Big Beat Steve

Another specialty that warrants exploring are the live recordings from Stan Kenton's European tour of 1953. Decent fidelity, great band with an enormous punch that even today gets the impression pretty well across that it left on European audiences back then. And as the Kenton band toured EXTENSIVELY all across Germany during that tour in August/September 1953 this is even part of our very own history of jazz, Kyo. They used to be out on LP on Duke, First Heard and Artistry (and possibly others) and I hope they have been reissued on CD as well.

I've also found that as my turntables improved over the years a lot of the skips (on records bought long ago) improved or disappeared altogether but I have a few "usual suspects" that tend to skip in particular spots anyway though visual grading would make them seem near-perfect. But of course a few 50s originals have that skip problem too (just due to plain wear) but in most cases it can be cured by careful pickup adjusting so just repeated clicks in the affected areas remain. (And then there are a scant few - otherwise treased - more recent LP's that have a pressing defect, i.e. some foreign matter embedded in the raw vinyl which had gone undetected at the time of purchase and also resulted in nasty repeated clicks. Sh... happens.) On the whole, those clicks, pops and crackles on older or well-played vinyl don't bother me too much, though (as long as the noise really remains in the background). In fact, if you buy lots of CD and LP reissues (as I do) of 78rpm-era recordings or airshots or acetate source material you naturally tend to get to live with some degree of background noise and your brain usually "filters it out" anyway. :D

Indeed, Larry. Not unknown to Swing fans at all. I admit, though, I have somewhat ambivalent feelings about those 50s cash-in platters featuring musicians from bygone days trying to revive their faltering careers and record companies trying to boost sales with cheesecake covers and a mass-appeal sales pitch ("Music from ..."). Not that I don't like those cheesecake covers but do we know if maybe the featured musician was past his prime and the backing a lackluster affair by studio hacks? As we know some of those records of this type are good, but others are so-so and still others just plain dull. I take your word, then, Durium, that this one is one of the better, then! The other album on this Lonehill comp, Blue Lou, had the Down Beat reviewers say this: "... good drinkin' music ... easy-going feeling characteristic of the best Nicksieland ... McGarity has that barrelhouse trombone sound ... the net effect of the entire LP is pleasant. Never provocative. ... Three stars." Now you know ...

@Bev Stapleton: Yes, all this public domain release flood (while basically a good thing) is complicating matters if you want to keep duplicates within reasonable limits. And the lower prices of those P.D. reissues compensate matters only slightly as long as so much else from the 78 rpm era remains unreissued anyway. It seems that only real specialist companies really seem to care about such things. The Document (blues reissue) label seems to be one. And the other day a batch of Western Swing CD's from the (U.K.) Krazy Kat label arrived here. The liner notes of one disc (1937-41 recordings by the Hi-Flyers) explicitly stated that the track selection (great music, BTW, and nothing like the leftovers from scraping the barrel) focused on recordings either rarely ever reissued or not reissued at all. And this despite the fact that the reissues they apparently were going out of their way to avoid duplicating were an early 80s Hi-Flyers LP's on the (U.S.) Texas Rose label as well as a few late 70s compilations on the Arhoolie and String labels. Long, long OOP and comparatively obscure from the start but thanks anyway, Krazy Kat, for being truly aware of what at least a sizable proportion of your (specialist) buyer group is bound to have accumulated anyway in their reord collections. @John L: No doubt about the quality issue. Of course the price alone prevents Mosaic from being an introductory selection, and like I said above, I realize remastering issues will be a major asset of this set for those who have the highest standards in this respect. It is just that I am a bit puzzled by the fact that even Mosaic seems to go the route of disregarding original leader credits (of name bands, mind you) and thus making it harder for collectors to avoid gathering more and more duplicates if they are out to get the complete recorded opus. I'd probably have invested in this one just for the alternates if it had been a complete Basie set (as I invariably approach this body of recordings from a Basie, not from a Young angle). I hope and trust it will sell well anyway.

I've had that on a CBS LP for a good many years (after having taped one or two of the tracks from that session from radio in c.1981/82) Not much new under the sun ... /Off-topic rant mode on ;)/ I realize Lester Young is the uniting factor on this Mosaic combination but in a way this still makes me feel ill at ease as this seems to be a more and more frequent policy on today's reissue market. You throw together packages where the common link is some sideman but the resulting compilations are made without any regard to the actual leader credits of the original release so you end up with more and more duplicates if you want to have the complete works of the actual leader and the music is in total disorder. This is particularly evident in a case like this where the release of the Basie catalog as a unit of course would make perfect sense. But somebody who comes into this as a relative newcomer but yet would like to dig deeper would end up having lots and lots of duplicates if he wanted both all of Basie AND all of Lester Young's solo features (or are the Teddy Wilson/Billie Holiday tracks, to name just one highlight, in the same package?). I can understand this policy of combining sidemen's works in the case of artists with relatively limited recorded legacies or really obscure nominal leaders but otherwise ...? To make matters worse, the credits on the actual reissues are often particularly muddled (cf. certain Proper boxes and others frequently mentioned here) so as to throw many collectors off course and hide the fact you are not getting that much that is really new. In short, packages aimed at superficial collectors but for those who want to dig deeper things will soon get extremely annoying once they realize how many duplicates they are bound to accumulate. /Off-topic rant mode off :D/

Agreed, John, but if the Basie big band recordings of the 30s/early 40s are "reduced" to those where Prez solos it's a "sampling" again anyway if you consider the Basie studio recordings as a single entity that ought to be valued as a whole in order to be appreciated. And besides, are the Mosaic Selects comprehensive reissues? There is an exception to each (conceptional) rule, it seems.

Which is exactly why I cannot see any reason in being selective with a band like this, especially since the entire body of Basie's work of those years IS available elsewhere. So this Mosaic looks like it's more of fidelity/mastering (and label ) than availability interest... Among the "name" bands of the Swing era I can think of a fair share of eminently forgettable pop/corn/sweet/lachrymose duds with many bands (especially white ones, of course) but not with Basie (being a Basie fan I am biased but anyway even the pop or novelty numbers that are no true masterpieces have a lot going for them and warrant inclusion to give the overall picture). On the other hand, what would have been highly interesting if this set is to concentrate on Prez' SOLOS with Basie is if it had included maybe a representative sampling of live recordings/transcriptions/airshots recorded during the time span covered by the studio recordings. A lot of these have been issued on LP since the 70s, and no doubt there must be more somewhere. Should be fascinating studying the differences in the solo work etc.

Hey, that unwieldy thing Braxton is handling looks even larger than those BASS SAXES played by Adrian Rollini, Boyd Raeburn etc. Good to see, though, we are actually talking about some sort of SAXOPHPNE and that this contraption is not a "contra bass" in the sense of the contra bass of the violin family. Could it be that this is actually a sax one notch below the Rollini/Raeburn bass sax? It does look larger .... The antique character of this instrument (as mentioned by Sandi in the above Lighthouse anecdote with that unknown player) makes sense. An amateur saxophonist interested in this matter too once told me the last ones were made c.1945 (at least in Europe, France in this case). Anyway, how about getting back to that Rogers CD compilation?

This is intriguing ... as it touches language matters, it seems. What exactly is a "contra bass"? I know in my own language (German) "Kontrabass" simply is the word for an upright bass, bass fiddle or however you'd care to call it. To understand the peculiarity of this musician I'd certainly like to know if we are talking about yet another type of bass, i.e. neither upright bass nor cello, maybe something in between? But to take a wide shot at guessing the identity of this musician, could it have been Leroy Vinnegar? Re- cornet, and this is going to be my last comment on it, I still am baffled. I know what a fluegelhorn is and looks like but still I cannot see how this relates to the cornet as played by King Oliver, young Louis Armstrong, later on by Bobby Hackett, and others. Their cornet definitely is smaller than a trumpet, whereas all fluegelhorn-wielding pictures of Shorty Rogers I have ever seen make it look larger than a trumpet (a bit like a bass trumpet as played by Swedish jazz musician Leppe Sundewall in the 50s but possibly a bit shorter than a bass trumpet). Yes, you can get carried away on tiny details like this ... Maybe some musician reading this can clarify these matters once and for all. And yes, Sandi, please hang around and share more memories from the Lighthouse years. And (as already suggested over at AAJ), did you ever consider gathering your personal memoirs from that era into a book? Eye/earwitness accounts like this should be very, very interesting!

I can't see Gerry Mulligan being credited as THE bebop baritone sax man (not even Serge Chaloff. But what about Cecil Payne?) Not Bebop. In fact Gerry Mulligan was lumped in with West Coast Jazz to an extent that he himself refuted. As he often insisted, he did not consider himself a typical protagonist of of the West Coast movement. Let's face it, one main reason why Leo Parker did not go further was simply - DOPE. Unfortunately ...

Yes - being the vinyl junkie that I am I was of course talking about LP's.

Great recordings indeed, but weren't there 3 volumes of "Count On The Coast"?

Might that be because the French set inadvertently has the instrumental version without "Google Eyes"? And the Shoutin' Blues liner notes by Dick Katz confirm your assumption: "If You See My Baby" - Another novelty blues, with vocal by "Google Eyes," more formally listed as being J. August, a singer who did not make history. Clearly the "Shoutin' Blues" blurb writer doesn't know his stuff, or he doesn't care or research into or awareness of (contemporary) boundary areas is beyond him. "Mr Google Eyes" not only had numerous single releases back then, e.g. on Regal, but also saw an entire LP of his recordings released on Jonas Bernholm's ROUTE 66 label in the 80s, and also was found worthy of an entire chapter in Jeff Hannusch's book "I Hear You Knocking" on New Orleans R&B. A lot of ink has been used to cover MUCH more obscure "core" jazz artists.

He's no slouch either on his first BN album "Let Me Tell You 'Bout It", and his "Billy In The Lion's Den" with Bill Jennings on King as well as all of his earlier 78 rpm leader outings for Savoy, Chess, Gotham, etc. are all worthwhile He is one of those whose recordings I've always bought unseen-unheard; as I love both bebop AND R&B of the 40s/50s his presence is good reason enough for me any time.

What I meant to say is that a CORNET (not corOnet which just might be something else, I didn't check) is a sort of slightly shorter trumpet (as played by very early jazz musicians) whereas a fluegelhorn definitely is larger than a trumpet so a fluegelhorn cannot be a cornet. But that's a side note only.

The track listing reads like something thrown together from Shorty's features with the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton bands (hence the 40s starting date) and his own Giants recordings for RCA and Capitol plus a few obscurities such as two tracks from that Boots Brown & His Blockbusters LP for Groove. I'd say in today's world and with so many collectors apparently saving every penny for their core interests and therefore exploring "side interests" by buying budget P.D. compilations only, this would be an OK starter for Shorty Rogers newbies but if you want to have a more comprehensive Rogers collection you'd end up duplicating everything everywhere else. The overall compilation reeks of a typical case of another compiler taking advantage of material that is in the "Public Domain" now by European valid standards. Nothing basically wrong with that (a law is a law) but this "normally" would make the "usual (U.S.) suspects" cry out loud about ripping off artists (well, mostly labels, ain't it?) if this had come from the "Andorran thieves". So how about it, fellas, want to have another go at THIS label? :D BTW, I am also glad to see Sandi (Eula) posting here. Her posts over at AAJ are always fascinating reading stuff. But say, a fluegelhorn certainly is no cornet??

Ha, I saw the light and grabbed this one a goodly 10 years ago (2nd hand but NM) for the very same reason you name: It's one of those compilations that go where others (less enlightened compilers) fear to tread. :D Need to pull it out again and give it a listen. Thanks for making this music available, Chris! It's actually this kind of V.A. compilations that I like to snap up. They either cover ground others tend to overlook (and thus fill gaps) or they make material available that would never make it onto single artist discs. How else would you reissue some obscure but fine artist who left only one single 4-track session from the 78rpm era behind? And sometimes V.A. compilations from other albums can serve as a great introduction indeed. During my money spending sprees at Mole Jazz in the 90s I came across a copy of the mid-50s Liberty LJH6001 "Jazz In Hollywood" sampler which at that time held lots of new music to me. This made me explore the Liberty "Jazz In Hollywood" single artist series (either through originals on eBay or Fresh Sound reissues) so I now have most of them, and this naturally led to exploring the entire NOCTURNE catalog. All because of one sampler. Re- that JAZZTONE sampler, I figured the one shown under the eBay link above was the one Larry Kart mentioned earlier. This Jazztone sampler still is all over the place (I have three different pressings of it, each with different artwork) - it must have sold (or was given away as an introductory offer, as evident from contemporary mag ads) to lots of record club members who otherwise would not have touched jazz with a 10-foot pole so it still crops up at garage sales. ) Yet no Pee Wee Russell playing "Stuyvesant Blues" on that, in fact that track was on Jazztone J-1009 (sez Bruyninckx) but on NO other Jazztone sampler, and "Congo Blues" seems to have been on Jazztone J-1204 only, so go figure ...

Is that "Google Eyes" vocalist listed for the Feb. 6, 1950 session above actually JOSEPH AUGUST aka "Mr Google Eyes", I wonder? Bruyninckx and Jepsen don't list him, nor does the French RCA Black&White 3-LP series that has all the RCA master takes.

Ha, no! (And yes!) No - I am neither a displaced American nor a "Haze follower". Like I said, I find him quite amusing to listen to here and there (you might consider his records just "good-time late night party music") and have a few tracks of his on various rockabilly compilation LP's but never rated him highly enough among my record buying priorities to buy any of his own records EVER! My real music listening and record collecting priorities are elsewhere (as obvious from my other occasional posts around here ). But yes - he does have a following among rockabilly fans in the entire 50s subculture throughout Europe, including Germany (or rather did - in the late 80s and 90s, don't know about very recent trends in this subculture, some things change even there) and he even received coverage in rock'n'roll (the REAL 50s thing - not what you Yanks call rock'n'ROLL :D) and rockabilly mags in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. I know quite a few around here who consider him a "cult" figure and to them spinning the occasional Hasil Adkins record at record hops is a must!

Fun listening and bopping to him as part of the rockabilly record diet if taken in moderate and limited doses, but in the long run his yelling, ranting and pre-punk anti-musicianship can get on your nerve. "She Said" with all its shrieking is fun, though, especially when played late at night at a record hop and all the rockabilly juiceheads finally knock themselves out to the music. :D

Of course, but the other way it would still be faster and more convenient (no need to start off by comparing aurally - do we know for sure what emusic does with track sequences?). And the info is available out there after all. Anyway ... now the Cap'n knows ...

Bit confusing, the info given above. Title listings would have helped, as you never know for sure if the sequence is the same on all reissue sources. Bruyninckx sez thus (abbreviated track listings as reviewers would do): Gooch - Whippet - Bernie's - April: 29-01-55 Morgan, Candoli, Wild Bill Davis, Robert Rodriguez (b), José Mangual (bgo), Rafael Miranda (conga), Ubaldo Nieto (timb) Remainder of original LP tracks: 31-03-55 Candoli, Morgan, Gray, Perkins, Roberts, Vinnegar, Marable Remainder (tracks 11-15) not included on the original LP would be the live recordings from the Crescendo club (date as given by Kyo) first relased later on in Japan.

Pleeeeze, just let your imagination run free. Carole Reiff's book is a photo book too, so what the pic "says" is what can be gathered from a rather funny view of this character taken from the REAR. Where are all those who own this book here anyway? Where is everybody? I realize lots of hardcore jazz fans would rather drop dead than buy a book where it says plainly on the cover it's all about "Rock'n'Roll" but there just GOT to be plenty of forumists who at least own Carole Reiff's book (it's a classic).

Sorry, the book is right in front of me but I don't have a scanner (nor a digital camera - I still use my old Rollei) and besides, it's a huge coffee-table book and the pic is a 2-page spread (with Pee Wee fairly close to the spine, i.e. in the center of the pic). But maybe somebody else out these has that book too. It was reprinted later in a smaller- sized edition. BTW, if you want to see the other side of wee little Pee Wee , have a look at page 70 of Carole Reiff's "Nights In Birdland" (Simon & Schuster, London 1987), a book that I guess quite a few forumists own.

A large (2-page), striking pic of Pee Wee the Midget standing between Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing (or rather being lifted up by them) is in "The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock'n'Roll" (Jim Miller, ed., Rolling Stone Presse, Random House, 1976). He sure looks tiny next to Jimmy Rushing (but who wouldn't?). Hard to say if "he" was a "she", though.