Big Beat Steve

Sounds treachereously like the Savoy material reissued on the "Brothers and Other Mothers" twofers. (Reissue) Credit to whom credit is due ...

Thanks. I'll keep my fingers crossed, then.

A quick question to those from Florida: I have my eyes halfway set on an item on US eBay that is located in Boca Raton, Florida. No music item, but not bulky at all. Will fit in a small and relatively lightweight parcel. According to you who live in the State and to your experience, what is the current USPS situation shipping-wise? What is the probable risk of an item being stuck forever in some distribution center there and not actually leaving the area (let alone the US) for ages? Thanks a lot in advance!

I doubt it. Parent women (some men too, I guess) who are CONVINCED that their offspring can do no wrong at all just because he/she just happens to be THEIR offspring is a not so rare phenomenon over here (and I doubt this is unknown in the US). Made worse by the same kind of parent women who insist on driving SUVs as "parent taxis" through our suburban streets (that often are not really suitable for that kind of show-off tanks) although they are not even capable of really handling them (i.e. they don't know shit about where their monster starts and ends ).

There were three Duke Ellington "The Brunswick Years" LPs on the (Swedish) Jazz Information labal (CAH 3001 to 3003) - reissued in 1989.

I agree - thinking about it, that aspect of "cross-pollination" ought to have been given more coverage.

Judging by the sequence of the above links, Matthew Shipp sure worked himself into a temper.

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.