Lord 8.0 is out

[brownie]

From Jorgen Grunnet Jepsen Jazz Records 1942-1962 discography, published in 1964 in pre-internet days.

The most important sources for this book have been all published discographical material. The editor has tried to collect all the available material from magazines, books and catalogues...

...Any addition and/or correction to this book will be most welcome. The same goes for material which will help future volumes. Anything willl be received with thanks, and even the smallest item is of interest. Without cooperation, it is impossible to make the job as perfect as one could wish.

This was the spirit back then. I still try to help with the Lord (as I did with the Bruyninckx when I was using it).

[Big Beat Steve]

Yes, those were the days ... A very healthy attitude, and yet I wonder what EKE BBB, for example, would say about his Tete Montoliu discography he is working on if he finds Lord appropriates it lock stock and barrel and then claims copyright on it (the same is true for other forumists here and elsewhere too, of course, who publicly invite contributions to and - hence - use of their discopgraphies they painstakingly built up).

As for Jepsen, while I still use it for basic information I've sometimes been wondering about his sources indeed. Beats me how rockabilly singer Sonny Burgess ever made it into this JAZZ discography (and he is no isolated case). Sometimes he cast his nets rather wide indeed.

Compared to his diligence and attention to detail evident from the monthly columns in Orkester Journalen he did back then this is really odd - or was it the sheer volume of material and comparatively primitive processing facilities available back then?

[Christiern]

Yes, those were the days ... A very healthy attitude, and yet I wonder what EKE BBB, for example, would say about his Tete Montoliu discography he is working on if he finds Lord appropriates it lock stock and barrel and then claims copyright on it (the same is true for other forumists here and elsewhere too, of course, who publicly invite contributions to and - hence - use of their discopgraphies they painstakingly built up).

As for Jepsen, while I still use it for basic information I've sometimes been wondering about his sources indeed. Beats me how rockabilly singer Sonny Burgess ever made it into this JAZZ discography (and he is no isolated case). Sometimes he cast his nets rather wide indeed.

Compared to his diligence and attention to detail evident from the monthly columns in Orkester Journalen he did back then this is really odd - or was it the sheer volume of material and comparatively primitive processing facilities available back then?

Since he could not possibly listen to (or even have in his possession) every recording, he probably went by the info, which does look like it might be suitable.

[Big Beat Steve]

At first sight yes ... and I can understand things like this to happen in the case of certain black R&B vocalists of the 50s but what baffles me is that when this info must have been entered in the mid-60s Sonny Burgess had been on the scene (though quite non-jazz) for quite a few years, had been a fairly well-known figure (at least in the South) on the R'n'R scene in the latter part of the 50s (though by the mid-60s was past his R'n'R prime and had gone into country music). Surely there must have been SOMEBODY among his U.S. contributors who might have been able to tell him that Sonny Burgess

a) was white (and therefore rather one of the "Elvis Presley fraternity")

b) was a R'n'R/rockabilly artist after all and that

c) by the time he recorded for SUN this label had largely given up its blues roots/connections (i.e. the mere name of the label did not provide a safe indication of the material recorded there anymore).

In short, there was NO jazz connection here, no matter how you look at it, and certainly SOME U.S. contact of his must have been aware of all this and more.

I realize I am speaking with the HUGE benefit of hindsight but it boils down to a matter of cross-checking of possibly doubtful facts (as there were other entries like this).

It's a minor point that does not detract from the overall quality of the discography at all but considering how Rock'n'roll was lambasted by the jazz world at that time it's amusing to see that entries like this (of all musical styles) crept into that reference work by the back door ...

Edited November 28, 2007 by Big Beat Steve

[paul secor]

There are also many blues artists listed throughout the Jepsen volumes, and in one of the later volumes Jepsen thanks Mike Leadbitter, who was the co-editor of Blues Unlimited and who, with Neil Slaven, compiled the blues discography, Blues Records, which for many years was a sort of bible to blues collectors. Mike Leadbitter obviously knew that the blues artists included in Jepsen weren't jazz artists.

Jepsen speaks to the point when he writes in the introduction to one of the later volumes:

"... it must be mentioned that this book contains details of recordings which strictly speaking have nothing to do or very little to do with jazz, but which have been thought "important" enough to include."

[Big Beat Steve]

Paul, I should have thought when he wrote this he was rather thinking of artists like Frank Sinatra etc. (possibly included not least of all due to the presence of jazz sidemen), and as for blues artists, isn´t it often rather hard to draw a firm line between jazz and blues, one of THE key ingredients of jazz? Where would you place Jimmy Rushing, for instance? Or Helen Humes? So there would be many who fit both bills as for their inclusion in discographies. It´s been a learning process even for discographers anyway - remember how Mike Leadbitter steadfastly excluded R&B artists in the original edition of his opus (a wrong thankfully righted in later editions )?

So "blues or not" certainly is not the question in jazz discographies - but rockabilly? (not that I would want to dwell on this point forever, but this obviously was a lapse of judgment - understandable in a way, and amusing today, but it was there).

[Christiern]

If that's the only example you can come up with, why bother? There is also often a thin line between country music and blues/jazz. Have you ever heard the recordings in question?

BTW, I once referred to Jimmy Rushing as a blues singer--he corrected me.

[Big Beat Steve]

Chris, with all due respect:

I not only have all the Sonny Burgess recordings listed in that discography (yes I admit I am one of those who is not above listening some good straightforward 50s R'n'r from time to time - "Ain't Got A Thing" is spinning on the turntable as I write this) but even more of his music, and if you must know there are more incongruous entries like this. And no, I did not note them down when I came across them so I cannot pinpoint them right now but one that is just as out of place is that (through solitary) entry by traditional country singer Carl Story.

The musical area where jazz and country music get close does exist but none of the artists that might be presented as such borderline cases (starting with Bob Wills and Milton Brown) got an entry in Jepsen's, and by musical comparison Sonny Burgess (fine though he is in HIS genre) is rather far removed from that borderline (OK, "Thunderbird" has a blues flavor but oh my what else you would have had to include if you go by that yardstick).

So it all is a question of methodology and crosschecking of entry suggestions/source material. Incorporating label listings wholesale does not help if nobody is there to provide guidance on the musical contents. Just imagine incorporating an extensive listing of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats in a blues/R&B discography just because they happened to record on the R&B-oriented Vitacoustic label too.

And though I do think such reasoning was not beyond discographers' standards in the 60s (or why else would they have made a fuss about whether to include or exclude Jimmy Dorsey who certainly had more jazz to him than others mentioned here ) this is NOT to denigrate the pioneering work of your fellow countryman Jörgen Grunnet Jepsen one bit!

I value his discography and yet I took the liberty of poionting out a few oddities earlier, more as a side note in this discussion on matters discographical (not imagining it'd turn into such a debate ).

Jag ber om ursäkta (nej, jeg taler ikke dansk)

Edited November 28, 2007 by Big Beat Steve

[Fer Urbina]

What Lord does is a collating job, not research, or at least, not primary source research. As long as we're clear with that, I don't have a problem. Actually, if you go to his website, there's a large bibliography (http://www.lordisco.com/tjd/help/author/v.jsp et al).

What I'd have a problem with (if I bought Lord's work) is the sloppy job he does at collating. From what respected users and reviewers have said, he seems to be quicker turning out new updates than actually implementing the corrections that would give some meaning to said updates. That doesn't work for me. Arguing that any discography is bound to have mistakes, in this case, sounds like a pre-emptive excuse to me.

Also, sometimes I have the impression that what Lord does is provide a user-friendly database, fills it up with info from the bibliography above *without checking*... and the gracious readers are expected to provide corrections (and effectively do the checking for Lord)?

As for ripping off previous authors, one thing is to use previously published material for your own research. What Lord seems to have done is selling an old book with new covers, tackling the same (or almost) project as Jepsen did and Raben was doing. The frustrating thing is that Raben was doing a sterling job and Lord does a so-so job. Raben has had to give up and Lord keeps on putting out updates for sale. A triumph of style over substance?

Personally, I don't like the discography by genre because of the grey areas (there'll always be someone disappointed). I find it more interesting (and easier) to make it by artist (and see what one person was involved in) or label (to have a cross-genre picture, something that Allen Lowe's Devilin' Tune has helped me appreciate more, BTW).

At the end of the day, what Lord does very well is being visible. I googled "Stichting Names & Numbers", the publishers of some serious stuff discography-wise. Not only they don't have an internet site, which is bad enough, but Google's first hit was actually Lord's site (the link to his bibliography).

As they say, you not only have to be good, you have to look like it.

F

PS Doing a discography properly is a daunting, boring, unrewarding task and works wonders in making you look like a complete nerd or an idiot without a life. Still, I use BRIAN and completely support Mike Fitzgerald's approach.

[Edit for very obvious second thoughts on rippings other off]

Edited December 1, 2007 by Fer Urbina

[Face of the Bass]

Setting aside the issues over plagiarism and the accuracy of some of the entries, how useful is this discography? If I want to, say, do a search for every Paul Chambers recording known to man, or every session with Oscar Pettiford, is there a better resource? Is it worth the money?

[brownie]

If I want to, say, do a search for every Paul Chambers recording known to man, or every session with Oscar Pettiford, is there a better resource? Is it worth the money?

Don't think there is a better source. If there is, I have not found it.

If you do a search for Oscar Pettiford record dates, you get 394 dates with all available details. If you do a search for sessions led by Pettiford, you get 40 dates.

333 dates for Paul Chambers, 10 as leaders.

It can be expensive but I find it worth the expense.

[Quincy]

There are roughly 60 artist discographies at JazzDiscography.com, the site that Michael Fitzgerald is associated with. Also many more "leader" discographies as well. You'll see a few non-jazz names like Dusty Springfield on there, but that's a case of someone using the nifty Brian program to create it, and as the program is part of the site's mission those are included too. We all remember Mr. Fitzgerald as being meticulous don't we?

[Christiern]

A discography that is rife with errors is worthless if one is doing serious research.

Yes, Mike Fitzgerald is, indeed, meticulous--that's why the professional jazz community respects his work.

[couw]

did they upgrade the Brian programme so that data in other format can be imported? Then folks could copy-paste from Lord, reformat in whatever way and import into Brian, edit it and put it out there on the web for free.

[Fer Urbina]

did they upgrade the Brian programme so that data in other format can be imported? Then folks could copy-paste from Lord, reformat in whatever way and import into Brian, edit it and put it out there on the web for free.

That's not the point, or at least, I wouldn't do that. I've checked data with Lord's discography for my own research, and there are some mistakes and a lot of inaccurate or incomplete things, as well as some things he doesn't have. AFAIK, what's in Mike's site is more reliable than Lord's.

If you use Brian, there's a "hidden" field (something the user of the database can see but not the reader of the published discography) where you can (and should) indicate the source of the data for each session (more for provenance than anything else).

Setting aside the issues over plagiarism and the accuracy of some of the entries, how useful is this discography? If I want to, say, do a search for every Paul Chambers recording known to man, or every session with Oscar Pettiford, is there a better resource? Is it worth the money?

For Pettiford you can use this http://themenschmidt.de/don.htm

Also, the guys from www.jazzdisco.org have a lot of stuff that although it's not 100% reliable, it's good enough for an online, gratis resource, IMHO.

F

[couw]

did they upgrade the Brian programme so that data in other format can be imported? Then folks could copy-paste from Lord, reformat in whatever way and import into Brian, edit it and put it out there on the web for free.

That's not the point, or at least, I wouldn't do that. I've checked data with Lord's discography for my own research, and there are some mistakes and a lot of inaccurate or incomplete things, as well as some things he doesn't have. AFAIK, what's in Mike's site is more reliable than Lord's.

well, it is the point as you seem to have overlooked the word "edit" in my post. Get the bulk from Lord and then check it and correct it. I think that would amount to less work than typing it all up from scratch, particularly if you are dealing with big bands with loads of names to type in with each session. Of course the stuff in Brian is more reliable, but the point is how to get it into Brian and for the moment the only way is to type it up, which means that everything that has been typed up already in some other format needs to be typed up again.

[Quincy]

did they upgrade the Brian programme so that data in other format can be imported? Then folks could copy-paste from Lord, reformat in whatever way and import into Brian, edit it and put it out there on the web for free.

That's not the point, or at least, I wouldn't do that. I've checked data with Lord's discography for my own research, and there are some mistakes and a lot of inaccurate or incomplete things, as well as some things he doesn't have. AFAIK, what's in Mike's site is more reliable than Lord's.

well, it is the point as you seem to have overlooked the word "edit" in my post. Get the bulk from Lord and then check it and correct it. I think that would amount to less work than typing it all up from scratch, particularly if you are dealing with big bands with loads of names to type in with each session. Of course the stuff in Brian is more reliable, but the point is how to get it into Brian and for the moment the only way is to type it up, which means that everything that has been typed up already in some other format needs to be typed up again.

You're right in that there is a lot of typing. I doubt an importation would be possible given all of the sub-databases within the Brian program. A misspelled performer name in Lord could contaminate your Brian performer database for instance. Brian also includes composer information with the songs, so the different "Lonely Woman"s are accounted for which apparently Lord does not do.

There is a time saving feature that comes up often enough with big bands, though it does require the initial typing of the big band musicians the first time. Let's say you have a February 30, 1929 session of Couw's Hot Buttermilk Boogie Band. Select your musicians from the performer database, select instrument and assign per song. From that point on you can import that lineup for future sessions. If a trumpet or trombone player changes you can import the Feb. 30th session musicians with the click of a button, remove the musicians no longer in the band and add in the new ones. Still a lot typing required, but that feature means a little less.

Edited December 2, 2007 by Quincy

[Quincy]

A discography that is rife with errors is worthless if one is doing serious research.

Yes, Mike Fitzgerald is, indeed, meticulous--that's why the professional jazz community respects his work.

I hope I didn't sound snarky with my comment.

Just from some of the posts I've read by him and some of the other researchers involved with jazzdiscography.com, we're very lucky that the site is free. The amount of time required investigating the unknowns, visits to the Library of Congress and other libraries and so on...it's a lot of work.

[couw]

You're right in that there is a lot of typing. I doubt an importation would be possible given all of the sub-databases within the Brian program. A misspelled performer name in Lord could contaminate your Brian performer database for instance.

good point. Is it not possible to edit mistakes out from an overview list of performer names?

[brownie]

Let's all agree that the Michael Fitzgerald discography is the site to go when you research on some 60 musicians.

But if you want to look for discographies of Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Gene Ammons, etc.. to restrict ourselves to tenor saxophone players, where do you search?

The Lord provides this.

Plus considering the cost of individual discographies when you can purchase them, the cost is not that steep.

The previous discographies (Delaunay, Jepsen, McCarthy etc...) were pretty expensive. And contained plenty of errors and omissions.

I thank the Lord that it exists!

[Quincy]

You're right in that there is a lot of typing. I doubt an importation would be possible given all of the sub-databases within the Brian program. A misspelled performer name in Lord could contaminate your Brian performer database for instance.

good point. Is it not possible to edit mistakes out from an overview list of performer names?

Yes, it is possible to look over a list of performer names and edit. I'm not sure whether one could merge performer data or not if there was a misspelling. (I'm not a "power user.") I guess I'm not sure how one (and it is one person, who does this for free) would program the conversion of data to end up in all of the right places. The instrument abbreviations might be different between the 2 programs. Brian also associates a default instrument with a performer as well, though I guess that can be left blank.

While having to reenter data is a drag and time consuming, my own experience with importing & altering dubious data (not with Brian) sometimes leads me to just start fresh & enter it myself, as after having to closely inspect & alter data it seems like not much time is saved.

For what it's worth there are plenty of Brian users who are willing to share their data. I've never asked as I'm not a researcher, just someone who for a time was entering some of my collection into the program. So I felt a little funny about asking given my amateur status. Also just like with math homework from childhood, I thought I learned more about my collection & the sessions by doing the work myself, than if someone else had done it for me.

[Fer Urbina]

did they upgrade the Brian programme so that data in other format can be imported? Then folks could copy-paste from Lord, reformat in whatever way and import into Brian, edit it and put it out there on the web for free.

That's not the point, or at least, I wouldn't do that. I've checked data with Lord's discography for my own research, and there are some mistakes and a lot of inaccurate or incomplete things, as well as some things he doesn't have. AFAIK, what's in Mike's site is more reliable than Lord's.

well, it is the point as you seem to have overlooked the word "edit" in my post. Get the bulk from Lord and then check it and correct it.

Oops, sorry, I missed that, you're right. However, although I have used Lord for my research and have had to check and correct it, and I'm sure other discographers must have done the same, I don't think there are enough people ready to spend the time, effort, etc... especifically to make Lord better. To correct data he has in his discography while doing work on a certain artist, yes, but to take on a Lord-based project... don't think so.

As for what Brownie says... well. it's a free world, I guess. I've very rarely needed Lord's (except for research purposes). If and when I buy something I'll go for the Bruyninckx.

F

[Fer Urbina]

You're right in that there is a lot of typing. I doubt an importation would be possible given all of the sub-databases within the Brian program. A misspelled performer name in Lord could contaminate your Brian performer database for instance.

good point. Is it not possible to edit mistakes out from an overview list of performer names?

Yes, it is possible to look over a list of performer names and edit. I'm not sure whether one could merge performer data or not if there was a misspelling. (I'm not a "power user.") I guess I'm not sure how one (and it is one person, who does this for free) would program the conversion of data to end up in all of the right places. The instrument abbreviations might be different between the 2 programs. Brian also associates a default instrument with a performer as well, though I guess that can be left blank.

While having to reenter data is a drag and time consuming, my own experience with importing & altering dubious data (not with Brian) sometimes leads me to just start fresh & enter it myself, as after having to closely inspect & alter data it seems like not much time is saved.

For what it's worth there are plenty of Brian users who are willing to share their data. I've never asked as I'm not a researcher, just someone who for a time was entering some of my collection into the program. So I felt a little funny about asking given my amateur status. Also just like with math homework from childhood, I thought I learned more about my collection & the sessions by doing the work myself, than if someone else had done it for me.

When you import data, personnel for instance, if it's not already there in the database, it shows in red. I have imported personnel to a BRIAN database and, basically, if a name that I expect to be there shows in red, it means that there's some spelling mistake and it has to be mended. Tedious work. Problem is, software and computers are not clever, and any, almost invisible, spelling difference will be noticed by BRIAN... and bear in mind Lord is not consistent within itself.

F

[Chas]

Quick question for Fernando - When can we expect your Eddie Costa discography ?

[Fer Urbina]

Quick question for Fernando - When can we expect your Eddie Costa discography ?

Soon. At the moment it needs some cleaning up and there are a few loose ends, but the first three years (1954-1956) are almost ready. I had some problems with BRIAN, but the rest is also beginning to look like something decent. Problem is, this is one of many items in my to-do lists.

Thanks for the interest, Chas.

F