From 1979: Why Big Record Companies Let Jazz Down

[Big Beat Steve]

2 hours ago, sidewinder said:

With regard to Shorty Rogers ‘Clickin’ with Clax’, Todd Selbert’s notes for the Mosaic box are informative. Apparently in the mid 1970s the Rogers tape archive was requested from the vaults and this session was amongst them. Via Nesuhi Ertegun all of the Atlantic affiliates were contacted to see if they wanted to release the new material. None of them gave an affirmative, even the Japanese. Eventually just the UK relented, hence that particular LP only coming out here. So, not surprising that Big Beat Steve only saw it later at Mole.

That Atlantic ‘That’s Jazz’ series put out in Germany around 1976/77 was widely available here and I picked up quite a few of them. Also those MCA twofers - quite a lot of Bob Thiele sessions, I recall. Weren’t they called something like ‘Jazztime USA’?

In the 90s I was very pleased to get the "Clicking with Clax" LP as it was right up my alley, and I also picked up the other "Martians" LPs later on (which included at least one LP's worth of previously unreleased music). I wonder ... did I do wrong when I did NOT pick up another copy of "Clicking with Clax" (to pass it on) when it popped up cheaply at a clearout sale at our local #1 used record store not too long ago? Or is it highly common? At any rate I was surprised to see it in there - it was another of those items you wished to have been able to get via a clearout instead of at full price.

As for the MCA twofers you mention, yes there were several of these, but these were not the MCA reissues I referred to. Most of those MCA twofers (which in fact ran under the "Leonard Feather" series title) we got in the shops here were U.S. imports (except for the Nat Cole twofer which was a German pressing the others I have are U.S. pressings - and yes, they included one "Jazztime USA" double LP). The "Jazztime USA" twofer actually takes tracks from the original 50s LPs of concert recordings under that title (there were three 12" "Jazztime USA" LPs on US Brunswick and UK Coral, and they were widely distributed - 50s 10" releases on German Coral aren't impossible to find). About three quarters of the contents of the "Jazztime USA" twofer overlapped with the original LPs but some tracks had not appeared on those original LPs, so the twofer was worth having anyway. And in fact the 70s "Jazz Lab" reissue series on German MCA Coral included one Jazztime USA LP too - with the exact contents of the original Vol. 2. Which brings things full circle ...

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Big Beat Steve

[medjuck]

2 hours ago, sidewinder said:

With regard to Shorty Rogers ‘Clickin’ with Clax’, Todd Selbert’s notes for the Mosaic box are informative. Apparently in the mid 1970s the Rogers tape archive was requested from the vaults and this session was amongst them. Via Nesuhi Ertegun all of the Atlantic affiliates were contacted to see if they wanted to release the new material. None of them gave an affirmative, even the Japanese. Eventually just the UK relented, hence that particular LP only coming out here. So, not surprising that Big Beat Steve only saw it later at Mole.

I've never heard of this record until now.  I'd probably buy it just because I'm a big William Claxton fan.  Are there many (or any) of his photos on the Lp sleeve? 

[Steve Reynolds]

The Dead’s first 4 albums sold little as well. Peaking at 73, 87 & 73. First one to make any impact was Live/Dead released in late 1969 and that peaked at #64. 
 

even the now acknowledged classic studio albums Workingman’s Dead & American Beauty only reached 27 & 19. The next 2 live records (2 LP Skull & Roses & 3LP Europe 72) also only hit the mid 20’s. That group of 5 albums is now looked on by many as an all-time sequence. That they existed and that the band kept playing live set the foundation for the largest grossing live act in the history of music. At least it’s acknowledged they played for more people than any other band. 
 

Imagine if Warner’s dropped them before WD & AB?

even the reunion shows without Jerry sold out 3 stadium shows in 2015. All because the label supported them when they were impossible to deal with in 1968-69. They even let them use the FIRST portable 16 track machine to ever be used in January thru March 1969 to record Live/Dead. Then look at the track list.

 

First Side: Dark Star

Second Side: St. Stephen>The Eleven

Third Side: Lovelight

Fourth Side: Death Don’t Have No Mercy>Feedback> We Bid you Goodnight

Feedback was 7:49 - I think it’s great but this is on a major label release / it’s closer to abstract improvisation than it is to anything else  

Only thing close to something commercial is St. Stephen 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Steve Reynolds

[sidewinder]

2 hours ago, medjuck said:

I've never heard of this record until now.  I'd probably buy it just because I'm a big William Claxton fan.  Are there many (or any) of his photos on the Lp sleeve? 

Other than on the front cover, I don’t think so. The Mosaic booklet has plenty of his photos though.

I did meet Bill once - and bought a book of his photos off him, which he kindly signed. A very nice guy !

2 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

In the 90s I was very pleased to get the "Clicking with Clax" LP as it was right up my alley, and I also picked up the other "Martians" LPs later on (which included at least one LP's worth of previously unreleased music). I wonder ... did I do wrong when I did NOT pick up another copy of "Clicking with Clax" (to pass it on) when it popped up cheaply at a clearout sale at our local #1 used record store not too long ago? Or is it highly common? At any rate I was surprised to see it in there - it was another of those items you wished to have been able to get via a clearout instead of at full price.

As for the MCA twofers you mention, yes there were several of these, but these were not the MCA reissues I referred to. Most of those MCA twofers (which in fact ran under the "Leonard Feather" series title) we got in the shops here were U.S. imports (except for the Nat Cole twofer which was a German pressing the others I have are U.S. pressings - and yes, they included one "Jazztime USA" double LP). The "Jazztime USA" twofer actually takes tracks from the original 50s LPs of concert recordings under that title (there were three 12" "Jazztime USA" LPs on US Brunswick and UK Coral, and they were widely distributed - 50s 10" releases on German Coral aren't impossible to find). About three quarters of the contents of the "Jazztime USA" twofer overlapped with the original LPs but some tracks had not appeared on those original LPs, so the twofer was worth having anyway. And in fact the 70s "Jazz Lab" reissue series on German MCA Coral included one Jazztime USA LP too - with the exact contents of the original Vol. 2. Which brings things full circle ...

 

Very comprehensive !

I remember those ‘Jazz Lab’ reissues but associate them more with the 1980s and not the 70s. That ‘Leonard Feather’ series I remember too - yes, as you say, they were US imports.

[Big Beat Steve]

15 hours ago, sidewinder said:

I remember those ‘Jazz Lab’ reissues but associate them more with the 1980s and not the 70s. That ‘Leonard Feather’ series I remember too - yes, as you say, they were US imports.

This is the "Jazz Lab" series I was referring to:

https://www.discogs.com/de/label/635161-Jazz-Lab

As Discogs confirms, it was in fact released in the 70s. All of the volumes figured in the 1975/76 edition (current as of July 1975) of the "Bielefelder Jazz Katalog" of jazz records in print at that time (though the catalog never was 100% complete as with each edition there invariably was this or that record company that could not be bothered to supply the publishers with details of the items they carried).

[sidewinder]

33 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

This is the "Jazz Lab" series I was referring to:

https://www.discogs.com/de/label/635161-Jazz-Lab

As Discogs confirms, it was in fact released in the 70s. All of the volumes figured in the 1975/76 edition (current as of July 1975) of the "Bielefelder Jazz Katalog" of jazz records in print at that time (though the catalog never was 100% complete as with each edition there invariably was this or that record company that could not be bothered to supply the publishers with details of the items they carried).

Thanks - yes, that is the one I was thinking of. Don’t recall seeing them here in the 70s. Maybe they percolated across in slow time by osmosis !

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

Thanks - yes, that is the one I was thinking of. Don’t recall seeing them here in the 70s. Maybe they percolated across in slow time by osmosis !

This kind of delayed availability with import items is quite possible. At any rate, that series of Coral/Decca 50s modern jazz must have been off the trodden paths of the usual reissue fare at the time. It cannot have sold in huge quantitites and certainly was subsidized by better sellers (even from within the MCA Coral jazz stable that reissued tons of Louis Armstrong here in the 70s, for example). I wonder why and how it came about at all. I once discussed details of the MCA reissues with the collator of many of those 70s series (who later ran a CD reissue and mail-order shop mostly for pre-1945 European swing and dance bands until his final retirement a couple of years ago). Unfortunately I never thought of asking him about the "Jazz Lab" series. We only talked about various of his swing reissues which also seem to have been subject to in-house programming criteria that you can hardly imagine today. E.g. I asked him why the tracks included were a bit on the skimpy side on one LP or series (resulting in incomplete inclusion of some sessions) but more liberal on another that did not come with any more lavish artwork or presentation. As he explained, the in-house policy was that up to a certain number of tracks per LP (12 or 14 at most but regardless of playing time per track) the final product fell into a different royalty and pricing category (than an LP with 16 or 18 tracks), and this seems to have played a big role in what was put out by the company and which artist(s) were to be marketed in which price category by the shops at all. And exceptions from those rules seemed to be fairly impossible. So there you have LPs where you figure 4 more tracks would very easily have fitted on the LP - but no ... This would have increased the list price of the new item too much (for it to be viable to the company, I guess).

[sidewinder]

That pricing policy rings a distant bell with me - I can remember some stores labelling LPs with a price code e.g ‘L’ and then putting the prices on a notice above the rack. There again, that might have been necessitated by rampant inflation. 

I don’t think this MCA series was in common distribution - unlike the Savoy, Prestige and Blue Note reissue series - and the Atlantic ‘That’s Jazz’. Probably too obscure for most stores.

Edited December 25, 2021 by sidewinder

[Big Beat Steve]

24 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

That pricing policy rings a distant bell with me - I can remember some stores labelling LPs with a price code e.g ‘L’ and then putting the prices on a notice above the rack. There again, that might have been necessitated by rampant inflation. 

I don’t think this MCA series was in common distribution - unlike the Savoy, Prestige and Blue Note reissue series - and the Atlantic ‘That’s Jazz’. Probably too obscure for most stores.

That "price group" pricing policy of the 70s was a thing to itself, I guess. I dimly remember it from student visits to London in 1975, 76 and 77 but most often saw it everywhere in France up to the 90s. However, in my experience this usually only applied to those stores that stuck fairly close to the "recommended retail list prices". Luckily over here the shops usually sold at somewhat lower prices than that. Items recommended at 12.80 DM sold at 9.90 DM, recommended prices of 14,80 DM meant an actual price of 11.90 DM, and hardly anyone sold at the very frequently recommended price of 22 DM (which was more like 16.90 or 17.90 DM in the shops). Those shops that priced LPs at 22 DM apparently did so because they also carried more imports than others - and so the imports at 22 DM did not look all that expensive, and the domestically pressed LPs they managed to sell at 22 DM anyway offset the slimmer margins of their imports. There was one long-established shop here that often carried specialist import items and did practice that pricing policy which of course looked outrageously expensive to us students but it had a clientele of older and probably more affluent buyers who would harldy ever buy their records anywhere else ...

Despite its nondescript covers that MCA series filled a gap - to those jazz fans who did not find them too obscure (as you point out). I only was able to afford a scant few as a student when they were new but after I had learnt to appreciate the artists better I picked up many more secondhand in later years (and have all except 2 or 3). They made 50s jazz accessible again that you did not see on the European reissue market for many years afterwards. As for the Savoys, I realize those twofers, in particular, appeared from 1976 or so but I in turn did not really notice them in the shops in wider selections and larger quantities until the early 80s, but on the other hand they remained in print and in the racks for an uncommonly long period through the 80s.

Edited December 25, 2021 by Big Beat Steve

[sidewinder]

There was strict Retail Price Control in the shops until the latter part of the 70s, at which point some enlightenment from this nonsense finally started to appear and they were done away with. It encouraged the rise of e.g. home goods discount warehouses such as Comet, which offered half way competitive offerings. Remember getting my first music centre that way !

Edited December 25, 2021 by sidewinder

[Big Beat Steve]

17 hours ago, sidewinder said:

There was strict Retail Price Control in the shops until the latter part of the 70s, at which point some enlightenment from this nonsense finally started to appear and they were done away with. It encouraged the rise of e.g. home goods discount warehouses such as Comet, which offered half way competitive offerings. Remember getting my first music centre that way !

Amazing ... I remember prices differed sometimes significantly for one and the same item (not just in the "Special Offer" bins) in the record shops I visited during my stays in London in 1975, 76 and 77 while I still was in high school. An important aspect for any student's limited buying means, and you fairly quickly found out which record shop was worth visiting again for the prospect of bargains and which one was out of reach ...
What surprised me about the price classes of the records I mentioned earlier about the pricing policy at (German) MCA was the strict correlation between the max. number of tracks and the price class they would assign each release to (at least in that reissue segment). Pricing records differently according to marketing aspects (there always have been "specially priced budget" series and full-price series, etc.) is one thing, but that limitation in the number of tracks?? Particularly since the presentation otherwise was the same (the lower-priced ones did not look any more "budget-y" than the mid-price items) and limiting the number of tracks meant incomplete sessions etc. No doubt collectors cared about that even in the 70s.

[Gheorghe]

On 24.12.2021 at 1:48 PM, Big Beat Steve said:

Reading Gheorghe's and Sidewinder's recollections, I more than ever feel I must have been one of the "odd men out" among jazz listeners and record buyers in central Western Europe in those late 70s. Once I had found my way into bebop, I did snap up whatever I could afford with my limited funds of a budding University student (after a careful tradeoff of what buy offered best value for money) in 50s modern jazz (including West Coast Jazz). WCJ reissues did not really come around here until the 80s, but I picked up Shorty Rogers' "West Coast Jazz" LP in the 70s when it was reisseud by WEA in their (silver-cover) "Thats Jazz" series and gave it lots of spins. This must have been one of my entry cards into WCJ. "Clicking with Clax", however, never seems to have been imported here and did not come to my attention until the 90s in a secondhand bin at Mole Jazz.
As for cross-subsidizing of reissues by the majors, there must have been a lot of cases. Bellaphon made huge amounts of jazz on Prestige available, and given their base in lots of fields of popular music I suppose their modern jazz reissue program was subsidized across the board. Milestone twofers also were available by the later 70s. In most cases we got U.S.imports of these and not nearer reprints (in France they were pressed locally with the same contents and cover artwork but different "small print").
I also remember there were reissue programs that made items available that really were off the beaten tracks of the commonplace modern jazz reissues. One example was the "Jazz Lab" series on German MCA that reissued a lot of 50s East-coastish modern jazz from the Decca/Coral stable that in many cases had to wait for another non-Japanese reissue until Fresh Sound came around later on. No doubt this (and also the tons of swing-era jazz that MCA reissued) also was cross-subsidized with the money that MCA made elsewhere. 
According to jazz record catalogs from that era, a lot of Blue Note and Impulse must also have been in print as locally pressed or imported items. I was mostly into pre-hard bop modern jazz then but even so I really cannot recall having seen and regretfully put them back in the racks often (except for some of these "brown paper bag" Blue Note twofers, some of which I found tempting but could not afford until years later). So it probably also was a case of distribution that was scantier for these labels than for, say, the Prestige reissues on Bellaphon or the "Milestone twofers".

I found my way into bebop after listening to "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus" from Paris 1964 with the long track "Parkeriana". A guy who was 5 years older than me and played a little alto had a lot of Bird though his main interest was free jazz. So I got to Bird at a moment when I wanted to know from where all this great music I already knew and played a little, comes from. 

About those silver-cover WEA "That´s Jazz" I remember it very well and had and still have four of them "Mingus Blues and Roots", "Coltrane-Cherry The Avantgarde", "LesMcCann Eddy Harris Montreux 1969" and maybe "Art Blakey-Thelonious Monk 1957". I was not aware of WCJ, it somehow remained a complete hole in my discography and my playing experiences". The only WCJ related things I have is the "Mulligan-Baker from Carnegie Hall 1974" , and a lot of Baker live in Europe from 1978 until the end. That´s the kind of Baker I was very aware of and liked to listen to , on record and live, if I wanted to relax with some more "quiet" acoustic jazz. I once heard some Baker from the 50´s but it didn´t impress me in the same way like the way he played after his comeback. He himself said that he plays better than in the past. I heard Mulligan more as a guest on other recordings by musicians I listen to more frequently: Mulligan Meets Monk, some occasions where Mulligan sat in with Mingus in the 70´s, and a really astonishing all star quintet set from 82 with Diz and Mulligan on the front line, and Max Roach on drums. That´s the best Mulligan solos I ever heard.