Stompin at the Savoy

Just picking a few at random from this list - https://musicbrainz.org/label/bb9a014f-e627-47ef-97c2-81431ce26f97 - it looks like there were quite a few producers, including Phil Chess on a number of them.

Yeah that's right. I checked and I ordered it on the 13th. So I guess they had a very tight window, delayed a few days and oops.

When your transaction with a card is authorized, an electronic check is made of your account and it is determined whether you have sufficient capital or credit for the purchase. Obviously card holders can have changes in their situation so the authorization for the transaction expires after some period of time. I suppose what happened is they advertised a ship date and then had to postpone it. If they had made the original ship date, the earliest authorizations wouldn't have expired yet. (Scratching head) Come to think of it, seems like they opened up ordering for the set too early. Wasn't that a couple months ago? There are some improvements to the process they can make. In their defense I think the staff is pretty limited and they are doing all sorts of stuff and have a lot of balls in the air at all times... Bottom line is when you order from them you end up getting the set. And this has been going on for decades. I don't buy from them for their marketing efficiency. I care about the research, sourcing of materials, mastering, discography, etc so I am apt to be very indulgent about minor delays and glitches.

Because the policy is not to charge your card till it ships, they run the number through the process known as 'authorization' which presumably sends back some sort of return code indicating all is well, you can run the charge. But they advertise the release more than 30 days in advance and so the authorization expires. Possibly they should just charge the cards up front? I guess they do it this way because sometimes they have delays - bits of the box or print jobs get delayed, etc - they don't want to leave us hanging for weeks, months.

I ordered the 36-41 and 41-45 volumes of this Fresh Sounds/Definitive set, Complete 1941-1951 Columbia Recordings of Count Basie. Unfortunately the discogs seller of 36-41 goofed and sent 41-51 so I guess I've got two of these... Don't you hate that? Anyway, this 41-51 set is pretty good. The sound is not bad. Some of it may be lifted from Chronological Classics I suspect and every now and then you hear some phonograph record surface noise, faintly. It's somewhat bass heavy and treble light. But the good is: there is an awful lot of 40's Basie in here that is not included on any Columbia or Mosaic cd releases. I'm a little bit floored by how much!

I paid with cc, had to reorder because the auth had expired, and received a tracking number just now. It's a bit of a nuisance to have to reorder but everything works out fine, don't panic. They have some glitches sometimes but I've been buying from these guys since the early 90's - they work hard to make it right for the customer. A while back I ordered a set for my son and then he turned out to be moving. I wrote to Scott and he expedited the order so he would get it before he moved.

Yeah I got the same message and reordered. This happened on a previous order, Black and White I think. It works out OK.

Man that Marie Bryant is a real gone chick!

I guess there isn't much market for Basie in the US? It seems a shame because, you know, Basie.

Oh well you know I own several of those euro collections. Hey sometimes that's all that's available without hocking your guitar... But I do try to hold out when I can for releases that had access to some type of original masters. And indeed often those produced by some of the big labels or Mosaic do sound a lot better. In this case Columbia has let us all down and probably will never issue this holy stuff, so ....

With a decent set of headphones the walkman is actually a pretty good system, maybe even equal to some expensive setups. You can certainly exploit whatever is on a cd - having ripped it to a lossless format - and detect differences of sound quality. That sounded suspiciously like a disdainful looking down the nose at my equipment or listening environment. You wouldn't do that, would you? My question was what do you know about these releases. As far as equipment since 1970 - I've led a wandering life, in school on both coasts of the US and living abroad many years. I did not collect much stuff. I listened to a lot of music on radio - VOA and US forces radio (Willis Conover!). For a long time I had a cassette walkman and kept some cassettes. Wore out some Charlie Parker Savoy cassettes. Eventually I think I became the last person in the country to get a cd player and since then it has been cd's and digital files of one sort or another.

I don't have any vinyl. What I had disappeared in 1970 when I went off to college. So I don't have a turntable. I'm probably not going to get one either. I still have the cd disks but I basically listen to music in digital environments: pc, recent walkman, iphone, ipad, etc.

Anyone know anything about Cutting Butter: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1939-1942? It's on a label called Sugabeat. Never heard of it. Another one is Complete 1941-1951 Columbia Recordings on Definitive. Is that any good? It's a little frustrating that with all these Mosaic sets and whatnot there are still parts of the Basie canon on Columbia that I don't have and in some cases haven't heard. I was listening to The Count Basie Story today and heard the tune Red Bank Boogie, which the booklet mentioned was a remake of a tune Basie recorded on Dec 6, 1944. But then when I looked for that first Red Bank Boogie in my collection, I discovered I didn't have it. Harrumph!

-This query brings up postings with most of Duke Ellington on Chronological Classics: https://archive.org/search.php?query=chronological duke ellington&sin= which you can stream or can be downloaded as flac files (some only mp3). As far as I know, Chronological Classics are/were a reprint series on material which is considered public domain in France. In other words Chronological Classics never owned any rights to this material.

I go through phases like that. For the past several years I've been listening to a lot of Count Basie. Bought tons of cds, read his autobiography, looking for the t-shirt... Don't you just love his version of In a Mellow Tone?

This just arrived today. I ordered it directly from the Village Vanguard website. I like this band and have the Mosaic set and a few of their other early recordings. The book is huge and has a surprising amount of content. Wow! Some shots of it here.

https://www.npr.org/2013/06/05/187385391/kenny-barron-quintet-live-at-the-village-vanguard

The other day I snagged surprisingly inexpensive (and in beautiful shape) copies of this and the Herman Capitol box. Swinging. And wacky! Some throwaway songs but some great arrangements and soloing.