Big Beat Steve

Am not familiar with Basie Straight Ahead (my Basie collection fizzles out with some of the Command label recordings of the mid-60s and then starts with the Pablos again) but thanks for bringing up On My Way and Shoutin' Again. It might well be time to relisten again (particularly since I personally do like the Hefti charts for Basie, including the Atomic LP). But this will take some time. I still got about 10 LPs worth of Basie to listen to (which were part of a huge secondhand vinyl buying spree some 6 weeks ago, including some 20 Basie LPs, about 2/3 Old Testament adn 1/3 New Testament). As for recommendations of that 60s period discussed here in the most "recent" posts, strange that most should limit themselves so much to studio sessions. One live coupling (released under the The Great Concert title on the (French) Festival label) I find quite exciting are the concert recordings from the Hammersmith Odeon (London, 18 Sept. 1965) and the Juan-les-Pins festival (23 July 1968). These two concerts have also been released individually on separate records.

I know and I understand. But as always - if you do it, why not do it right? BTW, according to the jacket - and yes, contrary to contemporary reviews - the title IS "Midsömmer", as if Lewis figured an "umlaut" makes it look more "foreign". Why, I wonder ... But I realize this picky criticism comes from a non-Anglosaxon angle.

My impressions after a first re-listen (by one who has never found much in Third Stream as I still consider it a dead end of in the long run incompatible genres if your preference is to see the full vitality and swing of jazz preserved, even in its coolest forms): It's an interesting exercise but the horn men (as opposed to woodwinds) really make the difference and bring it off. (And yes, Lucky Thompson is impressive in this setting. And Little David's Fugue is nice.) These soloists may well have triggered my buying decision: "Let's give it a shot and see what John Lewis does if he has to accommodate jazz horns" Otherwise I find some of the classical/third-streamish sections a bit lengthy (though if you take them as somewhat special mood pieces ... ). And the "Swenglish" Midsömmer title is and remains silly (or should I say inept, particularly for an erudite composer?) if the composer wants to convey that "Swedish holiday" feeling as per the liner notes. It's either "midsommar" (Swedish) or "midsummer".

Amazing ... I just checked and noticed I actually own a Verve original of this very LP (MG V 8131). Don't remember where and when I bought it but I must have bought it not only because it was very affordable (vinyl is fine and shiny but cover has pretty bad water staining) but also for Stan Getz, above all, and in fact everyone EXCEPT John Lewis. Will put it on my "spin next" stack now. So thanks for bringing this up, TTK! But this ... "Aaron Sachs was on that album, so I asked him about it. He said he was sitting there practicing Bach on the flute, and everyone else was getting high or something on the break. Then John Lewis asked him what he was doing, and he told him. John Lewis thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah, maybe I should try that some time!", as if it never occurred to him before..." ... OUCH!

Thanks ... Luckily my reading knowledge of Spanish (and a wee bit of Catalan) is good enough to figure out at least the essence of what he wrote in Valencian (though it did require a lot of concentration ). Writing about something that you THINK you are intimately familiar with (Jazz which orignated in the USA) without having the feel for national or regional specificities (such as Spain in this case) is a VERY dangerous thing indeed! Particularly if you have an agenda (beyond the core subject of the biography) to maintain and to make the narrative fit your agenda. So this review does not come as a huge surprise and makes this book another one of those "ivory tower efforts".

Just out of curiosity: So what WAS your impression of the earlier Montoliu bio that you wrote about last January?

Sorry, couldn't think of a better thread title ... And I realize it may be heresy to some around here .... (but so be it ... 😁) What I really am wondering abouot is this: All the world is drooling all the time about the summum of summums of presentation of the Mosaic box sets, including their booklets, in particular. Which in the case of the booklets is an important aspects to me with any box set (regardless of the label), and of course I do admit the class of the Mosaic products as such. I do not own too many Mosaic sets so I cannot really compare too many booklets. But what I do have (and have seen) makes me sit up and take note at times ... Case in point: Some time ago I purchased a NM secondhand copy of "The Complete Blue Note Forties Recordings of Ike Quebec and John Hardee". Fine music, but the booklet is slim and comparatively "basic" (but fair enough, after all it's only a 4-LP set). But what baffled me even without having fine-combed every word of the text is that the contents do look like at least the proofreading stage of the booklet was decidedly sloppy. An erroneous cross-reference that makes it look like the original sequence of the text was supposed to have been different, and errors/typos in the captions and release numbers quoted ... Surprising for a Mosaic set ... Certainly nitpicking in the eyes of some but after all we are talking Mosaic, not just any random PD reissue label. OK, so this set dates back to 1984, but I wonder ... Did others notice as well that production and attention to detail in the booklet contents improved noticeably over time to eventually become sort of the "definite word" on the subject matter covered by the respective box set? But that it DID take time for this improvement/"learning curve" to happen?

Yes, judging by the quantity of Herbie Mann records in the secondhand crates (though not so much in recent times anymore) he must have sold very well over here too.

Sorry, I can't, except to say that they included certain strata of "the media" (music or other). But I did not pay sufficient attention to the persons. And the situation may well have been different from country to country. Certainly these writeups were a flash in the pan but they did happen. Much like with Jazz Rock and, then, Fusion in the 70s. Except that a case can be made IMO that the jazz-cum-rock combination did bring about some interesting "crossover" results. Even if the rock part involved was not all that "advanced" or "progressive" at all but sometimes just meant "rock with horns" sailing under the jazz flag, for example. But what was and is odd is that the same type of jazz persons had shuddered (even in retrospect) at basically similar crossbreeding that happened decades before with R&B , and again scoffed loudly when Punk or R'n'R musicians turned towards Swing and Jump Blues in the 90s (yes, that "Retro Swing" subculture again ). As always, some acts were caricaturesque (but there certainly were hardly any among them that were as insipid and sloshy as certain Fusion "elevator music" sounds ) but others carved a niche of their own that took things in a new and different direction. Even if only for a while and/or only regionally ...

@Rabshakeh: Yes I would not mind some of the smoother excursions of Turrentine et al. either. There are quite a few instrumentalists out there (though not Kenny G) who are quite palatable as "jazzy background" music. What I strongly object to is all those out there who (particularly during the period that "Smooth Jazz" was all over the place) insisted and went out of their way to mediatize that "Smooth Jazz" now was what "Jazz" (i.e. ALL of jazz) was all about and that "Smooth Jazz" was the savior and future of jazz and whatever ... Ouch ... Yikes ... Just like I never felt that "Fusion" (or even Jazz Rock) ever was the beginning and end and future of all jazz at any given moment. They all were/are just ONE substyle among many. These sweeping generalizations cooked up by the media and interested parties (and not so few jazz listeners who all of a sudden felt they were in the epicenter of the action) always grated enormously on me ... As for Connick and consorts, I still feel their "merit" is that they were/are one way of acquainting a younger generation with a style of jazz (or jazz-influenced) singing that without these "intermediaries" would come across as all too outdated and less accessible to the young'uns.

At any rate Harry Connick jr. was/is fairly pleasant swing-like listening that might well have opened up the ears of a younger generation of listeners to Frank Sinatra and similar acts and orchestral accompaniment sounds and might have gotten some to move on to ... who knows who else in jazz ... This would be one way of easing these "jazz newbies" gradually into "real" jazz because all of a sudden a certain brand of jazz will no longer sound that strange or old-fashinoned to them once they have been exposed to Connick, Bublé or whoeever ... (And they all are a notch above the "smooth jazz" fad that for a while was touted by certain media as what "jazz" was all about). But of course this won't work (and probably didn't work) if a certain kind of "jazz" diehards blasts them at once because this kind of swing or jazz was not "advanced" or "art music"-ish enough to THEIR tastes ... And since you refer to specifically to the 90s: Remember how many among what I'd call the "jazz establishment" outright dismissed whatever options of broadening the listener (and therefore buyer) base there were when the "Retro Swing" movement of the 90s made a splash ... Some of this subculture still continues to this day, though on a much smaller scale. But when it made the headlines many among those who saw jazz as nothing but art music to be performed to a seated public at concerts but not as entertainment or even dance music (horror of horrors! ) claimed this music was no good, just noise (an accusation levied at jazz itself decades before so nothing new under the sun), instrumentally insufficient, too much rock in there (even Punk! Horrors again! ), lacking depth (and whatever other put-downs they were able to think of). This certainly did nothing to get more people interested in "jazz" and entice them to eventually progress beyond the acts on the Retro Swing circuit. Pity, because there WAS an audience ... and the door to jazz WAS - and is, for that matter, open in that corner because Retro Swing did attune the ears of many to certain styles of "real" jazz ... I still feel that exposure that introduces people (by offering a common musical ground that the newbies can relate to) instead of ALIENATING them from the genre would help a lot. Particularly since style-wise the jazz scene has for decades not just been fragmented but rather splintered into countless sub-genres that not even within the hardcore jazz fans very many embrace in their totality with the same intensity throughout. Just like in the Rock world and its many, many facets ... I remember the comment of a neighbor (who is in his mid-40s) when we casually discussed musical preferences and I mentioned my intense interest in jazz. His reply essentialy was "Jazz? All that really is too weird and all bizarre for me. I can't get into that." I do wonder what kind of "jazz" he had been exposed to (or should I say "subjected to"?). It cannot have been jazz styles like those of Louis Armstrong's All Stars or Count Basie or Woody Herman or Ella Fitzgerald or - yes - Joe Turner or Louis Prima, nor George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, and probably not even Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool (et al.) or Klaus Doldinger's Passport either ... But of course if you shove any of those free or avantgarde or post-whatever acts down these people's ears as a first "confrontation" with jazz and proclaim that this is what "jazz" per se is ALL about then this kind of reaction by those "outsiders" is fairly inevitable ... And "jazz" WILL remain a niche within niches ...

Ah ... my mistake ...

I am not quite sure what you mean by "only covers up to 1986". Some weeks ago I hit upon the Billboard archive on the Worldradiohistory website (that Cbianchi pointed you to now) after having discussed that mag with a fellow collector interested in the 50s: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard-Magazine.htm#50s However, to me it looks like it does go on beyond 1986. A random click on the link for an early 1988 copy yields this, for exdample: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/80s/1988/BB-1988-01-09.pdf

Quite true. In general I shy away from "lists" thrown out in the wilderness at random, particularly since they all too often aren't just "recommendations" but have a "you must hear these otherwise you're nowhere" tone to it. Which is why I cannot take those "100 records you must hear before you die" books etc. too seriously. I rather prefer lists of recommendations compiled specifically as a reaction to clear-cut questions about recommendations for this or that artist and/or style. One such list that is on this forum is a lengthy list of recommendations for a "core record library" of Soul Jazz records compiled by our forum member The Magnificent Goldberg. Clearly a sensible, down-to-earth list compiled by someone extremely knowledgeable (BTW, where are you these days, MG? It would be nice to have you around again)

I recently scored a very affordable copy of "Trane's First Ride" (Oberon 5100) that feature him with the Dizzy Gillespie Sextet at Birdland in early 1951. I haven't listend to it yet but FWIW the liner notes mention "big chunks of Lester Young" as a discernible influence.

Thanks. That sounds like a definite answer. A pity anyway.

Thanks to both of you. @Niko: It was definitely the book/large-sized folio by John S. Wilson that I saw in the 70s. I checked it online and the late 60s/ealry 70s "zeitgeist" artwork/layout matches what I remember. Besides, the sources I found online say this was published by some US Information Services agency (which makes it a prime candidate for being displayed at an Amerika Haus, doesn't it?). The book by Dave Dexter was published prior to this, and maybe John S. Wilson picked up some information from there. Interesting to learn about the "Tenor Saxophone Styles" sheet music collection. The sources of this collection probably remain a mystery. @mhatta: Your link (to a page from the "Jazz where it came from ..." book) is exactly the one that I found again the other day as well. I do remember the layout, i.e. the page shown there is what I saw in the 70s (the "Hi Heckler" sheet music reprint I saw defintely was not a full-page facsimile). Seems like we are turning in circles right now.

At one of my visits to the library of the local Amerika Haus (when these still existed here) during my later schol days in the second half of the 70s I browsed through some folio on the history of jazz that was on the shelves there and included a facsimile reprint of a tune called "Hi Heckler" credited to Lester Young as the composer. (Checking online now, this folio must have been "Jazz - Where it came from ..." by John S. Wilson.) The amusing name of that tune stuck in my memory and I told myself that some day I was going to get the recording. But I never saw it anywhere on any LP or CD through the decades. Internet information also is scanty, and one concrete reference that I found elsewhere was in the Lester Young bio by Lewis Porter (from 2005) that included the tune in the list of existing solo transcriptins, but with a mention "from no known recording". Which may explain things but is odd - how would this have been transcribed, then? Now the other day I received a copy of the "Lestorian Notes" discography and bibliography of Lester Young by Piet Koster and Harm Mombach (published in 1998) and checked there too. But no trace of "Hi Heckler" there either ... I don't know, of course, to what degree this discography still is totally up to date so I am wondering ... Given that "new" airshots, live recordings or jam session documents surface all the time from all areas of jazz, is there any Prez expert who happens to know if there is indeed a surviving recording of that mysterious tune anywhere after all or if there definitely is no such thing and never was? Thanks in advance.

If this was so then that footage would have been here somewhere in between (as per the link I provided in an earlier reply). Does this appear plausible? 61 28. November 1970 Stone the Crows - Danger Zone Colosseum - Take Me Back To Doomsday Fotheringay - Too Much Of Nothing Muddy Waters - Blow Wind Blow Muddy Waters - Honey Bee Colosseum - Tanglewood '63 Stone The Crows - Love 74

No, never - but the cover seems to be a "Concert Hall" product. So another Jazztone/Concert Hall Society combination.

The Fletcher Henderson alumini LP and the Cootie & Rex LP that were mentioned in post-war swing-style big bands thread started by Rabshakeh, for example, have been reissued by Fresh Sound on vinyl in the 80s. And AFAIK the rights to Dial (that according to various sources Jazztone acquired in the 50s) apparently have long since passed on elsewhere. Which is why Spotlite reissued so much in the 70s and 80s.

That's two of the four I was talking about ...

Amazing that Jazztone still holds such mysteries to even seasoned collectors today. Maybe the perspective and awareness were rather different over here because the label was advertised and promoted EXTENSIVELY throughout the printed press over here (even in magazines not even remotely dealing with music) as a mail-order source in the 50s and probably was a fairly affordable godsend to many interested in this music. These Jazztones usually are not overly expensive over here whenever one comes up, and even in case I already have the music elsewhere I pick them up just for the period fun of it. The most common one (relatively speaking) is the "Jazztone Sampler" (catalog no. J-SPEC 100) that figured in those ads in the 50s and apparently was the one 10" LP sent out to interested parties as an introductory offer, even if they did not take out a subscription. I have the U.S., German, French and Swiss releases of this one just to document the little differences. As for the labels that were part of Jazztone, at the start of this thread about 20 years ago Brownie mentioned "Guilde du Jazz" for the French releases (which also had the piano player logo and label but all-French texts on the labels and sleeves and - contrary to Wikipedia - does not look like a simple distribution deal but rather like the actual French version of Jazztone). Sometimes a French variation of the "Guilde du Jazz" releases existed on the "Club National du Disque" label as well. And then there also was the "Concert Hall Society" label that was not limited to classical music (cf. Wikipedia) but also encroached in the Jazztone field of operations. Sometimes you get both Jazztone and CHS pressings with the same release number but different letter prefixes, and sometimes you see Jazztone vinyl inside a CHS sleeve. Basically Jazztone reissued recordings from various labels ranging from Dial to then-contemporary Vanguard releases. And there were a fair share of sessions made specifically for that label (so the originals were on Jazztone). Contrary to what others said in this thread years ago, I cannot really find the pressing quality that bad for a budget label. At least several notches above Crown and even later reissue labels such as Ajax, Ajazz etc. (Maybe they did not stand up that well to user abuse, but I guess most were bought by non-discophiles so this may explain that). BTW, there were numerous Jazztone EPs as well. A miniature vignette of the generic Jazztone EP sleeve (some of their EPs had specific sleeves) can be seen in Optatio's avatar. As for the record club thing (as an extension of book clubs), AFAIK this continued for quite a while AFTER the Jazztone heyday. Both the USA and the UK must have been rather strong on this. I remember seeing ads for some of these clubs in magazines even throughout the 70s (but their - limited and MOR - selections advertised really would have turned me off). So no big surprise about the existence of these clubs here at all. @TTK: The "Modern Moods" cover art (on the 10 and 12" versions of this LP) was indeed the generic cover art (in different colors) Jazztone used for a long time right from the start (with the J-SPEC100 Jazztone Sampler).

According to the Web, it was on ARD from 1968 to 70. But you did not miss anything. For some reason the name of the show stuck in my memory, and years later (after I had started collecting, including Merseybeat and "all the rest"), I remembered it again, and the name stuck even more because it was sooo perfectly, absolutely "square" (play on words not really intended but unavoidable ).

"Betty's Beat-Box-Haus"! I very dimly remember having caught glimpses of this show on TV here and there as a kid (without really understanding or even digging it - I was not even 10 years old then) and this discussion of the "Beat Club" brought back these memories. But no - Betty's house was no competition for the Beat Club - never!