Big Beat Steve

Now please ... Focus Jazz is most definitely NOT to be equaled with East Germany! The jazzmen featured on this one are mostly from Austria and Czechoslovakia; Dusko Goykovich was originally from Yugoslavia (and made it to Newport in '58 with the ill-fated International Youth Band) but was a mainstay of the WEST German jazz scene for a long time. A minor difference from the Stateside point of view maybe, but it made ALL the difference to everyone involved in the countries right here ...

Checked out a surplus clearout sale at a local used record shop last Friday and returned home with approx. 110 Jazz LP's, everything priced between 1 euro and 2.50 euros! Mostly 30s/40s Swing and Swing-related 50s/early 60s Mainstream plus a bit of 20s classic Jazz and some Bebop items - lots of 70s collector reissues on long-OOP U.S. and European labels, some of the "Complete Duke Ellington" LPS series on RCA that was discussed here a while ago, but also some originals and 50s pressings such as a 10in Buddy De Franco on MGM, Benny Goodman's "Mostly Sextets" on Capitol and a few others. At that price almost anything that suits your Jazz tastes is a nugget so I am not complaining at all ...

At any rate Koch must have been good enough to rate a biographical entry among the leading East German jazz players in the 1974 East German jazz book "Fascination Jazz".

Hans, are you on the lookout for LIVE recordings to capture the concert atmosphere or just for any Kenton record recommendations? Not all bands that Kenton had throughout the decades always had the same kind of "Kenton Sound".

O.K., if you're a stickler for the typeface of those small label logo imprints somewhere in the upper corners of the covers then you're right. There are some that are later pressings (though not "most"). And if some of the Pacific Jazz covers show the Vogue imprint for a U.K. first pressing (instead of the U.S. one) then I can live pretty well with that. However, for all I know none of these books (not even the Japanese) were intended to be FIRST PRESSING album cover guides. So let's not overdo it. If you want to study the cover ART as such a repro reissue will do just as well as a DG original (disregarding the fact that deep grooves are hard to see in reduced-size prints of covers ).

Should be interesting to hear honest admissions, explanations and excuses to THAT one ... You know there are people out there to whom Bird is SOOOO old ... (anything pre-1955, in fact, i.e. anything that happened before Trane, Adderley, Morgan, Mobley and the like came along ) Signing off for now to spin that "new" Bird LP bought yesterday before it gets filed with those other 30 Bird LP's in my Jazz collection ...

I second the plugs made here for JAZZICAL MOODS IN THE GROOVE JAZZ ALBUM COVERS (by Manek Daver) All are great in their own ways and nicely complement each other. They all leave you longing to see all the other covers that evidently were omitted from the books. IN THE GROOVE concentrates mainly on the 78 rpm and 10 inch periods and also shows quite a few non-Jazz album covers but the feature on Jim Flora and his zany artwork for RCA, for example, is great. Disregarding the single-label books on Blue Note and Pacific Jazz, there also are a few more multi-label books: CALIFORNIA COOL (published in 1992 by Edition Olms, Zurich/Switzerland) complements JAZZICAL MOODS (and the JAZZ WEST COAST book on Pacific Jazz covers). It concentrates on the Pacific Jazz and Contemporary labels but also features artwork of a few other West Coast labels. And then there is (was?) EAST COASTING (also published by Edition Olms, Zurich) featuring the cover art of Prestige, Riverside and Atlantic (plus a few East coast labels such as EmArcy, Columbia, Impulse, etc.).

I have the original LP of Saxes, Inc. and agree with Brownie and Jazzbo. Not absolutely essential but a nice session. Both the arangers' and the soloists' work include enough highlights to warrant repeated hearing. It should appeal both to both modernist and swing-oriented mainstream jazz fans. On the other hand of course, it definitely is no Hard Bop ... If it was only a gimmick, why would Down Beat have rated it 4 stars? Not that I would base my record buying on DB reviews but I'd say their tastes weren't that weird. The reviewer incidentally said the date first looked like "another gimmick idea" to him too but when he heard the final record he realized "how good it really was" and credited the soloits with being "on a generally high level throughout". The project may have been a sort of salesman's idea, but on the other hand one might say the same of other dates, e.g. some Blue Note dates striving for that "Blue Note sound" in the first place or of some Prestige dates set up as "yet another Prestige blowing session".

I don't watch the Jazz vinyl for sale on eBay as closely anymore as I used to but some of them must have been around for quite a while. I bought from two Italian sellers (who also had nice originals but beyond my price range) in 2000 or 2001, and at least one of them is one of those whom I noticed in recent months. So the trend isn't totally new.

How true ...

I haven't heard of Svend Asmussen playing the guitar either. Unfortunately the record you are talking about isn't listed ni the discographies I have as it apparently is one of those the discographers considered too commercial to be called jazz. Maybe Asmussen sat this one out (although it was his group) and it is Jörgen Ingmann or Ulrik Neumann on guitar?

Up .... with some additions (see above).

If you have the Jazz Hot ones, please do post them! The April, 1955 issue of Jazz Hot has an interesting piece by Leonard Feather about "Bird the way I knew him". Interesting in the sense of giving an impression of how he was only partially understood even by some of the experts. I think this article must have appeared in English too (Down Beat? Metronome?). I remember one of the Swedish jazz mags had a pretty fierce editorial that hotly protested the way Leonard Feather and other jazz writers commented the death of Parker. MAy actually have referred to this particular article by Feather that appeared in Jazz Hot. Unfortunately I do not have the scanning equipment or other means of digitizing. And besides, what would the Jazz Hot people say if we just took their material and put it online?

Hey King Ubu! Grüezi! Aren't you overdoing things a little? I guess my reading knowledge of Spanish is decent enough to make something of this essay but how many are there around here who speak Spanish really fluently? What if everybody did this? There were a few nice essays and obituaries in Orkester Journalen (SWEDISH) and Jazz Hot (FRENCH) at the time of Bird's passing. What if somebody posted these? Where would we end? @brownie: Waiting for good book on Bird? I assume you are not too impressed with "To Bird With Love" either? (Out of reach for me and for most of us, I guess, but it's got quite a reputation. Unfounded?)

I still think "Bird Lives" by Ross Russel is a fine book on Bird (although Russell takes a few liberties with certain historical facts and embellishes a bit here and there). Another nice introduction to the subject is "Celebrating Bird" by Gary Giddins. And if you want even more factual accounts of his musical life, go for "Bird's Diary" by Ken Vail.

Thanks for the info on this release! What would be the best source to buy it from? I haven't checked all the tracks but it looks like it was quite thoughtfully done. Doesn't seem to duplicate too much from the other available reissues of similar material on Dragon, Caprice and Phontastic as well as previous vinyl reissues on Odeon and Telestar. However, looking at the track list I have one minor regret: What about the gap between 1941 and 1947? Sweden not only didn't have a war, there was no Petrillo record ban either and Jazz recording continued even during that period (see Svensk Jazzhistoria Vol. 5 on Caprice). No doubt there would have been other material from that transitional period that would have warranted a reissue. Anyway, I guess I will have to get that one fast!

MG, just a word of caution regarding the box set that King Ubu mentioned above. It IS a great one but if you eventually would like to get more of the music recorded by the artists featured on this set during roughly the same period you wil find that a LOT of these Mercury tracks have been reissued elsewhere (particularly the Ammons, Byrd, Vinson, Lee and Humes tracks) so you might end up with these tracks on other reissues over and over again. And I do think all the Rex Steward and Cootie Williams tracks have been reissued on the Chronological Classics CD series as well. So if you are both into Jazz and into R&B you might perhaps be better off checking out the other 8-CD box set mentioned in the earlier set: "The Mercury Blues'n'Rhythm Story 1945-1955". It has a far larger variety of artists and tracks and quite a few that have never been graced with reissues elsewhere.

Neither did I, of course. But looking at period photographs, it is striking how his vocalist Tommy Duncan towered next to him on quite a few pics - same with his brother Johnnie Lee and a few other front-line band members. They were... well ... a bit portly, you might say (more than Bob was, anyway). But what does it matter in the end ....

Blew some mean tenor ... I like the stuff he did for Chess in the 40s and his backup work for Wynonie Harris. Speaking of which, thanks for your impressions of the Dodo Greene CD, king ubu. Sounds like something I might want to add to the R&B corner of my collection one of these days. Fine stuff on these Mercury boxes. Not bad credentials if you compare her to this material. Which only goes to prove once again that you shouldn't buy records for the label (as so many BN fetichists seem to do) but for the artist and the music in its own right. If It's Good/Show Me Missouri Blues/Lotus Blossom/Dream Lucky Blues (originally recorded for Premium in 1946, reissued elsewhere too, e.g. on her Jukebox Lil LP's)

Ehhh .. large?? You are not confusing Bob Wills with his brothers Johnnie Lee or Luke or with Tommy Duncan, are you? They certainly were "large" but next to them and others on the bandstand Bob Wills looked neither very large nor very tall, just average.

Looks like this was compiled from his 30s and early 40s recordings so should be a great alternative to the Bear Family set (unless you are a completist, of course). If you want to explore the man further, don't overlook the Tiffany Transcriptions series. Vastly superior to much of his MGM and other post-war stuff (such as the Liberty remakes and the dull Kapp material)! Time they repackaged this in a comprehensive box set at a price to match

Thanks for the links, Jostein. (I had totally forgotten about the stim.se site) The problem with all these Gullin reissue series seems to be that it is hard to avoid duplicating too many of the tracks that were originally released on Metronome. If you have the Metronome 2-LP sets from the 70s and the four Dragon LP's from the 80s (not to mention the Metronome CD series that was out a couple of years ago) you are in trouble finding the remaining tracks that Gullin did in the 50s (on Gazell, Polydor, Philips and Sonet) unless you accept ending up with more duplicates from his Metronome and Artist sessions over and over again. A real pity ...

Anybody got any concrete opinion on the sound quality of this Collectables reissues of the "Baritone Sax"/"Swings" LP's by Lasse Gullin? Collectables hasn't the best reputation in this field and even a recent topic on this forum had nothing but disdain for the sloppy reissue practices of Collectables so I am just wondering ... Or would it make more sense waiting for the individual tracks from these LP's to appear in the Dragon series? (Some should already be on Vol. 9 I think)

Here is something from the vinyl corner to complement the two CD's above: "Dick McDonough and Carl Kress - Guitar Genius in the 1930's" - Jazz Archives JA-32 15 tracks featuring Dick McDonough solo, in a duo with Carl Kress, but most of the tracks feature both of them together in a 1937 band with Adrian Rollini. "Chasing a Buck" is on that one too but otherwise the tracks do not dupklicate any of the material on the two CD's above. Worth searching the secondhand LP stalls for ...

Now from looking at this cover there's just one thing that leaves me puzzled: Is there any link between this Walter Jackson and Leo Parker? Just wondering ...