Early 20th century music - help, please.

[John L]

the 1919 James Reese Europe's are not the prime ones to listen to - they are intersting but you really need to hear the recordings from 1913-1914 - hard to find, however -

That would be those listed as by the Castle Orchestra or some such, right? I've been looking in vain for any kind of retail compilation of that stuff for years now. Any suggestions other than going the file-sharing route?

Jim: If you can find it, this 2-disc French compilation on Fremeaux includes a few of the best early James Reese Europe tracks:

There is other material of historical interest too.

I have to admit that I haven't listened to this collection in a mightly long time.

There may be a lot to learn from these early recordings, but I think that we also need to be careful in how much weight we put on them for our understanding of jazz history. If only we could hear what wasn't being recorded at the time. I have a feeling that much of it was a lot more interesting than what we have here.

Edited March 23, 2005 by John L

[AllenLowe]

the 1913-1914s are listed under James Reese Europe - a few years ago I did some re-mastering for a project that never came out; I found some of these cuts on an old French Black and White reissue that had acceptable sound -

it's not really misleading in terms of "jazz history" because there is no actual jazz at this time - the pre-history of jazz is more than I can get into here, but the early recordings that we can come up with of ragtime song (Collins and Harlan, Al Bernard etc) are quite, in my opinion, vivid, and give a pretty good picture of what was happening (with the added early jazz recordings of the ODJB and the Original New Orleans Jazz band) - there's lots more, Gene Greene, Gus Haenschen, Lionel Bleasco - but as you see it's very difficult to get into this half-way - I have a ton of this in my own jazz history and, if things go well, there will be a boxed set appearing this May or June - as I said, it's more than I can get into here, but there's lots of recorded evidence from the time - also, Timeless Jazz had put out three ragtime volumes, and they have great stuff on it. If you like I can put together a quick discography.

Edited March 23, 2005 by AllenLowe

[kenny weir]

also, Timeless Jazz had put out three ragtime volumes, and they have great stuff on it.

This mention of the Timeless series stayed with me, so I've bought the whole lot - the series now runs to four volumes. I got 'em from Worlds Records.

TIMELESS #1035 VARIOUS ARTISTS RAGTIME TO JAZZ, VOLUME 1 [1912-1919]

TIMELESS #1045 VARIOUS ARTISTS RAGTIME TO JAZZ, VOLUME 2 [1916-1922]

TIMELESS #1070 VARIOUS ARTISTS RAGTIME TO JAZZ, VOLUME 3 [1902-1923]

TIMELESS #1085 VARIOUS ARTISTS FROM RAGTIME TO JAZZ VOL.4 [1896-1922]

It's rivetting stuff.

There's not a lot across the four discs that you'd accurately call jazz ... but you can hear it happening. There's a bustle and excitement and building tension across what is quite a wide range of music.

Through sound sometimes just bad as you'd expect, shrill and wooden playing, racist undertones (both in lyrical content and the decision-making processes of the fledgling record industry) and so on come ripping glimpses of a revolution.

Certainly, these discs provide a whole new perspective to the stuff by Morton, Oliver, NORKs and so on I already have.

Marvellous!

Edited February 7, 2007 by kenny weir

[medjuck]

How come no one (not even Allan Lowe) has mentioned That Devlin'Music vol 1? .

[AllenLowe]

when this thread started, the volumes had not come out yet - but yes, volume 1 has tons of stuff from this period - though modesty prevents me from mentioning it here -

[LAL]

I got these Archeophone releases - haven't listened to them yet.

AMG Reviews:

http://www.cdconnection.com/details/Variou..._Birth_Of/90854

http://www.cdconnection.com/details/Arthur...ury_Park/220396