Red Allen, Calloway, Dodds, Lunceford & Ory Boxes

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Red Allen

Cab Calloway

Johnny Dodds

Jimmie Lunceford

Kid Ory

Jazz record mart is flogging a bunch of Japanese 4-cd sets on the Quadromania label for $12.99 (including the ones listed above) until the end of the month. They don't appear to be available in Britain and, from this perspective, the price seems to be pretty good.

I don't have anything of any of these guys and it strikes me that these boxes might be a good way to get into them.

Does anyone know what they're like? I'm thinking of things like:

are the contents good/representative?

are they complete in terms of what they are or a more or less random sample?

what's the sound like? (it sez they're 24bit Japanese masters - does that mean I don't need to ask?)

are there cheaper places to get these boxes?

are there better sets to get to introduce myself to any of these people?

Thanks.

MG

[Harold_Z]

I've seen them recently on Amazon for $8.99.

The tracklists are good, but not complete. The Wild Bill Davison and Bobby Hackett sets contain a lot, but not all of the things they did on Commodore (and right now I don't know where else that stuff is available. The Chronogical Classics are good but have gotten hard to find.)

I have no idea how the audio is and I wonder about legality.

[brownie]

These sets came from Membran in Germany before they were released in Japan.

Membran Quadromania (type Quadromania in the Search window)

I have not bought any of these 4CD sets but I have several of the Membran 10CD boxes (available for something like €10 a set) including the Duke, the Fats Waller, the Artie Shaw, the Piazzola and am happy with these purchases.

Edited October 24, 2006 by brownie

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've seen them recently on Amazon for $8.99.

The tracklists are good, but not complete. The Wild Bill Davison and Bobby Hackett sets contain a lot, but not all of the things they did on Commodore (and right now I don't know where else that stuff is available. The Chronogical Classics are good but have gotten hard to find.)

I have no idea how the audio is and I wonder about legality.

Thanks Harold. I checked US Amazon and found they all came up when I put in "Quadromania". So I tried Amazon UK and found them all - and cheap from the market traders. So I ordered all five for 22 quid, inc post!

That's a proper price to pay for a CD!

These all appear to be the German issues you referred to. Thank you, too, Brownie.

NOW it looks as if I'm facing a too-much-to-listen-to problem!

MG

Edited October 24, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[Harold_Z]

That's a proper price to pay for a CD!

If I remember correctly a quid is 20 shillings plus 1 pence? At least in 1969 when I spent the summer on the road (music gig) touring Great Britain. How that equates to today's euro is a mystery to me.

MG...Please let us know how these turn out...espescially the audio. I usually can tell from the tune list what session the tunes are from. And how the notes are regarding personel and dates, etc..

Edited October 24, 2006 by Harold_Z

[J.A.W.]

That's a proper price to pay for a CD!

If I remember correctly a quid is 20 shillings plus 1 pence? At least in 1969 when I spent the summer on the road (music gig) touring Great Britain. How that equates to today's euro is a mystery to me.

A quid is slang for 1 pound.

In the pre-decimal system a guinea was 20 shillings and 1 pence (20 shillings = 1 pound, while 12 pennies = 1 shilling)

£1 = €1.49 or $1.86 / €1 = £0.67 or $1.25 / $1 = £0.54 or €0.80 at today's exchange rates.

Edited October 24, 2006 by J.A.W.

[Harold_Z]

That's a proper price to pay for a CD!

If I remember correctly a quid is 20 shillings plus 1 pence? At least in 1969 when I spent the summer on the road (music gig) touring Great Britain. How that equates to today's euro is a mystery to me.

A quid is slang for 1 pound.

In the pre-decimal system a guinea was 20 shillings and 1 pence (20 shillings = 1 pound, while 12 pennies = 1 shilling)

£1 = €1.49 or $1.86 / €1 = £0.67 or $1.25 / $1 = £0.54 or €0.80 at today's exchange rates.

AHHH. Got it. Thanks.

[Chuck Nessa]

MG collects the complete Rev Gates and asks for help choosing anthologies of Red Allen, Johnny Dodds, Cab Calloway, etc?!!!!

Give me a break.

FWIW, Goldie, do the Documents include the April 25 recordings "Good Bye to Chain Stores" parts one and two?

[Hot Ptah]

Why are you guys so harsh? In my humble opinion, it's uncalled for. Someone has a question, why not answer it without making fun of them? Listener fatigue was discussed on the avant garde thread recently. I wonder if there is such a thing as posting fatigue.

[Chuck Nessa]

Maggie is a big boy and can take it.

[Hot Ptah]

Maggie is a big boy and can take it.

Why would he want to? I can take a dressing down from my boss at work, but it isn't something I go out of my way to get in my leisure hours.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Maggie is a big boy and can take it.

Why would he want to? I can take a dressing down from my boss at work, but it isn't something I go out of my way to get in my leisure hours.

It's a new dawn, a new day, and I'm feeling good. So, working backwards through last night:

HP, no dressing down occurred. You want dressing down - work for a right wing politician!

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

also Tater yr misreading-- we love Goldberg & tho' different folks battle each other for a wide variety of reasons, this ain't that... it's just nutty a guy who knows so much so well missed these, all of which except Kid Ory i consider essential, tho' as i suggest above, plopping into a big box ain't the way el clementine would go about catching up.

p/s-- i was kinda disappointed by the Glorious Female Gospel cd-- do you need/want it, MG?

Maybe, Clem. Thanks for the offer - PM me details if you like.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

hah! i was thinking the same thing Chuck. i remember when Magniloquent Goldberg first showed up here dropping hardcore gospel knowledge & I was like... huh? that's weird, man, but good. Then the Opal Nations shoe dropped at some point, & anyone who can riff on the ins & outs of all those organ discographies is aiiiight by me (& then some).

THAT SAID, CLEMENTINE'S GUIDE TO 20s & 30s JAZZ ON CD

1) stating the obvious, MG, but remember yr getting 78s, there's no need to swallow the whole load (so to speak) at once, no matter the 'bargain' pricing.

2) "24 Bits" is bullshit. Size does matter but if you can't do it with 16 (or "20"), you can't do it period.

3) Henry "Red" Allen*-- six cds of the excellent (underrated?) small-group vocal sides on (I think) the Collector's Classics (different than French Chronological Classics) label, John RT Davies, re-mast; two-cd set on old-school (pre-Bear Family et al ripoff) JSP. (Add something about Luis Russell here)

4) Cab-- The 1930-1934 JSP box of RT Davies &/or wait 'til the Mosaic Chu Berry comes. I assume you already have the crucial Diz & Cab sides, yes?

5) Lunceford-- I have the Masters of Jazz series thru Vol. 5, which took us to 1939. "White Heat" muhfuh.

6) Johnny Dodds-- get the single discs on Frog (more RT Davies) first, trust me here. You will not love or know the music better getting it in bulk. (They don't even have Costco in Wales, do they?)

7) Do You Know What It Means To Miss Kid Ory?-- not especially, no.

***

i will now listen to It's Amazing: The Glorious Female Gospel (1947-1952) on Japanese P-Vine in yr honour.

signed,

Rev. C. Lemen Tineaho & His Camp Meeting of the Air

(Atheist)

* just "Red" I always think the mandolin player.

Thanks Clem, but I'd already sprung for it. The stuff is so cheap though, I couldn't resist. And it's so cheap that, if I decide I want to look more/better into any of these guys, I shan't mind ditching these CDs or simply filing them in the garage.

MG

[AllenLowe]

some little company has issued the Johnny Dodds Paramounts, which are stupendous - ALSO - if you can find the Johnny Dodds/Kid Ory LP on EMI, reissue from the 1920s with Lil Hardin, you will not believe the sound. Somebody in England clearly found the original masters on these, and it's like being in the same room with the musicians, except it's 1927. Stunning stuff.

as for gospel, Clem, I spend my days listening to shouting, mumbling 1920s and 1930s guitar evangelists. It's truly the only time I feel I've gone to heaven (of course, I wonder why the the fuc* it's so damn hot there) -

Edited October 25, 2006 by AllenLowe

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

FWIW, Goldie, do the Documents include the April 25 recordings "Good Bye to Chain Stores" parts one and two?

I've only got 6 of the 9 Gates CDs so far. It's not on any of them. In which year did 25 April fall ?

This must be a late recording - post the Crash. This material is covered in vols 7, 8 & 9, of which I've got 7 & 8 so far.

Vol 7 is 18 March 1929 - 25 April 1930 (is this the year? If so, it ain't there.)

Vol 8 is 12 December 1930 - 2 August 1934

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

MG collects the complete Rev Gates and asks for help choosing anthologies of Red Allen, Johnny Dodds, Cab Calloway, etc?!!!!

Give me a break.

I have a very biased collection. Decided in the '60s not to bother too much with acknowledged masters because I'd be able to buy their stuff "any time". Didn't feel that would be true for Don Wilkerson, Baby face Willette, Patton, Patterson, Lazar, Freddie Roach and several hundred others. And I was often right - what can you buy on CD by eg Billy Larkin & the Delegates? But "any time" took a long time coming.

MG

PS - this isn't really clear. In Britain in the '60s, Soul Jazz was really HARD to come by. I didn't anticipate the Acid Jazz movement of the '80s, of course, which made a lot of these musicians quite popular enough for reissue programmes to look into. And it was expensive; Blue Notes cost almost a week's wages when I started work. It was '65 before I could afford a new BN. And critics hated the stuff; I already guessed (as I posted elsewere last night) that they were working for the ruling classes. Even Hobsbawm, who was (probably still is) a Red, though he understood a good bit more than the others around here at the time. So there was a certain political element in my choices. It felt like a great achievement when my mate and I had, by 1970, converted Derek Stewart-Baxter, a critic who lived in Brighton, to the point where he wrote a piece called "Green is beautiful" in Jazz Journal. (Course, it wasn't ALL down to us )

Edited October 25, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

That's a proper price to pay for a CD!

If I remember correctly a quid is 20 shillings plus 1 pence? At least in 1969 when I spent the summer on the road (music gig) touring Great Britain. How that equates to today's euro is a mystery to me.

A quid is slang for 1 pound.

In the pre-decimal system a guinea was 20 shillings and 1 pence (20 shillings = 1 pound, while 12 pennies = 1 shilling)

£1 = €1.49 or $1.86 / €1 = £0.67 or $1.25 / $1 = £0.54 or €0.80 at today's exchange rates.

Nope, not quite. A guinea was a pound and one shilling (1.05 decimal). You got the rest right Hans.

MG

[J.A.W.]

That's a proper price to pay for a CD!

If I remember correctly a quid is 20 shillings plus 1 pence? At least in 1969 when I spent the summer on the road (music gig) touring Great Britain. How that equates to today's euro is a mystery to me.

A quid is slang for 1 pound.

In the pre-decimal system a guinea was 20 shillings and 1 pence (20 shillings = 1 pound, while 12 pennies = 1 shilling)

£1 = €1.49 or $1.86 / €1 = £0.67 or $1.25 / $1 = £0.54 or €0.80 at today's exchange rates.

Nope, not quite. A guinea was a pound and one shilling (1.05 decimal). You got the rest right Hans.

MG

Yep, you're right of course, 1 Guinea = 21/-!

[AllenLowe]

LOVE Bessie Griffin - my only caution is, before ordering from Roots and Rhythm, make sure thay actually have it in stock - nice people (sic) but I had a distribution deal with them a few years back, and they stiffed me for a nice cool $1500 - no exaggeration, my wife's still mad at me about it -

Edited October 25, 2006 by AllenLowe

[BERIGAN]

MG, once you are done playing those that you bought,and if you don't have any Clarence Williams, grab that set as well. Decent(if not exceptional) sound. Let us know what the ones you are getting are like.

Hope you don't get any with a broken case, cuz they use a cd case I've never seen before....

Edited October 26, 2006 by BERIGAN

[BERIGAN]

hah! i was thinking the same thing Chuck. i remember when Magniloquent Goldberg first showed up here dropping hardcore gospel knowledge & I was like... huh? that's weird, man, but good. Then the Opal Nations shoe dropped at some point, & anyone who can riff on the ins & outs of all those organ discographies is aiiiight by me (& then some).

THAT SAID, CLEMENTINE'S GUIDE TO 20s & 30s JAZZ ON CD

1) stating the obvious, MG, but remember yr getting 78s, there's no need to swallow the whole load (so to speak) at once, no matter the 'bargain' pricing.

2) "24 Bits" is bullshit. Size does matter but if you can't do it with 16 (or "20"), you can't do it period.

3) Henry "Red" Allen*-- six cds of the excellent (underrated?) small-group vocal sides on (I think) the Collector's Classics (different than French Chronological Classics) label, John RT Davies, re-mast; two-cd set on old-school (pre-Bear Family et al ripoff) JSP. (Add something about Luis Russell here)

4) Cab-- The 1930-1934 JSP box of RT Davies &/or wait 'til the Mosaic Chu Berry comes. I assume you already have the crucial Diz & Cab sides, yes?

5) Lunceford-- I have the Masters of Jazz series thru Vol. 5, which took us to 1939. "White Heat" muhfuh.

6) Johnny Dodds-- get the single discs on Frog (more RT Davies) first, trust me here. You will not love or know the music better getting it in bulk. (They don't even have Costco in Wales, do they?)

7) Do You Know What It Means To Miss Kid Ory?-- not especially, no.

***

i will now listen to It's Amazing: The Glorious Female Gospel (1947-1952) on Japanese P-Vine in yr honour.

signed,

Rev. C. Lemen Tineaho & His Camp Meeting of the Air

(Atheist)

* just "Red" I always think the mandolin player.

Where' are the white artists at??

Plus, where are Jelly Roll Morton, Basie, Waller, Redman, F & H. Henderson, Jimmy Noone, Earl Hines, Bechet, King Oliver, Jabbo Smith, Frankie Newton , Rex Stewart, Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Tommy Ladnier, Tiny Parham, Clarence Williams, Mezz Mezzrow(the blackest of them all) et al?? And that's just after a quick glance at my meager cd collection.

After all, you said...CLEMENTINE'S GUIDE TO 20s & 30s JAZZ ON CD

Sounds more like the Reader's Digest Condensed guide to Jazz....

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

hah! i was thinking the same thing Chuck. i remember when Magniloquent Goldberg first showed up here dropping hardcore gospel knowledge & I was like... huh? that's weird, man, but good. Then the Opal Nations shoe dropped at some point, & anyone who can riff on the ins & outs of all those organ discographies is aiiiight by me (& then some).

THAT SAID, CLEMENTINE'S GUIDE TO 20s & 30s JAZZ ON CD

1) stating the obvious, MG, but remember yr getting 78s, there's no need to swallow the whole load (so to speak) at once, no matter the 'bargain' pricing.

2) "24 Bits" is bullshit. Size does matter but if you can't do it with 16 (or "20"), you can't do it period.

3) Henry "Red" Allen*-- six cds of the excellent (underrated?) small-group vocal sides on (I think) the Collector's Classics (different than French Chronological Classics) label, John RT Davies, re-mast; two-cd set on old-school (pre-Bear Family et al ripoff) JSP. (Add something about Luis Russell here)

4) Cab-- The 1930-1934 JSP box of RT Davies &/or wait 'til the Mosaic Chu Berry comes. I assume you already have the crucial Diz & Cab sides, yes?

5) Lunceford-- I have the Masters of Jazz series thru Vol. 5, which took us to 1939. "White Heat" muhfuh.

6) Johnny Dodds-- get the single discs on Frog (more RT Davies) first, trust me here. You will not love or know the music better getting it in bulk. (They don't even have Costco in Wales, do they?)

7) Do You Know What It Means To Miss Kid Ory?-- not especially, no.

***

i will now listen to It's Amazing: The Glorious Female Gospel (1947-1952) on Japanese P-Vine in yr honour.

signed,

Rev. C. Lemen Tineaho & His Camp Meeting of the Air

(Atheist)

* just "Red" I always think the mandolin player.

Where' are the white artists at??

Plus, where are Jelly Roll Morton, Basie, Waller, Redman, F & H. Henderson, Jimmy Noone, Earl Hines, Bechet, King Oliver, Jabbo Smith, Frankie Newton , Rex Stewart, Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Tommy Ladnier, Tiny Parham, Clarence Williams, Mezz Mezzrow(the blackest of them all) et al?? And that's just after a quick glance at my meager cd collection.

After all, you said...CLEMENTINE'S GUIDE TO 20s & 30s JAZZ ON CD

Sounds more like the Reader's Digest Condensed guide to Jazz....

I can't buy everything at once!! And Clem was only commenting on the ones I'd decided on for a first shot. Will take careful note of your rec for Clarence Williams, though, for future purchases. One of this series, or something better?

MG

[AllenLowe]

I don't want to sound mercernary (but I need the money), and a good guide to early jazz of this period are my first two box sets of Devilin Tune - I can probably email you the list of songs as a guide, if you like -

I'd be wary of Berigan's suggestions, as he only listens to musicians who vote Republican - (and after all, how many times can you listen to "Pat Boone sings with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra" without getting a little ill?)

Edited October 26, 2006 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

yikes - too much work - though it would be very interesting to do - Spottswood, who has done many ethnic discographies, would be the man. He's an amazing guy -