Big Beat Steve

Interesting item ... I missed this LP two or three times on eBay a couple of years ago. It was first released as a 10in LP on the Skylark label ("Jam Session Vol. 2" and includes four tracks. "Big Boy" (or "M.B.B." (aka "More Big Boy") as it was billed on the LP issues) takes up all of side 1, and side 2 has 3 tracks: "Whispering" "You Know I'm In Love With You" (vocals by Vivian Garry) and "I Get A Kick Out Of You". "Big Boy" also was on the "Jazz Americana" sampler (Tampa TP-11).

Well, Milovan finds that a bit disrespectful (see above). ;)

That would be sensible (and therefore unlikely to happen ). But I agree with you in that many companies might not consider it worthwhile to take action in the case of recordings far older than 50 years and of artists most company exec most likely never were aware of, especially if they did not duplicate any of their current reissue releases.

Mike is right. This thread ought to be moved in to a more visible place - FAST!! BTW, it would indeed be interesting to see if laws such as this can be fully retroactive. I.e. will that music that has already fallen into the P.D. be made copyrighted again or not or will this take effect only on whatever has not yet gone P.D. As hinted at in the BBC article, this may actually be a huge coverup for a few biggies who can't get enough (such as assorted British "Sirs") because many others (minor ones) have signed away their rights long before. and I doubt anybody is going to revoke THOSE contracts to the detriment of the record companies. As for the record companies, I have a hunch the Andorrans will not really be affected (geographically speaking ), and would the copyright fees actually make that much of a difference price-wise? It all depends on the question of somebody WANTING to reissue the stuff in the first place. Maybe the logicla way out to satisfy the interests of EVERYBODY would be to achieve a rule that makes it legal for ANYBODY to release material after 50 years BUT requires royalty payments to the artists concerned to continue. Though I cannot really see that happening. It would be too easy. Anyway, I cannot see specialist reissue labels such as Ace (for R&B etc. - seeing that they BOUGHT the huge Modern/RPM catalog as well as the John Dolphin labels and the RIGHTS that go with them) in the U.K. or DRAGON in Sweden (for Scandinavian jazz) will be affected at all. And it is not the "Andorran thieves" who might suffer too much either but certain "U.K." reissue plagiarists that strangely do not usually come into the line of fire here. Many seem to sneer at Lonehill etc., but the same people drool e.g. about the Proper boxes. Anybody ever asked yourselves questions where the Proper material comes from? Have you had a look at some of their "instrument" compilations, for example, e.g. the Accordion jazz CD box? Ever noted that more than 20 of the tracks on that one are identical to those released on an Accordion Jazz 2-CD set released by Fremeaux Associés about 10 years ago? Coincidence? Aw, c'mon! There would have been LOTS of other accordeon jazz tracks to reissue if somebody had wanted to do the collectors a REAL favor instead of just capitalizing on what had already been made EASILY accessible. And all the Mat Mathews tracks on the same box set being drawn from one single Dawn LP (reissued by Fresh Sound before)? Coincidence again? Now really! No doubt it is all legal by the still-current 50-year P.D. rule but it sounds very much like an easy way to make a fast buck with a minimum of effort to me - a case of P.D.-ists ripping off the P.D.-ists, maybe? (Or "Bootleggers bootlegging the bootleggers", according to the attitudes of many U.S. forumists who've always defended the 70-year rule around here ) Makes you wonder, really ...

True, and it only shows how pop singing in today's world has deteriorated. Listening to that gasping and huffing and puffing in between lines and syllables with today's female pop "giants" is just painful. But would it disrespectful if "Tim-Tay-Shun" by Red Ingle & His Natural Seven was played in memory of Jo Stafford? (She sounds like she enjoyed herself immensely on that ditty).

Thanks for posting this writeup, Valerie. R.I.P. Gerry Wiggins. Not ong ago I bought his CD in the Classics series - time to listen to this again, and will pull out his Wiggin Out LP on HiFiJazz later today too.

Sorry but IMHO that Soul Junction Esquire cover is way better than the Prestige one (and actually could have appeared on Prestige too with its play on words). Nothing against how Red Garland looked at that time, but snapping persons in street clothing posing somewhere in a park is pretty nondescript too and does NOT relate to the title of the album in any way (not that the image necessarily would have to relate to the album title but generic covers like this were a dime a dozen at that time - or would you want to file this in the "Fashion" section of album cover art books like "Jazzical Moods" too?). As for the other ones, it all is a matter of taste but they do have their charm, and the DSM-inspired drawings aren't that bad either. DSM had no monopoly on this, and if you thought he had then you would have to discard a lot of other artwork on record sleeves and jazz mags right away. As always, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

IMO the inclusion of "non-original" issues is no concern really as long as the artwork merits inclusion. If the only difference of concurrent non-US releases is the label tag, then .... well ... And some European (or other) parallel or second releases would warrant inclusion, e.g. the totally different (but nonetheless intriguing) U.K. Esquire covers of LP's originally released on U.S. Prestige. As for duplications, I do have the same concerns, but what do you expect? BLUE NOTE and IMPULSE et al. spell $ALE$ $ALE$ $ALE$ in these circles as not everybody of those who stumble on this book now has those other books your are referring to and besides, who among the "impulse buyers" of lifestyle Taschen books could be bothered to investigate what a Mode or Dig or (whatever other somewhat minor label) cover is? No spontaneous association with the label there. A 10in or EP cover book would be a nice idea indeed but I don't seem much chances for 10in cover art books (beyond what has already been done) because with 10in LP's you are limiting yourself to a rather narrow time frame in the production of LP covers and therefore also to a somewhat narrow stylistic frame of whatever was usually done in that part of the 50s. And the way today's world and its trends function, you CANNOT do such a book without including a sizable portion of 60s (i.e. non-10in era) covers, possibly even 70s covers. It's all about market (and marketing) forces at work. Unfortunately ... So let's hope the price makes it worthwhile anyway.

Getting away for a moment from the endless George Benson thread about the relative merits of fairly overproduced easy listening pop :D, I'd like to second the recommendation of this set. This IS fun and highly entertaining and instructive, if only as a document of a musical tradition now extinct. Lovers of blues, early jazz and oldtime country music will find a lot here. And for additional listening, the FOLKS, HE SURE DO PULL SOME BOW compilation from the same stable (Old Hat CD-103) is recommended too. (Check out the link to the Old Hat website above)

Amazing how this goes on on and on on and on on and on (BTW; wasn't this the refrain of some 70s black city slicker dude pop song too? D: D:), but summing up the last dozen threads, including JSangry's interventions, all I can say (and I am a bit sorry about this) is that a) I strongly doubt there was such a thing as a quantum leap in musical prowess of the musicians and singers concerned (after all we are not talking lowdown-gutter country blues here, and there any such criteria would be futile as well), b) a technical quantum leap may have occurred, but SO WHAT - SO F****N WHAT if all this technical quantum leap can produce is insipid fodder like that song quoted several times here? SO MUCH effort invested and SO LITTLE achieved, and c) I therefore feel there is a bit of truth in Danasgoodstuff's assessment of any such statements indeed. And this has got NOTHING to do with being dissatisfied with anything in life - EXCEPT being fed up with people trying to shove down ever-increasing amounts of precalculated musical superficialities down one's throat and claiming this is "the real thing" at the same time. BTW @ MG: I certainly would not expect the black music makers to have remained in their ghettos (and really, not all of the 50s black music was a ghetto product) and I really try not to romanticise things about music form the past too much. But come on (and I know you know this too) - if smoooothie black music was needed to satisfy those who've "made it" and did not feel like being reminded of rougher music that reeked of harder times, then really, really - CHARLES BROWN achieved much more way back with (comparatively) much sparser at least just as effective musical means when compared to this "artificial "Turn Your Love Around" slickness and blandness. So where's the progress? Is plastering on layers of sugar coating and arranging gimmicks meant to be progress in musical competence? Accommodating changing styles- yes, but superiority? Nah! Again (and as the bottom line of all this), changing times demand changing music - OK, and if the music just serves its lowbrow aim of providing entertainment (and, above all, making the cash register of thosee purveyors of entertainment services ring :D), then that's fine too for what the music was meant to be only. BUT - claiming such insipid results of oh so intricate studio production wizardry is proof of musical SUPERIORITY is just ridiculous in the extreme. Finally, anybody care to comment on the entire hip hop-rap thing as a musical expression of what black society at large had achieved? Could it be that this funk slickness was just a put-on or cover-up or or did the pendulum of development of society actually swing back?

Ha, now that's funny ... Just been tinkering in my workshop for a while refurbishing some parts for my old cars with the radio playing in the background... And guess what just came on as a sort of commemoration of a tour George Benson seems to have done here some time ago (can't say I regret missing it)? "Turn Your Love Around"! Holy Mackeral! Sometimes it takes forced exposure like that to bring certain impressions back into mind. If this is all that's the result of those "developed skills" and "sophistication" of studio productions that occurred way after the 50s then "sophistication" in this musical genre just equals nothing but overproduction. Not much progress I can see there unless you want sophistication for sophistication's sake without any regard for honest, personal substance. Fine musical production values, that! Any 50s Johnny Ace or Jesse Belvin tune (both vocal and instrumental-wise) has more handmade, down-to-earth, straightforward musical qualitites than this interchangeable Commodores soundalike! But maybe turning out something with the more simplistic equipment of the 50s that despite these alleged limitations in musical craftsmanship has stood the test of time has become a lost art ever since production technicalities engineered by some whiz kids have won out in the studios??

MG, you're right - I did ask that question before (yesterday in reply to a post by Jim Alfredson, but I deleted my remark soon afterwards as I figured it was pointless at that point of the debate but now, and in view of recent posts that followed...). Some of those artists that come to my mind are Willis Jackson's EARLY recordings (as opposed to his later work), Louis Jordan's 50s recordings for Aladdin and Mercury or Cootie Williams' late 50s small band that he toured and recorded with. I admit I cannot really give the exact sources of recent statements from jazz circles that seem to put down the R&B output of jazzmen from that era but those statements did occur - very much to my surprise, as I figured the listeners' and critics' attitude from the 50s when such putdowns were even more frequent would definitely be a thing of the past. But there still seems to be an invisible barrier between 40s/50s jazz and 40s/50s R&B (or "black pop") in the minds of quite a few. And yet back then R&B and mainstream jazz and even bebop were not that far away from each other IMHO (as proven not only by the above but also artists by such as Gene Ammons and Leo Parker or Tom Archia) and "crossover" and cross-polliation were frequent. Again, nothing wrong with jazz artists going pop or easy listening at all if they find this is the road they want to follow but then their output not only ought to be judged by pop or easy listening standards but also ought to be categorized as such. Otherwise you'll have the next "Is smooth jazz actually jazz?" debate coming up and we'll be back to the beginning. BTW, I'm writing this as a local "jazz festival" is about to open here that openly includes pop acts in its festival roster (on what grounds, I wonder? It must be pretty hip to sail under the jazz flag even despite the fact that the commercial non-potential of jazz is relentlessly evoked everywhere )

Take it easy, Bluemonk. There is no big deal about statements to the effect that this or that musician "sucks" in what he does. No need to go overboard with PC here. It IS just a statement of opinion that everybody ought to be entitled as long as there still is the liberty of voicing one's opinion. After all, nobody is forced to agree with statements of opinion like that. IMHO it all boils down to this: Artists like Benson at one point in their career have decided to leave jazz (was Benson EVER "hardcore" jazz, BTW? The "core" of jazz - yes, but "hardcore"? ) for greener pastures of pop or easy listening music (some may call it R&B but wouldn't this be stretching things a bit?). All very well and all quite acceptable but pretend it is something it isn't? Not Benson's fault, but in the end it amounts to the same. Consider him a pop or easy listening (or "soft R&B") artist but it just ain't jazz anymore from a certain point. If for some reason his pop albums were to be forced on jazz audiences (via radio or otherwise) then I'd understand those who came to listen to jazz just say he "sucks" jazzwise. (Note: JAZZWISE, NOT pop-wise ) Like I said earlier in this thread, I've never been touched by Benson's "contemporary" music blaring from jazz radio shows back in the 80s, evidently made after after he had made the transition. It might be described as "lush" (but not in the better sense of the word) - and, yes, it DID keep me from exploring his jazz works (there being so much other jazz music to explore where you could not possibly go wrong, the risks of ending up with a pop-slanted bummer in those pre-internet, pre-forum days just were waaaaay too big for me. And I guess I wasn't the only one ...) Ornette paid his dues in rock and roll and "walked the bar" for the people. I think he believes that his music is not so erudite as to be appreciable by a vast number of people. So did others (e.g. Trane with Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges, not to mentin Sun Ra or Clifford Brown), yet that's a far, far cry from what came afterwards in their musical careers and is not necessarily linked. What I find strange in all this is that with more recent jazz artists it all of a sudden it is considered quite quite legitimate even by JAZZ criteria to go into pop (even if it was only for the money - let's nt make any false pretenses) whereas TO THIS VERY DAY jazz artists from earlier days see part of their output denigrated for being "R&B" although at that time (40s/50s, etc.) R&B certainly was far closer to the mainstream of jazz than black pop (so-called R&B) was/is in much more recent decades. Pretty strange, ain't it?

Suck or not suck, but is this what it's all about? Have any of those who complan about this "George Benson sucks" opinion (lilke Bluemonk said, it's nothing but an opinion, however clear-cut or radical it may be) ever complained just as loudly about all those who generically state "JAZZ SUCKS"?? C'mon gents, it IS just an opinion, like it or not. For every "George Benson (or any other controversial musician) sucks" statement there is another statement that says this or that "(place name of any pop or easy listening artist here) is the greatest jazzman ever". So what? No big deal. @Jim Alfredson: Respecting your audience is all very well (though the way you put it this does read a bit like "keep the cash register ringing" to me) but doesn't it mean that if an artist or a band is playing to a pop or easy listening audience and "respects" it by adapting to this audience's tastes they are actually making pop or easy listening and NOT jazz music? (As opposed to playing THEIR brand of music without any major concessions and winning them over anyway) Nothing wrong with that per se, but why not call a spade a spade? Artists like this just have made the decision to leave one style (jazz in this case) behind and move into another style of popular music. It all falls into those categories that later on show up in discographies where an artist's recorded opus is included only to a certain extent within any given genre and (like Brian Rust used to do in his discogs) it then says "Other recordings by this artist are of no jazz interest" (and there were and ARE such artists). I suppose if the money is right the artists concerned can live pretty well with this but jazzwise they then "suck" to some. That will have to be accepted too. Or else Kenny G and others like him would have to be right up there in the pantheon of the greatest jazzers ever because any stylistic identity that defines any type of musical style (and therefore obviously has to include some and EXCLUDE others) would be negated right from the start. And to carry your argument one step further, would you say all that to Ornette Coleman too? Are artists like him just disrespectful, inconsiderate, arrogant snobs who kick their audience in the you know where with their music because they do THEIR thing and do not oblige to the public's whims?

MG; in the era ot Top 40 soundalikes I think it cannot hurt if at least a certain (minor, anyway) share of the programs retains a clear-cut musical profile aimed at a particular audience. After all, to this day this still is no problem with strictly CLASSICAL-MUSIC programs (at least in Germany and elsewhere on the continent) so why should everything else be lumped together all the time? OK, I'd better bow out now before it gets too off-topic ...

To me the problem seems to be that too much of that pop stuff was played and featured as "jazz" everywhere. I remember back in the 80s over here he was all too present in specialist jazz radio shows here but the stuff of his that noodled and doodled over the airwaves might have fitted in very well with easy listening pop stations (where it probably belongs) but not with jazz, not even in jazz programs that leaned more towards more "classic" jazz material (and not avantgarde). THAT's the point ... The music may have been fine for what it was meant to be, but could it be that even in the 80s by typical pop standards he just did not have a youthful and/or energetic enough image to fit in with pop/rock music that was supposed to appeal to the young'us?? :D Which would only have left easy listening programs, but he ended up on jazz programs again instead, and diehard jazzers over here probably resented this as much as they resent(ed) it in the States. It may have been wrong resenting the music for that because it probably never was meant to be jazz anymore, but then it ought not to have been aired on jazz programs in the first place.

Reading a good deal of this thred made me ask myself this question: How would a similar discussion of WES MONTGOMERY have evolved if he had lived a lot longer? (And this was before I came up to today's post from Jazzshrink that mentions Wes )

Well, I remember quite clearly my first two BN's (bought almost simultaneously) were Jutta Hipp's Hickory House LP's (Vols. 1 + 2). And the reissue of George Wallington's 10in LP from the 5000 series came not long after. Guess I'm the "odd man out" when it comes to "typical" BN fare and what you tend to fall for in the first place when BN is mentioned. :D

Will check my copies of German, Swedish and French jazz mags from those years but from what I remember having read there about touring international acts sitting in with locals this name does not ring a bell AT ALL. Could be that except for Comblain la Tour (where he MUST have made headlines) he might have been somewhat under the radar of the jazz press. But possibly I've overlooked something. And just for the record, the correct spellings of those Swedish jazzmen (so they can be researched elsewhere) are SEYMOUR ÖSTERWALL and LARS FÄRNLÖF That Turkish trumpeter he mentions must be MAFFY FALAY (born Muvaffal Falay) who started out in the late 50s/early 60s and in the years after became quite a household name on the Swedish jazz scene. BTW, that info on the "Jazz Greats in Europe I and II" CDs (which do sound tempting) on the site you link to is a bit skimpy. Any track list or other recording info available on what's on those CDs exactly? And correcting the spelling of the local musicians involved couldn't hurt either ...

this is dead on. not sure if you mean it the same way that I do, but the current jazz era of regurgitation and recapitulation goes against everything jazz originally stood for: delving into new territory, exploding through what were thought to be barriers, finding your own voice and expressing yourself to the best of your abilities. jazz is such an innately constrained area that this has been impossible to do for decades, and is why jazz has been a stagnant (at best) art form for a long time now (I'd say since Miles left in 1975). but the spirit of jazz is alive and well in other areas of music, it's a crucial underpinning for plenty of the most exciting music happening today, just not jazz itself. Quite true - both JSangry's statement above and your comment. But if this is so, and if it is being realized by jazz fans, then I wonder why everybody in the "established" jazz world sneered at that entire RETRO-SWING or NEO-SWING movement throughout the 90s. Agreed, some bands were just musically oversimplistic or downright mediocre, others were more clownery than substance, but there were enough musically interesting bands that have added a new twist to the entire swing/jump blues genre by fusing swing with rockabilly/ska/punk influences AND managing to spark new and ongoing interest in the old masters among a younger generation of listeners and (above all) DANCERS. Here in Europe at any rate, this subculture definitely still exists, though the Neo-swing wave has ebbed off quite a bit since the late 90s here too. Or is it that exploring new territory in jazz is only OK to the keepers of the jazz flame if you use hard bop/post-bop/post-electric-Miles as your STARTING point and anything that uses older forms of jazz for reference is automatically labeled "old hat" or "reactionary" or whatever?? If so, then the stagnation that jazz seems to find itself in serves jazz right. Remember there was a time when jazz was quite legitimately considered a musical form designed primarily for dancing and having fun in an extrovert way instead of a musical background for musing over the relative merits of an augmented 137th vs a doubly flatted 93rd into one's long, grey but oh so sophisticated beard. :D

"Third Stream" was an even deader end IMHO. As for "vocalese" being such a dead end, I don't think it would be fair to overlook the work of Manhattan Transfer completely. Their output may be slighted by some as being too straightforward (probably by those who at other occasions would complain relentlessly about the public at large failing to grasp jazz at all) but there is no denying they generated new interest in the "originals" they took their inspiration from.

I'm not so sure about that. Isn't it a bit like MG said above: The frist step to tolerating and accepting the music (i.e. modern jazz - though to those outside the jazz world the notion of "modern" in connection with some 40 to 60 year old music must be abit odd) is NOT to run away or protest loud as soon as the first few bars are played across speakers. Of course some (probably the majority) will just take it in as a background tone pattern like they'd take in elevator muzak, but unless this jazz dispensed was just the more universally palatable Shearing and Brubeck fare (and apparently, from your description, it wasn't) then accepting this music even as background music over any lengthy period of time takes some serious adaptation and a degree of tolerance that still isn't found everywhere. And IMHO this IS the first step to getting into this music in some way. Kinda late, but better than running away screaming, isn't it? And who knows - maybe there are a few out there among this crowd who find it hip enough to take in their supper not to some sugary sounds of one zillion Mantovani or Faith strings but to some jazz blowing or tinkling? If only one or the other of those who might actually find this kind of musical background "kinda hip" will be intrigued enough to check out some jazz CD sampler or to even attend some jazz open air some time (if only out of sheer curiosity or because "it's the thing to do") then this isn't a bad thing either. Actually, I wish my better half wouldn't squirm the way she does when I play a certain kind of bop/cool in our music room at home. So are all those hotel guests hipper than my better half ? (I mean, they can't ALL the tone deaf! )

Any views, opinions, comments on the book shown above (see pic)? What aspects and what era does it concentrate mostly on? How is it written? Any other comments? Obviously Willis Conover does have much more of a name over here in Europe due to his radio presence (yes, and listening to his 1956 "WIllis Conover's House of Sounds" as a piece of the times can't hurt either). But in case of the book, it all depends how the author captured the particular aspects of W.C.'s career. Incidentally, the book got mentioned at some length on the website of a German news magazine (our national equivalent of "Newsweek") though it does not seem to be all that brand-new.

Not quite solo, but try "Percussion and Bass" recorded with Milt Hinton in 1960 for Everest.

On a side note: Ever since I saw this cover in a cover art book I've been asking myself this: This line - HIPSTERS FLIPSTERS FINGER POPPIN DADDIES - also is the album title of a 60s Brit R&B album by Geno Washington & The Ram Jam band (on Pye, IIRC). Hard to see a connection between Lord Buckley and 60s British R&B (except pure coincidence), but what are the real origins of this catchphrase? Anybody know?