Neal Pomea

I don't find this "fad" odd at all. Nearly all the rare music I have gotten from Joe Bussard over the years has come on cassette dubs from his 78s. And that's a lot of jazz from the 1920s-30s. Why not? It's a great medium. It's bizarre to me to compare cassettes to 8-track tapes. Cassettes had a much longer career and currency than 8-track tapes, and they still are smaller and easier to carry than cds. It'll be a sad day when I buy my next car and it doesn't come with a cassette player, just a plug in for an iPod.

Thanks for the story! I was lucky to hear Claude Williams participate in a tour sponsored by the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Arhoolie put out a CD of one of the concerts, which also included Kenny Baker, Michael Doucet, Natalie McMaster, and Brendan Mulvihill. This was at Georgetown U. and it must have been 1995 as the notes indicate. Good review on the Arhoolie site! I remember him doing a wonderful "Going to Kansas City." ETA: here is the link: http://www.arhoolie.com/titles/434.shtml

Dixie Ramblers, "La Musique Encore Encore," Cajun French version of "The Music Goes Round and Round," the song done by Wingy Manone, Louis Prima and others, on Rare and Authentic Cajun (1928-1939), 4 cd set, JSP. Nice remasters by Chris King.

Congratulations on your preservation efforts, but in a lot of cases it disappears.

Interesting remarks about Joe Bussard. I think his collection will stay in private hands. He doesn't think archives and libraries make things accessible enough. In his own way, he has made a lot accessible. What you wrote about "cultural genocide" (or disappearance) is true for Cajun and Creole culture. Those who monopolize and hoard cultural treasures for which there has long been no market -- well, what's moral about that?

The collector's item is the music, not the original lp. What did you want? The music or the artifact? In this case it's the triumph of the idea over the physical. I read that kind of language about ideas being trumped by the physical on this board when the discussion was perpetual copyright.

Good luck to you, and to anyone in a similar situation! I hope you can keep in touch with your friends from the job!

Were test pressings of 78s on shellac done for the same reason? So that if a collector had a test pressing on 78, he could assume it is one of only ~3 or 4 copies?

What label was this version of Organ Grinder on, the one with Ikey Robinson on guitar? It's not listed at Red Hot Jazz. I love that song!

You could become a "friend of the library" for just about any academic library in the Washington Research Consortium (Georgetown, George Washington, American, Catholic, etc.) or University System of Maryland (University of Maryland College Park, University of Maryland University College, Bowie State University, etc.). Some of these, including College Park, are open to the general public because they are federal depository libraries that house the print publications of the federal government.

"Will anyone be listening to our music in 50 years time?" What would they be doing, dancing to it instead?

Hope you had a good one and have an ever better New Year!

Christ was born on Christmas morn -- Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers with Frankie Half-Pint Jaxon and Punch Miller.

Quoi simmo? 'Issimo Bundys

Organisraelite Organisyouwithme?

Glad the Nationals didn't sign him. I thought that would have been the wrong move.

John Fahey and his Orchestra: Om Shanthi Norris, from After the Ball

I see it as a problem of the politics of naming. All these threads on what is jazz, what is black, what is minstrelsy, what is marriage, etc. should be in the Politics forum because they are all basically political. They all have to do with who has the authority to name things a certain way, or who can effectively bully their way into dominating the language. When I do the math, what I see is people bullying traditionalists with name-calling. The traditionalist can say simply, "That music is not jazz." The "progressive" often responds with personal attacks and calling the traditionalist terms like neo-con, close-minded, reactionary, regressive. You don't see that as bullying? The music evolves and changes. So what. That's natural. We know that. But does it improve? So much of the rhetoric employed by people who say they are just evolving the music connotes that the old music is deficient and needs to be improved. It goes roughly like this: "Your music is old and deficient. Irrelevant. We have come along and improved it. Not only that, we are going to steal the name you have given your music and use it as our own. We will call it jazz. Your old music will be discussed mostly as a historical precursor to current jazz, which is the only jazz that is alive. And not only that. If you object, then we will label you neo-con, regressive, close-minded, etc." First, the stance insults the tradition, or the traditionalist, then it goes even further and appropriates the cool terms that the tradition used to describe itself, piggybacking on the cachet associated with terms like jazz. Then it's a tremendous surprise when such appropriation is not embraced. Amazing!!! Really amazing to me. Don't you see this kind of thing happen in other genres as well? I mean, how can a musician like Ricky Skaggs talk so dismissively of Bill Monroe, as though Monroe's music was somehow primitive and basically a forerunner of modern bluegrass music? How can Beausoleil, for instance, frame itself as an improvement on the proud tradition of Cajun music by mixing in all sorts of elements that don't sound so good together, sort of like marrying a horse and a donkey to get a mule? And then be surprised that a lot of folks say "That's just not Cajun music anymore. Give me something I am used to"? Well, that's just a few words. Not much of a counterweight to the views predominating here. Thanks for reading. This is an interesting thread.

The Farr Brothers, Hugh and Karl, Texas Stomp, 1933-1944 (these are recordings on the side from their main gig with the Sons of the Pioneers). http://westernswing78.blogspot.com/2008/08...dard-radio.html These guys are terrific!

I love Franki Valli and the Four Seasons! No, more than that, I think they were one of the greatest! Sherry Big Girls Don't Cry Walk Like a Man Rag Doll Let's Hang On and then You're Just Too Good to be True COMPLETELY beyond reason. 1962-65 must have done a number on me! And even better? Dion and the Belmonts!

Slap tongue technique on clarinet a la Wilbur Sweatman and other early players also gets to me.

Something about the tone of the sax on the Jackie McLean albums from the 50s on Prestige. Was he using a cheap instrument or something?

I don't think the term "organized sports" is going to make much sense in the near future, if in fact it even makes much sense anymore to children today. Much of the leisure time of children in the United States, at least in the suburbs, is so organized that all sports will be organized sports. Kids may never know the other. They will scarcely believe that once upon a time children met informally, voluntarily, and completely unsupervised on a sandlot or an empty field and picked their own sides for teams and made up the rules as they went along, etc. --- unorganized sports-- as opposed to organized sports and extra-curricular activities assigned by protective but well meaning parents, complete with leagues and schedules and adult coaching and adult umpiring/refereeing, being chauffeured around the county in SUVs, etc., with parents' weekends subservient to the god that is the supposed betterment of their children I played organized baseball, Little League and Babe Ruth League (10-15), in centerfield, first base, and catcher. Catcher was most fun by far! Ahead of my time I got to wear my cap backwards. And I alone on my team got to see the whole beautiful field in front of me, unlike the rest of our defense.

What about the Universal Studios fire? Didn't we conclude that the Decca masters were destroyed? What will be Mosaic's source?