Big Beat Steve

Pulled out this one again and am reading it piecemeal once more. Some of it is rather dated (even by nostalgia standards), some (a lot in fact) is a priceless image of that era. BTW, @jazztrain: Thanks for bringing up that Bluegrass book. That looks rather interesting for a friend of mine (a keen old-style country music collector and musician).

I know I'd pick up ANY such press kits for LPs (that as such are of interest to me) from the 50s without flinching. The sales blurb can be very, very entertaining. And from what I used to see on eBay they ARE collectable. I don't know about Marsalis but generally I'd say that with all things paper the longer they are preserved the more they will "appreciate". I remember I obtained two sets of the Pablo press kit for the '77 Montreux festival releases at a local record shop way back when the LPs hit the shops (they had a stack just set up free for customers to take away). A folder with a huge poster (styled similarly to the typical covers from that LP series, nothing that appealing but anayway ...), a set of some 6 or 8 or 10 pages of typed promo blurb and about six glossy prints of the featured artists (Eldridge, Gillespie, Peterson etc.). I hung the photos from one set on the wall in my student room for a time, then both got filed away and eventually ended up in the "music items" box of my fleamarket stuff as they really were too "recent" to keep by all means. One (the better-preserved one of the two) found a new home rather fast at an OK price, the other I dont remember, in fact it MAY still be in the box.

Good points, but the Discogs listing of the "Historical" series is a HUGE mess. They haphazardly mix the US Prestige and German Bellaphon releases (and other pressings of the same LP) instead of listing them as different pressings of one and the same release/reissue, as they (correctly) do with other LPs. .This would have given a much better overview as each release would have appeared only once in the listing linked above. BTW, the listing is still incomplete. "Trumpet Jive" feat. Rex Stewart and Wingy Manone (PR7812/BJS40159) is missing, for example. I remember this series well and bought many of them in the shops in my early collecting days (they remained in print for a long time as you may remember). A lot of these reissues were my introduction to the artists (e.g. "Mating Call"), though quite a bit of the material was also reissued elsewhere (e.g. on the Prestige/Milestone twofer series) in more compehensive form soon after, so if i had the choice I went for the twofers. The "older music" recorded for "other labels" is quite an odd mix IMO. The "Trumpet Jive" LP mentioned above features 4 Rex Stewart tracks done for (UK) Parlophone and 8 WIngy Manone tracks done for the Joe Davis indie. Where's the link there? It still is FINE music and was an ear opener at its time. E.g. the Walter Foots Thomas LP (that also had material from the Joe Davis label) and includes what still are some of my favorite late swing era small band sessions. Of course the Joe Davis reissues have long since been superseded by the LP reissues on Krazy Kat. I never quite figured out how the French Vogue releases ended up on Prestige either. This created more discographical messes. I remember I more than once pulled the Clifford Brown LPs from the bins, hoping for new material, only to find all this had also been reissued comprehensively on a UK Vogue 3-LP set that I had bought years before and Prestige added nothing new. Reissue redundancy wherever you looked ... and so much more unreissued at that time ... (e.g. the material that Prestige leased from Metronome in their early days).

You're talking about Prestige 7650 that you showed the above cover? I would have thought this reissue happend before OJC ... I bought this LONG beore there were any OJC's (at least in OUR record shops). It's the German license pressing (exactly same cover, Bellaphon label, i.e. probably pressed in the 70s) and I think I bought this in 1985 or so along with one or two other Miles Davis "classic quintet" reissues on Bellaphon.

Apart from a few other Erskine Hawkins LP, I've in fact owned the five LPs by that band that were reissued in the Black & White series on French RCA in the 70s for about 20 years now and they have been among my favorites from the swing era ever since. Just recently, though, I grabbed Vol. 1/2 of the "Complete" Erskine Hawkins double LPs from the French RCA "Jazz Tribune" series (did they ever go beyond Vol. 3/4?) at a local secondhand vinyl shop in mint condition for a price you just could not resist - figuring at that money a duplicate set of the music would not hurt. On comparing closer I found there were quite a few newbies because whereas the Black & White series gathers all the essentials, instrumentals and dance floor fillers as well as a select few vocals, the Jazz Tribune "Cmplete" volume has quite a few more vocals, not all of which are on the ballad side. While no desert island discs, their versions of "Big Wig In The Wigwam" or "Do You Wanna Jump Children", etc. are quite enjoyable too as "30s flashback" fare and deserve not to be forgotten.

You never heard of the Singleton-McCoy songwriter duo?

Check out "Charlie Parker & Jazz Club Memorabilia" (The Norman R. Saks Collection) published by JALC in 2007. It shows a Royal Roost menu as exhibit 247 but it's way too small to scan and reproduce here. From what can be deciphered they did serve chicken soup as well as Southern Fried chicken as part of the special dinner at $1.85 as well as broiled chicken, various cutlets, steaks, sea food etc. on the main menu, Hot Turkey sandwich in the "Sandwich" section etc. Exhibit 253 of the book shows the brochure shown by Makpjaz577 in the opening post, BTW.

So this coincides with the date my aunt visited the club. Regrettably I never thought of asking her about the club and the gig itself (though I guess her recollections would not have been very specific).

This may have been in the late 70s? An aunt of mine went there one " night out" as a tourist during a cruise trip that included a stay in NY. This was in April 1979 and, though not a jazz fan at all, she bought one of his LPs (MK Records 1001, looking like one of those Boris Rose things and including a collection of far earlier live recordings featuring Suillvan, Cutshall, Russell, Wettling et al. if the cover info is correct) and thoughtfully got it autographed by Max Kaminsky himself as well as a handful of his then band embers (whose names I cannot decipher). She later on passed it on to me and that platter has been residing in my collection for some 20 years now.

It IS the same tune. I am not sure it is a transcription recording (but apparently was recorded at World Transcription studios). It was issued on Brunswick 80104 (coupled with Blue Skies) and was therefore reissued later on MCA. This was on the very first Red Norvo LP I ever bought way back at age 16 or 17 - a couple of years before I snapped up "The Changing Face of Harlem" when it hit the record stores. So the Norvo version is the one that got me hooked on this tune (which IS catchy ...). https://www.quora.com/Jazz-Music-Who-all-is-playing-on-Red-Norvos-recording-of-Dee-Dees-Dance https://www.ebay.com/itm/Red-Norvo-Sextet-BRUNSWICK-80104-Blue-Skies-Dee-Dees-Dance-E-E-/323255398020

Maybe when he wrote "album" he meant to say "78 rpm album" (i.e. 3 or 4 discs making up what "album" originally meant after all) and not an "LP album" (so an LP reissue was not what he was alluding at)?

Does that Persuasive Trombone album have cover art by Josef Albers (of BAUHAUS fame) too? Without wanting to derail this discussion I am kinda surprised that you (of all forumists ) find those Command albums lousy. I've had the Persuasive Percussion album for almost as long as I've collected records (I was given it at the time but every now and then it is a nice spin) and a couple of years ago happened upon the Provocative Percussion Vol. 2 album for next to nothing at a fleamarket. Admittedly the artwork (one for the museums) initially was my main reason for picking up the Provocative album to keep the Persuasive album company on the shelf but both are nice enough loungey late-night mood albums IMHO.

(Seeing this post only now ...) Why would she have laughed at that flick? Being aware of the existence of THAT segment of motor racing (drag racing as opposed to street racing and circuit racing) as I have no doubt she was at least superficially she'd probably have acknowledged movies of this sort (there were many) for what they were - a Hollywood version (B movie class at that ..) of the real thing, and with youth, youth entertainment (both r'n'r and, in this case, drag racing) and a hefty dose of J.D. all mixed in to milk a youth trend for cash, this was the likely result to be churned out by Hollywood. As with movies about circuit or road racing too. No doubt she would have had a lot to laugh about period movies somewhat closer related to HER activities in motor racing too. (I doubt that the plot of the Carrera Panamericana-related original The Fast and The Furious of the same period had that much more substance, for example ... ) The name of Denise McCluggage rings a bell to anyone halfway interested in motor racing of that period. By all accounts she was quite somebody and it is no surprise she would have taken someone like Allen Eager (whom I cannot find "somewhat obscure" though, BTW) under her wings (typical gender roles of the day notwithstanding), and her exploits have been covered elsewhere, e.g. here: https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Ladies-Female-Racing-Drivers/dp/1845842251/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1546785294&sr=8-3 Re- Hot Rod Girl, at the bottom of this page is the line-up of the musicians who did the score: Quite an all-star line-up, some with previous experience in this particular field of R&B-like studio outings. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049335/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

Thinking about what records to dig out for this thread, here is a question I have often wondered about in this and all the other "album cover" threads: How many of the covers posted here actually come from the collections of those who posted them? (Generously enough, using a pic already available online for a record the poster actually owns will also count )

I like these sessions a lot and I can't find much wrong with Washigton either but FWIW both Ira Gitler (writer of the original liner notes) and John McDonough (writer of an update for the reissue on Prestige P-24109) find him "a bit rusty". Ira Gitler also stated in the original liner notes that Jack Washington can be heard soloing with the original Basie band on "Doggin' Around", "Somebody Stole My Gal" and "Topsy".

I certainly would not expect "academic" writing in biographies. On the contrary. I was just wondering about what the "workmanlike" attribute actually means when you get to the core of it. Maybe in the sense that given the proximity to the subject and to new source material some may feel that "a lot more could have been made out of it if only ...." (I've come across cases like this before, therefore I was asking)

A somewhat direct and open question: Would "workmanlike" be an actual, honest-to-earth description or a polite euphemism for what others might call "pedestrian"? I realize optinions of which is which may vary and boundaries are not all that precise. But I have come across cases before where interesting subjects were covered by people full of good intentions but with somewhat less than the required skills and craftsmanship in what and how they write. This can be tiring and potentially disappointing for the reader ...

It's not MY musicologist, it's "wallacebass"'s musicologist (see link in my post above). I just quoted a few statements from the sites I linked. IMHO there is a point to what he says against the term and about its etymology. But then, whatever I feel and (sometimes) write about my favorite music(s) certainly does not have any scholarly or academic aspirations. Besides, in my everyday work with what others saw fit to put to paper I've seen enough pretentiousness, hollowness, show-offiness and "just blah" (to adopt Dexter Gordon's comments about one band's music as a description of the substance of certain writings) to be unimpressed by unnecessarily high-brow terms such as these. Does jazz really need this level of academic dress-up a to have its creative processes described and put into words? (You can be precise, in-depth, "scholarly" in a positive sense of doing well-researched work and still be down to earth) Sorry, "emperor's clothes" to me ...

So ... scholarly linguists to the fore and explain the etymological relationship (or not?) between "contrafact" and "counterfeit" (a pair that immediately comes to mind). (BTW, the first link given below DOES have some etymology, including some relationship of the ABOVE pair. ) Anyway ... that term sounds rather inflated and pompous to me - one of those dressed-up terms that I'd bet one or the other self-professed "scholar" may well find impossible to NOT use once it gets repeated often enough (after all they've got a reputation to live up to among their fraternity ), rendering their blurb even more high-browishly stuffy to read. (FWIW I think I have done a fair bit of reading of jazz literature during the past decades - out of deeper interest in the subject matter, including suffering through some overly academic rambling here and there, but I cannot recall having read this term before seeing this topic, so apparently it has not made me cringe often enough to consciously remember it - so all hope is not lost ... ... and I do trust this is one term that GOOD writers projecting the feel and core of the music can do without ... ) Further random Googling indicates there are some out there who take offense at the use of the term in this context: "Suffice it to say that to me, it has a whiff of the ivory tower about it and is yet another $300 word, which jazz has enough of already, thanks." "While I approve of the idea behind contrafacts, I deplore the term, it’s egg-headed, dreary and cumbersome, utterly lacking the earthiness and humour of jazz." https://wallacebass.com/contra-contrafact/ After doing a bit of research and discussion with a very eminent musicologist, my initial thoughts are correct. A contrafact is not a tune written to the chord sequence of another tune, it is as I thought, different words to a tune. The Wikipedia entry is bogus. No surprises there as any old Tom, Dick and Harry can write stuff there and people take it as some kind of authority. -- So what would you call a tune written over the same changes? I'd call it a tune written over the same changes as another tune. Otherwise I'd have to say that every 12 bar blues (except the very first one) is a contrafact. This is an example of extreme jazz musicologist ponciness IMO. Did Bird say, "Hey Diz, let's write a contrafact of Indiana/I Got Rhythm/etc." https://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?310850-Contrafacts-Database

Same to you, and thanks for some interesting and enjoyable listening through the year. An interesting list you compiled there ...

Was finally able to open my copy at Christmas Eve too, and it made for some lengthy and very interesting browsing. Very glad I got this one. However, without wanting to nitpick, I have a few regrets, maybe due to somewhat false hopes after having read the background story linked in the opening thread and seen the documentary. 1) A bit more background info and memories/anecdotes about how the shooting went along would have been welcome. 2) Captions would not have hurt either in many cases (would have helped to avoid some of the leafing to the ID page and back ) 3) I realize the "Closer Look" section does not include all the "Frame by Frame" contact prints but I have my doubts about the selection of some of the full-size views. One or two fluffed exposures where some car drives through the scenery in mid-shoot or someone sees fit to step directly in front of the lens, blocking most of the view, may be nice to show the "in-process" stages of the photo shoot, but they could have limited these a bit. Instead I'd rather have seen a full-size view of the close-up of Pee Wee Russell, for example, and of what looks like an "alternate take" of the final and published group picture. This one can be seen on the extreme right of the cover (differences being that Mary Lou Williams and Roy Eldridge look towards the camera, whereas Prez and Dizzy look sideways). This would have been a nice one for comparison (and maybe discussions about which one would have been the bestest in the end after all ). The overall idea and concept of this book remind me of the "Charlie Parker" book by Esther Bubley (the title being not quite correct, except as a selling argument, as the other musicians of that July, 1952 Norman Granz session are also featured extensively): Contact prints first, full size next. But the Bubley book has a lot more backgrund info about the shooting and the context. BTW, anybody checked the biographies closer yet? One goof that struck me was that Rex Stewart did not die in 1972 (as stated there) but in 1967

I figured it was something like this in the case of your expert topic of Cal Tjader but I really would not expect or count on budget labels like this to go into any sort of discographical research and reprogramming (though personally I often prefer chronological reissues too). And generally speaking (as my remark was intended) I do understand the approach of those who prefer to listen to albums the way they were originally released (including those here on the forum who have stated they burn their own CD-Rs in album release order from chronological box sets). It does make sense to ALSO experience the music the way it was originally released and try to recapture the impression those original releases made. It is not the only possible approach, of course, but it is a valid one IMO.

No idea about these but I have several of their 4-CD box sets covering specific areas of early post-war R&B (Shouters, Nasty, Boogie Woogie Goodies, Fine Brown Sugar) as well as Western Swing/Honky Tonk (Swingbillies) and then their pre-1945 German dancebands sets (that you might classify as jazz, semi-jazz and not even quite semi-jazz) that were very good for what they were. I.e. if you were able to pick them up at the prices they sold at Zweitausendeins for, for example, they were fine (I even tend to like the Charlie Parker "No Noise" set as car CD player fodder). Decent fidelity, quite well compiled. The sets mentioned above of course duplicate other reissues but have some occasional rarer stuff thrown in that wasn't that easy to buy elsewhere off the shelf at that time. I've found them handy when DJ-ing occasionally as they help you avoid having to carry around an even larger number of LPs or CDs (than you bring along anyway) that you'd spin for only one or two tracks that happen to be on these compilations too. And the German pre-war dance band sets even had a rather huge share of really obscure stuff by orchestras undocumented elswehere (not even in Horst H. Lange's discography) and to the best of my knowledge had not even been reissued by Robert Hertwig on Bob's Music. Whoever compiled those German sets went to great lengths to proceed off the beaten tracks of the usual suspects.

Maybe so, but as for these "original releases", were they the FIRST-TIME releases of the tracks or were they (early) reissues of material released before (not counting the transitions from 10" to 12", of course)? It was not rare for record labels to compile an LP from different sessions (that weren't necessarily ALL complete) for their first-time release - even in the 50s. See Pacific Jazz LPs, for example. So if the policy of this reissuer is to pack COMPLETE LPs in their original release format onto the reissue wihtout any further discographical fine-tuning (not surprising, considering this is a budget label) then this looks quite logical to me. Except that maybe some might prefer other LPs if you do not reissue them ALL in one package. So I cannot see anything odd about this, not least of all because (as we all know) other reissuers get by with reissuing just the measly contents of one single LP on one CD - and nothing else to fill out (even halfway) the remaining playing time. I think us reissue listeners/collectors ought to get away from the notion that reissues NEED to be strictly chronological all the time. There are many approches to programming a platter and each one has its benefits and drawbacks.

This Atlas label compilation on the (recently) much-maligned Acrobat reissue label has two tracks featuring Frankie Laine with The Three Blazers: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boogieology-Atlas-Records-Various-Artists/dp/B00009YX7W/ref=tmm_acd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1545560388&sr=8-1 I was never much of a fan of Frankie Laine (though I somehow like his album with Buck Clayton) but I remember reading Arnold Shaw's "The Rockin' Fifties" a looong time ago and in the chapter on white pre-rock'n'roll artists he devotes quite a bit of space to Frankie Laine as the prime exponent of the vocalists labeled "belters" (which makes him sound much, much more energetic and rockin' than I had ever perceived him).