Lester Young, LOC acetate recording - full story

[John L]

On the positive side, it is nice to know that there still exist Lester Young recordings that we haven't heard, and hopefully will have the pleasure of doing so sometime in the future.

[bertrand]

'and why does the governement have the art blakey 59 tape anyway, was it for some government sponsored broadcast. i had thought it was just a private tape recorded at the fest and traded among elitist bearded jazz fans---until this is released it is my #1 beef with the US gov't.'

The Library of Congress received the VOA Newport tapes a few years back which is why they have this particular set. I believe the collection has mostly been catalogued (and you can probably find it somewhere on their site). The next step is for some record label to look into putting this stuff out, which includes permissions and payment to the artists or estates. I guess they need to do some sort of market study to find out if it's worth it or not. I *think* some of the tracks from the Happy Birthday Newport 3-CD set are from this collection, but I could be wrong. Note that the Monk/Trane is from another collection - I forget which right now.

The private tape of the 1959 Blakey set is no doubt from another source. You can't copy things at LoC unless you have a massive collection of permission letters and are willing to pay their copying fees (it's not DIY).

Bertrand.

Edited March 13, 2007 by bertrand

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

bertrand: can u tell me more about what the library of congress is and how someone can just "enearth" a rare recording there?

and do you need permerssion just to listen? like if i somehow ended up in DC area, could i walk in and listen to it?

[erhodes]

On the subject of unissued recordings, there are still the John Coltrane quintet tapes with Wes Montgomery that nobody was willing to put the money up for many years ago. So these kind of delays could be indefinite.

I'd be interested to know the reference for this. I follow the Coltrane discography rather closely and AFAIK the only known recording of the quintet with Coltrane, Dolphy, and Montgomery is a poor quality audience tape from the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco that is in the possession of the estate. Commercial release of this material would almost certainly have to come through Ravi. There are many issues there but the question of "putting up the money"...at least as it applies to the LOC Pres recording...is not one of them, at least not to anything like the same degree. There is a large body of unissued Coltrane work that the estate controls, some of it unissued material from Impulse, some of it privately recorded, and some of the latter in the posession of the estate, e.g., the "Titans of Tenor" concert from February '66 at which Ayler performed with Coltrane. The basic consideration for commercial issue is whether the estate wants to do it.

P.S. We will never know what Boris Rose left unissued regarding our subject. According to brief look at Pres discography, so many examples of live broadcast material remained unknown and unissued.

It is not clear that this is the case. There was a thread on this at,

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...p;hl=Boris+Rose

See Mike Fitzgerald's comment re: Doug Pomeroy. The Pomeroy link is at,

http://www.smokebox.net/archives/rootcella...otpomeroy2.html

If Pomeroy has access to the entire collection through Rose's daughter, it's reasonable to assume that he has or can index the entire collection. The unnamed university could also do it.

Note also that partial copies of Rose's binder - a list of all of his recordings - do exist.

ps- can you copy stuff there, cause i have sworn ive seen that blakey tape on peoples lists and stuff when trading, etc...

I'm not clear as to whether you can copy at the LOC but the existence of the same material in private tape collections is not necessarily evidence that you can. The Mingus Newport '56 and '59 material that surfaced in relatively clean dubs from the LOC last year or the year before have been in circulation for quite some time, albeit in substantially poorer audio quality. Also, the earlier dubs differed in some details. The recent LOC dub of the '56 session is missing Mingus' spoken intro that is present on the older copies. And the '59 LOC dub has the tunes out of order. The older dub has the correct order and the tracks play continously, something that is not the case with the LOC material. The older copies could be sourced from the LOC but they also could have been copied from the original VOA broadcasts. My guess is that some of the duplicate material is from Rose's list.

[alocispepraluger102]

anyway, one can hear clarity of the original acetate source, despite bass drum recorded loudly unbalanced)

I don't hear the bass drum as too loud - we're used to unnaturally soft bass drums from studio recordings beacuse audio technicians were afraid the cutting stylus would jump out of the groove, and producers didn't like it. Drums are recorded at too low a volume on most recordings.

agreed

[John L]

On the subject of unissued recordings, there are still the John Coltrane quintet tapes with Wes Montgomery that nobody was willing to put the money up for many years ago. So these kind of delays could be indefinite.

I'd be interested to know the reference for this. I follow the Coltrane discography rather closely and AFAIK the only known recording of the quintet with Coltrane, Dolphy, and Montgomery is a poor quality audience tape from the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco that is in the possession of the estate. Commercial release of this material would almost certainly have to come through Ravi. There are many issues there but the question of "putting up the money"...at least as it applies to the LOC Pres recording...is not one of them, at least not to anything like the same degree. There is a large body of unissued Coltrane work that the estate controls, some of it unissued material from Impulse, some of it privately recorded, and some of the latter in the posession of the estate, e.g., the "Titans of Tenor" concert from February '66 at which Ayler performed with Coltrane. The basic consideration for commercial issue is whether the estate wants to do it.

Ed: For all I know, this could be the same tape. I just remember the following: about 4-5 years a tape was "discovered" of the quintet with Montgomery (or sextet, I guess, if Dolphy was there, or was it pianoless?). I recall that it was in the possession of somebody (maybe this person was respesenting the estate. I don't remember now) who put a definite price tag on the copyright for commercial release. There were some brief negotiations, but no deal was reached at the requested price. I also recall that the company in question was concerned about the sound quality. So it probably was an audience tape.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

what kind of permission do u need to go into and listen to the l.o.c. sound archives. can any citizen just go there and listen to stuff 9am-5pm? what if i decide to go to philly for the genesis concert and to visit hank's gravesite, then i hop over to DC i wanna know whats goin on

[bichos]

John, many thanks for your wishes. I'm in hope things will be better from now on.

Speaking of LOC, there are few more examples of Lester Young that remained unissued buried under the vaults... I'm almost certain that, while doing some exhaustive search, I found 1949 session with Lester Young interview - located and preserved in LOC.

Doing the same search right now, it's impossible to find same data.

But, I saved that particular page, and if you are interested, I can try to find it in my archive and copy to this forum.

M.

P.S. We will never know what Boris Rose left unissued regarding our subject. According to brief look at Pres discography, so many examples of live broadcast material remained unknown and unissued.

Pitty - for such musican...

mmilovan, yes, can you please post it? there exist also an unissued and unkown blindfold test recording of lester young with leonard feather. i found the information here:

http://www.leonardfeather.com/feather_credits2.html

this site is not updated for years and i contatced lorraine feather ca. two years ago and asked her about chapter 5 but she answered me that she has too much other work to continue this project in the moment.....

keep boppin´

marcel

[AllenLowe]

"what kind of permission do u need to go into and listen to the l.o.c. sound archives. can any citizen just go there and listen to stuff 9am-5pm? what if i decide to go to philly for the genesis concert and to visit hank's gravesite, then i hop over to DC i wanna know whats goin on"

actually, LOC will allow you to listen to and copy and take home any recording(s) as long as you consent to a cavity search that they can video and use as a CIA/FBI training film -

that's how I acquired half of my collection (for the other half I had to sleep with Barbara Bush) -

Edited March 19, 2007 by AllenLowe