Big Beat Steve

Looks like sombody out there is afraid of alienating people from Corona, CA, or drinkers of a beer brand of the same name. As if the virus went away if it was linguistically associated (by inference) with a foreign place (through such an artificially constructed "name") and not with a place that MIGHT (mistakenly) be understood to be "'murrican". Ho hum ... In common lingo it's and remains the Coronavirus (or Corona virus, if you prefer). Covid-19 or whatever is the technical/medical term. That's all.

I've been thinking about this too. There aren't many record shops I'd REALLY want to go to but I'd like to so I'll see and find out how they handle things. Wearing a face mask is no problem, but I wouldn't want to be rushed because- say, only 3 or 4 are allowed to enter at one time and there are more waiting. (Normally this is no big deal because apart from special action days you always have plenty of room between customers and no risk at rubbing elbows with the nearest peruser. But do we know in the current situation?) But it IS a shop where you have to take your time to make the rounds. So if they want to rush me they can keep their records for the time being. I have a slightly uneasy feeling about browsing through the records that obviously are touched by everyone but either you do it all the way or you don't do it at all. With THIS kind of goods there are are no in-betweens. Besides, when you shop for your groceries (and no, I don't wear gloves there and nobody else does either around here), even if you really try to avoid picking items and then placing them back, it DOES happen. and with others too. And there NEVER is ANYBODY to guarantee you that the one who just browsed the same rack 2 minutes before and had second thoughts and put back the pack you now are taking is NOT loaded to the hilt with little Covids. So there you are ... But hand sanitizers and gloves? Come on ...!!! How often would you want to sanitize your hands? Every 10 LPs handled? As for gloves, I hope anyone all out to wear these when goign to any kind of shop or public area where surfaces have to be touched realizes that beyond any "feelgood" effect he just postpones the problem of potential virus contact - or else he'd have to change them (in such a manner that no bare fingertips get into contact with any glove surface) every couple of minutes all day long.

Exactly. What i wrote in another Corona virus topic last week still holds: "Yes the Bundesliga is supposed to start up again but this is not the best role model or signal to everyone else out there. Apart from the fact that it is a very slippery slope (one 2nd league team will be out already for the next 2 matches because the entire team and staff have just been quarantined again for 14 days after 3 positive cases detected) it will make others in the entertainment field wonder "why them, why not us?" Let's face it, their monetary clout with the "deciders" was decisive in enabling them to get back (even if playing to crowds of zero). Ill feelings are bound to come up even inside the sport: On Saturday I caught a lengthy discussion on French radio where a soccer representative complained bitterly about why they had to shut down (as one of only 5 countries in Europe) whereas others such as Germany etc. were able to start up again, leaving French clubs in a weakened position etc. etc. This does NOT bode well overall. "

Compared to other restrictions it's no actual hardship of course but those working there and those visiting the place are wondering what good this is supposed to be really doing. Now how long IS this virus clinging to non-animate surfaces after all? Considering that we're not at Day 1 of the epidemia, one should think that this should have been tested and analyzed throroughly by now. After all it is an important aspect of how to manage everyday interactions everywhere. The problem is that all by itself details like this do not mean much and are a nuisance at worst but in the overall picture they add up to those who set the rules and restrictions just scrambling around in rather a headless way. This does not really increase the feeling of security among the citizens and will make it even harder ensuring compliance with the rules and restrictions that REALLY are necessary. My better half works in the health profession (dentist's assistant) and the way the professional federation has been issuing do's and dont's and caveats on how to run the job at a rate of about three times per day that went one way, then the other, then contradicted each other and explicitly revoked what had been said the day before and above all were wildly impossible to implement when catering to the patients at all (e.g. can YOU imagine a dentist keeping a mandatory 1.5-meter distance from his/her patient during the treatment?) then this does leave you with a not so favorable impression of how these things are being handled. And according to what she hears from doctors and their employees in other medical fields the story isn't much different there. Now this spills over to other areas of everyday life now that they are trying to reopen everywhere. Remember the list given by another forumist above about businesses that can operate curbside retail? Often you have a conflict of targets that is getting more and more acute there. Example: Clothing shops allowed to open again here have been heard to forbid the customers to try on their garb (strangely enough, not every shop - don't ask me why)! O.K., I perfectly get the reason behind this but can you imagine our better halves falling for that? I guess mine wasn't the only one to say "What's the point, then? If it's so I can order online anyway and won't have to go through the face mask hassle." This does hurt the business of the shops, of course, and opening up under these circumstances will not enable them to get back to normal for a long time to come. As for the masks, remember I mentioned my wife works in a medical profession, i.e. she has been wearing those masks in her daily job for years and therefore knows what these masks do but above all don't. (BTW, she and her boss - the doctor - do find the FFP3 ones do choke them, so no way of wearing them for longer periods at a time) In her view what they are supposed to accomplish currently by everyone wearing them (including all those home-made ones) is getting treacherously close to what you call a "placebo". We do wear them anyhow in all those places where they are mandatory (shops, public transport) but it would be nice if what the public is being told to do would make sense even to those with insider's experience (such as those working in the medical field). @Brad: Yes the Bundesliga is supposed to start up again but this is not the best role model or signal to everyone else out there. Apart from the fact that it is a very slippery slope (one 2nd league team will be out already for the next 2 matches because the entire team and staff have just been quarantined again for 14 days after 3 positive cases detected) it will make others in the entertainment field wonder "why them, why not us?" Let's face it, their monetary clout with the "deciders" was decisive in enabling them to get back (even if playing to crowds of zero). Ill feelings are bound to come up even inside the sport: On Saturday I caught a lengthy discussion on French radio where a soccer representative complained bitterly about why they had to shut down (as one of only 5 countries in Europe) whereas others such as Germany etc. were able to start up again, leaving French clubs in a weakened position etc. etc. This does NOT bode well overall.

T.D., the sense of irony is there alright. Although you'd find it hard to muster yourself if you had lived in a country where you'd have run the constant risk of being exposed to much, much more by this "grandma's favorite grandson singer" of the late 60s and 70s. Anyway, it made the day for a friend of mine who is all for this kind of weirdo cover versions by German-language pop singers of the 60s. With this YT clip she'll be off to a great start into the new week at the job. TTK, may I respectfully suggest, though, that in your laudable quest for new stimuli for jazz to thrive you do include something somewhat more meaty as well. The blues ain't dead!

Karel Gott? He cannot have been THAT exotic(a) Sounds like "Kalinka" with him ... You're really pulling everyone's leg here.

To add ridicule to the ridiculous (as far as everyday handleablilty and practicability is concerned), requirements over here in the current opening-up of more and more businesses specify e.g. that shoe stores are required to put every pair of shoes tried on by children (as prime undetected transmitters of the virus??) and not bought to be put into a 72-hour "quarantine" before thy can be brought out again for someone else to try on. Similarly for public libraries - books returned to the library have to be quarantined for 48 hours before they can be put back on the shelves for other library users to pick and borrow. A friend working at one the other day sent a pic of the stacks and stacks of returned books stowed away in the quarantine room. Bizarre! And so on and so on ... Now that shops are slowly being allowed to open again under specific conditions I've wondered about paying a visit to our #1 local used records store again. But I decided to skip it. Even if customer presence was thin and keeping your distance was not an issue, how about this browsingest of all browsing businesses? Do I have to tell the clerk at the counter which records I touched and picked and put back in so he can quarantine them too? And I wouldn't like to be told to leave because I have outstayed my authorized in-shop time. I am all for being very, very careful at this time and keeping a low profile (and will continue to do so for myself to the extent possible) but if those politickers out there want the restrictions to be observed scrupulously by really everyone they will have to make them so that they actually are feasible in REAL everyday life.

What about "Basie's Beatle Bag" IYO?

That doesn't quite sound like Frank Sinatra but more like Jimmy Durante.

Like Pim said ... it's rather unpredictable now. Small parcels i have sent to France recently took and are taking a lot longer than normal (though even the past there have been outliers in the '"slow" and "fast" directions) but the French recipient of one of them told me today that this happens even inside his country. A larger letter mailed from a place just 150 kms from his home inside France took FOUR weeks to arrive. OTOH, I received a smiliar larger letter from Austria today only 3 days after it had been dispatched. So one really never knows, do one?

No doubt, considering his other books such as California Cool and East Coasting that follow relatively clear-cut lines. So it is all the more unfortunate IMO that his Blues cover art book is rather unfocused (except for the disproportionate accent on Prestige blues subsidiaries) and has so many blind spots. As if somebody had thrown together his (no doubt substantial but very personally colored) blues record collection and took pics of the covers and then lined them up at random. The field he set out to cover in the Blues covers book just is too wide NOT to have any structure - or maybe even one along the lines of the Jazzical Moods book - not the same categories, of course, but a set of categories that do telll a story across the wide field of the blues).

I bought it at the time it came out. And honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed. On the one hand, the cover artwork selected is a bit latter-day-ish - very little from before the early 60s (blues LPs may have been comparatively rare then but not THAT rare) - and the selection of the labels and styles of artwork is a bit lopsided too to my tastes. The lack of any "theme" layout fo the contents does not help either. But above all, the selection of the major part of the artists is rather old hat and overly tradtion-minded to those who appreciate the ENTIRE spectrum of "da blooz" . It's as if the authors in most cases had decided "if the artist would not have been invited to The American Folk Blues Festival tour he ain't no bluesman". Not that I would have wanted 60s/70s "white blues" albums in it but there would have been a fair bit of R&B-ish albums and their cover art to feast your eyes on. (Nothing at all from King or Savoy, for example, was included, and as the authors did go into the reissue years there would have been plenty more labels to consider).

Your pic doesn not show up here but it would be a coincidence if it was the same. It's just a compilation reissue on the cheapie Italian Giants of Jazz label mostly made up of recordings featuring Navarro for Blue Note, Savoy, Prestige and Dial (all of which - and more - I already have on vinyl). The kind of compilation you buy cheaply at record sales for "minor uses" such as in-car listening. Great music anyway.

I read that last winter and found it very interesting too. It's all fictional, of course, but there are enough actual facts and characters woven into the plot to make it a story that COULD have happened that way.

Hee heee .. the musician speaks ... I bought the book when it came out (though Scarecrow Press usually frightens you off price-wise) but I found the musical analysis sections really heavy stuff for a non-musician and not easy to digest ... So this is one book where I have skipped quite a bit so far, partly because so far I just never got around to REALLY sit down for lengthier times to take in the recordings with the book in hand, following up all the writings note for note (though OTOH that Fats Navarro CD in my car is one of my favorite musics there, not least of all because of the perfect blend with Tadd Dameron's writing).

Totally forgot about Scott Joplin. I have a few Biograph LPs by him and James Scott with piano rolls transferred to vinyl for reissue. But discounting vinyl reissues of piano rolls, I find I also have this one with recordings dating back to 1900: https://www.discogs.com/de/Various-Ragtime-Cake-Walks-Military-Bands-Ragtime-Orchestras-Coon-Contests-Blues-And-Jazz-Volume-2-1/release/6295213

Not counting the Really The Blues? Vol. 1 CD set by Allen Lowe (too obvious), it's this: An original 78 of this one (Orchestre Tzigane du Volney - sous la direction de Maestro Lensen, Paris, on French HMV GC30728, recorded in 1912):

You are providing a very interesting overview. Let's face it, Mike, seeing how far you are already involved into all the details you'd be the ideal candiate to tackle the compilation of a discography.

Somehow the figures on the cover artwork look familiar from elsewhere ...

Paywall again. Of no use to "furriners" Anyway (and without knowing if the author did include these), I'd nominate Mary Osborne Terry Pollard Jutta Hipp Billie Rogers Kathleen Stobart

Regarding the books you mentioned, how would you rate (by comparison, maybe) the following books as INTRODUCTORY books on the subject of Afro-Cuban music? - Latin Jazz - The Perfect Combination, by Raúl Fernández (Chronicle Books) - Cubano Be Cubano Bop - One hundred years of Jazz in Cuba, by Leanardo Acosta (Smithsonian Books)

Isn't it Candido CamEro (but CHEVY Camaro )? Anyway - happy birthday!

Same here. Mail sent.

The Discogs entry seems to have the answer: Old Town was the distributor for this record, i.e. (probably) for the Barry label. So whoever entered the label credits on Spotify got it all wrong. But your topic title did have me puzzled (like everyone else, I guess): Had I missed some discographical detail? What was Prez doing among Bob Gaddy, Hal Paige and all the bluesmen on Old Town?

Second (third?) the recommendations above. Apart from the Chronological Classics series and the Mosaic the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra recordings, in particular, have not really been reissued in comprehensive form. As I still am primarily a vinyl man I went that way before the CC series was around and carried on later on, snapping up whatever I found to fill the gaps. In addition to older reissues on German Brunswick (The Golden Swing Years Vol. 8) and UK Coral (Jazz Heritage Series No. 5) the later French/U.S. "Jazz Heritage" series LPs as well as the "Big Band Bounce & Boogie" series LPs on (UK) Affinity give a fairly good summary of the Decca sides by the LUnceford band. Of course you end up with a fair share of duplicates. The Vocalion sides of 1939 were on (UK) CBS Realm Jazz 52567, for example. And then there were a couple of "collector's" reissues that semed to be geared specifically to fil the gaps left by the usual (Major) suspects: "Takin' Off with Jimmie" (Tax m-8003) and "1939-1940" (Two Flats Disc TFD 5.001). Ther latter reissue as well as a Chronological Classics CD I picked up to fill more gaps, however, made me realize that you do not really need everything by the Lunceford band unless you are an inveterate completist: The Dan Grissom vocals really are very much an acquired taste and his singing style IMHO has dated badly (some of the Andy Kirk band ballad vocals are a similar case). And the arrangements aren't always much to write home about either, with that rickety-tick rhythm going on behind some of the Grissom vocals, as if to ape the sweeter sweet bands of the day. So if you are fine with the classic swinging instrumentals and the vocals by Trummy Young and Joe Thomas and do not need everything that can save you some purchases and a bit of an ear-ache.