JohnS Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 There were some interesting things mid-fifties but they seemed to be stuck in a twelve track format. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 assinine! love it! don't know much of those 50s RCA albums... some Norvo, Cohn, the two Bud Powells... I think it was Larry who once wrote something interesting about RCA's production values and how they sort of toned down lots of things, using the same format and same session players all of the time etc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teasing the Korean Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 im sorry im sorry- my orig. post was going to be narrower but i lost focus on it and thats what happened i think origianlly i just wanted to know, how RCA, the GREAT RCA, could do something so assinine like put the session/personel info buried in this love letter on the back to you. I'd rather they bury it in the liner notes as opposed to not listing it at all. I can't tell you how many albums I have that don't bother to list the personnel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clifford_thornton Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 Well, to be fair, that's not really a "jazz" record or conceived as such. He got the Red Seal of a classical record. Dixon should have, too (he'd requested that, as a matter of fact), but... It might have fed his ego but would have sold even fewer copies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmonahan Posted September 9, 2009 Report Share Posted September 9, 2009 im sorry im sorry- my orig. post was going to be narrower but i lost focus on it and thats what happened i think origianlly i just wanted to know, how RCA, the GREAT RCA, could do something so assinine like put the session/personel info buried in this love letter on the back to you. I'd rather they bury it in the liner notes as opposed to not listing it at all. I can't tell you how many albums I have that don't bother to list the personnel. Or the recording date. That one always aggravates me. greg mo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnS Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 assinine! love it! don't know much of those 50s RCA albums... some Norvo, Cohn, the two Bud Powells... I think it was Larry who once wrote something interesting about RCA's production values and how they sort of toned down lots of things, using the same format and same session players all of the time etc? Seems to be the case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Beat Steve Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 But that wasn't always the worst of things as long as the session leaders in whose name the music was released did not have a working band with a fixed line-up at all times. Like it or not, studio lineups assembled specifically for a recording sessions were and are part of jazz history. And many of those backup jazzmen had pretty good jazz credentials and really were a safe bet for quality (at least in that segment of Eastern "modern mainstream" jazz of those times that was often featured on labels such as RCA). I would not want to listen to two dozen of these RCA's (or other similar major labels' jazz excursions) in a row but would I want to listen to two dozen of Prestige or Blue Note "blowing sessions" (where incidentally the session lineups frequently give you the impression that it was a matter of "I play on your date today and tomorrow you'll play on my date", etc.) that ramble on and on and on? I dunno .... Sameness is sameness. (Yes I know this will be heresy to some around here but anyway ... ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 nah you'se perfectly right sir... hence I shall not be angry any longer about having missed the Poppa Lou Mosaic... will gets me Sunny Side Up on RVG and retain the two or three olde ones and hence shall not have too much Popp-istic sameness in my life the diff'rence with RCA though seems to be that contrary to other labels, they often had more of those studio pro guys (you know, all those folks who turn up with Gil Evans, for instance, those multi-reedists etc, trumpet whisperers and all that...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Beat Steve Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 I see what you mean, and though I've heard a fair bit of them (thanks to Fresh Sound, for ex.) of course I cannot speak for all of those recordings (and I would not want to come across as a defender of the RCA jazz catalog anyway, I am just trying to put things into perspective). But from what I've heard I cannot really complain about the presence of the musicians from what you might call the "wider Al Cohn circles" on other studio recording dates. In many cases they did raise the jazz level enormously within the framework of that particular segment of jazz. It seems to me that all too may of those who listen to mid- to late 50s jazz (beyond West Coast jazz) seem to judge everything by Hard Bop standards as long as Hard Bop existed. IMHO this is beside the point; there were more facets to MODERN jazz than that, and they all had their own particularities. The criticism of the "same format" being used is understandable and valid to a point but remember Prestige et al. have been accused of more or less the same thing too (loads and loads of "disorganized" blowing sessions, etc.). And yes, I admit that overall I'd much rather listen to some Al Cohn or Zoot Sims or the "older modern masters" such as Dexter Gordon than to an all too heavy dose of certain "angry young horn men" of those days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 the diff'rence with RCA though seems to be that contrary to other labels, they often had more of those studio pro guys (you know, all those folks who turn up with Gil Evans, for instance, those multi-reedists etc, trumpet whisperers and all that...) "Studio pro guys" and "trumpet whisperers" is an oxymoron. There was and would be no place for the latter in a studio setup of the time. What trumpeters are you thinking of? Joe Newman played tightly muted on a lot of RCA dates of the '50s, but he could also ring the rafters. Bernie Glow? Ernie Royal? Two of the greatest lead players of all time. Dick Collins was fairly mellow in a neo-Hackett manner and made two RCA dates under his own name, but his regular gig was as a section man with Woody Herman, not a place for "whisperers." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 10, 2009 Report Share Posted September 10, 2009 Yeah, those are some of the guys... and of course my choice of words wasn't serious Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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