Big Beat Steve

That's quite possible. Those reel-to-reel units were all over the place as THE home recording medium in the 50s and 60s. Not audiophile throughout, not cheap but something to save your bucks for in many circles. I remember copying a few reel to reel radio shows from such a device onto cassette in the early 80s. No problem with a suitable adapter. But I have never owned a reel-to-reel unit myself (compared to cassettes they WERE unwieldy and fiddly and the nostalgia bug had not bitten). Which may have led me to a blunder (of sorts). When I bought a virtually complete collection of 1953-90 issues of the German JAZZ PODIUM magazine about 14-15 years ago the seller also asked me if I was interested in buying a reel-to-reel tape recording of the Stan Kenton concert in Berlin in 1953 he had made as a teenager when he attended the concert. I declined, not owning a playback unit and knowing that at least part of the concert had been released on vinyl. It may well have been a mistake, though (but i did get the program booklet of this concert along with the lot of mags ).

Yes, about 1998. a friend had one in his car. the first time i actually had one. I found this very practical and I still used cassettes in my cars then (until I bought my current car new in 2012, in fact). I still play cassettes - to a limited extent - in my late 50s cars, BTW, but do figure shifting to CD players). As for the launch of those K7 ("compact cassettes" as they were originally called), the first ones were marketed here in 1966 according to my catalogs, including playback units and recorders. Add-on devices to be connected to the car radio to be able to play the cassette via the car system were also available from that time from a scant few manufacturers (Philips was among the first). Car radios with an actual built-in cassette slot (as produced up to much more recent times) were listed from 1969. But reel-to-reel playback devices were still FAR more numerous among home audio devices then and for several years afterwards. Cannot find many traces for those fat, huge 8-track cartridge tapes in these catalogs, though. They really must have been a niche thing over here.

Maybe easier for Europeans because "cassette" is and was the word throughout. Including in many non-English languages where the pronounciation is more or less the same. Less ambiguous than the US "tape" which often is NOT used in its full form "cassette tape" and in itself does not tell you if you are talking about "reel to reel" tape (very widespread before cassettes came along and even for some time afterwards so if somebody had told me he copied it to "tape" in the 70s or 80s this might as well have meant he copied it to reel-to-reel tape), 8-track cartridge "tapes" (culty retro items now, maybe, but never really got off the ground in Europe) and the fairly long-lived "cassettes", i.e. CASSETTE (or K7) "tapes".

Reminds me of my days of copying music from radio (and VERY cocasionally from LP) onto K7. To know how far to wind the cassette if I wanted to listen to specific tracks or only parts of a side of a cassette I always indicated the starting and ending numbers as shown on the counter of my cassette deck while the cassette ran form start to finish. Worked OK, though of course only exactly for the particular deck in question, and if you had reset your counter to zero in the meantime and started at zero at the beginning of a track in the middle of the cassette this count only told you a track went on for 25 digits in the count. So if you make a note of these figures when playing your cassette all the way through you should be able to see where you are at any point (even during a track) while the cassette is running when you rip the contents somewhere else (provided the K7 runs on the same medium - having a counter - that you used when you played the K7 to note down the counts). Just an idea ... (a very old-school one, I know, but as long as there are K7s ... )

You never been sniped at eBay before? Happens regularly and has probably happened to everybody who's been on eBay. Don't presume others aren't as sly as you are in their bidding strategies.

For years? For decades! I remember hearing this "TIger Rag" to my amazement and fascination on a local jazz radio show (and taping it on cassette) in the late 70s or early 80s. It must have come from the below LP which was the release most widely avilable around here (I bought my copy a couple years later). https://www.discogs.com/Charlie-Parker-Live-Sessions-1947/release/2305342 This broadcast even figured in the selected discography of Ross Russell's "BIrd Lives" (listing Spotlite 107 as its vinyl release) which I had bought during a school trip to London in 1976. I'd love to hear the Rudi Blesh "Moldy fig" tracks too. The label looks like that of an S-D (Steiner-Davis) 78.

Then go on and read "The Jazz Scene" too. Just to continue into the (musical) side of the matter.

With me it is not a matter of never listening to them but of just postponing listening to new purchases (that were bought when the occasion presented itself and in the knowledge that they DID fit my tastes) when required up to the time I felt/feel in the mood for that particular style of music. When I am on a West Coast Jazz listening binge, for example, I know I won't really and fully appreciate listening to a newly bought Ernest Tubb LP. And vice versa in all directions of styles. So it' s postponed. But every item's time will come. Overall, just by sheer statistics I KNOW there are loads of records in my collection that I will probably never listen to again for the rest of my life. But I have no idea which ones they are (because listening moods and habits are not totally predictable into the long-term future) so they are keepers. (For the time being, anyway ... ) I'd guess this is the case with many collectors with larger collections out there.

I was very, very, VERY reluctant to make the transition and held out for a long time well into the 1990s, spurred both by the fact that early CDs often used to be more expensive here than comparable LPs and offering not that much more music to offset the higher cost and that this coincided with secondhand LPs dropping in price (noticed particularly during my trips to London and its record shops in the 90s) as many seemed to unload their vinyl in favor of CDs. I knew I could not hold out forever and did in fact buy the Bear Family box below as one of my very, very first CD buys long before I got a CD player as this was right up my alley and I KNEW I'd never get this music in any other form, originals being rare and pricy and much of the contents never having been released before. So I decided to grab it while it was available, postponing listening until some time later (little did I imagine that this item remained in print for very long time): https://www.discogs.com/de/Various-Deutsches-Jazz-Festival-19541955/release/3829499 I got myself a CD player 2 or 3 years later (1993 or so), finally makng the plunge because the LP racks in the shops kept shrinking fast and more and more reissues in niche fields such as R&B, Jump Blues and Western Swing made their FIRST appearances ever on CD. So it was CDs or none at all. (This also was the time when the Chronological Classics CD series were in full bloom and they were very tempting too.) To this day I still prefer vinyl if I have the choice, though.

Looks like one of those Italian series from the 80s to me. Vaguely remember that series from the racks in the record shops.

Just out of sheer curiosity: There was a time in the pre-digital days when (put in an oversimplified manner) the sound restorer would individually tape off pops, crackles, scratches and other "out" sounds from a slooooow-running tape of the track to be restored and thus eliminate this foreign noise to the extent possible at all. Time-consuming but would this be possible today and with today#s technology with voice-overs too (if somebody wanted to go to that extreme trouble)? I've often wondered if something could be done about this sort of "foreign noise" in the case of basically interesting recordings where the announcer (or whoever ...) talks right into the tune/music.

No doubt they picked this up from the Jamaican Sound System DJs who went to extreme excesses in trying to guard their secrets and "advance knowledge" vs their (purported) competitors. Can happen even with DJs in more modern times. But the music itself still was the real thing throughout and not something MARKETED from the start as something totally different. So these things are not comparable at all with what the thread starter is getting at. That first one you show is amazing. Flyright? not surprising. They indeed packaged this in the typical artwork style of the Flyright and Krazy Kat labels that reissued a lot of blues and R&B obscurities back then. This one would have fitted right into their line of releases by The Great Gates, Charlie Gonzales etc. and many other obscure artists from the 50s and no doubt would have fooled me too. Pianists seem to have been a favorite in this field. I remember a jazz radio show along these lines from sometime in the 70s. Might have either been around Carnival or Halloween when the show host played an entire show of piano boogie "field recordings" by a "newly rediscovered and previously unrecorded old master of the 88s" from somewhere in the honky tonks of the Deep South who went by the name of ALEX CLAMPSAVER. Who?? Well, at the end of the show the host gave it away ... just a spoof and an anglicized version of the name of famous German boogie pianist AXEL ZWINGENBERGER (those who are familiar with German around here will understand and appreciate the play on words in this "literal" translation of the name). Fun anyway ...

You got a link, maybe?

4 of them are on Classics 1445 ("Buddy De Franco 1949-1952". Bought it years ago (when some Classics CDs came up for sale again after the demise of this series) as his MGM recordings were difficult to access elsewhere (though not all of them are that essential or even all-out jazzy). Time to listen to this particular session again so thanks for bringing it to everybody's attention.

I'm sure it did, though probably not always for his whining, with him having died in November, 1977. And since "whining" seems to go with "berating" here, I wonder how big an artist one would have to have been so as not have been kept back by this. Or were they? Charles Mingus, anyone?

I understand very well. Visitors every now and then marvel at my music room where one entire main wall is taken up by most of my vinyl (and the opposite wall by my music books and magazines). However, I also happen to move in circles where collecting records as part of the music hobby is not such a rare thing, so some friends have substantial collections too (though not quite as much as I have accumulated). OTOH, there are some visitors (who are very welcome anyway) to whom I'd not really show my music room - just to avoid the reactions you describe. As you say, I also limit my expenditure elsewhere (without any economic burden on my family either) and don't need an upmarket, expensive car or the latest electronic entertainment gadgets, overly expensive garb, etc. (Though to be honest, my "other" hobby - 50s cars and the spares and literature that go with them - does take up a lot of space too but the main investments have been made long ago and this hobby has in part paid for itself through sometimes intense parts swapping etc. Obviously that stuff is outside the house except for the "old car papers" - where I have severely cut down my buying in recent years too ). Having a room all to the music is ideal and I was glad to be able to furnish our house like this but you can get carried away too - or misjudge how fast the shelves tend to fill up. For quite some time I had my 12in LPs stuffed way too tightly (having run out of space) but last winter I finally shifted my 78s to the room next door, shifted my 10" LPs into where the 78s were (all this rearranging involved much more work to free up space for the 78s in the first place but that's another story ). I now have quite a bit more looseness and free space on the LP shelves and hope this will last me for a while. As for unplayed LPs, I try to give my purchases at least one listen before filing them where they belong and this usually works out within 2 weeks or so after buying even when I grab bulks at special sales, but I now have a (small) stack of LPs bought in March, July and September that I still haven't listened to (they are nice to have and it's nice to know you have them but they have not yet made it to my top listening priorities since).

Well, they WOULD BE "P.D." in Europe.

Being the Basie fan that I am, I MIGHT even be tempted by those for completeness sake (and bouts of analytics ) if I came across them dirt cheap but as it is I am quite happy with the six twofers with the master takes.

At any rate it's much more to the point and it nails the problem. There are alternate takes that are sufficiently different to capture your ear at once and there are those that need "analytical" dissecting (and maybe in fact in-depth liner notes to make you aware of what to listen for ) to appreciate the differences at least passably completely. Not always an approach one fancies in listening, even if it is NOT just a case of "background muzak listening". Often it would be better if they placed the alternates separately from the master takes. Which HAS been done, particularly in the CD era, BTW. But of course then there are those who don't like THAT either.

Agreed (in MOST cases, not all). 2 takes one after another are OK (particularly if by an artist or band that DID vary their output) but 3 or 4 each time? There have a been a number of occasions where I prefered sticking with a "complete master takes only" reissue for this very reason. What I also find annoying at times is when they include studio chatter (of little relevance) on an occasional track (or more often) for no good reason. Showing off that they have been the first to dig up some original tapes? I cannot see the point either of leaving in the take announcements - as on a Hank Penny CD on the Westside label bought some time ago) where Syd Nathan is heard anouncing in a very formal voice "Master xxx take Y" on at least half a dozen tracks.Just this and nothing else. What for? As far as vinyl goes, i find that the CIRCLE label was one of the unnervingest. 4 different tunes to one entire LP with countless alternates and even false starts, breakdonws etc. per track (I am exaggerating only slightly). Picked them up occasionally anyway if VERY cheaply. Sometimes you end up with funny stuff anyway. I once bought a Sonny Boy Williamson II LP with Chess recordings that for some reason had a VERY lengthy nonstop version of one tune including false starts, studio chatter and an alternate (or so) and was clearly marked "Not suitable for airplay" on the cover. Small wonder ... Sonny Boy at one or the other point seemed to have become disgusted with the proceedings and can be clearly heard to speak his mind: "Li'l bitch .... motherfucker'" .... Mine is the German pressing and not that this would have mattered at the time over here (record bought in 1977 or so when heavier LP stuff was around - talk about "casual" listening ...) and regardless of why anyone would play the full "in-the-making" version of a Sonny Boy tune at all even on a late-night radio show but I can very well imagine the radio station manager of some US station throwing a fit when his DJ tried to spin this on the oh so "wholesome" all-family format radio program somewhere out there. Ha! HA!

I doubt that this was a matter of having a "thing going", at least as far as Vogue was concerned. No record execs snuggling up with each other in some back room. Blue Note also leased Vogue recordings for US release in their 5000 10" series (and French and UK Vogue, in turn, issued some BN 5000s with thier own cover artwork). So it rather looked like a matter of working out international distribution deals at a time when this apparently was cheaper/more efficient than importing/exporting. Just like Metronome releasing in the US through Prestige. And an "affair" (there you are again ...) that went both ways: Metronome distributed a LOT of Prestige recordings from the "classic" hard bop Prestige days in part of continental Europe (and in the UK Prestige was on Esquire at that time). For quite some time: And in other directions too: Metronome also distributed and license-pressed Atlantic, for example. When you come across Prestige and Atlantic EPs from the 50s and early 60s here they are very likely to be Metronome pressings.

The Coleman Hawkins "Papermoon" record also is one that was leased from VOGUE in France. So this should explain why it is not listed in Mercer label discographies. It wasn't recorded for Mercer, just reissued by Mercer. Available later on vinyl on Prestige 7824 ("Bean And The Boys"), so there's your Prestige connection again.

I was saying "some", not "you.". I agree that these and other acts are the flesh on the "major-name" and "big-star" bones of music from that period. Lem Davis is a relatively famliar name from other reissues but his Prestige sides seem to have been overlooked constantly. Considering the common denominator in the line-ups of these and other rare sessions, maybe someone might want to do a "Complete Teacho Wiltshire on Prestige" reissue for a starter?

If the discography in the (Japanese) "Prestige Book" (Jazz Critique 1996 No. 3) is anything to go by, then there are not really a huge number, but quite a few anyway (a couple dozen) in the singles series released by Prestige. The record listing (in numerical order) seems to list the line-up and recording dates for those 78s only that apparently had not been reissued in other forms later on by Prestige. Not quite correct, though - the Gene Ammons tracks had been riessued on the "The 78 era" twofer. And a couple of the others have been reissued on other labels since. The two Ralph Willis tracks (from Prestige 919 - 2nd series) are on Document DOCD-5257, Rudy Ferguson's "Cool Goofin'" (Prestige 798) is on the "It's Jamaica Jump Blues Time" compilation (Fantastic Voyage FVTD214). And the Zoot Sims session from Jan. 23,1953 was included on Blue Moon (yes, Fresh Sound ) BMCD-1040. And so on, probably, if one checked closer ... Plus, some of them fall into the jump blues/vocal group category and might be sneered at by some jazz purists.