Any Interest In a Post-Roulette Basie Verve set?

[JSngry]

So...anybody else possibly interested in this? I myself have very mixed feelings, but, like the new Herman set, there's meat and filler in an almost indistinguishable mix. Plenty of Jaws, though, right?

Also, if you really want to stretch, all those Post-Verve labels, up to and including Dot. That's where shit can really get weird.

Anyway, just the Verve stuff, eh? Would you be interested in the for-real Swing Machine?

[mjzee]

How many discs?

[JSngry]

No idea..there's more that I've not heard than have...let's see, on Verve:

• On My Way & Shoutin' Again
• Basie Land
• Ella and Basie
• L'il Old Groovemaker....Basie!
• Our Shining Hour (with Sammy Davis, Jr.)
• More Hits of the 50s & 60s (aka Frankly Basie)
• Count Basie with Arthur Prysock
• Basie's Beatle Bag (better than you might think, but...)
• Basie's Beat

After that, you go to the two Command albums (Hollywood Basie's Way & Broadway Basie's Way), Basie Meets Bond (a LOT better than you might think!) and the Dot sides, The Board Of Directors (w/the Mills Brothers), Plays the Happiest Millionaire (w/Illinois Jacquet!), Standing Ovation, and Straight Ahead. The ultimate obscurity is Basie On the Beatles, done for the Happy Tiger label, home of post-Van Morrison Them. Also two MPS records, probably nothing Mosaic can get.

Not sure what else there is.

Other than the Beatle Bag album, what I've heard of the Verve album is pretty much "straight ahead" but also very Swing Machine-y. Still, one helluva band.

 

Also, interested in this only after the Bill Barron side comes out! 

[Brad]

I don’t know the material so hard to say but, hey, it is Basie. 

[sidewinder]

Maybe chuck in ‘Afrique’ for good measure? (not Verve but all part of the story).

[Big Beat Steve]

44 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Not sure what else there is.

So you'd exclude the Reprise recordings?

 

[JSngry]

29 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

Maybe chuck in ‘Afrique’ for good measure? (not Verve but all part of the story).

Readily available, I think, but sure!

2 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

So you'd exclude the Reprise recordings?

 

not on principle, not sure about rights, though.

[Brad]

2 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

So you'd exclude the Reprise recordings?

 

Different corporate ownership.  Looks like they’re owned by Warner. 

[JSngry]

Have heard none of this album of Quincy Jones' charts (your joke here _____ ) until now Yes, formula, but yes, damn good band. Snooky Young/Marshall Royal, lead players, hey.

Truthfully, fr this kind of thing, I think I'd rather buy it all at once than in pieces, get it all and play it, like one disc a month or whatever, a lifetime of pleasure with a minimum of engagement, hey look at me, I'm post-modern now.

etc.

Oh, here's two I had forgotten about.

 

Kay Starr don't suck.

[gmonahan]

Groovemaker is one of my favorite Basie albums. Only issue with this idea is that most of them have been issued on cd (even Basie's Beat, though only in Japan on a limited release), but pulling them together in a set would be very nice!

 

 

gregmo

[Brad]

The music that Quincy Jones recorded for ABC and Mercury, which is on the Mosaic set, is some fine damn music.  Some of the albums featured some musicians like Mingus, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson, Patti Bown and the like.  There are a few pop arrangements but all in all some great stuff. 

[jlhoots]

I have the ones I need, except the Prysock.

[king ubu]

I'd be in I guess, though expectinga bit of a roller and coaster with some bumps to decorate ...

This, too - Coral, 1967:

 

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, king ubu said:

This, too - Coral, 1967:

 

Well, that's another one I forgot about. Looks like it was on Brunswick in the US:

 

That one and this one:

Note the "Vocals With Orchestra" tag.

And look - a possible 45 version!

 

[JSngry]

13 hours ago, gmonahan said:

Only issue with this idea is that most of them have been issued on cd (even Basie's Beat, though only in Japan on a limited release), but pulling them together in a set would be very nice!

That's sort of my feeling as well. I have not bought all the individual discs, they did not have a "pull" for me as individual items. Expenditures, shelf space, just wasn't feeling that. But a set, yeah, I could get them all at once and be done with it.

[HutchFan]

Those Quincy charts sound stinkin' fantastic.  (I'd never heard 'em either.  )

They remind me of the Basie/Sinatra record It Might as Well Be Swing -- Quincy did those charts too -- which just might be my favorite Sinatra record.  

[JSngry]

11 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Those Quincy charts sound stinkin' fantastic.  (I'd never heard 'em either.  )

They remind me of the Basie/Sinatra record It Might as Well Be Swing -- Quincy did those charts too -- which just might be my favorite Sinatra record.  

Here's a Verve that ties all that together, sortakinda. Billy Byers for this one.

 

This one I had heard (under its original tile), my high school had a copy (sic), and of course, if you played in any kind of stage/lab band, you probably got around to at least one of those charts. But they probably didn't get played this well!

Again, the kind of thing that becomes wearing over the course of an album (at least to me), but a few tracks at a time, hey, yeah.

[JSngry]

Not a lot enthusiasm here? I get it.

Here's another one, just in case anybody's curious.Frank Wess plays really good alto on the opener, to the surprise of,,,uh...nobody, right?

 

[Jim Duckworth]

Before I investigated this thread I could have easily passed on such an admittedly hypothetical set; not I want it.  Darn.

 

[JSngry]

Here's Basie Land, another Byers album. I think "Doodle Oodle" might have been some kind of a hit?

 

[jlhoots]

18 hours ago, JSngry said:

Not a lot enthusiasm here? I get it.

Here's another one, just in case anybody's curious.Frank Wess plays really good alto on the opener, to the surprise of,,,uh...nobody, right?

 

[riddlemay]

On 8/29/2018 at 11:59 AM, JSngry said:

No idea..there's more that I've not heard than have...let's see, on Verve:

• On My Way & Shoutin' Again
• Basie Land
• Ella and Basie
• L'il Old Groovemaker....Basie!
• Our Shining Hour (with Sammy Davis, Jr.)
• More Hits of the 50s & 60s (aka Frankly Basie)
• Count Basie with Arthur Prysock
• Basie's Beatle Bag (better than you might think, but...)
• Basie's Beat

A Basie album on Verve that's missing from that list is Basie Picks the Winners. A Byers-arranged album that I like a lot.

For some reason, the CD reissue (Japanese import) was in mono, even though the album is definitely from the stereo era. And the version of the album that's on iTunes is also mono. And so are various YouTubes of the album's contents. (Like the one below.) Did the stereo master get thrown out by mistake a long time ago? I wonder.

I would be interested in the Verve set you're imagining, especially if it included the stereo mix of this album.

 

 

 

[JSngry]

Wow, I'd completely forgot about that one. I'm guessing that this is about when Lockjaw came back on the band. And Leon Thomas gets a shot!

 

For YouTube playlist of the album. If that's the poster's cover used in the video, I'd say that he found a mono copy in the cutout bin and went from there. I've got a few mono Verves that same way.

 

[crisp]

I'd be up for this. It sounds like the sort of project that Michael Cuscuna might have rejected because of some of the material.

Does Universal own Command? I've tried googling...

[king ubu]

39 minutes ago, crisp said:

I'd be up for this. It sounds like the sort of project that Michael Cuscuna might have rejected because of some of the material.

Does Universal own Command? I've tried googling...

Well, ABC bought Command in 1959 ... not sure how long they used the label or if it was divested again at a later time, but the line would go: ABC > MCA (aka the mob) > Universal (later UME).