General question about discographies

[bertrand]

I was thinking about the new Ray Charles DVD in Brazil which has foootage of Tina Brooks. To the best of my knowledge, the music has not been released separately on an audio-only CD. Yet, in a way, this is a performance that belongs in the Brooks discography - it's definitely an important piece of the puzzle, because it's his only 'wide-audience' exposure (The Sermon is a distant second) and it's also his last-known recorded performance.

Should it become a common practice to include these types of DVD-only performances in discographies? Is anyone already doing this (and pardon my ignornace if they are)? If one of the purposes of discographies is to make fans of a certain musician aware of every known performance captured in some medium, then I would think this would be a good idea. I would have never known about the Ray Charles DVD if it was not for this board.

Still need to get a copy, BTW. I'm just swimming in backlog.

Bertrand.

Edited February 16, 2005 by bertrand

[bertrand]

Looking at the Andrew Hill discography by our friend relyles hosted on Mike Fitzgerald's jazz discography site, I see that at least one TV broadcast is listed.

I hope this becomes more and more of a practice. Of course, since right now I'm working on a Wayne Shorter discography, I just gave myself a hell of a lot more work to do! Plus with him, there's a bunch of European and Japanese TV broadcasts which I know nothing about, and I am not sure about how to get this information.

Maybe I need to rethink this idea

Bertrand.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Include everything.

Mike

[MartyJazz]

As Mike says, everything has to be included if only for the fact that the audio portion of a VHS or DVD release can easily turn up one day on a CD. I copped a commercial VHS copy of Monk's appearance on Japanese TV back in May 1963 and then saw the audio portion subsequently on LP and then CD. Now I can't swear as to which issue was actually first released, but what's the difference?

[Rooster_Ties]

If I were doing one of these, here would be my priorities...

First priority would be to include all legal commerical releases, in any format (audio or video).

Second would be grey-market material that's been "released" in any kind of semi-professional packaging (bootlegs, and such).

Third would be private recordings of any sort, that are in circulation, or held by even just a very select number of collectors. I would also include unreleased recordings that are still in the vaults.

But as Mike said, "include everything", is the way to go.

[relyles]

I also say include everything. I know for a fact that people like Rick Lopez who maintains the very informative sessionographies for Sam Rivers, Marilyn Crispell, David S. Ware and William Parker also includes any known videos/DVDs.

[MartyJazz]

I also say include everything. I know for a fact that people like Rick Lopez who maintains the very informative sessionographies for Sam Rivers, Marilyn Crispell, David S. Ware and William Parker also includes any known videos/DVDs.

Maybe you can PM me with RL's email address assuming you know it. I have a slew of private Sam Rivers from when I hung out at Studio Rivbea back in the '70s and Sam personally loaned me his open reel tapes of his sets to dub. I also copped quite a bit of Sam off of WKCR and other radio broadcasts back then.

[medjuck]

Include everything.

Mike

That's what the guys who do Duke Ellington discographies do. As a result the discographies run for several hundred pages.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Which is fine - especially when you give up the antiquated printed page and deal with the nearly infinite storage of the WWW.

Books are great, but discographies have been severely limited by the constraints of keeping details onto the size of one page and keeping the number of pages down to accomodate publishers/printers and purchasers.

Duke Ellington is the most-studied jazz musician. But he's not the only one who should receive such scrutiny.

Mike

[medjuck]

Agreed. As I just wrote on another thread:

I wish all discographies were on-line and accepted help from readers.

[Harold_Z]

Include everything.

Mike

I agree.

[EKE BBB]

Books are great, but discographies have been severely limited by the constraints of keeping details onto the size of one page and keeping the number of pages down to accomodate publishers/printers and purchasers.

That´s why Timner´s "Ellingtonia" doesn´t include releases... and even so, it runs for several hundreds of pages.

[Daniel Andresen]

Every performance should be included regardless of medium-That's the way my three main discographies work and that's the way it should be!!!

[EKE BBB]

Every performance should be included regardless of medium-That's the way my three main discographies work and that's the way it should be!!!

That´s what I also think, but there are some scholars/critics/biographers who think that only widely distributed private recordings should be included. In their opinion, the listing of almost impossible to get tapes, creates some insane collectionism.

[Daniel Andresen]

"In their opinion, the listing of almost impossible to get tapes, creates some insane collectionism. "

Yes but imagine the joy of finding some never realeased session and making a small V beside itn your discography (It makes my day).

Now imagine you've got something that is not in the discography

A It irritates!!!

B You start wondering if the session details you have are correct.

C If you are a "Collectorhollic" like myself you write it in the discography which is very useful but usually it ruins the looks of the discography.

Give me the most complete discography possible and I'll figure out how to get the impossible.

[relyles]

Maybe you can PM me with RL's email address assuming you know it. I have a slew of private Sam Rivers from when I hung out at Studio Rivbea back in the '70s and Sam personally loaned me his open reel tapes of his sets to dub. I also copped quite a bit of Sam off of WKCR and other radio broadcasts back then.

I do have it, but I can just as easily give you the link to his site, which has the email address at the bottom. http://www.velocity.net/~bb10k/. His sessionographies are pretty thorough and it is possible that the sessions in your collection are already included.

[MartyJazz]

Maybe you can PM me with RL's email address assuming you know it.  I have a slew of private Sam Rivers from when I hung out at Studio Rivbea back in the '70s and Sam personally loaned me his open reel tapes of his sets to dub.  I also copped quite a bit of Sam off of WKCR and other radio broadcasts back then.

I do have it, but I can just as easily give you the link to his site, which has the email address at the bottom. http://www.velocity.net/~bb10k/. His sessionographies are pretty thorough and it is possible that the sessions in your collection are already included.

He does list a lot more than I have but nevertheless, checking his extensive list against mine, I came up with 8 dates during the '70s that I have that are not on his list. So I guess I'll get in touch. Thanks for the link.