Big Beat Steve

There is some early Eraldo Volontè stuff on the JAZZ IN ITALY IN THE 40s CD issued by the Riviera Jazz label. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=415 I doubt that style-wise this is what you are looking for but it is an interesting CD that - given the early post-war limitations in Italy - shows they were capable of astonishing and original things there.

I like that recognition that something that 'doesn't work' might just not work because we're not used to hearing it. Again, relevant to the criticism of fusion musics in many forms. Yes and no. Sometimes it IS a matter of "not being used to it", sometimes it is a simple matter of taste, but sometimes it also appears to be a case of a musical dead end. Taking the example of woodwinds used in jazz, by coincidence the other day I listened to a few Chick Webb recordings featuring Wayman Carver on flute. By the sheer "oddity" aspect this must have been even stranger than woodwind recordings in 50s jazz but to my ears it makes perfect sense and fits in perfectly well even in that idiom. Same with 50s jazz: I am really not a jazz flute or woodwind fan but even on first listening I immediately took a liking to the early Herbie Mann recordings on Savoy whereas I never really got into all that flute'n'oboe etc. stuff by West Coast jazzmen such as Giuffre, Shank and Cooper, especially Bud Shank whose woodwind noodling and doodling I often find rather bloodless. And this despite the fact that I consider myself a HUGE West Coast jazz fan. How come, I wonder? Normally the more laid-back, cooler WCJ style ought to lend itself particularly well to woodwinds (at least more so than "bebop on flute") and yet ... somehow it just doesn't "fuse" with the idiom IMHO. Maybe the detractors of WCJ were right in that those woodwinds tended to accentuate the drawbacks of WCJ?? (I.e. a certain "laid-backness" just for the sake of being laid back - which I've never felt to exist to the extent the detractors of WCJ used to claim back then, but there just might be a grain of truth in it if woodwinds come too much to the fore?)

Too bad the Hawk and Red Allen never crossed paths in the studio (AFAIK) in the early to mid-40s when the Hawk was immensely productive in various small group settings and the Allen-Higginbotham group was hot too. No doubt they met at after-hours jam sessions. Being able to hear THOSE jams today would be a major GAS!

As long as there were quite a few male teens who had a crush on somebody as homely and unhip as the McGuire Sisters (and there MUST have been) there's nothing to be ashamed of. :D BTW, Dorothy Collins' vocal attempts at coming to grips with rock'n'roll are fun indeed (e.g. "My Boy Flat Top"). (Don't know if they were recorded with Raymond Scott's orchestra providing the backing, though)

I don't quite know where Kenton fits into the "Crossover" or "Third Stream" bag (except that there might be parallels between the "pompousness" of some classical and some of Kenton's music) but the key fault IMHO with people in dissing Kenton's output (whether they were "brainwashed" into this attitude or not ) is that they lump all of Kenton's music even of that era into one bag. Some of it WAS pompous, and sometimes the usual clichés are even increased by Kenton's own marketing. The other day I picked up the "Kenton Era" 4-LP set of 1956 (that was widely marketed and acclaimed at the time) to add to the not too few Kenton LP's I already have, and listening to those discs, the rhythm section work on a fair number of those tracks makes it quite clear why Shelly Manne "felt like chopping wood" when working with the Kenton band. But as the Kenton orchestra went through a lot of different "phases" from the 40s to the early 60s alone there was quite a bit of variety that ought to have "something for (almost) everybody" if you take the time to listen closer. That aside, I for one am glad that the attempted marriage of classical music and jazz into what was tagged the "Third Stream" did not evolve any further than it did. IMHO it would have taken too much of the lifeblood out of jazz, and the attempts at using "Third Stream" to "elevate" jazz to "respectability" (over here, anyway) were both ill-fated and totally off the mark if you really cared about jazz. Because this approach to using "Third Stream" could only have come from somebody who did just not do what Gioia did: appreciate jazz on its OWN terms.

Proper being what they are (rehashing of previous reissues where you can take advantage of the P.D. copyright rules), I'd venture a guess a lot of this material comes from the LPs with early Ronnie Scott material that were reissued on the ESQUIRE label in the 80s. I have several of these and find them very enjoyable, very creditable examples of bebop playing - a sort of "miniatures" where a lot of energetic music is condensed into the 3-minute playing time limits. Americans may sneer at them and dismiss them as "copycats" but I feel there is more to this music; they did develop their own ideas in the idiom in a quite convincing way. At the relatively low price of those Proper re-reissues you can probably live with the fact that you often are bound to end up with lots of overlaps and duplicates, and for others it's a good opportunity to fill total blanks in their collections.

Reading this thread and bieng of roughly the same age bracket (born in 1960) as quite a few around here when it come to awareness of 70s pop music, I wonder what I am to make of this thread? Do I have to feel guilty of having been a total outsider back then because I took only a very passing interest in the pop music of the day and otherwise was in the same camp as Ted O'Reilly (the details, histories and trivia of rock music that came AFTER the end of REAL rock'n'roll music in the early 60s were of little interest to me as got into jazz early on and otherwise was/am only interested in the music of the rockabilly era, i.e. music "before my times" in every respect) or - what might be worse - do I have to feel like a total fraud today because for all I know about jazz and jazz-related music (and I'd claim it is a lot) it is boards like this that make me realize how much I still DON'T know about this music compared to others? And going by that yardstick, how many "frauds" would there be around here anyway so aren't a lot of us in good company anyway? :D BTW: WTF were the Starland/Starlight Vocal Band??

Not according to Feather's bio entry (see above). Maybe Late confused this when he mentiond the WEST Coast?

Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of 1960 sez thus: JOHN WILLIAMS, born Windsor, Vt. 1/28/29. played with Mal Hallett's last band in 1945 around Boston. To NYC 1949; Army, Jan . 51-53. Later was with Ch. Barnet, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and other small groups around NYC. Not related to West Coast pianist John Towner Williams. Favs.: Powell, Silver, Brookmeyer. Own LP: Mercury. LPs with Nick Travis (Vict.), Brookmeyer (Storyville, WoPa), Getz (Verve), Cannonball Adderley (Merc.), Z. Sims (Argo, Dawn), Phil Woods (Pres.), J. Cleveland (Merc.).

Yeah, Mike is basically right - Crown often retitled previously issued RPM/Modern tracks when they re-reissued it on Crown. I have several Joe Houston LPs where this is the case. I think that up to a point Ace got into this too (they mention it in their liner notes to a Joe Houston CD) but I do think that in their research they go by the original session acetate info (and from the recent Ace CDs with Modern/RPM material there is lots of unissued stuff to be discovered there so this is keeping them busy). Besides, the tracks do not seem to be retitled but are just cover versions in the case of this Continental Jazz Octette and jazz is only a minor interest in the entire Ace catalog. So I guess this is why items like yours and mine (my Continental Jazz Octette LP, BTW, is Vol. 2 on Crown 5220) are not in THEIR focus. Discographer Walter Bruyninckx is pretty clueless about this too. He lists both of these Crown LPs but says the lineup is unknown and give an approximate recording date of 1954 (which I assume is just a wild guess - I figure it is a bit later but this is only based on the release number of the Crown LPs).

Have heard most of the Michel De Villiers material on those Jazz in Paris discs (and a bit more). No trailblazer maybe, but he certainly was no slouch either. Very solid, very swinging "modern mainstream" "Eurojazz" and really enjoyable if unpretentious, no-frills swinging music from that time is what you want.

Budget stuff as usual with Crown. Most of it shrouded in mystery. I have one of those Continental Jazz octette LPs too (may be the same one but I don't have my collection here at the office with me right now, of course) and this anonymous group may have been discussed here before (I dimly remember something). I agree it's not some reissue of Crown/Modern masters but some rerecording (jazzmen doing "cover versions") but I have no discographical information whatsoever. I picked up this LP for cheap a couple of years ago, found it amusing, and as it evidently was some 50s recording that was good enough for me at the time. But I'd be interested to find out more about the actual lineup too. BTW, anonymous recordings like this on budget LP's weren't that uncommon. I have a budget LP from the early to mid-50s on the GUEST STAR label which listens Sarah Vaughn and Billy Eckstine as the "featured" artists (Sassy has only one song on the LP and the Eckstine tracks are reissues of a couple of his mid-40s big band sides) and then "PLUS SELECTIONS BY THE FLETCH ANDERSON ORCHESTRA". Nice enough big band tunes with a 40s sound to fill out the album but would you believe there EVER was such a thing as a FLETCH ANDERSON orchestra? Obviously somebody tried to cash in on Fletcher Henderson's name (it's not him, that's for sure) but whoever hid behind that name hid pretty well.

Wasn't that 1948 Transcriptions disc originally issued on Hindsight? I like Hep's 1946-47 Performances, Vol. 2, which is HEP 74. Nice cross-section of his work at that time with most of the studio Evans and Mulligan material. "Anthropology," with that amazing Lee Konitz solo, is still one of my all-time favorite big band tracks. Greg Mo If the 1948 Transcriptions disc you are referring to is Hep CD 17, then the Answer is NO. I haven't been able to compare the track listings quickly but I'd say the source for this one is the previous Hep LP 17 that includes 14 tracks from 1948 and 1 from 1949. Hindsight LP 108 has tracks from 1947 (at least that's what the liner notes say).

Have earlier Mangelsdorff's (from the EP era) ever been reissued comprehensively? I mean, how can you go wrong with track titles like DIE OPA HIRCHLEITNER STORY that would leave most anybody guessing as to what it actually is?? :D

It may be a matter of course to most around here, but I guess the key to coping with books colored by (often skewed) personal opinion that are actually supposed to be REFERENCE books is to take everything with a fair grain of salt and use them as a rough guideline (with the accent on "rough"). But as you say, that requires having at least a fair degree of basic knowledge so you are not derailed too easily by someone else's possibly extremely one-sided judgment. For example, I've read several 40s books written by Hugues Panassié with GREAT amusement and interest (and actually even learned a few tidbits from them too), although in his assessments of a lot of jazz artists he was about as WAY OFF BASE as you can possibly get. BTW, your complaints about the Penguin jazz guide sometimes remind me of a few instances in the Penguin BLUES guide. There the authors clearly cannot warm up to a lot of (admittedly more craftsmanlike than artistic) 40s and early 50s R&B. But then a lot of late 20s early blues recordings (that most diehard blues fans drool about, no matter how formulaic they were) were just as repetitive when listened to in a string of recordings (i.e. in a way there were never supposed to be listened to back then when they appeared as single 78s). But overall it seems like the blues Penguin guide is a lot more objective. And yes - Tadd Dameron WAS a major figure IMHO. Wonder how "extremely slight" Cook and Morton would have rated Tiny Kahn who (again IMHO) accomplished a LOT and left quite a mark in his very brief lifetime.

So this is THAT rare?? Gotta play my copy once more Bought it on eBay some 5 or 6 years ago, I think. Cannot have cost me much more than 20 euros or so (maybe less if I bought it in a multi-record auction) because I do have my limits, though for a while I tended to shell out for non-reissued Eurojazz from that era too. If I had a turntable to CD burner interface I'd be happy to burn you a copy but right now I don't have the equipment yet. @Christiern: Re- the cover: My guess is that tenor sax man is Jack Sels.

I am not familiar with that particular 3-CD set (but it sounds interesting, how about giving full details? Track listings, label, number, etc.?); it might well be all that exists from that concert, but how much is really issued for the first time there? I have one of those 78rpms that was originally issued (on that yellow label that yells out BOP!), and as early as the 60s the Jepsen discography listed a LOT of that music that was first issued on that BOP label and later on Savoy. "Bopland" , for example, was spread in 6 parts over 3 78s and was later retitled "Byas-A-Drink". A more recent reissue of those tracks is on a Savoy twofer LP from the 80s ("The Hunt"; credited to Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, Savoy SJL2222). Beyond the material on that 2-LP set, there also were 3 78s worth of "Bop After Hours", according to the discographies. Wonder how much beyond that really IS all new to those 3 CD sets. If it is a substantial part I might actually go for it.

So what? It's only a rant by someone who realizes he is totally out of touch with a subculture that clearly is beond his comprehension. It seems to be dawning on the "author" of that blurb that jumping on every bandwagon labeled "progress" doesn't make you a hip person. And when his music download data have disappeared into the collective data nirvana of unreadable files the final laugh will be on us and our records and turntables. :D

Indeed! Happy listening. And after you're through with that, see if you can get hold of the "Swift Jewel Cowboys" LP on the same label!

Ha, so you made that discovery - about a quarter century after the release of that Rambler LP! Great stuff for those who are prepared to look beyond the bounds of usual 30s swing and jazz. This is ONE area where open-minded listeners will see how stylistic boundaries were defied and "crossover" music was made (in a VERY authentic way) decades before that term came into use. Enjoy!

Ouch! That's really, really bad news to European jazz fans. He was a real giant not only of Swedish jazz. Another legend gone and a link to the glory days of Swedish jazz that's been cut. I spun one of his Dragon CDs with his earlier works last night, unaware of his passing. More to follow tonight (and a good moment to reread his recollections of how he got started that have been included in the booklet to one of the Caprice CD anthology boxes). Admins, please move this thread to the Artists section. It warrants being seen much more widely!

There must be a more detailed thread about this boook around here somewhere. I remember Brownie commented on this book at length.

Well, Niko if you can't "feel" that typical 50s street flair (especially around St. German de Près) and are indifferent to 50s cars, then that's so (but that's your loss ) - OTOH rainy days aren't that appealing anyway, and not even some (then) shapely legs will offset that. As for the music, if I understood the liner notes correctly (I didn't check my discographies) there are no overlaps between those 2 CDs. The "shorter" original releases that you refer to probably are those 4-track 45 rpm EP's (EXTENDED PLAY). An extremely common release format for jazz in 50s Europe. That facsimile LP reissue by Fresh Sound is interesting. Never seen that reissue before - one of the very few that must have escaped me totally.

What Allen and Larry said. Agree too. R.I.P. BTW, wouldn't this thread have a better place in the "Artists" section??

Dead wrong IMHO! Those covers are all about a uniform "identity" of the entire series, showing Paris street scenes from the 30s to 50s (though some pics are a bit ouf of synch with the recording dates). I actually find them quite appealing (but then I'm European and am interested in other aspects of the 50s too , up to the point of buying one or two for the covers only - and then getting to appreciate the music too). I'd agree it's a matter of taste but unless you do something like the Fresh Sound reissues where you use original album cover art for the CD covers you might as well go this fairly original route adopted by "Jazz In Paris". But remember many of those Jazz In Paris CDs are made up of the contents of several 10in LPs and EPs so there would not be ONE single original cover that would apply to all the contents of the CD. But maybe you'd lilke the black Vogue reissue series of the 90s (the ones with the cardboard foldout covers) better? If you want to use the term "scam" for thoughtless, nondescript cover art, this might better be applied to certain other reissue labels (including some Stateside ones). Just my very personal opinion...