Les Génies du Jazz box set

[Big Beat Steve]

A question probably more geared towards European forumists:

During my recent holidays in Southern France I let myself be tempted at a local fleamarket and grabbed (well. hauled, really ... ) the LES GENIES DU JAZZ box set (issued by Atlas in c. 1991) at what likely was a giveaway price. The box set includes six books and a total of 96 CDs.  5 or 6 CDs from the set are missing but the price of 45 EUR for the entire lot still sounded like a steal. Of course I already have a huge chunk of the contents in my collection but the set includes several interesting live recordings by the featured artists that are not that common, and at some 0,50 EUR per CD (less than the price of a CD-R blank, not even counting the books) the others can go into the car player if needed. And from what I so far have read the texts in the books aren't that superficial or cliché-laden either.

As for the missing CDs, I can do without most of them and but am wondering about Pee Wee Russell (Vol. III, no. 8) and Martial Solal (Vol. V, no. 8). I found the track listings on Discogs (although only about 40 out of the total are listed there, the others apparently never made it into offers on Discogs) and will have to check how much of the Pee Wee Russell contents would actually be new to me. But if any of you out there have any of these two, please drop me a PM. Thanks!

[Big Beat Steve]

I have no idea. They were produced by "Editions ATLAS" (a French editor that does a LOT of series of collector's editions - sometimes distributed via newsagents - in a wide variety of fields) with affiliates in Belgium and Switzerland.

There also is a very small imprint in the paperwork of the CDs that says "Guilde Internationale de Disque" (a record club AFAIK).

The recordings span a rather wide time frame and at the time this edition was released (1991) cannot have been a matter of public domain recordings as some of the recording dates go up to the mid-70s. The recordings they selected are a bit of a helter-skelter affair. E.g. Art Pepper is represented by some of his very earliest 50s recordings (on Discovery etc.) whereas Dexter Gordon has both some of his Dial sides of 1947 and some 70s recordings, the Art Blakey disc has his "Hard Drive" LP on Bethlehem BCP6023 plus part of BCP6027 (not his most representative items, I'd say), and the John Coltrane disc includes live recordings from Birdland from Feb. and June 1962. But this is what I find interesting as you get some nice items overlooked elsewhere. And who's to complain at THAT price ...

At any rate the books that go with the CD sets include full bibliographical and copyright details (also stating that the original publication came from Spain) as well as the names of those involved in the production and cannot possibly have gone under the radar of the rights holders if this had been a production that tried to go the "public domain, no licenses due" route.

Edited July 19, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[mikeweil]

Got them through customs without problems? 

[Big Beat Steve]

Well, as of now the EU hasn't crumbled to pieces yet ...

[king ubu]

Does the box include very stable geniuses only, or others as well ?

 

[Big Beat Steve]

16 minutes ago, king ubu said:

Does the box include very stable geniuses only, or others as well ?

 

Wel, there actually IS a CD featuring Bud Powell, for instance.

[king ubu]

 

[Big Beat Steve]

I understand. I have no idea how and on what licensing basis they actually compiled this set but considering how open-handed they were about who was behind the project and where they operated from I figure it would have been rather too risky if this had been an all-shady affair.
Maybe some French forumists can shed some light on this set. Someone must at least remember this set.

[king ubu]

My understanding is that the situation got more and more difficult ... Mosaic did a few "mixed" sets in earlier (the Illinois Jacquet comes to mind, the final CD there is from RCA, now Sony/BMG/whatever, the rest included material from EMI/Capitol (Aladdin), Savoy and others (no idea where ARA belongs ... and not sure of the Apollo/Delmark connection - does Delmark own the Apollo catalogue? License? Own parts of it?)

Also maybe the fact that it was a "record club" issue did help in making things easier? Those seemed to disappear quickly as the 90s came along, similar siutation with books, I think, but there the demise is running at a slower speed it seems?

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, king ubu said:

... and not sure of the Apollo/Delmark connection - does Delmark own the Apollo catalogue?

It looks like they do - at least they did during the 90s when they reissued several compilations of Apollo recordings.

 

[king ubu]

4 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

It looks like they do - at least they did during the 90s when they reissued several compilations of Apollo recordings.

 

It's off topic here, but Wiki doesn't have a very clear entry, alas:

Although the Apollo records catalog has seen few releases in the digital era, several doo-wop compilations have been released through Relic Records since the 1980s. Some of Apollo's jazz has appeared on Delmark Records. Bess Berman died in 1997. Cash Box said in 1954 that Berman "was the only woman ever to break through with outstanding success in the male-dominated recording industry."^[11]

Apollo Records and its affiliated publishing company, Bess Music, was purchased by George Hocutt on May 4, 1989. Shortly after that purchase in January 1990, Hocutt sold fifty percent of his interest to Couch and Madison Partners of the Malaco Music Group located in Jackson, Mississippi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Records_(1944

[Big Beat Steve]

OK, so I'll quote from the fine print inside the booklet to the "West Coast Jive" CD (DD-657),published in 1992, hoping that you will accept this statement as being a "statement of fact" (or do you think they would expose themselves to ligitation THAT easily?)

"Delmark has acquired the rights and surviving source material of the long out-of-print blues and jazz masters, and is presenting them in this Apollo series, including numerous unissued performances and alternate takes."

Sounds similar to what Ace did with the Modern/RPM masters,except that Ace admittedly resurrected a LOT more.

[Chuck Nessa]

Delmark did indeed purchase the jazz and blues masters. I helped them sort the acetate masters when they were delivered. We were all excited to find so many alternates and unissued masters.

FWIW, George Hocutt also purchased the Mahalia Jackson sides. I don't know who owns those now.

[Big Beat Steve]

12 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Delmark did indeed purchase the jazz and blues masters. I helped them sort the acetate masters when they were delivered. We were all excited to find so many alternates and unissued masters.

FWIW, George Hocutt also purchased the Mahalia Jackson sides. I don't know who owns those now.

Very interesting to hear these first-hand recollections.

I am not aware of all the reissues that Demark did and don't know if you are, but would you agree that there should be a LOT more in the vaults?

And do you happen to know up to what recording year the jazz masters were included?

 

[king ubu]

Interesting, thanks for chiming in with some details @Chuck Nessa!

[Chuck Nessa]

From the Delmark site:

Born in a record store near the Apollo Theatre building in 1944, Apollo Records presented virtually every kind of popular and ethnic music. By 1962, Apollo ceased recording but continued merchandising its gospel music, primarily the Mahalia Jackson catalog. In the 1980's, Delmark acquired the rights and surviving source material of the long out of print blues and jazz masters, and has been presenting them as the Apollo Series, including numerous unissued performances and alternate takes. To date, Delmark has issued 16 albums in this acclaimed series.

Following is an explanation of some of the work that goes into creating an Apollo CD.

First, Steve Wagner, the label's general manager, and Bob Koester, label owner, listen to the material available and determine if there is enough to feature one artist for a whole CD or whether there is another concept that ties the material together.

Once the concept for a particular CD has been decided Steve checks the discography for titles that were issued - he begins by searching for the 78's not in Delmark's file. For example, for the four Apollo's in the upcoming series (Illinois Jacquet, etc.), Delmark had 19 of the issued 78's. Steve then contacted collectors internationally to find the remaining 78's and thus determine which takes of the songs have been issued. Often, Delmark has unissued alternate takes of songs and then Bob and Steve make a decision regarding which takes to issue. The collectors supply us with copies of the 78's and the label information, including the exact song title, the composer and publisher credits. Steve said, "Among my list of twenty-five collectors, they have almost everything recorded on 78 in the blues and jazz fields. They are extremely helpful - we even received a cassette of material from a collector in Ireland.

Because the Apollo record label began in the pre-tape era, in 1944, and extended post-1950 when tape was introduced, Steve works from both acetates and tape and occasionally from original 78's, EP's, or LP's. For example, on the new Piney Brown CD some of the tracks were recorded on acetate and some on tape. The masters recorded on acetate are sent to disc-to-tape transfer expert (or should I say genius?) Jack Towers, to be transferred to DAT. These are then sent to Cedar in England for digital removal. In the old days, clicks and pops were cut out of analog tape, but in the new process the computer reads the program, detects foreign sound, removes it and replaces it by duplicating adjoining music or speech. Thus even the most perceptive percussionist will not detect the missing material for there is none.

There are times when Delmark has the rights to a master but the original disc, metal or tape has not survived the several changes of ownership of the Apollo label. In fact, disc recordings are usually transferred from simultaneously-recorded 16" 33/3 rpm (standard groove) recordings made as backup in case the original 78 rpm masters got damaged. These 16" discs are called "playbacks" or "safeties." The original 10" disc masters tended to get damaged in the electroplating process and were discarded. Sadly, the playbacks were often discarded as well after all the release takes were processed to metal. In 1962 or perhaps earlier, the old 78 rpm metal parts were discarded, perhaps to save storage space - a very short-sighted move on the part of Apollo's owner which left them no ideal source material for much of the very early recordings. During WWII the aluminum and chemicals used for recording blanks was critical and rationed and safeties simply seem not to have been recorded, at least not by Apollo.

Fortunately much of the best material was preserved by being issued on LP by Apollo, Vogue, Grand Award, Waldorf and other labels. The Apollo 10" LP's were probably recorded direct from the disc since no 10" LP master tapes have been found. But Apollo did issue a 12" anthology of sax (with tapes derived from original acetates, transfers from metal parts and a few titles with tape spliced in from the tape-recording era). Some of our Apollo albums will include tracks derived from several different media. Occasionally we are forced to make a transfer from the noisy wartime pressings and the surface noise can not be removed without reducing sound quality --- we prefer to let you hear all the music even if some surface noise survives. But thus far we have been releasing projects where we have most, if not all, of the sides on primo source material. We are especially indebted to the marvelous work done by Michael Cuscuna and Mosaic Records... our Illinois Jacquet album comes right out of their box set of I.J. on Aladdin, Apollo, ARA and RCA. 
There are a lot of other folks involved in the Apollo projects. We've already mentioned the collectors who provide us with label info and loans of rare records, but one collector tipped us off to some Apollo playbacks that turned up in a New Jersey record auction which filled gaps in the West Coast Apollo sessions. Reissue projects owe an unpayable debt to the discographers and writers who have ferreted out details of personnel and date info on the old sessions (which is why we don't mind answering requests for such info if we are able to provide it). .. But please don't write us for info that's already in the discographies - buy the books and help that movement! (preferably from Jazz Record Mart).

And here is a link to a number of their current issues (not sure if it is complete:

http://www.delmark.com/delmark.apollo.htm

Edited July 24, 2018 by Chuck Nessa

[Big Beat Steve]

(Continuing the off-topic exhanges, but it IS interesting ... )

Thanks very much for this info. I must admit I had not thought of checking the Delmark website for information.

From the above text it seems , though, that the Apollo reissue propject has lain dormant for some time and the text you extracted has not been updated for a while. The "new" Piney Brown CD mentioned (the one co-featuring Eddie Mack) has a copyright/production date of 2002.

The reason I was asking about the recording/issue year up to which Delmark had secured the rights to the jazz recordings was that I was wondering if maybe items like this one (below) would be reissued too:

https://www.discogs.com/Angelo-Di-Pippo-The-Jazz-Accordion/release/10048481

Though I figure that this would be likely only if Delmark had taken the "leave not even the tiniest pebble unturned for reissue material" approach as Ace did/does with the Modern/RPM catalog.

 

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[Chuck Nessa]

7 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

The reason I was asking about the recording/issue year up to which Delmark had secured the rights to the jazz recordings was that I was wondering if maybe items like this one (below) would be reissued too:

https://www.discogs.com/Angelo-Di-Pippo-The-Jazz-Accordion/release/10048481

Though I figure that this would be likely only if Delmark had taken the "leave not even the tiniest pebble unturned for reissue material" approach as Ace did/does with the Modern/RPM catalog.

 

 

A few possibilities here - the masters were sold in blocks of master numbers and genres had their own numerical series.

I know Delmark passed on the popular series(1000/1100) and thus missed out on the Luis Russell sides (to their regret). Maybe the lp masters were in the pop series or had their own.

Maybe Delmark has the Di Pippo masters but decided against issuing it - they didn't have much luck with their Leon Sash release.

I do believe Delmark feels they have exhausted the possibilities.

 

[Big Beat Steve]

Not all that surprised. Taking chances on "niche recordings" WITHIN this niche market is not for everybody.

A bit of a pity anyway that they feel they have exhaused their material. There MUST be more (of the meatier kind) from the 78 rpm era.

52 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I know Delmark passed on the popular series(1000/1100) and thus missed out on the Luis Russell sides (to their regret). Maybe the lp masters were in the pop series or had their own.

 

In 2005 I bought a "job lot" of 40s and early 50s U.S. 78s (lots, though not exclusivelly, of jazz and R&B - many singers). Among the lot were one or two Luis Russelll 78s on Apollo. Of course I figured I had some obscure finds on my hands, but listening proved a harsh deception. About as sugary, syrupy, square, stiff and straight as they come ... No doubt most if not all jazz fans would not have recognized the Luis Russell band known from the 30s (even taking all stylistic evolutions in the jazz field into account) The records went straight into the fleamarket/trade box of 40s U.S. pop 78s (from that lot) and sit there ...
In short, if his entire output on the label was like this, then no regrets here ...

Edited July 25, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[Big Beat Steve]

I for one am VERY interested in such obscurities and am very, very glad they brought them up in most cases - not so much the alternates (which sometimes one can do without and sometimes they are nice add-ons) but tunes that were never issued at the time. There must be a lot out there - in many fields of music. Just for comparison (outside the field of operation of Ace, but the problem no doubt existed in early post-war R&B or R'n'R fields too): If you run through the entries in the discography below ....

https://www.amazon.com/Discography-Western-String-1928-1942-Discographies/dp/0313311161/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532599828&sr=8-1&keywords=discography+of+western+swing&dpID=41CxhILI2jL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

.... you OFTEN find tracks marked as "unissued" that - if the titles are anything to go by - must be very, very lively, uninhibited, danceable and entertaining, as opposed to a fair share of issued tracks that apparently were dictated by heavy-handed A&R men who wanted something "for all the family" along the lines of a "something old something new something borrowed something blue" aproach. (Cliff Bruner wasn't the only one who explicitly complained about this later on). No doubt many of the unissueds were found to be too raucous for "healthy, clean-cut" all-round appeal.
I guess many of those pre-war unissueds for the majors are lost forever and only are documented by these ledger entries. so if Ace decides to make them available now at last in THEIR fields of reissues then all the better (I know I have discovered quite a few gems there that leave me puzzled as to why they never were released at the time).

I agree that some items that may need to be re-reissued so far might not have been and in a few rare instances I have found the share of alternate takes a bit frustrating too (but which recordings exactly that need to be reissued are YOU thinking of?). However, I do not think this is matter of trying to protect at least part of their releases from being "P.D.-ed". The same policy has been followed for DECADES (way back in the vinyl era when these P.D. problems did not exist yet) by other British reissue labels such as Flyright and Krazy Kat  and - sometimes - Charly - (in addition to Ace) and may very well be a quirk of British discographers' and reissue producers' approaches in addition to a possible desire to bypass familiar master takes that HAD been reissued before elsewhere.

[Dan Gould]

Love Ace and their approach.  They are definitely in the "new to CD" camp but that is fine for me.

As for BB King, they did a series of every Crown LP reissued in full with extras that doubled the run time.  Awesome series.  

[Dan Gould]

Well comps are going to be comps; the great thing about the Kent compilation is that most of it is music Kent released after he went to ABC, taking tracks from the late 50s to early 60s and dubbing in new instrumentation. Ace issued many of them without the dubs that were meant to 'modernize' the sound.

Which left me to go out and buy a lot of Kent 45s to hear them as released, too.

[JSngry]

I like what Ace is doing, especially with their themed compilations. The two discs dedicated to early covers of early Randy Newman songs was sheerly delightful.

[Big Beat Steve]

2 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I was just looking through Ace's catalog for some examples and I realized that what I'm really unhappy about is their single-disc approach to reissues. I wish they'd do it like Bear and Mosaic and release everything at once. And even when they do release the complete recordings of an artist, as they seem to have done over three discs with Wynonie Harris on King for example, they don't usually title it as such. They just offer a single CD of material apparently chosen at random, not presented in chronological order, with no sense of its context in the artist's discography, often with a lot of alternate and unissued material, and no promise that more material will ever be released. All in all, their approach seems extremely haphazard and dissatisfying.

I don't mind if they want to release previously unreleased stuff, but IMO they should release all the master takes first. 

Take for example their release on The "5" Royales: at a time when Rhino's excellent 2-disc collection was OOP, Ace's offering was a single disc grab bag of random tracks, many of them non-hits. Even Collectables had a better collection available. It was left to some label I'd never heard of to release a box set of the complete "5" Royales. Or their treatment of Hank Ballard and the Royals: I see they have three different CDs now. How do these compare to the excellent box set Nothing But Good 1952-62 from Bear Family containing his complete recordings? I'd have to analyze Ace's offerings in depth, comparing them track by track to find out. Screw that. Same with B.B. King: there are so many King titles than it hurts my head to try to figure out the differences between them. 

In short, I think Ace's reluctance to release anything bigger than single CDs and the occasional double really limits their usefulness as a reissue label.

I somehow agree with you with these "name" artists. It takes some figuring out to find out what to buy to close gaps in your collection (if you want to minimize overlaps with other reissues). OTOH, i think Dan Gould nailed it when he spoke of the "new to CD" camp. Since you mentioned Wynonie Harris, their CDs reach back to the time in the 90s when vinyl and CDs coexisted in the record shops. I remember picking up one of the Ace CDs (Women Whiskey and Fishtails) and was pleased to see that in adition to some inevitable overlaps they had included a fair share of tracks new to reissue and not to be found on the then-current vinyls - as if to specifically fill a few known gaps on the reissue market.

However, I'll give them lots of credit for the way they explore even more obscure artists and give them their "reissue due". Their compilations from the Modern/RM stable (e.g. the Mellow Cats & Kittens series) or the John Dolphin labels are second to none. They take chances that hardly any other labels do.

Bear Family and the like took chances with their box sets that maybe Ace find them to be too much of a good thing and therefore of limited marketability (according to THEIR criteria ..). Different strokes ...

Edited July 26, 2018 by Big Beat Steve

[mikeweil]

20 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I suppose if you're a collector you'll be obsessive enough to figure out the differences, but if you're approaching the catalog for the first time it's bewildering.  

Count me among the victims who gave up on completing their B.B. King collection ...

Edited July 27, 2018 by mikeweil