The 70s Twofer Jazz Reissue LP

[TedR]

I completely missed this thread. I pretty much have all of the BN reissue series two fers (except for TBone Walker) and a number of the Prestige and Milestones. These expanded my horizons back in the seventies when most all of them were available as cutouts. I haven't listened to vinyl for years now and was hoping to sell them and replace with the Mosaic Selects (Tyner, Hill, etc) and other CDs put out with the same material. But for sentimental reasons I just can't part with them. They're part of my past and I can clearly recall where I bought them and the thrill of discovery they gave me. Sometimes I think there may be a very fine line between the collecting and hoarding mentality.

[sidewinder]

TedR - I can relate completely with that. I still have most of the 'brown' twofers too and would not want to part with them. Not least because of the nice liner notes by Messrs Cuscuna and Lowrie plus various other knowledgable heads and the fine session pictures. Back in the late 1970s these twofers were the absolute Dog's Bollocks !

I've probably already said that some years ago earlier on in this thread but I don't care..

Edited August 9, 2013 by sidewinder

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I missed this thread earlier.

When the first twofers came out - I THINK it was 1970/71 - it was Prestige material. I believe this was shortly before Fantasy acquired Prestige, Prestige having rejigged its catalogue numbering so that the 7000 series was to be used for reissues, the 10000 series for new releases (and a dollar more) and the 24000 series was the twofer series. A few recent popular items from the 7000 series were reissued on the 10000 series (10021 & 10023-10030). So we have Bobby Weinstock to thank for the idea. And Fantasy extended it to Fantasy and Milestone, on merger. Then everyone else took it up.

However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the early Prestige twofers dealt with the 'usual suspects' - Miles Davis, Mose Allison, Trane, Rollins, MJQ, Monk, Yusef Lateef, Dolphy, Bird and Mingus - and there was little in there for me: the first soul jazz twofer was 24013 - Jack McDuff''s 'Rock candy', a compilation of bits and pieces from here and there in his career at Prestige, which I didn't bother with. But gradually some interesting stuff began to trickle out - 'Jug & Dodo' - the first issue of stuff Jug did while he was moonlighting at Chess), 'All day long and All night long', King Curtis' 'Jazz groove' (with sleeve notes by Jerry Wexler, of all people! Well, there's a logic to it, but it WAS a surprise).

Jug was pretty nicely treated in the twofer stakes. I have 'Jug sessions' on EmArCy, 'Early visions' on Chess, 'The 78 era', 'The big sound', 'Organ combos' and 'Gentle Jug' on LP. In the CD era, Fantasy continued issuing twofers up to 2004, by which time the Prestige 24000 series had reached 24294. I doubt if any of the major companies issued this many twofers. And that didn't exhaust the resources of the Prestige label - Ace issued at least 11 Prestige twofers that weren't included in the 24000 series on its BGP label (the most recent two by Pucho & the Latin Soul Brothers last year).

MG

[TedR]

Gene Ammons was just one of the examples of expanding my horizons because of the two fers. Gentle Jug and Organ Combos were two of my favorites and still are. Dare I say they were the Dog's Bollocks!

[Stefan Wood]

Most of the twofers from that period had excellent sound quality, overlooked by the first pressing hunter geeks. I always pick up a few if I happen to be at a used lp store for very cheap.

[sidewinder]

Most of the twofers from that period had excellent sound quality, overlooked by the first pressing hunter geeks. I always pick up a few if I happen to be at a used lp store for very cheap.

That is very true. Particularly those early Prestige 74000 series twofers pressed by RCA here (although I have reservations about the ones over here from Carrerre in France). The Riversides can be noisy though. The Savoys are some of the best of the lot !

Edited August 11, 2013 by sidewinder

[A Lark Ascending]

My introduction to a lot of jazz in the late 70s - Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Thelonious Monk etc. You could get a lot of music quite inexpensively - but because they were made up of entire LPs you could get a picture of the discography of the player, unlike more scattered 'best ofs' (which I also like).

[Jim R]

When the first twofers came out - I THINK it was 1970/71 - it was Prestige material. I believe this was shortly before Fantasy acquired Prestige, Prestige having rejigged its catalogue numbering so that the 7000 series was to be used for reissues, the 10000 series for new releases (and a dollar more) and the 24000 series was the twofer series.

I think you're close, but the 24000 series began I think in '72, which was the year after Fantasy acquired Prestige.

Of course, there were some Prestige 2-LP sets which pre-dated the 24000 series, for example this one from 1965, which I had (blue labels): http://www.discogs.com/Wardell-Gray-Memorial-Album/release/4000850

Edited August 11, 2013 by Jim R

[Milestones]

Yeah, this sure brings back memories. I started in jazz back in 1981. I bought a few records by Miles, Coltrane, and John McLaughlin, then started seeing a ton of those twofers around. I was instantly a huge fan of Miles, and there were a lot by him--I think the first was Workin' and Steamin', which did exactly replicate two albums from 1956. There was Tallest Trees, a bit of a hodge-podge, but how great to have all the tunes with Monk and Milt. And Tune Up. A little later I remember finding a twofer of Miles' Blue Note sessions from 1953-1954.

I picked up Monk and Rollins and Wes and Bill Evans...all kind of stuff on Prestige and Milestone.

I didn't have as many from Blue Note, though I did purchase a used Little Niles, which featured that great early album and some other nice stuff from Weston; only rather recently was I able to re-duplicate most of this on CD (the Mosaic set).

Yes, those were lovely days of record buying.

[Chuck Nessa]

Those of us issuing new lps by new bands resented these issues. Why buy a new Lester Bowie lp for $5 when you can get a 2 disc Miles Davis reissue for $7?

Edited August 11, 2013 by Chuck Nessa

[David Ayers]

I wonder when the tyranny of the back catalog can be dated from? I know that in classical music if you go back twenty years the back catalog was said to account for 80% of sales. I'm told that now that classical new releases account for most sales, hence the increasingly cheap box sets designed to monetize back catalog. I have much less sense of how this goes in jazz. Certainly on the face of it back catalog is absolutely dominant, as can be seen in any general CD store from the Coltrane and Miles holdings. That said, ECM seems to do well, and lots of artists seem to release and sell many titles on minor labels, plus there is certainly a culture of reviewing and pushing new releases. I'd be interested to know.

What were the first reissue programs, I wonder?

[Big Beat Steve]

What were the first reissue programs, I wonder?

Well, they definitely date back to the 78 rpm era.

And they were around from the day that 33 rpm vinyl (in the form of 10in LPs) started. They were far less comprehensive and not something for the completists but many reissues did follow a programming pattern (such as reissuing maybe a dozen series of LPs - or corresponding sets of EPs - from a label's back catalog, each dedicated one major artist and picking their recorded highlights). Just check out the 50s reissues by labels such as Coral, Decca, Capitol and the like. And due to the fact that pressings were much more "national" (and imports were a costly commodity) you'd tend to get a lot of reissues at the same time on different markets. German Brunswick, for example, had reissue series of swing-era music from the old Decca catalog in the late 50s/early 60s that were specific to Germany (they seem to have been marketed elsewhere too but did not have exact matches on other markets AFAIK but rather different reissues, the contents of which of course overlapped in part).

And of course even the minors repackaged their 10in releases in 12in form as soon as the 10in format became obsolete among the longplayers (cf. Prestige).

Nothing new under the sun there, really ... just an increasingly prevalent "completist reissuing", re-re-repackaging and "scraping the barrel" attitude IMO

[Teasing the Korean]

If jazz musicians in the 1970s had any sense of humor, they would have aped the graphics from the twofer reissue labels and released their new LPs as fake reissues, right down to the recording dates and academic liner notes.

[A Lark Ascending]

The era of 'virtually everything available' is quite recent. Back in the 70s even music that might be considered 'core repertoire' could be OOP for long periods of time - that was certainly the case in the UK (those living in London could access imports).

So if you were a young, new listener and had read about how wonderful these old records were the Prestige/Blue Note etc twofers were a welcome way to explore. And it didn't mean you were not also buying new records. I suspect most of us were doing both.

As for their cheapness, well listening to older music can actually be quite difficult at first - it does sound 'old fashioned' if you have not been brought up around it; I doubt if I would have taken the chances on a lot of the older music I did if it had sold at the same price as new releases. My pattern of buying in the 70s/80s each week was to buy a new full price record plus a cheap jazz or classical title to experiment.

Like classical music, blues, folk (and increasingly rock). jazz has always put a high premium on being aware of the music's history. I recall the confused messages coming through - some voices asking why were we listening to X, Y or Z in contemporary music when it had been done so much better by A, B or C in 1928, 1941 or 1960; others asking why we were buying all this old music when we had a duty to support the new (normally from older listeners who already had that music from when it was originally released).

In the end we all navigated our own paths through that.

Edited August 12, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[TedR]

Those of us issuing new lps by new bands resented these issues. Why buy a new Lester Bowie lp for $5 when you can get a 2 disc Miles Davis reissue for $7?

Without knowing the half of it I can understand the resentment. Especially now these larger labels putting "complete albums" sets together for cheap has to gnaw at you. But those reissues helped me to gradually open my ears to the likes of Lester Bowie and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. It was their ECMs that I noticed and bought at the time. It's only 40 plus years later that I'm putting my buy list together for your catalog. Time goes by much too quickly and I won't delay any longer.

[sidewinder]

The era of 'virtually everything available' is quite recent. Back in the 70s even music that might be considered 'core repertoire' could be OOP for long periods of time - that was certainly the case in the UK (those living in London could access imports).

Those twofers were a real god-send back in the 1970s. The high street LP stores over here stocked them - a big plus, when most of the jazz selections in the racks stopped at Stanley Clarke and Spyrogyra. It really was a case that if you wanted/could afford imports then you had to get the train to Kings Cross.

Edited August 12, 2013 by sidewinder

[clifford_thornton]

I can totally understand Chuck's point, too.

Bought Nessas and Blue Note twofers around the same time, all used, when I was getting into the music in the mid/late '90s. Glad to have both well represented in my collection.

[six string]

A few faves

Back at the Gig - Booker Ervin / Horace Parlance (Blue Note)

Coleman Hawkins (prestige)

Art Farmer (Prestige)

Good stuff!