster(ess) all the time when reference was made to the fucked up situation in Baltimore. Whoever got the postmaster GENERAL in in the first place in connection with Baltimore got it wrong, not Catesta. The word that Catesta may have "skipped" was a word that did not belong there in the first place.

Any hints on the album? I've browsed through the reviews in the Down Beat Record Reviews and found one more name there who seems to have had a penchant for cleverish-witty comments and plays on words every now and then. But I am not going any further with the guesswork for now, particularly since offhand I wouldn't know to what extent that reviewer also wrote liner notes ...

While we are name calling, the other name that somehow came to mind when I read your initial post was: Bill Coss?

No idea what album but was this written by Ralph Gleason, maybe?

What do you expect? Arranged by Joe Lippman (who had arranged many recordings for vocalists such as Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughn that did not exactly aim at the out-and-out jazz clientele either), and then some of these "big band" sessions (e.g Temptation) were those "with Strings", i.e. with a very non-jazz string section. Not exactly a setting that will give you a blowing Dizzy Gillespie bebop big band. But according to those who ought to know Bird was delighted and proud of that combination. So that's that ... Besides, it is all a matter of perspective. What may sound "commercial" to our (Ornette-Coleman- and Peter-Brötzmann-hardened ) ears today may not have come across as quite as commercial then.

Up - with a few additions (Estrad 1943).

Considering what Ron Rambach already charged for these many moons ago (and what eBay items netted in more recent times), the above prices do not appear to be out of this world. OTOH demand seems to be spotty and unpredictable. So far I haven't been able to shift my duplicate copy of Vol. 3 (through the ad section here) at what I think is a very fair price. I have Vols. 1 to 5 and like Chuck Nessa, I refer to them fairly often

Received my copy of the box set and Vol. 1 of the book here today. And fast transfer to "Yurp" too - mailed on 12 Aug., arrived today. Nice to see that under the given circumstances the postal offices did not goof up. A very intesting package - so far I've just listened to parts of 2 post-war CDs but it will certainly yield some surprises and new insights. Listening to Jimmie Logsdon and a Bob Graettinger chart for Stan Kenton back to back certainly takes some getting used to. I am looking forward to reading Vol. 1 and can't wait to get Vol. 2 in due course.

I listened to the title track of the Happy Bird LP this morning (mine is a French license pressing on Musidisc, though it uses the Charlie Parker Records cover artwork) and find it very mono-ish. I then compared it to the CD reissue of the same record included in the 30-CD "Charlie Parker Records Collection" box set that hit the market a couple of years ago. Beyond the usual superficial aural differences between vinyl and CD the CD sounds just as much like Mono to me (though the thumbnail image of the LP cover on the CD sleeve does read "Stereo-Pact"), except that I am under the impression that on this CD on the right channel the sax is a wee bit more "buried" among the rhythm section compared to the left channel where the sax is a little bit more prominent. The difference isn't huge and to my ears the mix is the same left and right. So no stereo. Not even a rechanneled one.

BYG did such an awful lot of releases (among others, they are one of the older Savoy reissuers) that I think it is impossible to generalize. What exact release number, year, pressing, country, distribution company listed on the back cover, etc. are your LPs from? I have a handful of BYGs (reissues) which I would date as late 60s/early 70s pressings and I cannot find anything wrong with them beyond what could be attributed to the condition of the record in general.

RIP. Incredible that it is already 22 years that I had a record cover and his autobiography signed by him at a concert in Britain. He must have been a very approachable, down-to-earth guy (as told by friends from Strasbourg who had run a fanzine in the 80s and got into contact with him for an interview and kept in contact for quite a while).

I sincerely and immensely admire the work you put in these discographies and can only applaud your efforts, but from a USER's angle (at least the way I am used to using discographies), there is something I find inconvenient: Why list all the issues and reissues over and over and over again for each track of one and the same session? Wouldn't it make much more sense if the common issues and reissues (often entire sessions are reissued in their entirety or sizable bulks from one session are issued/reissued on specific releases) were listed for the entire session behind the tracks (like conventional discographies such as Jepsen and Bruyninckx did for ages), i.e. the actual labels and numbers behind the first teack and then "identical" signs behind the tracks listed underneath. This would make it much easier to see at a quick glance which issue or reissue actually includes the entire session. Or else list only the original issue and first-generation reissues in this way, and then "Complete session also on ..." UNDERNEATH the full track llisting. And then (AFTER the complete track listing): "track 1 also on, track 2 also on etc." afterwards to cover other (incomplete) reissues. BTW, IMHO "sampler"-type reissues that include only 1 or 2 tracks from a 4- or 8- or 12-track session (that has been reissued in its entirety multiple times) and otherwise feature unrelated recordings could very well be dispensed with. Unless a given track can only be found on, say, one or two of these scattered issues/reissues (such as some of the V.A "theme" albums on Pacific Jazz in the 50s). I realize with the explosion of the quantity of reissues through the decades this is getting very difficult but the alternative would be to have monstrous quantities of lines of text after EACH track (which would take up an inordinate amount of lines and therefore space even for a simple 4-track session, not to mention LPs). And it would make it very hard to see at a glance where the collector can find the entire session. This is no criticism, just a detail that has kept me wondering, not only with your discographies but also with numerous other fairly recent online discographies (maybe complied using Brian? Who knows?) These detailed splitdowns for each track do make it hard for the collector to see quickly which is which when.

O.K., and now you add the definition of "operational determination" and "differential determination" to make it really clear.

The one of the Medallions?

Ha ... you made me snicker there ... As an OFF-TOPIC side note, this is exactly what neighbors down the street more than once complained about with regard to a succession of American (military) people who, finding it more comfortable (and prestigious?) to "live on the economy", rented a next-door apartment in a multi-apartment house down the street here (the nearest US post and their place of work is about 3 miles from here, so this apartment was passed on through several US Army families through the years). "Inconsiderate", I think, is the word. None of them were missed over the years when their respective tour of duty ended ... Too bad, an occasion missed (or several, rather) ...

Aah ... I was half expecting that if something very obscure of that kind would show up it would be on the Red Saunders Research Foundation site.

Yes, a very interesting story. Too bad no airshots have been preserved.