Bopland

[BeBop]

This has been reissued more times than anything else in my collection.

Though the material is very good, it contains a zillion alternates, which I'm not so fond of.

If you're looking at, for instance, Backbreaker 1, 2, 3... and thinking "alternates", they're not. The original issues were on 78s. Since the recordings are far too long to fit one a 78 (3-minute play), they got spread across several, sequential 78s.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

This has been reissued more times than anything else in my collection.

Though the material is very good, it contains a zillion alternates, which I'm not so fond of.

If you're looking at, for instance, Backbreaker 1, 2, 3... and thinking "alternates", they're not. The original issues were on 78s. Since the recordings are far too long to fit one a 78 (3-minute play), they got spread across several, sequential 78s.

So they never tried to join the bits up, as in the JATP recordings?

MG

Oh, I see...

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

So they never tried to join the bits up, as in the JATP recordings?

MG

Oh, I see...

MG

Well, listening to the vinyl and CD reissues, I think they did there ...

But how could you have "joined up" a 13-minute tune on 3-minute 78rpms anyway?

You had to cut somewhere. After all this was no studio recording where they used fadeouts between Pt1 and Pt2 or whatever ...

Edited May 1, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[Bluesnik]

If you're looking at, for instance, Backbreaker 1, 2, 3... and thinking "alternates", they're not. The original issues were on 78s. Since the recordings are far too long to fit one a 78 (3-minute play), they got spread across several, sequential 78s.

Oh, I didn't know that. Although the CD came out a long while ago, its good to have a thread like this running.

[mikeweil]

They spliced together all the longer tracks originally issued on a bundle of 78's - luckily the original 16" dics overlapped a bit, but there were other problems - see Dan Marx' production notes. The engineers did a formidable job. Sound- and compilation-wise it is a great improvement over having all these tracks spread over several LPs. This 3-CD set is the only edition that has everything in one place that survived.