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Jack McDuff on Prestige


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I recently ordered two McDuff twofers in the Oldies.com sale and wondered the other day whether, when they turn up, I’ll have all of Jack’s recordings for Prestige.

What a mess the McDuff Prestige discography is! It took me ages to work it out; and I had to list every track from every session and the LP and CD issues. And I found a whole LP I hadn’t known about before! That’s “Good times” by Shaky Jake, a Bluesville LP on which he’s accompanied only by McDuff and Bill Jennings. Apart from that, I’ve got all but three tracks that McDuff recorded for Prestige (or I shall have when my order turns up).

Prestige split loads of sessions up into different LPs, giving Fantasy a bit of a headache in terms of reissuing them (not to mention a couple of unissued tracks, which haven’t seen the light of day at all). I think the chaps at Fantasy tried their best, but four tracks fell through the holes – unnecessarily, because there was room to have included them; usually in the “logical” CD. But looking through the list in session order, one certainly sees all sorts of other anomalies. This would probably be a good discography for the Mosaic treatment, if ever it came to it.

Anyway, here’s the list. Hope you find it interesting.

Jack_McDuff_on_Prestige_trax___issues.doc

MG

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The thought that kept occurring to me as I was doing this was, "is there an 'ideal' way of listening to this material?" I don't know. If one has to stick to a bunch of separate CDs, then Fantasy didn't do too badly. Without that constraint - ie a big box - one could put the material in session order. But quite a lot of this material was probably issued in its apparently haphazard order with the direct involvement of McDuff's managers - and by implication McDuff himself - and represents their efforts to put together interesting programmes of music. So maybe album order is best. I'm going to rip this material onto my hard drive and reconstitute the original LPs, adding in some extra tracks that got put into compilations, and see how that sounds. And if I don't like it, I can put it into date order :)

MG

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  • 1 year later...

A couple of additional notes:

Step Out And Get It was included on a 1996 CD compilation called Mod Jazz which was drawn from the Fantasy vaults. Here is the AMG review, where one also can hear a sound sample.

If Ever I Would Leave You was recently made available on a blog that should be well-known to those who frequent such places. Using that, one can now at least burn a complete copy of the original Silk & Soul album.

Apart from the shorter single take of Redwood City, this means that Moody McDuff from the Steppin' Out album is what now remains to be made available in digital format.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just caught up with this - a really nice job! I gave up trying to sort this out long ago, so thanks for putting this together. Another issue with his Prestige output is the recording locations - the "live" stuff apparently isn't, as most of you probably know. Anyway, this is very helpful.

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  • 1 month later...

Since my last post on this I've purchased the Tom Lord on-line discography (or "rented" is probably the right word), and the first thing I did was to sort out my McDuff CD's. Some of the individual sessions were spread out over 4 CD's (and maybe even more LP's?), it really is a mess. Anyway, between Lord and this, I've almost sorted it out, but there are a couple of tracks (maybe "Redwood City?") that appear out of nowhere. Anyway, nice to see someone devote this kind of effort to McDuff!

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  • 6 months later...

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