Discographical information about recording dates on jazz releases.

[John L]

OK, this is a pet peeve of mine.  

There is a strong trend toward providing minimal or no information about recording dates on new jazz recordings.  That stands in sharp contrast with past practices of the 20th century when exact recording dates were commonly documented.  

I understand that there may be good reasons for this.   Some have to do with modern technology that now longer necessarily requires having an entire band in a recording studio at the same time to make a record, and also makes professional-quality recording cheap enough so that released music can be cherry picked from a huge number of recordings from multiple dates.   

It likely also has to do with the fact that artists are now often able to control their own releases and labels, and may not feel as anal as record executives about documenting precise recording dates.  But even the large labels like Blue Note now seem to be following suit in not showing concern about providing precise discographical information for new recordings.

What do people here think about this?   Personally, it bothers me quite a bit.   When I engage in assessing or understanding the career work of a jazz artist, I like very much to be able to understand the chronological order of recordings.   For example, it can be insightful to know if a particular concert performance occurred before or after a certain studio recording.  

  

Edited yesterday at 03:37 PM by John L

[AndreyHenkin]

Are there labels in particular where you have seen that happen other than Blue Note. I agree any lack of information on a recording is maddening. However, that happened all the time in the 20th Century. Columbia was the most egregious but hardly the only one. Concord was not great. But what I never understood was including minimal to no information about recording dates and personnel but a massive explanation of what microphones were used.

[John L]

For new jazz, the labels that I buy from tend to be Blue Note, Smoke, ECM, and a lot of small often artist-controlled labels.  In every case, I would say the precise recording dates are the exception rather than the rule.   

What you say about Columbia and Concord is spot on, but it would seem that most reissues of the music include this information.  So the information was documented but maybe not included on original LP covers.   Today I wonder if a lot of this information is not being documented for posterity at all.

[Big Beat Steve]

5 hours ago, John L said:

What you say about Columbia and Concord is spot on, but it would seem that most reissues of the music include this information.  So the information was documented but maybe not included on original LP covers.   

I agree, this has very often been the case, and the rule rather than the exception. There are countless reissues that reproduced the facsimiles of the front and back covers of the originals but often have a few lines with personnel and recording dates added somewhere (wherever there remained some free space) in the original layout of the back cover. And I do not even count the number of original (or very early rpressing) LPs where I've added the recording dates in pencil (so erasable ) on the back cover somewhere near the lineups. 

As for "new jazz", I cannot really comment because there is not much brand new jazz releases I am buying. But overall, among those I did buy (most often CDs) I'd say it's about 50% with and without recording dates. But indeed the recording studio always seems to be mentioned (and the recording dates - if indicated - buried somewhere nearby), as well as the lists of thanks to a milion people out there. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

While I do appreciate having the recording dates for the same reasons as John, I am a bit confused by his comment that listing the recording date(s) was a common practice in the 20th century. None of the original Blue Note LPs listed the recording date(s). For some reason, I remember reading an interview with Cuscuna where he said that until he got Lion's log book in the mid-70's, that information was lost.

So it seems like Blue Note's practice of listing the recording date(s) on their releases was a Cuscuna thing & not a Blue Note thing as they didn't start listing those dates until Cuscuna launched the LT series.

[John L]

15 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

While I do appreciate having the recording dates for the same reasons as John, I am a bit confused by his comment that listing the recording date(s) was a common practice in the 20th century. None of the original Blue Note LPs listed the recording date(s). For some reason, I remember reading an interview with Cuscuna where he said that until he got Lion's log book in the mid-70's, that information was lost.

So it seems like Blue Note's practice of listing the recording date(s) on their releases was a Cuscuna thing & not a Blue Note thing as they didn't start listing those dates until Cuscuna launched the LT series.

Well, I guess that I should have been a bit more precise in my comments.  While some of this information may have been lost at Blue Note, it wouldn't seem to be a major issue.  We have exact recording dates for almost all the classic Blue Note sessions, even if a lot of this information wasn't included on the back cover of original EP and LP releases.   From about the 1970s until the end of the century, we not only had precise discographical information included on reissues of classic earlier records but established jazz labels would generally include all of this information on new releases as well.  

Now, the situation has significantly changed in that regard and, as I wrote above, I worry that a lot of discographical information is not being saved for posterity at all. 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by John L

[Big Beat Steve]

Re-recording dates on BN - what is more, the JEPSEN's Jazz Records discography (published from 1962 onwards) listed the recording dates almost throughout for these releases. I just did a quick check on some of the BN acts (Blakey, Sonny Clark, Donaldson, Silver) and the'yre there. So visibly this info had been "salvaged" by researchers (Jepsen or whoever contibuted this info to him) and saved for posterity at a time before it may have got "lost" (for a time). 

And some renowned labels such as Contemporary did list the recording dates even on the original releases, starting back in the 50s.

 

[AndreyHenkin]

One amazing source is the log books of Rudy Van Gelder, who was as fastidious with information as he was with sound. Every session is documented and has been a great research tool for me.

ECM albums rarely were made in a day, which is why they tend to list month and year. That said, when a single session date was in effect, they rarely included that. One example that comes immediately to mind is Arild Andersen's A Molde Concert, which just says August 1981 but took place on August 4th according to the Molde Jazz Festival people I contacted.

One early label that was great about including recording dates was Argo.