What 78 are you spinning right now ?

[jeffcrom]

Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys:

I'm Building a Home/Beautiful Brown Eyes (Conqueror, 1939)

The Streamlined Cannonball/Weary River (Conqueror, 1940)

Mule Skinner Blues (Okeh, 1940). The flip is "The Streamlined Cannonball" again.

I'll Reap My Harvest in Heaven/Don't Make Me Go to Bed and I'll Be Good (Okeh, 1942)

[paul secor]

Another 78 for someone with deep pockets:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BLUES-HONEY-BOY-EDWARDS-Sweet-Home-Chicago-Drop-Down-Mama-UNKNOWN-1953-ACETATE-/331054997365?pt=Music_on_Vinyl&hash=item4d146a5f75

[jeffcrom]

Recently: acoustic classical, concert bands, pre-1920 dance, and Yiddish records. Today: The great Decca Kansas City Jazz album again, plus:

Jimmie Lunceford - The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down/I'll See You In My Dreams (Decca, 1937)

Jimmie Lunceford - Well, All Right Then/Time's A-Wastin' (Vocalion, 1939). A gorgeous copy. I don't have the B side on LP or CD.

Duke Ellington - Put Yourself In My Place, Baby/The Wildest Gal in Town (Columbia, 1947). Don't have this one anywhere else either, and it's nice to hear some "new" studio Ellington that I hadn't heard. These are two non-Ellington pop songs, with vocals by Kay Davis and Dolores Parker, respectively. There's some Shorty Baker on the A side, and some Lawrence Brown on the flip.

Ivie Anderson - I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good/On the Sunny Side of the Street (Black & White, 1946). A very nice little record, with solos by Willie Smith, Karl George, and Charles Mingus.

[jeffcrom]

Been spinning lots of shellac; most of which would probably not interest many folks here. But since I'm reading Derek Coller's book on Tony Parenti, I played all my Tony Parenti 78s yesterday. To quote myself from earlier in this thread:

Anthony Parenti and His Famous Melody Boys - French Market Blues/Dizzy Lizzy (Victor, 1925)

Tony Parenti's New Orleanians - In the Dungeon/When You and I Were Pals (Columbia, 1928). The Columbia features an early example of Johnny Wiggs' wonderful cornet - poised somewhere between King Oliver and Bix.

And a two-record album: Tony Parenti's New Orleanians, Vol. 2 (Jazzology, 1949). (Wish I could find a picture online.) From the very first Jazzology session. I have this material on CD, but enjoy spinning these 78s. Given the condition and the provenance (the co-owner of the record store where I got this album was once employed by George Buck), I believe this album to be unsold warehouse stock, unplayed until I got hold of it.

[Clunky]

Lucky Thompson- --Boppin the blues/ Just one more chance-------( HMV) Swing Music Series 1949

Being an LT nut I picked this near mint UK edition despite already having a nice Victor US edition. As it turns out the UK edition probably has the edge. I can only say probably as I've not looked for the Victor , it'll be somewhere but locating 78s has never been my strong point.

Also picked up

John Kirby ---- Rose Room/ Coquette----(Parlophone ) R2806

I was both surprised and disappointed to read in my newly acquired Rust ( 5th ed.) that RR is a dub and Coquette a master pressing. In close listening RR does sound a little dustier but excellent none the less. Now that I've a good discography I'll no doubt discover more of my cherished 78s are dubs.

Final reasonably noteworthy find was

Nat Gonella------Basin Street Blues/ E flat blues----(Parlophone )

Fine British band from 1935 with NG in excellent Satch inspired voice. Undervalued

[rgodridge]

here are a few that I bought from the internet, all a little bbit beaten up!

frankie trumbauer orch - bye bye blues/louis armstrong i'm a ding dong daddy laminated parlophone issue, unbelievably clear sound and both sides are fantastic.
original memphis five - steppin out/a smile will go a long long way, not sure if the latter is by the memphis five but it is on a uk imperial record.
om five she wouldn't do what i asked her to/more on columbia, she wouldn't do what i asked her is one of those songs that culd only hae been written in the twenties..
piron's new orleans orch - west indies blues/do doodle oom, original u.s issue, still not sure how I got this, or the next one..
friers society orch - excentric/husc o'hare's super orch of chicago - san, original us gennett and plays very nicely for a pretty beat copy! delited when I found it.
and finally one I've been looking for for a long, long time.
Ray miller's orchestra - angry/that's a plenty. The accordion solo on angry is one of my favorite solos on any record, I'm not sure why but it just is!

[Clunky]

here are a few that I bought from the internet, all a little bbit beaten up!

frankie trumbauer orch - bye bye blues/louis armstrong i'm a ding dong daddy laminated parlophone issue, unbelievably clear sound and both sides are fantastic.

original memphis five - steppin out/a smile will go a long long way, not sure if the latter is by the memphis five but it is on a uk imperial record.

om five she wouldn't do what i asked her to/more on columbia, she wouldn't do what i asked her is one of those songs that culd only hae been written in the twenties..

piron's new orleans orch - west indies blues/do doodle oom, original u.s issue, still not sure how I got this, or the next one..

friers society orch - excentric/husc o'hare's super orch of chicago - san, original us gennett and plays very nicely for a pretty beat copy! delited when I found it.

and finally one I've been looking for for a long, long time.

Ray miller's orchestra - angry/that's a plenty. The accordion solo on angry is one of my favorite solos on any record, I'm not sure why but it just is!

Nice stylitistic range there. I've not come across any Piron's but I'm well acquainted to all manner of laminated Parlophone discs. Even when quite worn they tend to play better than they look. This isn't unique to Parlophones but something to do with the high quality shellac used to laminate the core.

[rgodridge]

yes, Adrian, I think it oes have to do with the quality of the materials. also laminated discs should be washed carefully if at all because they have paper in them.
I have a french (i think) disc gramophone record of mezz mezzrow, from the late 30s and it plays just as good as those early parlophones. Shame the u.k didn't keep it up like other countries did.

[Clunky]

Today's purchases ...

Fezz Williams-----------Razor Edge/ Number Ten--------(Brunswick) UK 3596, recorded June 1927, two good numbers and nothing to suggest a novelty act here.

John Kirby ---------Pastel Blue/ Rehearsin' for a nervous breakdown ------(Brunswick) UK , Oct. 1938.

The other half of the tracks of Kirby's debut recording. I'm no expert on his output but these earlier sides swing harder and feel less chamber like than say "Cuttin the campus" from Jan. 1941.

[rgodridge]

However novelty Fess Williams could be, I still really like those recordings. The jazz orical cds have tracks i return to time and time again and i have a couple of his 78s (reissues) that I wouldn't be without.
My expert stylus, after 2 and a half years of very heavy use has finally started to push into the artrage and sound terrible, so I will order a new one from them on monday, back to the wind up for now though when I want to play 78s

[jeffcrom]

As usual, spinning lots of shellac without posting about it. But here are some interesting ones from the past few days:

Jelly Roll Morton - Black Bottom Stomp/The Chant (Victor, 1926). A nice copy of this one. Listening on 78 makes you realize how well Morton understood the medium - these are both three-minute masterpieces.

King Oliver and His Dixie Syncopators - Someday Sweetheart/Dead Man Blues (Vocalion, 1926). Picked this one up for a few bucks recently. It's very worn, so although it plays with no skips, it's more of a cool object than a record I'm going to listen to often. But it's my only original-issue Oliver, so I'm happy to have it.

Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy - A Mellow Bit of Rhythm/In My Wildest Dreams (Decca, 1937). I've got half a dozen Kirk 78s, but "Mellow Bit" is the only Mary Lou Williams instrumental I have in the lot. It's a good 'un.

Mary Lou Williams - Knowledge/Oo-Bla-Dee (King, 1949). Mary Lou at her boppiest, with Idrees Sulieman, Mundell Lowe, and Kenny Hagood.

[jeffcrom]

Old-time country today; the first and third are new finds, which nicely complement records I already had:

Georgia Yellow Hammers - Pass Around the Bottle/Johnson's Old Gray Mule (Victor, 1927)

Gordon County Quartet - Walking in the King's Highway/Beyond the Clouds is Light (Columbia, 1930)

This is the same group under two different names; they were from Gordon County, Georgia, in the foothills of the Appalachians.

Scottdale String Band - Chinese Breakdown/In the Shade of the Parasol (Okeh, 1927)

Scottdale String Band - Carolina Glide/My Own Iona (Okeh, 1927)

These guys worked in the cotton mill in Scottdale, down the road from me a few miles outside Atlanta. They were a little unusual in that they didn't use a fiddle; the lead was split between mandolin and banjo.

Blue Ridge Mountain Entertainers - Washington and Lee Swing/Goodnight Waltz (Conqueror, 1931)

The great team of Ashley & Foster - Gwen Foster on harmonica and Clarence Ashley on guitar - plus unidentified others.

[rgodridge]

I have my stylus back from the expert company now, it took them less than a week to do what was neeed a very quick turn-around!
so today i have played
art tatum, emaline/afte you've gone. Mint condition but you'd never know, why do all his 78s sound dreadful no matter who he recorded for?
another pianist
bob howard swing it bob 1/2, a hilarious record from a guy who started out at first as a louis armstrong copy-cat, then a fats waller copy-cat, then sort of got a bit of his own style. This is really a party record! there are some cds of his on chronological classics and while they arn't the best music ever they are a lot of fun and isn't that what jaz is about?
louis armstrong orch: some sweet day/snowball, danish hmv from the 40s but sounds absolutely fantastic. These records by the way all came fromm ebay fairly recently and averaged at about £3 each.
mezz mezzrow et sun orchestra: the panic is on/mutiny in the parlour. This is just a joy, a rench laminated disque gramophone 78, plays beautifully and excelent music! now for some more mezz
mezzrow bechet quintet, gone away blues/jelly roll, king jazz. Not exceptional but nice playing by al concerned.
bowing the blues/old school, another king jazz record. I love bowing the blues, it has a special sound to it.
bechet's new orleans feet warmers the mooch/blues in the air. Paye quite a bit for this one as it is an original rca victor that i would say has never seen a needle, and though I didn't know that before i got it, the seler's descriptions being ague I've never seen this one before. The mooch is very, very slow, very well played. Bechet doesn't actually solo but this is the stuff I think he is best for.
I will add that some of the later bechet 78s sold by the same seller on rare non-uk or us labels went in some cases for eye-boggling money, not 3 figures but £15 or so each, I've never seen records of this period go for so much. Anybody know why this is, or just a feeding frenzy?

[jeffcrom]

Commodores and similar music today:

Jack Teagarden and His Swingin' Gates - Big T Blues/Chinatown My Chinatown (Commodore)

George Brunis and His Jazz Band - Sweet Lovin' Man/Wang Wang Blues (Commodore). Some nice Tony Parenti on this one.

Eddie Heywood and His Orchestra - T'ain't Me/Save Your Sorrow (Commodore). Really nice, with Doc Cheatham and Vic Dickenson, among others.

Mel Powell - When Did You Leave Heaven/Blue Skies (Commodore)

Mel Powell - The World is Waiting for the Sunrise/Mood at Twilight (Commodore). Powell's 1942 Commodore session is excellent - Billy Butterfield, Lou McGarity and Benny Goodman (using a pseudonym) help out.

Dave Tough - You Were Meant for Me/East of the Sun (Jamboree)

Dave Tough - Love Walked In/When You're Smiling (Jamboree). Dave Tough's only session as leader, in its entirety. Trumpeter Joe Thomas and Ted Nash on tenor form the front line.

And a Commodore album: Eddie Condon and His Band - Jazz a la Carte. One record each from three December, 1943 sessions. Max Kaminsky and Pee Wee Russell are on all three, along with a changing cast of characters.

[romualdo]

Australian 12" 78 of Leonard Feather's Esquire All-Americans

Long Long Journey / Gone With The Wind

[Chuck Nessa]

Australian 12" 78 of Leonard Feather's Esquire All-Americans

Long Long Journey / Gone With The Wind

I just had chills.

[Clunky]

Just two purchases today , space on the shelves is a limited as finance.

Roosevelt Sykes------Honey Dripper/ BVD blues ----------Victor (USA)

Earl "Father" Hines----------Reminiscing at Blue Note/ The Father's getaway-------BN 12 inch, yellow/blue label No. 5 !

My earliest Blue Note and one I'd not heard before. Hines is in great and pretty modern sounding form.

[jeffcrom]

As usual, I've been spinning lots of 78s without posting about them. In the past few days I've spun blocks of early blues ladies, Italian music, and Jewish/klezmer. But tonight, it has been Red Nichols:

Alabama Red Peppers - San/Sam Lanin and His Troubadors - My Ohio Home (Romeo, 1928). Okay, Nichols is not on this one, but it led me to play a bunch of Red's, since he's on many of the Alabama Red Peppers discs.

Kentucky Hot Hoppers - Red Head Blues/The Drag (Perfect, 1928). The Alabama Red Peppers under another name.

The Charleston Chasers - Five Pennies/Feelin' No Pain (Columbia, 1927). A fabulous record, with good Pee Wee Russell on both sides.

Red and Miff's Stompers - Feelin' No Pain/Blue Steele and His Orchestra - Betty Jean (Victor, 1927). Another great version, also with Pee Wee. Blue Steele led a hot dance band in Memphis.

Red Nichols and His Five Pennies - Dinah/Indiana (Brunswick, 1929). The discographies put a question mark beside Jack Teagarden's name on this session, but it couldn't be anyone else. He leads a three-piece trombone section on "Dinah." (Young Glenn Miller is one of the other bones.) Benny Goodman, still recognizably influenced by Frank Teschmacher, solos on both sides.

Red Nichols' Stompers - Make My Cot Where the Cot-Cot-Cotton Grows/Sugar (Victor, 1927). A larger group and a more commercial record, with forgettable vocals on both sides. But there are still good solos by Red, Adrian Rollini, Frank Trumbauer, and Pee Wee.

The Captivators - What Good Am I Without You/We're Friends Again (Melotone, 1930). Even more commercial and less jazz-oriented, but there are still short solos by Benny Goodman and Eddie Miller. This one has a nasty crack, but I won't be heartbroken when it eventually breaks.

Red Nichols and His Orchestra - The King Kong/The Hour of Parting (Bluebird, 1939). Red trying to make it in the swing era. He still sounds like himself, though.

[rgodridge]

I genuinely love red nichols and was listening to him just the other day, after at last finding an lp of the earl baker/goodman/nichols cylinders, with the nichols radio transcriptions on the other side. I've been curious to hear this stuff for years and it is really worth having.

[jeffcrom]

One reason I don't post about all the 78s I listen to in this thread - it's too much work! If I listen to a CD for an hour and feel like posting about it, I can do that pretty quickly. If I listen to an hour's worth of 78s, that's ten records to post about. So this is far from complete, but here are some highlights from the past few weeks:

A four-pocket Bud Freeman album on Decca called, for some reason, Fashions in Swing. It was later released as a 10" LP called Wolverine Jazz, since all the tunes were recorded by Bix and the Wolverines in 1924. It's in nice condition, and sounds a lot better than my LP. Couldn't find a picture of the 78 version online.

Rubberlegs Williams - Going Back to Washington Corner of 7th and "T"/Did You Ever Set Thinkin' (Haven, 1946). A nice little jump blues. The Lord discography was no help with this, but I found a Bill DeArango discography online that says DeArango and Al Haig are on this.

Bob Effros - Sweet and Hot/Tin Ear (Brunswick, 1929). A very nice, interesting little record. Effro was a hot studio player; as far as I can tell, this is the only record under his name. "Tin Ear," an original, is especially interesting - it's a multi-sectional piece in several different tempos.

[JSngry]

A four-pocket Bud Freeman album on Decca called, for some reason, Fashions in Swing.

A reference to Mr. Freeman's seemingly consistent sartorial savviness, perhaps?

[jeffcrom]

Went on an afternoon date with my wife, strolling around a suburban Atlanta antique mall. I found a few gems:

Mitchell's Christian Singers - Who was John/What More Can Jesus Do (Romeo, 1936). This is my all-time favorite gospel group. I had three of their 78s before this, but I bought them all on Ebay; this is the first of their records I have found "in the wild."

"Gotham Club Orchestra" - Red Hot Mamma/Doodle Doo Doo (Silvertone, 1924). I think I've said before that I've learned to recognize a pseudonym on an old dance band record, and the titles looked promising. A little research when I got home revealed that these sides were recorded for Emerson (Silvertone was Sears' label), and that "Red Hot Mamma" is by the Original Memphis Five, a band I love. The flip is by the Emerson studio band.

Bob Roberts - Twenty-Three (That Means Skidoo) (Columbia single-sided, 1906). An interesting vaudeville song from very early in the century.

None of these records are in great shape, but the only skips or catch grooves are on the Emerson Dance Orchestra side; everything else is listenable. I'm happy.

[Clunky]

First 78 in about a month. I've been too busy playing LPs to lift the dust cover off my Lenco ( to play shellac)

Today's find, ok I love Hawk so this counts as far as I'm concerned

Coleman Hawkins --------Bean and the Boys/ Cocktails for two--------(Sonora) 1946 rec.

Bean with Maxwell Roach , Milton Jackson et al.... ....oh and Fats N...... I couldn't resist it.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Clunky

[jeffcrom]

Nothing I haven't mentioned before -

A very nice find today: a three-record Coleman Hawkins album on Asch, with a cool David Stone Martin cover. It's Bean's 1945 quintet, with Howard McGhee, Sir Charles Thompson, Eddie Robinson, and Denzil Best. Outstanding music, with "Bean Stalking," "Sportsman's Hop," and the rest.

The only drawback is that it's on Asch. As Clunky has pointed out, their records were really noisy. Even though these records are in excellent condition, they're some of the noisiest 78s I have. Whatever Denzil Best is doing is totally lost in the white noise. Still, I'm very happy with this find - some great playing by Hawk and Maggie.

This again. Then this again:

A 1943 album of late-20s Pinetop Smith, in really nice shape. That inspired me to pull out:

Cow Cow Davenport - Chimes Blues/Slow Drag (Broadway). Worn, but quite listenable.

[Chuck Nessa]

Those "felt" albums give me the creeps.