Big Beat Steve

The online "Svensk Jazzdisografi" names Englund, Björkman, Wickman, Gullin, Hallberg, Brehm and Edman - and AKE PERSSON on trombone (who else? )! But which Dragon CD are you referring to? I've got that session on DRCD 402 (Bengt Hallberg All Star Sessions 1953/54) and this one DOES list Persson too. So is Persson's omission an oversight on the part of another compiler on another CD or on your part? Anyway, I've never heard or read of Englund playing trombone, even in period mags he was touted as a trumpet man all the time (I've got all of Orkester Journalen from 1936 to 1963 and most of Estrad from 1939 to 1963 so have done a bit of reading).

That just about sums it up IMHO. If he had just said it was Curley Russell who had named the tune for this particular reason. Point. No babble about how Curley sicked it to P.S. of all people etc. But no ... that would not have been enough, it seems ... And no, somehow I don't believe certain hypotheses advanced around here as all this bigwig attitude of those who've come to feel they are absolutely indispensable in their field ties in with what you've heard and witnessed in many such cases. Coming to think of it, I've got all of Ken Burns' JAZZ documentary on video and just LOVE the period footage etc., but would I maybe be better off editing out all the "statements" by Schaap, Marsalis and Crouch when I transfer it to DVD? :D Any suggestions? :D

Got my copy of "Bouncin' With Bartok" last Friday and was immediately impressed as I from the start had a feeling this author did not leave a single stone unturned in exploring every facet of this short artistic life ... I must say this is one of very few musician biographies I would have devoured in one go (if I'd had more time) immediately after starting reading it (only Terry Gibbs' "Good Vibes" managed that in recent times - on a TOTALLY different level, of course )). So far I'm still in the chapter about R.T.'s boyhood and his family background, and as I am usually not overly impressed by whole family tree sagas worked into a bio of one particular person (in other words, some such background stories would benefit from being kept shorter) I still am not weary of that chapter as I feel it is vital in understanding his artistic background. So that's saying something... I noticed that "Bess You Is My Woman now" claim too and was half-tempted to check the tune indexes in accessible discographies so to see if that claim actually was true but then let it pass ... Glad to see that point's settled. At any rate, it certainly was not yet a MAJOR "standard" in 1954. (Was it at any point? ) I probably would not have noticed that misjudgment of Chet Baker, but OTOH what would one have to say about other bios if you start fine-combing things and go by THAT yardstick? Take Count Basie's autobio (a musician I HUGELY admire so I am willing to make limitless concessions) but this one does ramble on and on and get repetitive in its narrative, and since that autobio claims to have been written "with Albert Murray" I wonder how this "ghoster-editor-tidier-up" (or whatever A. Murray's function was) could have missed those misplaced dates and slipups in the post-45 section, in particular? And no doubt unkind things relating to this kind of details could have been said about numerous other bios too. But maybe all this is just because I'm judging this book just as an ordinary listener and collector and not a jazz writer or musician?

Amazing how things come full circle ... All those L+R records from the list in the first post were all over the place in record shops here in the LP days and remained in stock for very, very long at fairly low prices of some 9.99 deutschmarks apiece. Seems like L+R did not manage to shift them all THAT quickly ... Since the Jutta Hipp LP was mentioned, part of that LP is made up of part of the contents of her first Blue Note LP (10") so the current CD is a re-re-(re-?)reissue.

Agreed too. Considering the limited number of items that MODE released, they certainly had lots of high-calibre players. But apparently they were located on the "wrong" coast and did not have enough "angry young horn blowers" in their ranks to achieve anything like the BN cult status.

Indeed! Must have been released after I bought a whole batch of that series.

Are there any accessible reissues of Arnold Ross' 10in LP recorded for Vogue in 1952 available these days? Can't recall having ever seen it in that black cardboard cover Vogue/BMG CD reissue series of French jazz that was around in the 90s.

Hm .... looks like this is the time to pull out my copy of "The Complete Clarence Profit" on Meritt 15 again and give it a spin. Been a while since I listened to it but what I do remember is that his interplay with guitarist Jimmy Shirley on his 1940 trio sides is EXTREMELY fascinating.

I don't know ... My copies of Atomic 202 (Strictly For Kicks/Wolf Song by Lyle Griffin's Strictly For Kicks Music including a.o. Herbie Haymer on ts) and Atomic 230 (David Allyn singing Snowbound/Penthouse Serenade, with Lucky Thompson a.o. in the backing band) have fairly little wear and pretty decent shine (maybe a visual VG+) and play with only a moderate amount of background hiss and crackle. I've heard 78s on major labels that sounded worse with the same amount of visual wear. So I guess they probably were not the very best and most silent indie pressings but a lot better than many of those "recycling shellac" noise platters often mentioned in connection with 40s indie labels. But a lot depends on the equipment you play those 78s on today. I've played them on two different Dual turntables (none of them high-end) and the background hiss is much more pronounced on one (the older one) of them. But that's not specific to those Atomic records.

Did you check the Louis jordan discography by Jacques Lubin and Danny Garcon? It is about 20 years old so may not be quite up to date as far as recent discoveries are concerned, but it includes a lot of tracks recorded in 1944-46 (mostly with personnel) with the World Transcription Services being indicated as the recording source. Some of the tracks on that CD are listed there, some are not. According to that discography some of the World Transcription recordings even made it to Decca and V-Disc releases at the time. World Transcription recordings (not the ones on that CD) were reissued on Circle LPs CLP-53 and CLP-97. Now the amazing thing is that CLP-53 has 12 tracks from 7 different sessions and the dates and personnes for all 7 sessions (Jan., 44 to July, 45) are given in the liner notes, stating "World Broadcasting Systems Files" as the sources. So clearly it could not have been THAT difficult researching the lineup and recording dates for most of these tracks??!

Yes I've been wondering where you've been lately too. Hope you will enjoy your faster web access once it's there. A couple of weeks ago I finally installed a new computer (the old one is close to 9 years old but is still doing fine for what it is supposed to do), changed over to a faster DSL (at last!) flat rate phone and internet access at the same time (wouldn't have made much sense upgrading the old one before that) and finally had an in-house "intranet" with up to 4 internet access points installed. So I won't have to rely on my office computer anymore for really FAST access to this and other sites. Hope you'll be able to experience the same difference, so hang on until then ...

I believe you are right (especially for what you said about the music being played the way it was meant to be heard way back then, why is why BTW I dont always believe in reissues doctored beyond all limits; I can live quite well with a measure of surface noise) and I AM interested in this thread. In fact it has prompted me to give some of my c. 1000 78s a spin again every now and then, but I don't really believe in listing individual tracks here. But maybe I'll change my mind, even though I don't (yet?) see the point of rattling off playlists as apparently there is hardly ever a substantial discussion of the tracks mentioned.

This 1945 session was originally on Atomic and vinyl geeks will find it on "Central Avenue Breakdown Vol.2" (Onyx 215).

Unless I am very much mistaken and this is supposed to be a plug for newly-released kids' books with jazz overtones (or jazz books with kids' overtones, however you look at it, cf. that comment on the Monk book above), I am surprised nobody has mentioned that "First book of Jazz" by Langston Hughes yet. Pretty timeless IMO. That said, I do like that Bird kids' book theme. Edit: Oops, Baker (who else? ) beat me to it. His post tends to get crowded out by the others with their color cover scans, etc. so another mention of Langston Hughes' book is in order I guess.

"Al Haig Meets The Master Saxes Vol. 3" (Spotlite SPJ 143), featuring a.o. Herbie Steward's session of Jan. 17, 1950 (Medicine Man/Passport to Pimlico/T'Aint no use/Sinbad the Sailor)

I guess Jay Cameron was almost better known over here in Europe during his early prime. He lived in Paris from 1948 and was a regular on the French jazz scene. His 1955 Album ("Jay Cameron's International Sax band") released on Swing (F) and Vigue (GB) and reissued on CD in the "Original Vogue Masters" series by BMG is an interesting one.

And why not, Chewy?? That record by Paul Bley was recorded in Feb. 1954, and 78s were commonly made and released until 1958.

I have two of his earliest 78s (rec. 1945): Empty Ballroom Blues Pt. I + II (Pacific 603) Rose Room/Mexican Hat Dance (Pacific 613) The first one reminds me of the small-combo post-war swing/R&B combos such as those by Saunders king, Pee Wee Crayton, etc, Rose room (feat. Barney bigard on clarinet) leans a bit more towards typical mid-40s small-band swing, and Mexican Hat Dance shows he'd been listening to the Western Swing guitar virtuosos of the day too.

Are you really serious? Since BN has been such a fetichist label for such a long time, it's been the holy grail for many - not only original pressings but also slightly later pressings, Japanese pressings, etc. And this not only with collectors who either truly go for hard bop and the music that is on BN or who somehow have a habit of building "label collections" (where BN cannot be missing) and who therefore are dead serious about it, but also for collectors who have been lured into the "reasoning" that any self-respecting jazz collector has to own a sizable cross-section of all those "classic" BN items (no matter whether those items sit on the shelves most of the time afterwards because their favorite listening consists of other facets of jazz). So even when somebody clears out a massive jazz vinyl collection the BN's go out first almost automatically. And then there are (or have been) those well-off yuppies and self-proclaimed hip dudes who believe in accumulating artefacts of a certain 60s-style or "post-modern" lifestyle that they want to embrace and, above all, be identified with. This not all that rarely seems to include a good selection of BN's and Impulses too. Believe it or not, I've been told on more than one occasion by record dealers (in unrelated places) that they've been doing excellent business with BN and Impulse (originals or second pressings or, in a pinch, Japanese reissues) not only to the typical collectors but also to lifestyle-conscious people who had those dealers compile a set of "BN essentials" for them to store, stow (and display? and hopefully listen to as well) as part of their "hip" apartment furnishings. Sounds crazy? And all this because they figured this was the kind of cool music they were supposed to listen to in the setting they wanted to build for themselves at home. Do your cooking in those all-stainless steel kitchens or your office paperwork to some Trane background music? Seems to be not all that unlikely. Sounds crazy? It is. But that seems to be part of the story of where those BN's go. So now you may go ahead and guess where they all are ...

Sixstring, I am not sure which Goldmine book of Jazz lps you are talking about, but either you ought to remember that this book (in its probably older version by now) has a release cutoff date of 1969, and the Spotlite LPs were issued LONG afterwards (so cannot be in that book) or this guide has a blatant lack of non-U.S. releases. Anyway, this LP is fine (my copy ahs been played countless times by now) but if you're interested in bebop then it is only the tip of the iceberg - Spotlite isued a HUUUUGE lot of interesting reissue, drawing heavily on the Dial catalog but also on airshots and other indie releases. Worth checking out!

One half of your wants is available here at quite a correct price: http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/search.ph...mdSearch=Search Good luck!

Then let me put it this way for you: 1) I did NOT dwell on the pricing aspect because I do not have an opinion and certainly not enough information on that matter. Besides, it would not be the only industry where consumables are priced much lower for producers than they are for consumers (cf. energy costs in a LOT of countries and industries). So the issue is wider one. And it also includes the aspect of whether you are willing to accept that lower pricing for producing industries is worth it because you want the produce that uses and needs that water. If you do, fine (but introducing saving measures to limit the effects of droughts might still make sense). If you don't, move the production where it really can be said that "food grows where water goes" (as you said), i.e. "where water GOES" and NOT "where water has to be carried piggyback". A drought is still a drought. 2) I did NOT say at all that the water use for irrigating agricultural fields and for watering private lawns is on the same level. BTW, do you have actual figures that underline the relationshsips of the consumption levels of the two "consumer groups"? 3) But if there is a drought then there is a drought and water needs to be saved. Because if water is in short supply it is in short supply for everyone. And limiting water use to really IMPORTANT use (defining what's important is something I'd leave to others but watering one's lawn sounds pretty unimportant to me in such a shortage situation) does not sound like the worst idea to me in such a situation - and even in urban areas there are bound to be more important uses than watering one's lawn - and I know my water bill DOES go up if I do lot of watering of my not so huge lawn during dry summer spell here. So in all logic every little bit should help, especially if you multiply the "insignificant" amount of water used watering ONE lawn by the certainly not quite so insignificant number of people who do this. Of course watering one's lawn would probably be only one such aspect. Washing your private car out in the street would be another one (if that is still legal there) - and sprinkling sidewalks too, of course. 4) Or is it that you insist on continuing to satisfy your own petty everyday whims (such as dousing your lawn regardless of whether insufficient water is available) on the premise that the "big users" are elsewehere and "what I do on top of this doesn't matter"? Or is it a "way of life" that you insist on keeping up? If everybody did this where would you be? Or is it that everybody DOES this and that's why you are where you are? With all due respect, I doubt that I do not know what I am talking about (such shortage situations have occurred elsewhere too, you know, much closer to here, and the politicians' reactions on what water use to outlaw have been similar too), but are you sure that YOU are up to the task of contributing of easing that situation if what you said above describes your stance on EVERYONE contributing to saving water?

Just reading all this in puzzlement ... Can somebody fill me in on the actual and unavoidable link between watering PRODUCE grown by farmers for general food consumption and watering LAWNS as a personal luxury? If you are short on water, limit it to the essentials. I daresay watered lawns aren't essential (at least not compared to water used for agricultural purposes). And that just MIGHT ease the situation ...

Not on bass, but on drums: That's Jack "The Bear" Parker who also recorded a couple of R&B vocal sides under his own name around that time.

5-4-3-2-1 made it to No. 5 in the UK charts (even Come Tomorrow and Ha Ha Said The Clown made it "only" to No. 4) AND 5-4-3-2-1 was MM's FIRST chart entry in the UK. So not that bad if you go by that yardstick (not every pop/rock band can get its first chart entry to No. 1 (not even "that one" British invasion band did - at least not in the UK). And all the rest is a matter of taste.