Mosaic Records is releasing a Savory collection set

[jazzbo]

Jim, there's some really cool pictures. And Allen: the Basie stuff is dynamite.

[medjuck]

Since this thread seems to have become a discussion of the liner notes (even from people who haven't read them yet) let me add this:    

One thing the liner notes don't talk about is the importance of air checks in general.  I've been thinking about this because  recently I've been listening to this set as well as the last Ellington Treasury Shows set and various AFRS Jubilee shows  I've downloaded.   Air checks give us a different view of most bands than records do.  For better or for worse (usually the former) the bands tend to be looser when playing live.  More important  they play an enlarged repertoire including many songs they never recorded. (The notes do point out several  instances of this-- including Coleman Hawkins theme song!)  

Even when the bands play songs they've recorded, they often, but not always, play different solos and even different arrangements (as the notes say).  Usually the numbers are longer and you get to hear expanded arrangements ( or rather as Loren says, the recorded versions are the abridged arrangements). Walter van de Leur tells how he found the Billy Strayhorn's original, longer arrangement of  Chelsea Bridge (which was never recorded) at the Smithsonian  .  But you can hear that original version on the Ellington Treasury shows. 

And as the notes do point out the performances and even arrangements often change from broadcast to broadcast.  (The arrangement the Basie band plays here of St. Louis Blues had noting to do with the one played at the Chatterbox in Pittsburg in 1937. )

Edited June 20, 2018 by medjuck

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

Since this thread seems to have become a discussion of the liner notes (even from people who haven't read them yet) let me add this:    

One thing the liner notes don't talk about is the importance of air checks in general.  I've been thinking about this because  recently I've been listening to this set as well as the last Ellington Treasury Shows set and various AFRS Jubilee shows  I've downloaded.   Air checks give us a different view of most bands than records do.  For better or for worse (usually the former) the bands tend to be looser when playing live.  More important  they play an enlarged repertoire including many songs they never recorded. (The notes do point out several  instances of this-- including Coleman Hawkins theme song!)  

Even when the bands play songs they've recorded, they often, but not always, play different solos and even different arrangements (as the notes say).  Usually the numbers are longer and you get to hear expanded arrangements ( or rather as Loren says, the recorded versions are the abridged arrangements). Walter van de Leur tells how he found the Billy Strayhorn's original, longer arrangement of  Chelsea Bridge (which was never recorded) at the Smithsonian  .  But you can hear that original version on the Ellington Treasury shows. 

And as the notes do point out the performances and even arrangements often change from broadcast to broadcast.  (The arrangement the Basie band plays here of St. Louis Blues had noting to do with the one played at the Chatterbox in Pittsburg in 1937. )

Good points. I'd add something that I think Gerry Mulligan or Al Cohn once pointed out -- that if you were an adolescent would-be jazz musician in, say, 1937-8 listening to band remotes night after night while you also were of course familiar with the commercial recordings your favorite bands had made, hearing Lester Young or whomever play new solos on their featured numbers on radio remotes gave those young apprentices a living sense of possible/permissible variation. Gerry or Al explained that this was  a significantly different matter than dissecting/emulating a favorite recorded solo, which of course has value but lacks the reality test, so to speak, of listening to Pres re-shape/reinvent "Taxi War Dance" or "Every Tub" several times a week.

[Big Beat Steve]

I wonder how many airshots released for the first time in this set also figure in the listings in this chronicle of listening to swing on the radio:

https://www.amazon.com/Swing-Era-Scrapbook-Teenage-1936-1938/dp/0810854163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529479502&sr=8-1&keywords=swing+era+scrapbook

 

Edited June 20, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[king ubu]

15 hours ago, Clunky said:

Please stop 🛑. This set isn’t a reality yet this side of the pond. I hope it arrives soon as I’ve got nothing else to listen to 😮

Mine has just been announced by the post ... planned delivery tomorrow - so (not being home during the day) I should be able to pick it up on Friday morning!

I did ask Scott about the liners during the pre-order process/waiting time and he was - I guess - diplomatic in not getting specific but mentioning that the set's booklet will be "much more in depth" than the PDFs we got along with the downloads ... eitherway, that discussion about airchecks vs. studio productions (and transcription sessions are another case in point were often longer takes were recorded, it seems) is interesting and I guess this set would indeed have been the ideal place to summarize it.

[medjuck]

5 hours ago, king ubu said:

Mine has just been announced by the post ... planned delivery tomorrow - so (not being home during the day) I should be able to pick it up on Friday morning!

I did ask Scott about the liners during the pre-order process/waiting time and he was - I guess - diplomatic in not getting specific but mentioning that the set's booklet will be "much more in depth" than the PDFs we got along with the downloads ... eitherway, that discussion about airchecks vs. studio productions (and transcription sessions are another case in point were often longer takes were recorded, it seems) is interesting and I guess this set would indeed have been the ideal place to summarize it.

The notes do give many examples. I was just summarizing what anyone would infer.   

Edited June 20, 2018 by medjuck

[RiRiIII]

I wonder when this Set will be available from JazzMessengers in Spain.

[ghost of miles]

On 6/19/2018 at 2:45 PM, Larry Kart said:

 As for the cuts that are not worthy of praise, I'm still working my way through the Savory set, but I was underwhelmed by the Waller broadcast from 1938 on Disc I -- and I'm a Waller admirer par excellence. These tracks IMO are certainly not up to the level of, say, the 1939 Waller and His Rhythm broadcast on the 2-CD Stash set "The Definitive Fats Waller." Also, the paragraph from Ethan Iverson that is inserted into Dan's notes on the Waller material is gratuitous

Larry, do you have the 3-CD Waller box set If You Got To Ask, You Ain't Got It?  Dan did outstanding notes for that collection.

[king ubu]

On 20.6.2018 at 5:30 PM, medjuck said:

The notes do give many examples. I was just summarizing what anyone would infer.   

Okay, cool. Will be picking mine (and the Teddy W.!) up at the post office first thing tomorrow morning! 

[Big Beat Steve]

17 minutes ago, king ubu said:

Okay, cool. Will be picking mine (and the Teddy W.!) up at the post office first thing tomorrow morning! 

So I suppose you do not have any other plans for the weekend than to bury yourself next to your CD player, right?

Enjoy!

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Larry, do you have the 3-CD Waller box set If You Got To Ask, You Ain't Got It?  Dan did outstanding notes for that collection.

No, but I've got most (maybe all) of the Bluebird 2-LP sets, plus some outliers like that excellent Stash set of airchecks.

[Big Beat Steve]

43 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

No, but I've got most (maybe all) of the Bluebird 2-LP sets, plus some outliers like that excellent Stash set of airchecks.

Must have been a lot of Bluebirds. The reissues on French RCA (Black & White series) ran to two 5-LP boxes plus a full 23 individual LPs.

Just checked these Bluebird twofers out on Discogs. I cannot consciously recall having ever seen them in shops over here at the time, contrary to those on many other swing bandleaders. Maybe the existence of the monumental series of the French RCA Black & White reissues left no place for them?

[sidewinder]

1 hour ago, king ubu said:

Okay, cool. Will be picking mine (and the Teddy W.!) up at the post office first thing tomorrow morning! 

Make sure you buy a 6 pack of this as an accompaniment !

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Must have been a lot of Bluebirds. The reissues on French RCA (Black & White series) ran to two 5-LP boxes plus a full 23 individual LPs.

Just checked these Bluebird twofers out on Discogs. I cannot consciously recall having ever seen them in shops over here at the time, contrary to those on many other swing bandleaders. Maybe the existence of the monumental series of the French RCA Black & White reissues left no place for them?

Oops -- maybe I don't have as many Bluebirds as I thought.

[Brad]

2 hours ago, king ubu said:

Okay, cool. Will be picking mine (and the Teddy W.!) up at the post office first thing tomorrow morning! 

I'm getting mine tomorrow as well. 

[Brad]

I just read the introductory essays to the book and although I know nothing about sound engineering, Bill Savory sounds like he was a genius in his field. What was even more amazing to me was that his heirs were going to throw out all the discs. What a loss that would have been. 

[mikeweil]

15 hours ago, Brad said:

 What was even more amazing to me was that his heirs were going to throw out all the discs. What a loss that would have been. 

........

[Brad]

On 6/19/2018 at 2:45 PM, Larry Kart said:

As for the cuts that are not worthy of praise, I'm still working my way through the Savory set, but I was underwhelmed by the Waller broadcast from 1938 on Disc I -- and I'm a Waller admirer par excellence. These tracks IMO are certainly not up to the level of, say, the 1939 Waller and His Rhythm broadcast on the 2-CD Stash set "The Definitive Fats Waller." Also, the paragraph from Ethan Iverson that is inserted into Dan's notes on the Waller material is gratuitous ("However, all that jolly joshing [from Waller] obscures just what a fine pianist he is" -- really? obscures for whom?) and IMO both gratuitous and bizarre -- "Most importantly, Waller's relaxed swing remains a gold standard for the era. There are times when James P. Johnson, Eubie Blake, Willie 'The Lion' Smith, and Earl 'Fatha' Hines seem a little choppy by modern standards. That's not true of Fats, whose smooth swing remains timeless."

Hines, for one, was "a little choppy" -- this "by modern standards" no less -- while Hines' sense of swing is apparently less than "timeless"? Oy vey.

I listened to the first cd and I like the notes quite a bit -- they are informational -- and have no issue with what Iverson said. It's his opinion. As far as the Waller sections, I don't claim to be an avid Waller admirer (which I may want to correct going forward) but even if I was, what would you have Mosaic do? Omit the music because it's not up to "your" or someone else's standards. Sorry, but that makes no sense.  That's not how Mosaic does things, although this set is not called the "Complete."

Edited June 27, 2018 by Brad

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, Brad said:

I listened to the first cd and I like the notes quite a bit -- they are informational -- and have no issue with what Iverson said. It's his opinion. As far as the Waller sections, I don't claim to be an avid Waller admirer (which I may want to correct going forward) but even if I was, what would you have Mosaic do? Omit the music because it's not up to "your" or someone else's standards. Sorry, but that makes no sense.  That's not how Mosaic does things, although this set is not called the "Complete."

I wasn't saying anything about what Mosaic should or should not have included in the set. I was commenting on the relative quality IMO (versus other comparable Waller material) of the Waller material that was included. Yes, that's IMO, but I said what I did because the general question of  the quality of the Savory set material had quite naturally been raised on the thread and also because, knowing  a good deal of other Waller material myself (studio recordings and airchecks) and in face of the enthusiasm for the Savory Waller airchecks on the part of the annotator, I thought it would be worthwhile to say that, again IMO, the Savory Waller performances should  be regarded as good but not top drawer Waller and His Rhythm. 

As for Iverson on Hines' "choppiness" -- yes, it's his opinion but IMO it's not only not a very informed one (one of the great rhythmic masters in jazz, Hines could be smooth or brilliantly angular rhythmically at will -- and BTW aren't informed opinions what one ought to get in a Mosaic booklet?), but it's also an implicitly arrogant, even rather snotty one. Again, "by modern standards"? Are styles or musical approaches in jazz at the mercy of chronology and/or an implicit "progressivism," where the way most players do things in the present or the recent past should be thought of as superseding the way things were done previously? Does, say, the undoubted modernity in its time of the way Chick Corea played on "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs" be thought of as rendering less valid the less smooth playing (in conception and execution) of Monk? 

FWIW, a  passage from the liner notes to Harold Danko's album "Hinesight" (Steeplechase, 2005) -- Danko himself being an eminently modern pianist. 

"The second time I heard Hines [in person] was in Nice, France, in the late '70s when I was with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. Being that I was touring on the circuit and playing the same pianos that the most illustrious fingers had recently tickled, I felt that I had 'arrived' and was indeed a happening cat. So when I got a chance to catch a set of Earl Hines it was more out of respect than having any idea that it would shake my musical foundation. The tune was 'Tea for Two' -- to me an 'older' vehicle for running some II-V vocabulary as opposed to getting into more 'interesting' stuff on newer tunes. Well let me tell you -- that was the freest 'Tea for Two' I've ever witnessed, as modern and dynamic as anything I'd heard that summer. He was in total command of everything the piano could surrender to his imagination -- it was unlike anything I could have expected, and I instantly became a devoted fan. I was experiencing a jazz rebirth."

 

 

 

 

[JSngry]

I would play poker with Ethan Iverson any time, and place.

I would not would not want to play poker in the same...atmosphere as Earl Hines. That would be nuts.

[Brad]

Fair enough Larry and thanks for the response.  I would never agree that Hines is choppy  

Since I could stand to learn and listen more to Waller, would you suggest the Stash set you mentioned or something else. 

Edited June 27, 2018 by Brad

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Fair enough Larry and thanks for the response.  I would never agree that Hines is choppy  

Since I could stand to learn and listen more to Waller, would you suggest the Stash set you mentioned or something else. 

That Stash set, if still available, is a gem. IIRC, it has a nice mix of solo and small group tracks. All broadcast transcriptions, a setting that seemed to work well for Waller. I see Vol. 1 used on Amazon at a great price. 

https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Fats-Waller-Rhythm-Piano/dp/B000008CIB/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1530118600&sr=1-1&keywords=fats+waller+stash

but not Vol. 2.

You'll probably want this one (below):

If you have access to a used LP store, the Bluebird LP Waller sets used to show up there fairly often. If the price is right, nab everyone you see. IIRC the notes are excellent. Also, if you see the Time-Life Waller LP set. In fact just about every Time-Life set is worthwhile -- excellent booklets.

 

[Brad]

Thanks Larry. I’m going to Princeton on Friday (not Jim’s Princeton ) and I will see if they have the Bluebird. 

Edited June 27, 2018 by Brad

[ghost of miles]

18 minutes ago, Brad said:

Thanks Larry. I’m going to Princeton on Friday (not Jim’s Princeton ) and I will see if they have the Bluebird. 

If you come across this Waller box-set at a reasonable price, it's well worth snagging too.  An excellent booklet by Dan Morgenstern:

Fats Waller: If You Got To Ask You Ain't Got It

[Brad]

Thanks David. I will look out for it.