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*****Lester Young Corner*****


king ubu

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  • 3 months later...
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  • 2 months later...

I waited and hoped for years that this 1950 JATP Carnegie Hall concert with Pres and Sweets would make it to the digital age. It has a sublime extended solo from Pres on Ghost of a Chance.

0102450.jpg

Little did I know that it has been hiding at iTunes under the following disguise, packaged together with JATP Bird with strings:

mzi.xeqgkolo.170x170-75.jpg

Beware, however, that the MP3 of Norgran Blues (here eroneously titled Morgan Blues) is defective and cuts off before Pres' solo. :(

But Ghost of a Chance is here in full. I can't think of a greater pleasure that can be purchased for 99 cents. :)

It is also astonishing to hear in the Norman Granz introduction to this concert just how much bigger a reception American audiences were giving Flip Phillips in 1950 relative to Lester Young. It wasn't like that in Europe. Europeans were hipper.

Edited by John L
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  • 5 months later...

Unofortunatelly, we are still waiting for that unissued live LOC material from beginning 1940s, on few acetates... last time I heard about them, it was transcription turntable that was unfunctional, or something like that... :blink:

in july 2007 i contacted larry appelbaum from the loc in washington and asked him about plans to release the lester young sides. here is his answer:

" Hello Marcel,

I'm not aware of any plans to issue the Lester Young jam session materials.

Any record label can do so as long as they get permission of the rights

holders. So far I've not been contacted by any label and no one has come

down to listen to the discs.

Larry"

and in a second mail he gave this information:

"There's only about 15-20 mins of Lester, along with other items from the jam

session (like Sammy Price trio performances).

i would think this might be bonus material for a Lester Young reissue.

Larry"

that is both sad and surprise news for me.

because i thought that there is a market for a legend like lester young and

that this recordings go very quickly on cd (like the monk/coltrane one). but

that´s not the fact. so we have to make propaganda and find a label who is

willing to release this historical recordings.

keep boppin´

marcel

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  • 2 months later...

Does Lester Young play on the 15 minute version of "Stuffy" from the 1957 JATP All-Stars date (Sept or October)

I'm currently listening to it - it's the last title (added as a bonus) on the 1993 CD "Coleman Hawkins & Roy Eldridge At The Opera House"

The liner notes (research by Phil Schaap) list him as playing while other discographies omit him from this track. He's possibly the last soloist but Stan Getz is also listed as playing.

Coleman also solos. Having trouble distinguishing between Getz & Young (???)

Also interestng that Schaap has different dates (from other discogs) for the mono & stereo recordings of the CH/RE live at the Opera House.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Has anyone else looked at Jan Evensmo's newly posted Pred solography on the Jazz Archaeology website? He notes a recently discovered 2Nd take of Lady Be Good from 1936! Yes, that one! WTF, or does everyone else already know about this? At least it's not dated April 1st!

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Has anyone else looked at Jan Evensmo's newly posted Pred solography on the Jazz Archaeology website? He notes a recently discovered 2Nd take of Lady Be Good from 1936! Yes, that one! WTF, or does everyone else already know about this? At least it's not dated April 1st!

Great news! That it existed was not in doubt. On the 1988 liner notes to 'Lester-Amadeus' on Phontastic, Anders R. Ohman mentions he was going to include the 2nd take, but 'alas, someone managed to steal it'. Let's hope it sees sympathetic release, and soon!

Interesting site, by the way ...

Q

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:excited: :excited: :excited: :excited:

I just read the piece at Jazz Archeology. It claims that we not only have another take of Lady Be Good, but two other new takes from Pres' first recorded session: alternates of Boogie Woogie and Evening!!!!!

Hadn't noticed yet either ... those takes should have been in the great Pres/Basie Mosaic box!

Someone really should collect those and the live session dubbed too short to fill a CD (who cares, I'd run for a 20 minute CD of unissued/unknown/unearthed Pres) and release it all!

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Yes, the alternates of Evening and Boogie Woogie would be the cherry on the cake, but the LBG alternate will be very special. I never picked up the Phontastic, as I had the material in other permutations, so I missed the reference in the liner notes to the 2nd take. Incidentally, I thought I had all of Pres' pre-war recordings, but there were some tracks listed in the solography that I couldn't remember coming across (even in the very comprehensive Masters of Jazz Pres and Basie series). I'll have a look through my collection this weekend and see what's missing. I've been meaning to email Jan to thank him for his generosity in providing all this research gratis on his website. It's a remarkable achievement, and endlessly fascinating. Even when I don't agree with his opinion about particular items, he's always stimulating and more than once has spurred me to listen again to tracks that I thought I knew very well. I enjoy sitting in a comfortble chair on a Sunday morning, ipad in hand, the Jazz Archaeology solographies for Frankie Newton or Joe Thomas on the screen, and using Spotify to work through the recordings. Even with much/most of the material sitting upstairs on vinyl/CD, it's really luxurious to have so much of the material to hand. Bliss!

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