Uptown Releases 2017?

[Dan Gould]

It seems to me that Uptown has usually had releases timed for the holiday market, more or less.

So does anyone have any advance word on what may be coming next?  I've been checking City Hall Records as I believe they've been their distributor but nothing is showing.

The suspense is killing me.

[bertrand]

He could start with some more Left Bank material. He got a number of tapes from them beyond the two already released.

Bertrand.

 

[Dan Gould]

Or the Picadily tapes! I've heard some are just waiting for liners/artwork but no idea what they may be.

[mjzee]

Has there been any progress on that Uptown project of Detroit jazz in the mid-40's?  Sounded very promising.

[Jordan]

That’s the one with the unreleased Charlie Parker song on it right? Something like Detroit Jazz before Motown. 

[mjzee]

Wasn't aware of the unreleased Bird, but yeah, that's the one.  There have been prior discussions on this board about it, but there's been radio silence for a couple of years now.

[Jordan]

Looking into it, according to Peter Losin’s site, there’s a version of Now’s the Time with Bird from October 1, 1949 at the Bluebird Inn in Detroit that is/was scheduled for that release.

[Big Beat Steve]

13 hours ago, Jordan said:

That’s the one with the unreleased Charlie Parker song on it right? Something like Detroit Jazz before Motown. 

Which Detroit exactly?

The "Before Motown" book is fantastic and extremely instructive on a scene that seems to have passed largely under the radar.

BUT - a couple of years ago there was a website or blog on the same subject matter (jazz in - roughly - 1945-55 Detroit)  with a LOT of period photographs (unfortunately all of them relatively small) but a huge portion of the bands mentioned and shown there (many of them white) somehow do not seem to have made it into the book. (The names do not have entries in the index of the book) So the scene seems to have been even larger. Anybody remember that website? For some inexplicable reason it went down several years ago.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[Niko]

I think this could be the site you mean:

http://www.ipl.org/div/detjazz/

and here is a thirteen year old thread about the Jazz Before Motown CD ...

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/16502-jazz-before-motown-cd/

 

 

[Big Beat Steve]

Thanks for that link, Niko. It may have been that one (there cannot have been that many sites on Detroit jazz that have all gone down or been made inactive) but if so, then the contents have been modified since I consciously saw them. The one I am thinking of had a lot more pics from real unknowns from the early post-war Detroit era whereas the photo gallery in that site above has a lot of the (fairly) well-known who were also featured in the book. I may have downloaded some pics at the time and will post them here later on, maybe.

So it appears that the "Jazz Before Motown CD by Uptown has been in the works for all of 13 years now? (I admit I had forgotten about that earlier thread and its later "up" messages)

Edited February 6, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[Claude Schlouch]

L'Arlésienne: this expression comes from the Letters of my mill, written by Alphonse Daudet at the end of the 19th century. An Arlesian girl never showed up on her wedding day. Her husband waited so long that it inspired to designate a person that we hope.

This may be the case of "Jazz Before Motown" ...

[Big Beat Steve]

On 6.2.2018 at 1:26 PM, Niko said:

I think this could be the site you mean:

http://www.ipl.org/div/detjazz/

and here is a thirteen year old thread about the Jazz Before Motown CD ...

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/16502-jazz-before-motown-cd/

 

 

While the forum was inaccessible and my McAfee aked if i actually wanted to follow that "goodmayor" link (yes, exactly the same problem mentioned by JSangrey happened here too) I checked what I did download and the website I am remembering was something totally different.

From what I still can trace, it seems to have been a sort of photo collection titled "#1 Detroit Jazz photos back to 1947" put up in the "Member Photos" section within a larger, probably Flickr-like photo album site called American Greetings Webshots (none of which I can find online anymore, not even under the name of the one who put up that album - which of course I cannot just state online here now. I've done a bit of googling and the Webshots site seems to have been sold and then went under, much to the dismay of former Webshots users).

Here are some photos found there - about the only ones I downloaded out of curiosity at the time. There were plenty more private period photos so the ones below are not even the tip of the iceberg.

Benny Carew band:

Kenny Pinson on the next two photographs (no idea which one of the two saxophonists he is):

Kenny Singer and his band:

Benny Carew and Kenny Pinson barely rate a footnote in the "Before Motown" book, Kenny Singer is not mentioned anywhere in there.

So as you can see there was a bit more going on in Detroit jazz at the time, even beyond this very detailed book. And who knows ... some of it may have been taped somewhere and might have found its way onto the apparently never-happening Uptown project (which is why I remembered the above website again). Makes you wonder what has been lost to posterity (not just because bands and artists went unrecorded but because their remaining photographic evidence was lost after the mangled Webshots sale ...)

Edited February 8, 2018 by Big Beat Steve