Big Beat Steve

Uh oh ... another unsung Swing era man. 96 years ... admittedly I had no idea he still was alive. Seems a fitting tribute that photos of Franz in action are now circulating a bit more widely on the net thanks to the Life online photo archives (see related threads, check out the Gjon Mili 1943 jam sessions).

Indeed!! And the Gjon Mili pics (p.ex. his jam session pics of 1943) are real gems. (Thank goodness they had not been "drigged"; as Chris A. would have said ) They could do with some additional musician identification/correction, though.

Check out the V.A. CD "ARKANSAS SHOUT" on Jazz Oracle BDW 8025 if you want more. :tup for a Blues version of Devilin Tune here too (with hopefully as little duplications as possible between the two sets).

I suppose you realize how much musc from past decades would have remained TOTALLY unreissued if this had ever been a valid yardstick? (That is, unless you are satisfied with a scant few major label reissues, because - all copyright issues aside - there must be a lot of labels where no session tapes are around anymore) Remember there are good and there are bad remasterings, even from vinyl, so you really can't generalize. I'd venture to say some 80s/90s needle drops are better than many 60s/70s "enhanced stereos" with pseudo echo etc. All in all I've never been disappointed with the Fresh Sound vinyl I've bought through the years (though I'll admit my hifi system is no high-end system). And the fact that they stuck to the original cover artwork is a HUGE bonus to the collector when compared to MANY other reissues of the past 30 years that came with UTTERLY UGLY, nondescript, totall out-of-tune "redesigned" (actually loused-up) "modernized" covers. And what's the key difference between reisued CDs or vinyl from vinyl? Isn't the fact that you use vinyl as the SOURCE the decisive factor? BTW, TTK: Do your reservations also apply to "non-Andorran" VSOP vinyl reissues? I doubt that all of them are remasters from the original tapes.

Just out of sheer curiosity: Are there plans to include ANY tracks from 78rpm, acetates or whatever, i.e. tracks that never ever have been reissued before anywhere, i.e. something that not even collectors with the most exhaustive collection of reissues imaginable could possibly possess? A sort of icing on the cake, so to speak ... That aside, I think the initial list that seems to be omitting a lot of the "usual suspects" would make for very interesting listening. Reissue projects that more and more fall back to the usual artists as they become more and more comprehensive aren't exactly thin on the ground (and this is where I found the debate in the original thread a bit wearying as everybody seemed to add more and more essentials). So an overview that in a way runs crosswise to the usual retrospectives and puts the emphasis on filling the gaps everybody else left open in their compilations (and programs tracks and artists together that aren't usually matched) would open up entirely new perspectives. Just my 2c

Yes, her vocals with Teddy Wilson are rather nice in her own way (like you said, who wants everybody to sound like Billie Holiday, and besides, Billie's had her share of clones through the decades anyway, e.g. Marilyn Moore or Madeleine Peyroux). But beware anyhow - some of her big band vocals are downright painful to listen to today. Nothing wrong technically with her singing but that kind of operatic aria vocalizing in front of a schmaltzy band certainyl is BADLY dated and even then certainly did nothing to uplift the "SWING" era.

What's amazing is the wide range of musicians who seem to have come and visited Nica. Not all young hard boppers, angry young rebels and young turks for modern jazz. Benny Winestone (p.273), for example, must be THE Benny Winestone who played in various British dance and swing bands in the 30s (see Albert McCarthy's "The Dance Band Era", p. 115) and who by the 60s must have been rather beyond his most active period.

Yet there are a few other names in that name list at the end of the book that do leave the average (and above-average) fan puzzled. So that statement in the intro isn't all tha tout of place. Got my own copy from Amazon not long ago. I can only agree with the praise that's been heaped on the book here, and at the going Amazon rate of some 12 or 13 euros the English-language edition is a steal. Good that I hesitated picking up the (earlier published) French edition this spring while in Paris. It would have set me back some 35 euros then. That would have been a bit hefty ...

That's correct. Upstairs at Mole was the Asman's store for a while in the late 1990s. I think the deck/amp/speakers were part of all that as most of the music I heard through that system was pre-1940 ! Actually I was referring to the Asman shop in that small side street off Charing Cross Road (don't remeber its name - Gt. something Street - always a good stopover not only for that shop but also for the Motorbooks book store not far away). It was at that time that they used the bags that had the Mole publicity on one side and the Asman one on the other. Can't remember having seen any separate Asman section at Mole. I stopped by there at least one or twice a year until late 2000 and "upstairs vinyl at Mole's" always was as it had been since the shop moved there.

Ohmygawd! And they say tampering with recordings and copying and editing and splicing is a thing of relatively recent rock music! Were there more than a scant few tunes recorded at that concert that remained totally unchanged vs the actual live recording and where they did not jumble things to and fro?? That said, THANKS CHRIS for sharing all these period items throughout this thread and giving us insights that normal mortals don't ever get! This thread is almost better than some printed and published scrapbooks of the music.

Same here ... On one occasion I had picked up Vols. 2 and 3 of Hamp Hawes' "All Night Session" LPs (British Contemporary/Vogue originals) at Mole's (where I habitually started my day-long record buying sprees) and within hours at Asman's (which was my next stop) a copy of Vol. 1 (with a slightly more worn cover but still NM vinyl) came my way at ONE quid (which was only a small fraction of the still decent price I paid at Mole's for the other 2 vols.). Needless to say I took the cashier's pitiful look in stride!

Will check later on in my collection so see if i can substantiate this. BTW, how does fit JAMES ASMAN into alll this? For some time (at least in the 90s when I stopped by there) he seemed to have been a sort of oldtime jazz outlet of Mole (and the Mole Jazz carrying bags had Asman's address and logo on one side) and though the sales blurb about the selection of ALL jazz supposed to be available there was widely exagerated IMHO I did manage to pick up a few nice ones there because whatever secondhand jazz LPs they had in stock that were stylistically well past the old-time barrier (read. "too modern") would not be too expensive as they apparently fell out of Asman's habitual trading focus. At any rate, I guess the shop was past its best days when I stopped by there every now and then during my stays in London in the 90s.

I have fond memories of visiting both Dobell's shops during my trips to london in 1975/76/77. To this 15 to 17-year old student who'd just started collecting records seriously this was sort of heaven indeed, though there was MUCH too MUCH to buy and even more of it was beyond my means financially. I seem to remember that both the "Folk" store and the "Jazz" store were either next door to each other or just on opposite sides of the street facing each other but my memory may be failing me. I remember them being downstairs (were they both or is that I just spent more time in the downstairs "Folk" store?), and somehow the selection Dobell stocked in both shops did not seem that much different from each other to me. There must have been some jazz (secondhand??) in the Folk store too. During one of my visits I recall buying both an LP by Gid Tanner & The Skillet Lickers (a 20s hillbilly string band on the U.S. Country label) and a secondhand copy of Sonny Rollins' "Saxophone Colossus" at the same time. Must have looked like a strange combination to be picked up by a young feller wearing a leather jacket ... On another occasion I literally jumped at the bin there that held new copies of that Cyril Davies LP released on the Folklore label (a Dobell enterprise, I found out later). Being the young dude from abroad that I was, I guess I wasn't the typical customer of that record at Dobell's either ... , but having read about that release in a book about the roots of British Beat I figured I ought to give it a try. (Seeing the price that Ray's later in the 90s charged for a secondhand copy of this in his downstairs Folk/Blues section I guess I did well to pick it up and hang on to it...) As for John Kendall, that name rings a bell. I think a few of the secondhand LPs I picked up at Mole in the 90s carry a tag that says "This record supplied by John Kendall Jazz Records" or something like it. So did he set up his own shop after Dobell closed down?

Tom in RI, if you really want them then grab'em if you can! It would be nothing short of sheer luck if you got them for MUCH less than 50$ these days. I have Vols. 1 to 5 (1 to 4 as paperbacks, Vol. 5 as a hardback) of which I bought most through eBay (and 1 or 2 from Ron Rambach) a couple of years back but it did take a lot of searching and watching and being outbid. I think my average winning bids for each of these was not all that much less than $50 even back then (and I did NOT jump at the first one that came up).

If those last few ads were from '77-78 then those prices WERE steep! I remember what I usually paid for records from my small student's pocket money during my visits to London in '75/76/77. Seeing how many goodies there were to be found in the new and/or secondhand bins at prices at £2 to £3 at the most (not to mention 99p special offers) this was decidedly beyond my means in most cases. At that time one Pound Sterling still equaled about 5 Deutschmarks (2.50 euros) so those £4.50 LPs would have set me back about 22,50 DM at a time when everything in the new-record racks of our local record stores back home (some of them VERY well-stocked even in the jazz and blues departments) was rarely more than 17.90 DM (often 10 to 12 DM only), even for imports. Today, of course (and seeing how records have become cheaper, relatively speaking), I'd often be glad to pay that money too.

Got to show this my 8-year old son (who's a big Star Wars fan). Maybe this will make him understand even better why I've got a whole wall of the room next door (our music room) crammed full with albums with funny huge black plastic discs! :D

Anyone knows what one has to do to be permitted access to certain essays? I tried to acess the essay by Maxine Gordon on the 1947 Elks Hall concert but no go!

Sounds familiar too ... but what do you (or your girlfriend mean by "guitars not played properly"? Is playing single note lines "proper" or isn't it? Actually, though, these two details are something that are specific to women IMHO. Even many MEN who have been raised on ROCK would sort of shy away from clean-cut single-note guitar solos à la Farlow/Raney/Kessel etc. that don't come with the usual reverb/buzz/distortion/overampliciation or other gimmicks as done by countless rock guitarists ever since the hard rock/classic rock era that started in the late 60s/early 70s. Same for horns in the front line (the emasculated pop tweeting of Curtis Stigers and the like doesn't count, of course ). Horn-led ensembles or solos (instead of guitar-led sounds) still seem to puzzle a lot of men who aren't really familiar with jazz. And high-note trumpets or deep-down baritone saxes are a No-No not only with many women either.

Sad to see another legendary person is gone. I first got to hear him on the 1953 Clifford Brown/Gigi Gryce recoprdings and was (and still am) quite impressed by the fluent lines he played there among the horns.

Good observation, Tom. No doubt both extremes can happen. Here is another angle on the "Talk" aspect: It all depends on what the wimminfolk mean by "talk". I imagine there are enough occasions and reasons to "talk" indeed and if those of the male sex who by definition (of manhod??) don't fancy any talk at all then those representatives of the male species will be in for some real trouble. After all being able to listen and talk is not a sign of not "not being man enough" (there ARE men who think talking and listening is incompatible with being "man enough" and "taking care of business", you know ... though I am not so sure how many of them are in the jazz fraternity ). So if she wants to talk, how about taking things in your own hands in the way the "talk" is run? Talking for the sake of talking isn't it, really. Make her understand talking and listening to what she's got on her mind is fine with you, but if it's about controversial topics or problems she wants to bring up, then fine too, but then it's going to be about an exchange of ARGUMENTS and pros and cons and well-founded reasoning (!!) and arriving at conclusions and solutions, not just about listening to talk because somebody wants to rant and get something off his (her?) chest (that's necessary sometimes too but from a certain point things GOT to advance beyond that stage unless you want to be caught in an endless loop). And then you'll see how she will be able to play THAT game. Don't let ALL the rules of "talking" be dictated by her!

A funny thread ... ... though no doubt serious to you, Jay (Zanonesdelpueblo), so are my 2c. Much of what's been said above seems to be true to me. Of course having both a roommate AND a girlfriend in the same apartment AND having the turntable in the living room is about as bads a starting point as it can be. IMHO before you consider dumping the girl, dump the roommate. That's a living/apartment setup one outgrows pretty fast in one's life anyway, I'd say. Besides, three's a crowd, you know (kids don't count, of course!). Right from the time I refurbished our house it was clear from the outset that there would be a separate "music room" (that houses my entire coollection of records and music books as well as that sprinkling of music she owns) which is next to the living room so each one is free to do his/her own thing without intruding unduly onto each other (if you keep down the volume, of course) yet without being too far away from each other (and stepping over into the other room to see what your partner is up to comes quite natural between spells of listening to one's favorite music ). A for being able to listen to jazz in "her" presence, that nagging about "dissonance" sounds VERY familiar! I don't think you can "educate" a woman into wholeheartedly embracing jazz if she does not have a certain predisposition from the outset. Jazz is a stylistically far too wide field for that! In my case, my better half would probably start that rant not at bop or similar jazz styles but a LOT earlier such as some of the more extrovert R&B honkers or JATP blowing or Ben Webster getting into that particular blowing groove that earned him the "Brute" nickname. But if you want to get her accustomed to jazz being played in her presence (if only as background music to start with), do you have to start off with what's the hardest music to digest for ANYBODY outside the inner jazz circles (just imagine how many of your MALE non-jazz friends and acquantances would be able to stand those "friggin' hard bop/free jazz dissonances" ?? ) There's enough music within jazz that should be able to get her started on SOME jazz if carefully carefully selected, e.g. lots of jazz piano trios, e.g. maybe some Erroll Garner or King Cole Trio, and since my better half has an interest in 50s r'n'r (sort of our common musical ground) some Louis Jordan Tympany Five played in the background is not going to chase her out of our music room either. And it can go beyond that. Yesterday afternoon, when she really was in a cuddling mood she did not object at all to that swing-cum-Condon-style two-beat jazz that came from that CD of 30s George Chisholm recordings that kept spinning for half an hour more. :D So take it easy and act tactically wise and you'll be fine!

@Fer Urbina This record was discussed earlier in this thread: My Bright Orange 70s reissue of this LP listes the same personnel except that it ADDITIONALLY lists Alvin Stewart in the trumpet section. No recording dates given. Walter Bruyninckx' discography gives a tentative recording date of 1958/59. Sorry, that's all I can tell. S

Well, Gents, with all your enthusiasm about this Crown/Bright Orange series you got me curious! So when I stopped by our local used records shop to check out the "Jazz Special Offers" bin I took the plunge and grabbed the copies of the Woody Herman and Charlie Barnet tribute LPs from that series that seemed to have been waiting for me there: - Woody Herman on Bright Orange X-BO 707 (the one with the more familiar titles from the Herman book) - Tribute to Charlie Barnet on CROWN CST-131 (red vinyl!) At 3.75 euros for both (both in very, very decent condition) I guess I could have done a lot worse, really ... So I'll be looking forward to giving them (and the Ellington disc I already had but apprently hadn't appreciated properly ) a spin later on!

Now look ... first of all, we are not talking about wholesale marketing of illegal bootleg items that are still protected by copyrights but about an ISOLATED single favor on a personal basis for an item that apparently is OOP and that falls beyond the 50+-year limit as per the PD rule as it (still) stands in Europe at THIS time of writing. I am no legal expert but until conclusive proof to the contrary I consider the law effective at MY place of residence to be applicable to what I do here at MY place of residence OUTSIDE any forum (talking about what one MIGHT perhaps be doing, like in this case, is of no relevance, I guess ). And as it is, recordings that have passed the 50-year mark thereby are in the P.D. by the laws applicable here (for the time being). And as for being told what to do or think, I for one certainly didn't mean to tell anybody what he is supposed to think, but doesn't the door swing both ways? Couldn't it be argued just as well that "being told what to do or to think" starts when somebody starts off by saying he does not approve of certain acts that others MIGHT possibly be doing (thereby implicitly putting the (moral?) blame on those others )? And again - we've been talking about an ISOLATED case as a personal favor. So isn't it really high time to bring back things into perspective and all take it a little easier? Or should we really carry things further by asking if those who are so indignant here never ever bought ANY CDs by Definitive, Lone Hill, Fresh Sound, Proper, etc. (remember the accusations made against them, and there are many more labels operating on the P.D. principle - even some that aren't usually mentioned in the "Andorran" debate) nor ANY vinyl on any of the 70s/80s grey market collector labels? So therefore ... PEACE! BTW: I understand Jazzpizzicat has received what he has been looking for - courtesy of an obliging board member.

I also agree with Chas - including (particularly so) in view of the fact that it might very well be that European copyright laws might well change and become much more stringent from sometime next year (adopting somethg like a 95-year rule in fact) which OF COURSE was something invoked not to protect some poor session men possibly facing poverty at old age (THEIR rights were signed away long ago in most cases) but to feed the greedy "needs" of those early rock stars (Cliff Richard was instrumental in arguing for a tightening down of rules) as the 50-year cutoff rate would have meant that within the next few years all that r'n'r/60s beat stuff etc. would have gone P.D. However this evidently does NOT mean that all the material from past periods would be reissued comprehensively by those oh so "legitimate" nominal rights holders. Instead, many will sit on material that is no longer PD but not available either from "legitimate" sources, i.e. the public willl be deprived entirely of a lot of music because even collectors' reissue ventures would have a hard time making the music avilable as strictly collectors' ventures (because they can't afford the rates the "rights holders" would charge - ask the guys at HEP Records if you want proof of the situation!). Now if that isn't a law made not in the interests of the public at large but in the interest of a select few then I don't know. In line with MG's arguing, it is therefore very much open to debate if the new version of those rules would be a good law or a bad law (as it was manifestly instigated by "interested parties"). At any rate, self-righteous pseudo-morality in this respect is totall uncalled for. There are MANY more facets to this entire history so that narrowing it down to a question of morality or immorality is missing the point entirely. And besides, once it is P.D. (at least as long as the music remains P.D.past the 50-year cutoff date) there are no legal (and therefore NO moral) angles to burning a simple CD-R. After all we are NOT talking about high-volume grey-market affairs here. Now be that as it may - @Jazzpizzicat: Unfortunately I don't have the equipment (yet) to burn CD-R's from vinyl (only CD to CD) so I cannot burn you a CD-R of my copy of JWC-507 (the one with the famous cover of the frogman stepping out of the water) for the time being but I'll go on record right here saying that otherwise I'd be happy to oblige! (But note: My copy is about VG+ so there might be some pops and crackles here and there ) Yet I hope for you somebody else will oblige too (without speaking out publicly here ). P.S. A final note re- that Rule #6 invoked above: At least as far as European parties in such transactions are involved, that material on the record Jazzpizzicat asked about no longer falls under copyright rules as the 50-year limit has been passed. And as long as any more stringent European rules have not yet come into force that's the applicable law at least in Europe and Rule#6 does NOT apply and that's that.