Big Beat Steve

Not having been around at the times of the BNBB and not wanting to pass lightly over the feelings of diehard BNBB'ists but I do find this thread both instructive and entertaining (beyond the fact that Norah Jones just is NOT jazz . Now maybe somebody ought to place a link to this thread over on the AAJ forum and see what happens THEN? :D

How true!

Very good point. Norah Jones is pop. Not jazz. That's all. If the "powers that be" at BN feel they need to stick that "Jazz" tag on her because it's chic and elevates her "music" to a higher, more sophisticated level that sells better that way then we might well be in for another "smooth jazz" debate (except that this time it's not about instrumental music, obviously). This will be interesting to watch indeed...

Well, Richie Cole was born on 29 Feb. 1948. Would that offset it at least somewhat?

MG, the Sun R&B material has been reissued widely by Bear Family and Charly on vinyl, and I should think that they currently are available on CD too. It might pay looking through the Bear Family catalog. Check this, maybe it might lead to you what you are looking for: http://www.bear-family.de/tabel1/neuheit/serien/sun_e.htm

Well, MG, now it's my turn to tell YOU I don't quite get what you are out to say. Does "Smooth Jazz" BENEFIT the JAZZ community? Or does it benefit some soft instrumental pop pap "community" because in addition to providing the music it provides them with a hip, in-crowd moniker that they can cling to? "Even if I don't get the essence of actual jazz now I am a hip jazz fan too because I am into "smooth JAZZ" and this is soooo much cooler than having to be into "smooth adult entertainment background music". ??? :D In short, call a spade a spade and stop coming up with false pretenses, that's all the REAL jazz fans seem to be after(including in THIS thread).

I do assume this comment of yours is all tongue in cheek, right? I suppose you are fully aware of the major difference between a Tin Pan Alley standard done instrumentally by, say, Eddie Duchin or Joe Reichman on the one hand and Al Haig, Oscar Peterson or Art Tatum on the other? It's what you make of the source material, and this is what the difference between "instrumental pop" and "instrumental jazz" amounts to. An occassional obbligato does not yet make a truly jazzy solo and does not turn the music into jazz yet.

Unusually, I'm not clear about what you're saying here, Steve. In particular, I don't know what you mean by "soft fusion" - I never listened to fusion anyway - could you give a couple of examples? All labels for genres of music are coined quite a long time after the music develops. Marketing men don't hang with musicians, do they? MG MG, I made up this "soft fusion" term myself just to hint at the blander and more commercial semi-jazz music played here and there (radio etc.) under the "fusion" tag. You know when I started getting seriously interested in and collecting jazz in my high school days in the 70s the music marketed under the "fusion" label really bugged me because everybody semingly "in the know" seemed to insist that THIS was what jazz all about and (worse still) was what jazz had been about forever. Of course I wouldn't say fusion per se is no valid style of jazz, but to make matters worse, among that "fusion" label there just was soooo much doodling and noodling that was just plain insipid pap (sort of slightly r&B-ed over elevator music), and I take it that the evolution of this end of fusion was what later was marketed as "smooth jazz". After the early 80s I did not really pay much attention to fusion anymore as it somehow ebbed off but when smooth "jazz" came along again from the late 90s it did get rather annoying. For the very reason evoked by others here: Those among the total newbies who might otherwise have gotten into some real jazz (though it might be a bit more demanding on one's listening) are led to believe "smooth jazz" actually is at the core of REAL jazz and is what jazz is all about (marketing forces at work, you know ...). Either they pass it off as elevator music and never care to explore actual jazz any further or they get stuck in the rut of this smooth, unoffensive lull of soft instrumental streams and get frightened away from any real jazz that has considerable more bite (regardless of the actual style of jazz). And you yourself as somebody who prefers quite a wide variety of real jazz it IS annoying being associated with that kind of pap and having to explain that there is a LOT more to jazz. It's a bit like this: Imagine you are a diehard classic jazz fan of the "acoustic" era (there are such characters). And then somebody comes along who drools about Mr Acker Bilk being THE EPITOME of "classic jazz". Just my 2c Steve

Nicely written summary of black music at the edges of jazz, MG, and though I am all in favor of certain forms of R&B being appreciated as valid forms of jazz (as you know) I don't see the link with the entire "smooth jazz" thing. Not all Afro-American music is or was jazz, especially not all post-1960 Afro-American popular music (cf. the entire "Disco" fad). And is "smooth jazz" only about black musicians? And as for the errors (or not) of the opening quote, it all depends on how you look at it. Of course the "Smooth jazz" tag had not been coined in the 70s yet (and the way I remember it a lot of that brand of music marketed under the "fusion" tag sounded like all those cats were trying to grab their share of up to date popular black music too - sort of sophisticated disco, if you want ... And I admit it did bug me the way even the most commercial stuff marketed under the "fusion" label was hailed as THE music that jazz in its totality was all about). So the "soft fusion" music was already there that later was being marketed under "smooth jazz" but does that mean this label (the way it had been coined by marketing people) was any less artificial and anything more than an attempt at cashing in on the "jazz" label because "jazz" was considered hip, sophisticated, cool or whatever ... As noted on other threads where this topic has been discussed, I feel it is this usurpation of an attribute that this music has virtually no rights to at all that jazz fans take offense with. If you "smooth" guys want to market your music, make sure you can stand on your own feet and do not have to rely on other tags.

MG, it's not a question of the degree of jazz content or of good or bad, etc., and not even a question of lineage. There may actually be some "legitimate" "smooth jazz" in the same way that some "nightclub jazz" was recorded in earlier decades too. Sofar, so good. Benson may be a case in point. The key problem, however, is what else there is out there trying to sail under "smooth jazz" flag and thus tarnishes everything else, including the name of jazz itself if the unwary public at large is being led to believe "this is jazz". Don't ask me for examples or names; I've heard quite a bit here and there that has been tagged as "smooth jazz being the latest thing in jazz" in the media, and found a lot of it bloody awful jazzwise. OK, more agreeable to listen to as a sort of "music to brush your teeth by" than, say, certain death metal or gangsta rap nerve-racking rhythms :D but swinging jazz in the commonly accepted (broad) sense of the word, even including the more subtle, subdued varieties? Nope, not in a zillion years! Just watered-down "adult pop" where maybe, just maybe the occasional jazz cliché is repeated here and there.

Maybe so, Guy, Alexander, et al: BUT - you may have recorded jazz as much as you'd care for as long as you'd care; however if you shift the style of your music to something that is NOT jazz, is THAT jazz still jazz just because OTHER music you did a more or less long time ago was jazz? To go a bit back in history: Take former jazz artists such as Nat King Cole and their much later pop hits. Would these still be considered jazz? Would you consider these part of the history of JAZZ? If so, would there be any substantial reason for this that goes beyond some sort of tribute to the artists' former accomplishments? Or to go back even further: Quite a few sweet band leaders of the 30s started out in "hot jazz" bands of the 20s. Would their "sweet" output still be classified as "swing" or "jazz" just on the strength of their earlier sylistic allegiance? In short, why should anybody be fooled by labels and tags slapped onto a product by marketing and accept any statement such as "I want this to be jazz so I am going to call it jazz" at face value?

A guy who went by Sailor Vernon, from whom I used to buy a lot of blues and gospel albums in the early eighties first brought this phenomenon to my attention. It's true, you can't ever experience your first kiss (&etc) again. That's something I've been wondering about too those past years (a sure sign that you DO get older? ). However, I think I do manage to recapture some of that feeling whenever I pull out the actual albums that I bought way back when in my beginning collector's days - those albums discovered downstaires at Dobell's during my school class trips to London in the 70s, etc., or that first Folkways "Mountain Music Bluegrass Style" album located in a local record store, etc. Even if I later came to explore the wider context of all the music first discovered back then (making you realize those records weren't THAT special because there is so much more in the same style) the feelings experienced when I brought those albums home still come alive again to a degree when I spin those records. Anyway, I've been through what most described here too. Though over the years I've been listening to more and more jazz, there have always been periods when you listen more to one particular kind of jazz (or related music) and far less to another. An R&B period might be followed by a West Coast Jazz period or even a period of contemporary Retro swing (where you touch on contemporary rockabilly bands again too). Currently I'm back to the roots in a way similiar to Allen Lowe's - 1930/40s string bands and Western Swing as well as pre-war jazz off the beaten tracks, e.g. Territory bands, which is where things come full circle again. If you explore the music in a direction that runs crosswise to the usual way the history of jazz and other musical styles (that are interrelated more than you first realize) is presented, you discover fascinating new musical relationships you had not been aware of before - which is a fine way of avoiding tiring your favorite music! But forcing myself to listen to ALL or almost all my albums in regular turns - no way I could manage that (or would want to). But even the day of the "dust gatherers" will come again ...

Agreed. Beyond of what's on the "Sixteen Men Swinging" set I cannot get that much out of the 50s Basie studio recordings for Verve either. Not that they are bad but I like some late 50s Roulette sets (including the "Atomic" and the "Chairmen of the Board" albums) better.

Yes they definitely are! Her Savoy 2-LP set gets frequent spins here. I have only casually explored the subsequent Capitol stuff but what I've heard is nice too. Yet somehow she is valued only for her latter-day recordings. Great as they may be, they don't tell the whole story. Marian McPartland is one of those jazz artists where somehow the key years of her career (when these artists were closer to the jazz scene at large) tend to get overlooked. She was very much part of the 50s jazz scene yet somehow she is among that part of jazz history that is unfairly ignored. Everybody drools over Bud Powell, Duke Jordan, the "Miles Davis Quintet pianists", Elmo Hope and other hard hitters etc. but fails to realize there was another (or in fact several other) school(s) of modernist jazz piano playing and those female-led piano trios had a lot going for themselves. And white jazz piano playing in the 50s wasn't all George Shearing after all.

Disc 1, tracks 1 to 3: According to Bruyninckx, reissued on a Fresh Sound compilation entitled "Way To The West". Disc 2, tracks 2 & 3: Available e.g. on RCA LP NK 98865 "Little Richard / Boots Brown & His Blockbusters - Rockin' n' Ravin' " Disc 3, tracks 1 & 2: (Re)Issued previously on LP JAM SESSION JS-100 So there you go ... OOP but secondhand bins are always worth a look And it makes that Propoer box look even more like a hodgepodge good as a starter but invariably something that will annoy those who dig deeper into this artists's recordings because they end up duplicating EVERYTHING!

indeed! here is another telling favorite... Holy sh.t !! If it wasnt so sad it would be hilarious indeed! As if that "Bird chirp" bit weren't enough already!

Dave Schildkraut was part of the Kenton band for the European tour in Aug./Sept. 1953 (he must have joined the band for the tour at the last minute to replace Don Carone as his name is not in the official program distributed at the German concerts). No trace of Bird (not for the other 1953 live recordings I m aware of, and definitelynot for the European tour), but he was a guest soloist at a concert in Portland, Oregon, on 28 Feb. 1954.

Alexander, I am afraid you've got a good (all to good) point with your "self-fulfiling prophecy". I've witnessed it at our local music stores here too - to the point of the selection now being only a very tiny fraction of what it was as late as the late 90s. It is indeed as you say - less choice prompts people to buy less and less music. Neither the companies nor the shops seem to care much anymore. To them it doesn't matter if they make a buck from selling a music CD or some computer game trash. And downloading (even legal downloading) does the rest. Not that I would at all encourage massive CD-R'ing or mp3ing and reselling the originals but what is this compared to the bigger issues anyway? For all I've experienced, passing on the occasional CD-R's (or in fact even the occasional original CD when you find it to be something that you'd keep as a CD-R but did not need an original) has always meant that the funds thus freed went into buying other collectible CD's that otherwise would have been unaffordable to everybody involved. Small wonder with the flood of music still hitting the market, except you now really have to DIG for it. - Remember everybody how much money you today have to shell out for SHIPPING all the records you still would have bought over the counter some 10, 15 or 20 years ago in your well-stocked brick and mortar record shop? If the money you have to spend on shipping is balanced by burning the occasional CD-R or keeping the mp3 on your hard drive, who's going to throw the first stone and who's to blame? Maybe those who forced you out of your shops and into mail order after all?

I've had the CBS LP of this since the end of my school days in the late 70s and I must admit I find the announcer's intro quite charming, giving it a period flair (as if you were listening to the actual radio broadcast). Especially if you combine it with the same announcer's intros to the appearance of the Swedish All Stars at this festival (as released on the Dragon CD). But then again I do speak French fluently. I could do without the voiceover during the actual tune but oh well ... Anyway, I have a hunch those who complain about this introduction would be less severe if it had all been in English. There seems to be a ready market for location recordings and broadcasts with all announcements after all. And hey, what would the Jubilee broadcasts be without Ernie "Bubbles" "The Stomach That Walks Like A Man" Whitman's chatter? :D

It all depends on the reissue labels you'd like to buy. In some cases it really pays going straight to the shipping department of the label itself. If you have to have the goods shipped internationally anyway, their prices seem to be the most competitive of them all, and being as close as possible to the source cannot possibly hurt either. Fresh Sounds seems to be such a case for European customers. (Coming to think of it, that reminds me I need to drop a line to Timeless Records in the Netherlands once again; maybe a third mail to them will get me a shipping cost quote at long last ...)

Indeed it is. Especially in view of the fact that discussions seem to center around the latter aspect here all too often and that it still remains doubtful if royalties really always go to the original artists (and their descndants) or just to some music industry moguls whose predecessores screwed the original artists in the first place (and still insist a contract is a contract, no matter how morally doubtful it was when signed 40, 50, 60 or more years ago). So the European 50-year Public Domain cutoff date should be fair enough. 50 years ain't exactly nothing when it comes defining a time frame during which you can reap your rewards. Sir Cliff Richard et al. take note! :D

Not in the case of P.D. stuff. And not in the case of discs originally purchased secondhand either. (And we are not going to start those fancy debates about the desirability of paying royalties on SECONDHAND sales again?? )

Ha! Another one who saw the light!!

Not wanting to hijack your thread, but having read a lot of period material about that festival, I wonder if the other appearances at that festival have also been released comprehensively (or might be released some day)? So far I am only aware of the Swedish All Star band's live recordings issued on DRAGON, and surely the Bechet tracks will also exist somewhere on disc. But beyond that?

Swinging Swede pointed in the right direction. There are many from that era. (Too numerous to mention?) BTW: Would Zoot Sims'" Plays Alto, Tenor and Baritone" session count, too?