Rare sessions, never reissued?

[mikeweil]

It seems this still awaits reissue in Delmark's fine Apollo series:

Israel Crosby Quartette : unknown (ts), (p), Israel Crosby (b) Jack Cooley (d,vcl)

 unknown location, 1947

R1240I feel the blues (jc vcl)   Apollo 405

R1241The death of Piney Brown (jc vcl)       390

R1243I know the blues (jc vcl)      -

R1244I deal in cats       405

Edited July 14, 2022 by mikeweil

[JSngry]

What would they couple(?) it with?

[clifford_thornton]

maybe the Andrew Hill Ping 45s?

[Holy Ghost]

21 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

maybe the Andrew Hill Ping 45s?

Curious what these are?

[JSngry]

Not sure if Delmark has provenance for Ping?

[Dan Gould]

The Andrew Hill Combo playing "Down Pat" on Ping Records 1003, recorded in October 1956. The musicians are: Von Freeman: ts Pat Patrick: bars Andrew Hill: p Malachi Favors: b Wilbur Campbell: dr

[JSngry]

Weekend reading assignment: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/ping.html

followed by: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/rsrf.html

be ready to call in sick Monday if you need/want time to finish. It's one of the best online resources out there, period.

[Big Beat Steve]

14 hours ago, JSngry said:

Weekend reading assignment: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/ping.html

followed by: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/rsrf.html

be ready to call in sick Monday if you need/want time to finish. It's one of the best online resources out there, period.

Seconded.

Overwhelmed by the wealth of info (right up my alley of interest) that this site holds, I went ahead and printed out some of the chapters on "key" labels and artists one day in late 2007, but after several hours, having filled two entire ring binders and feeling kind of dizzy, I had only covered a minor part of the site contents. Then, some time later I of course became aware that these pages were still being updated every now and then so whatever I had printed out tended to become a bit outdated over time. 
So in the years that followed I checked out the site for reference from time to time, and then, dreading that this site might go belly up one day (it would not be the first excellent collector research site that this has happened to), during the Corona lockdown period in the latter part of 2020 I took the plunge and sat down and downloaded the contents of the entire site, copying each and every chapter and subchapter using the "Select All" Firefox feature into Word files and saving them on my hard drive and on a USB stick.
Some 59 files or so in all ...
Pity, though, that some of the photographs (mainly label illustrations) are no longer being displayed online.

Of course I now know I have to do it all again eventually, depending on updates happening in the meantime, but at least one not all that old version has been preserved for offline posterity.
 

[Holy Ghost]

16 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

The Andrew Hill Combo playing "Down Pat" on Ping Records 1003, recorded in October 1956. The musicians are: Von Freeman: ts Pat Patrick: bars Andrew Hill: p Malachi Favors: b Wilbur Campbell: dr

Woah. Sun Ra-ish sounding, I think I read here a thread/tie between Hill and Ra talking/collaborating in Chicago in the 50's (dunno who or where)

[T.D.]

25 minutes ago, Holy Ghost said:

Woah. Sun Ra-ish sounding, I think I read here a thread/tie between Hill and Ra talking/collaborating in Chicago in the 50's (dunno who or where)

Agreed on Ra-ish sounding. I think Jim speculated about talk/collaboration. I was sufficiently interested to pull out my copy of Szwed's bio and go through the Hill references in the index. But all I found was one mention of Andrew Hill being among "younger musicians [who] were often in Sonny's audiences now [c. 1959]".

Edited July 16, 2022 by T.D.

[JSngry]

Speculated, yes. 

[Rooster_Ties]

A couple months ago, I heard told of a biography of Andrew Hill that’s in the works. Perhaps something will emerge from that.

Maybe I shouldn’t say too much (I barely know anything myself).

Edited December 24, 2022 by Rooster_Ties

[T.D.]

56 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Speculated, yes. 

A very reasonable speculation, I didn't mean to badmouth it. I've been searching for documentation, but AFAIK that hasn't yet appeared (at least in "widely available sources").

I read Sites's excellent book Sun Ra in Chicago, but only via interlibrary loan checkout, don't own it. Don't recall any detailed Andrew Hill info there, but haven't been able to check the index.

Whoa...big discovery!...I was able to find via Google Books, from p. 81 of Sites [bold added]: "Pianist Andrew Hill, who came of age in this scene and played with Blount, later called it 'a time before the music got separated'..." That seems to be the only significant Hill reference in Sites, however.

Edited July 16, 2022 by T.D.

[JSngry]

That Stites book is wwll worth owning, imo. 

[clifford_thornton]

22 hours ago, JSngry said:

Weekend reading assignment: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/ping.html

followed by: http://campber.people.clemson.edu/rsrf.html

be ready to call in sick Monday if you need/want time to finish. It's one of the best online resources out there, period.

yup. Ping is pretty cool and those postwar Chicago discographies are fascinating.

A bit later, but I've still not figured out much regarding Ardell Nelson's Jazz Prophets, which features the first recording of Leroy Jenkins. Ra-ish organ, drums, violin combo. I have the 45 and it's quite enjoyable.

[mikeweil]

I had a closer look at the Apollo catalogue in the Lord Disco, and it seems Delmark has covered pretty much everything that's interesting, in artist-centered CDs or thematic compilations. Could be that some tracks are lost even though they were on 78s, maybe the Crosbys are among them. They were never sold on discogs. The master numbers on these labels suggest there were six titles recorde, but Lord list only four and has 1243 instead of 1246.

Edited July 17, 2022 by mikeweil

[Late]

On 7/15/2022 at 0:16 PM, Dan Gould said:

Andrew Hill playing "Down Pat" on Ping Records 1003, recorded in October 1956. The musicians are: Von Freeman: ts, Pat Patrick: bars, Andrew Hill: p, Malachi Favors: bass, Wilbur Campbell: drums

Thanks for sharing! Von Freeman sounds great on those tracks. Reminds me in places of John Gilmore. Which gets me to thinking—I wonder what Von would've sounded like in Sun Ra's band. Or, rather, what would the band have sounded like with Von in it.

[clifford_thornton]

I really like those Hill Ping tracks and wish I owned the records. Would be great if they got compiled on a CD for mass consumption.

[Chuck Nessa]

13 hours ago, Late said:

Thanks for sharing! Von Freeman sounds great on those tracks. Reminds me in places of John Gilmore. Which gets me to thinking—I wonder what Von would've sounded like in Sun Ra's band. Or, rather, what would the band have sounded like with Von in it.

Von was in a couple of early Ra bands in Chicago.

47 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

I really like those Hill Ping tracks and wish I owned the records. Would be great if they got compiled on a CD for mass consumption.

There are also 2 trio tracks from that session.

[clifford_thornton]

Rad. We can hope.

[Late]

4 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Von was in a couple of early Ra bands in Chicago.

Didn't know that—very interesting. Would be great to hear that.

[colinmce]

Seems like a good place to put this. Part One of an extensive 1977 interview with Ajaramu which touches on the 50s in Chicago into the creation of the AACM:

https://threefoldpress.org/ajaramu

[Mark Stryker]

On 7/14/2022 at 3:38 PM, mikeweil said:

It seems this still awaits reissue in Delmark's fine Apollo series:

Israel Crosby Quartette : unknown (ts), (p), Israel Crosby (b) Jack Cooley (d,vcl)

 unknown location, 1947

R1240I feel the blues (jc vcl)   Apollo 405

R1241The death of Piney Brown (jc vcl)       390

R1243I know the blues (jc vcl)      -

R1244I deal in cats       405

In the course of researching Israel Crosby for an upcoming column for Jazz Times, I have come across digitized versions of the two sides issued as Apollo 390. The tunes are "The Death of Piney Brown" and "I Know the Blues." Lord indicates an unknown tenor saxophonist, but the cat on the date is actually playing soprano sax, and according to a related page to the family of discographies referenced above, it's Buster Bennett. http://campber.people.clemson.edu/bennett.html. Moreover, the article says that this was essentially Bennett's group recording under Crosby's name without Bennett's name on the label because he was under contract with Columbia.

Here are the links to the recordings:

"I Know the Blues" https://archive.org/details/78_i-know-the-blues_israel-crosby-quartette-jack-cooley_gbia0007594b

"The Death of Piney Brown"  https://archive.org/details/78_the-death-of-piney-brown_israel-crosby-quartette-jack-cooley_gbia0007594a

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Mark Stryker

[mikeweil]

Thanks!

[Jim Duckworth]

I would be very interested in having this one:

Dave Tough Quintete

Joe Thomas, trumpet; Ted Nash, tenor sax; Bernie Leighton, piano; Jack Lesberg, bass; Dave Tough, drums.

NYC, January 9, 1946

MJ7013	You Were Meant For Me	Jamboree 906
MJ7014	Love Walked In	Jamboree 907
MJ7015	When You're Smiling	-
MJ7016	East Of The Sun