Everybody Needs A Hobby

As you know, I like to take old LPs that have never been issued on CD, clean 'em up, and make CD-Rs of them.  I just finished one that NOBODY will ever know what I went through, how much work I put in, and I'm quite proud of how it came out... so I'll tell the tale here for posterity.  All three of us.

Background:
Last week I ran across a 4-CD set in a used CD store which re-released seven LPs by Pepper Adams.  Pepper was this wiry little guy, 5'4" tall, who played baritone saxophone.  His instrument was almost as big as him.  Pictures of him playing are a hoot, especially when pictured next to Dexter Gordon (6'5") or Paul Humphrey (6'7").


Back in my LP collecting days I had 16 albums by Pepper.  I loved Pepper's playing in particular, and the sound of the baritone saxophone in general.  But his stuff has not been well-represented by CD re-issues, so I only had one CD by him.  Needless to say I was THRILLED to gain 7 albums all at once.

It made me nostalgic for more baritone.

I found another boxed set from Sahib Shihab (birth name Edmund Gregory) and downloaded & burned some Gerry Mulligan albums I was missing.  I used to have a few LPs by The Dave Brubeck Quartet with Mulligan sitting in (which I already have on CD), and two where Mulligan replaced Paul Desmond (on alto), "Compadres" and "Blues Roots" (both 1968).  Because perhaps this era of the DBQ is less well-known they've never been issued on CD.  

So that was my goal for this week.

Most albums -- as I believe I've mentioned -- are easy to locate online.  These two bucked the trend.

Nothing on iTunes or Amazon Digital Music, since they're LP-only.  No blogs were found that had them posted (which is really unheard of -- especially for Brubeck who's a superstar in the jazz world).  A few of the tracks were on YouTube, in really scratchy and/or defective dubs.  Got most of "Blues Roots" that way, cleaned up and repaired the tracks, equalized everything so the tracks matched (despite vastly different sources), and burned a copy.  Two of the tracks were listed under Mulligan's name, three under The Dave Brubeck Trio, and two under Dave Brubeck alone.  It took some searching but I eventually found everything in the proper recordings (many of the songs have been recorded more than once). It's a studio album (actually two different studios) but the end result sounds coherent, despite the scattershot way I found the tracks.

"Compadres" on the other hand is a live album, recorded in Mexico City, with applause between the tracks and leading into and out of every track.  However the audience is dead quiet during the music, so it's really quite a nice session.  Really nicely recorded too.

Found only two of the tracks on YouTube.  Found a Russian website that CLAIMED to have the whole LP, but the files were incomplete.  Found several websites that CLAIMED to have the album, but these led to advertisements to buy Viagra or software I didn't want (lotsa spam when you google for free music).  Again, one of the tracks had been re-released on Ken Burns compilation (under Mulligan's name) and one on a Dave Brubeck compilation (under his name), both with the applause truncated.  Two tracks were posted online (not YouTube) but were copy-protected so I couldn't download them.

I jerry-rigged my system to record the audio as I played the files so I didn't have to download them.  With the three tracks I got from Russia, the two under different names and the two I bootlegged that gave me all seven files.

Now to set about recreating the applause so the tracks flow into one another continuously.  One of the tracks had a fairly long stretch of uninterrupted applause, so I pulled that out as my source.  I pasted bits and pieces of that into the other tracks as necessary, adjusting levels and shortening the applause to just the bare minimum.  Fiddled with the volume and EQ and dynamic range to try to match the tracks, and burned a CD-R.

It ain't perfect, but I might be the only one who'd notice.

Hey it keeps me off drugs.

I hate it though when hobbies keep you from sleeping.

Two of my favorite Gerry Mulligan albums are “Jeru” (1962) and “The Age of Steam” (1973).  I’d burned a CD-R with both of them on it a few months ago, but they didn’t really go together.  Big changes in music between 1962 and 1973.  “The Age Of Steam” has a Fender Rhodes piano and electric bass, while “Jeru” is a standard jazz quartet of acoustic piano and standup bass.

Last night as I was trying to fall asleep this fact came into my consciousness and wouldn’t leave.  I suddenly knew what I had to do.

I got up out of bed, downloaded another two albums — one acoustic (“What Is There To Say?”, 1959) and one electric (“Little Big Horn,” 1983) — and reburned the four albums as two coherent sets.  

Finally I was able to sleep.

It sounds pathological even as I recount the story.

Last couple weeks I’ve been filling in gaps in my Bob Brookmeyer collection (valve trombonist) including “Traditionalism Revisited” (1957) where he plays with clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Ralph Peña.  Really nice stuff.

That reminded me of another CD I had, “The Jimmy Giuffre 3” (1957) which includes Hall and Peña.  Very unusual configuration: no drummer.

In fact Giuffre has had two or three ensembles with either no drummer or no bassist either.  Including one with Brookmeyer.  These ensembles are improvising ensembles, but pretty far removed from normal jazz without any rhythm section.

So I had to research Giuffre and download some more albums.  One I remember from my LP days was called “Piece for Clarinet and String Orchestra” (1960) which isn’t quite jazz, isn’t quite classical either.  Right up my alley IOW.

But it’s never been issued on CD, and the LP goes for $100.  I spent most of today looking for files I could download — nothing on iTunes, nothing on Amazon, nothing on Spotify, only half the album on YouTube, nothing on the stores I know that offer digital downloads of out-of-print albums, nothing on the usual blogs.  I was just about ready to give up when I found a Russian website that seemed to offer them (having already bailed on two fake download sites that claim to have everything you look for but actually only install malware).  My virus scan alerted me to a misdirection, but it was just an easily-dismissible ad.  Behind the ad, yay, the files actually existed.

Downloaded, burned.  And they sound good.  Somebody did some serious cleanup on the LP source.

Gotta love the Russians.

I used to have a fairly comprehensive Dave Brubeck LP collection, 25 or 30 pieces covering the vast span of his career from 1948 to the '90s (his last couple of decades before he died in 2012 were mostly religious and sad music).  Before I sold my record collection I made a couple of DBQ compilations, but as noted above, these weren't sufficient anymore.

Bought a few 2ndhand CDs.  Made a few CD-Rs of stuff not available.  Still not enough.

One thing about Brubeck, he was immensely popular from about 1953 to the 1970s and released close to a hundred discs.  His catalog is further complicated by constant reissues, which reshuffle tracks into new albums, or release whole albums with new titles and covers.  He also recorded many songs more than once, in various studio and live albums.  Keeping track of it all is difficult.

Some of his earliest stuff, when he was fresh off studying orchestration with Darius Milhaud, is the most interesting.  I found a CD that compiled his 1946-1949 octet recordings, which had been originally released on a half dozen 10" EPs.  During the same time period he also had a trio with members of the octet, including Cal Tjader on vibes & drums, but I'd never seen any rerelease of those.

Until I recently bought a boxed set of Tjader.  There, hidden among six early Tjader albums, were the two Brubeck Trio albums.  I pulled them off and burned them together to make a new DBT CD-R.

These reminded me of other early Brubeck releases (1950-1954) which were before his best-known DBQ personnel was solidified (occasionally including a bassoon!)  This morning I went looking for this stuff, and found it in a variety of places, in a variety of conditions, mixed in with other tracks.  I assembled these into replicas of the old albums I used to have & love - now in pristine digital sound (most of my old Brubeck LPs were bought used, and sounded like it!)

Only afterward, reviewing them and looking over my existing CD collection, did I discover I already had some of the tracks on other compilation albums.  Oops.

Oh well.  There's something comforting about playing the songs in the order I first came to know and love them.

One of the olde Brubeck albums i used to own was on Crown Records, a discount British label known for repackaging.  It was called "Dave Brubeck Quartet - Paul Desmond Quartet - Cal Tjader" and included just three tracks: "At A Perfume Counter," "Purple Moon" and "Jazz Latino."  No liner notes or other information.

The DBQ track "At A Perfume Counter" (also known as "Perfume Counter" and "At A Perfume Counter on the Rue de la Paix") was fairly easy to track down: the 15-minute live version Crown re-issued was released on a 1951 LP.

"Purple Moon" did not show up anywhere else in Discogs except on this LP, nor did "Jazz Latino."  Neither was posted anywhere online.  However, after a couple hours of research (including using Shazam) I discovered that "Purple Moon" was originally released (in 1952) as "Sacre Blues" by the Paul Desmond Quartet, and I already owned a copy.  "Jazz Latino" was originally released as "Bill B." in 1954 by the Cal Tjader Quartet.  It was fairly easy to track down.

Why Crown Records felt it necessary to retitle these two tracks is puzzling.  Perhaps it's a licensing issue.  Perhaps it was simple laziness.  Perhaps it was a bootleg.

At any rate, this old LP -- which was among the most-trashed LPs I ever owned but still a favorite for the quality of its music -- is now in my collection again in pristine digital quality. Along with, for the first time, details about personnel and recording dates.

The fourth member of the Paul Desmond Quartet (above, "Purple Moon" aka "Sacre Blues") was not a piano player as you might expect, but rather Don Elliott (1926-1984) on mellophone.

Don Elliott was the most famous jazz musician you've never heard of.  He was the master of a bewildering array of instruments:

• trumpet
  
• vibraphone
  
• marimba
  
• trombone
  
• flugelhorn
  
• bongos
  
• congas
  
• vocals
  
• vocalese*
  
• mellophone
  

The mellophone is a brass instrument halfway between a French horn and a cornet, mostly used in marching bands.  It sounds like a trombone, or a French horn with more bite.  There are a few jazz trombonists, and one or two jazz French horn players, but so far as I know Don was the only mellophonist to apply it to jazz.

He's done albums both as a trumpeter, and as a vibes player.  Sometimes both.  Also mellophone.  And as a vocalist. In fact, he's done over 60 albums.  And over 5,000 advertising jingles.  He has appeared as a featured soloist on hundreds of albums for other artists.

He was also a composer and arranger, and ran one of the first multi-track studios in the world.

When he sang, it was with an unadorned, somewhat naive-sounding voice similar to Chet Baker.  He also *used his voice to imitate a trumpet, so effectively that it takes a while to work out that what you're hearing is in fact a voice rather than a horn.

After tracking down "Purple Moon" again and being impressed all over again with the mellophone solo contained therein, I decided to investigate Don's oeuvre somewhat.  I found a 2-on-1 CD of his octet and sextette recordings, arranged by Gil Evans and Quincy Jones respectively.  They're in that gray area I like so much between jazz and swing orchestra and composed classical brass music, not dissimilar to Brubeck's octet or George Barnes' octet or John Kirby's sextet from approximately the same period.

Next I found a 4-on-2 CD of four of his jazz albums from the mid-50's.  I'm still working my way through this release, but the range and quality are impressive.

Last, I discovered an old LP I used to have, "A Thurber Carnival" featuring Peggy Cass, Tom Ewell, & Thurber himself, actually features musical backing and interludes by the Don Elliott Quartet.  I did not remember that!  I've been a Thurber fan since childhood, when my mother used to read to me from his books.  This guy's on order now and should arrive in a day or two.

Astonishing really that this guy isn't better known.



* - Yes, I know "vocalese" is technically singing words to instrumental jazz solos, rather than imitating an instrument with your voice. Not sure the latter has a technical name?

The other day I sat bolt upright in bed and realized I needed to make a CD-R of Eric Schoenberg.  Immediately!

Eric is an acoustic finger-picker from Cambridge Mass who released only three albums that I know of: an album of ragtime rags transcribed for guitar -- probably the first to do this -- released in 1971 with his cousin Dave Laibman.  The Scott Joplin revival really only happened a couple years later, with the release of the movie "The Sting" (1973) and the album "Piano Rags by Scott Joplin" by Joshua Rifkin in 1974 (who taught at the UW for a spell).  Since then of course every guitarist and his brother has released an album of ragtime music.  Eric's second record, and the one that awakened me, was 1977's "Acoustic Guitar" on Rounder Records, where he plays a couple of rags and some traditional Irish reels and some Beatles tunes, all accompanied by an upright bass.  The combination of steel-string acoustic guitar and acoustic bass is magical.  I loved this LP and suddenly realized I couldn't go another day without it.  Eric also (it turns out) released a third LP in 1982, which I'd never heard nor seen (nor could find online.  I've ordered a vinyl to transcribe.)

None of these albums has ever seen a CD reissue.

After a day of fairly intense searching I found a website with the 2nd album posted for listening (but they wanted FIFTEEN bucks to download it).  It took only a few seconds to set up my computer to record while I listened for free.  Spent the day cleaning up ticks and pops, and burned a copy.  Found hi-res scans of the cover, so I made a high quality reduction of it.  Incidentally, Eric has a guitar shop (and custom manufacturing facility) in California, so I sent him an e-mail inquiring about the availability of his ancient old records in digital format. To date, no response.

Found and burned his first LP, and found about four tracks from the 3rd one.  When the vinyl arrives I'll fill that one out.

So I've been basking in Eric Schoenberg all weekend and loving it.

But that reminded me.  I used to have some records by German electronic musician Eberhard Schoener filed right next to his.  Like Schoenberg, apparently his stuff has never been reissued.  I found four of his albums -- the good ones -- available at iTunes so I downloaded and created two two-fers.  More great stuff.

One of Schoener's LPs is based on Balinese ketjak monkey chants.  Fascinating how he transforms this distinctive vocal chorus into electronic music.

I used to have the very-famous source recordings for this, Nonesuch's 1969 "Golden Rain: Balinese Gamelan Music and the Ketjak Ramayama Monkey Chant."  Turns out that's another fond memory I lost along the way.  I have a couple CDs of Gamelan music -- both traditional and contemporary versions of it -- but not the most famous recordings of all. Most places wanted $10 to download the tracks, but Amazon was selling the three tracks individually for $0.99 ea.  So for $2.97 I downloaded and burned the "Golden Rain" again, yay.

I love how one thing leads into another, totally unexpectedly.

There's a Swedish group called Hoven Droven who take old Swedish folk songs and rock them up with electric guitar and bass and drums and saxophone and fiddle.  They really put forward a fearsome noise.  I first became aware of them about 1996 when their first two albums were rereleased by an American distributor who sent them to me for review.  Since then I had accumulated three more albums, but I was aware there were two more I was missing.  I was reminded of this yesterday while I happened to be updating a wishlist at a local CD store.

So I went looking for them online, found them, downloaded and burned -- along with a live album I'd never heard about, and a single and EP I'd somehow missed.  Now I'm rolling in Hoven Droven.

I was singing their praises on the music board I monitor, when one of the posters asked if I knew of Den Fule ("The Fool"), another Swedish rock band who do traditional folk tunes.  Four albums, also available online (though album cover images were incomplete).  Wonderful stuff, not EXACTLY like Hoven Droven, but in the same universe.  

I love that I can still get all worked up about new music.

You are a busy little boy. Damn. As much as I love music (by which I mean jazz, of course), I could never put in the time you do. I would rather just listen to a worn-out 78 for an hour than spend an hour making it flawless.

After reading this thread, and your many references to some of my all-time favorite musicians - I realize that I just screwed up. I gave away two boxes of reel-to-reel music - probably close to a hundred tapes - and I think it should have gone to you, instead of the recipient. While he is a very old friend whom I've known for at least fifty years, and he was quite happy to get the tapes, I think you would have found more to appreciate and restore. Sorry, NoCo. Sincerely.

No worries. A few years ago I purchased a TEAC 3340S and dubbed off all my old reels. After that experience, I was ONLY TOO HAPPY to sell that sucker again and hope never to have touch another R2R as long as I live. What a titanic hassle aligning everything to what was on the tapes, getting the speed to match, and of course my tapes were old and shed like crazy.

About five years ago I took some reels in to a guy who makes a business out of dubbing. His services were paid by the record label that was releasing them. He concurred that reels are a maintenance nightmare, which is why he gets the big dollar for dubbing off tapes. Every tape requires a complete alignment to match how the tape was recorded.

Yesterday, somebody on my music forum mentioned videogame soundtracks.  Lots of young men of my generation or slightly younger spent YEARS of their lives listening to the Mario song on their Ataris.

As a result, there's a considerable nostalgia market these days for:

1. Old videogame soundtracks
   
2. Old videogame soundtracks played by a band on normal instruments
   
3. Normal '70s rock & roll played on 8-bit sound chips to SOUND like an Atari videogame
   

I was never "a gamer" so I do not have this nostalgia, but in the 1990s I did sample the "exploration" video games of Cyan, namely "Myst," "Riven," and "Exile Myst III."  These featured soundtracks by Robyn Miller, on a variety of synthesizers, and were fully realized electronic music albums of their own merit.  And VERY cool.

So, pursuant to this thread on the board, I pulled out my Myst soundtrack and played it again.

Which got me to wondering if Robyn had released anything since the 1990s.

Which led me to discover there was another Cyan game (under a different name, since the original company want bankrupt) from the early 2000s called "Obduction" which I had completely missed.  I downloaded the soundtrack and listened to it three times in succession.  Massively cool -- Robyn uses samples of real instruments so it has a much more "organic" feel, but it's still his style of music.  Every once in a while I discover something that gets me all excited again.

There is also a "walkthrough" of Obduction on YouTube -- something we didn't have in the '90s -- which shows you the whole game without having to buy it and play it.  I was never that interested in "playing" these games because that involves solving a whole lot of nonsensical "puzzles" where stuff is hidden everywhere and you have to find icons and turn hidden levers and open locked doors.  I was only interested in the photorealistic landscapes you can explore.  This walkthough is 2½ hours long, so I haven't gotten through all of it yet, but it makes me glad I missed the original videogame because the frustration level is off the charts.

On YouTube, there's always a sidebar of other videos you might like if you're watching THIS video, and through this I discovered there are several Riven/Myst knockoffs that use the same rendering engine to create photorealistic explorable landscapes.  I started the walkthrough on one called "Haven Moon."  Incredibly good graphics, though intensely derivative of Riven and with a nuttin' soundtrack.  However, after ten minutes of watching the walkthrough I had to pause it -- I was getting motion sickness from all the rapid turns and jumps!

I also discovered, in the sidebar, that somebody had taken some of the background environments in Riven -- a forest scene, an elevator scene, a field -- and either recorded or looped an hour of the bird & insect sounds, mechanical rumbling of unseen machinery, water lapping on the shore, etc.  One of the really cool things about Riven was the soundtrack when there WASN'T music because Robyn had created fully believable ambient sounds.  If you paused in one of these locations the sounds would play until you left, and many of the comments underneath the videos were from people who would pause the game there just to enjoy the colorful ambience while they read or did something else.

So I downloaded 4 one-hour soundtracks, did screen captures on the four locations (readily available online), and burned me a box set.

I'm such a geek.

Some of the Japanese anime have quite good music, even though I find most of the shows pretty crappy as shows. A lot of the opening and closing themes to the shows are really pretty good, and there is some other worthwhile stuff as well. And on Youtube, you find the same sort of looping going on. A pleasant piece of background music that is a little repetitive and that lasts,say, 8-10 minutes in the show can be cunningly looped to provide an hour of background for doing your homework, or whatever the kids do these days.

My personal favorites are anything by Yoko Kanno (composer).

Inner Universe

Apparently videogame music is HUGE IN JAPAN (as the saying goes...)

Over the past couple of months I've been filling in my Pepper Adams collection -- well, since September 12th -- and tracking down hard-to-find items has turned into a fun challenge.

Item No.1#:


This was one of the few albums released in 16 RPM, with one side of the L-LP being two baritone saxes (Pepper + Cecil Payne) and the other side being two French hornists (Julius Watkins + Dave Amran).  Due to the speed a 16 RPM album will play up to 1½ hours, double a normal 33-1/3.

I had absolutely no luck tracking down this LP or any recordings of it.  But the thing was described on a couple different websites, and on one of them it was mentioned in the fine print that both sides of this LP eventually saw release as LPs under different artist names.  Side one was re-released as "Dakar" by John Coltrane (who played on the date, but was a minor backup player).  Side two was re-released as "Curtis Fuller and Hampton Hawes With French Horns" even though it was the French hornists who were the leads on the date.  

Anyway, with this new information I was easily able to track down both sides of this album (1:16:48 total time) and burn the CD.  Finally!!!

Items No.2 & 3:


These two sets, recorded a year apart, are long relaxed jams by a whole host of people.  I always filed them under Pepper Adams because he was listed first, alphabetically, on both albums.  These two sets remind me of the Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts hosted by Norman Granz, where a bunch of top-notch players are given the shell of a tune and given a half hour to play with it.

Again, no luck finding these albums anywhere, or anyplace where somebody posted the files.  And again, reading the fine print on a website that mentions them, it was revealed that both were re-released as Dizzy Gillespie(!) albums, with no reference to the original album format.

Again, a quick search turned up the Gillespie CDs, and I have my Pepper CDs.

Sometimes I love my job.

The past week I've been making Albums That Never Were.

There's a whole host of websites devoted to recreating albums that were canceled, or the bands broke up, or the album didn't turn out to be what the artist intended.  
http://albumsiwishexisted.blogspot.com/
http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/
http://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/
http://albumsbackfromthedead.blogspot.com/
http://whatif-misc.blogspot.com/
http://beatles-whatif.blogspot.com/
http://jiggy22.blogspot.com/
http://lpredoreview.blogspot.com/2017/02/
http://the-reconstructor.blogspot.com/

For instance, there are many "Beatles" albums of what would have happened if they hadn't broken up in 1970, made up of various Beatle solo album tracks fit together thematically and sonically.  There are similar albums imaging if Crosby Stills & Nash hadn't broken up, using tracks where they guested on each others' albums.  There are tons of Pink Floyd albums compiled from rare B-sides, live tracks, obscure singles, imagining a whole alternate universe of Floydology.  There was an entire industry imagining what Brian Wilson's "Smile" would have been, most of them better than what he eventually did release.  Similarly, The Beatles "Let It Be" without Phil Spector's added echoes and strings (which eventually was officially released, as "Let It Be... Naked"). Captain Beefheart's "It Comes To You in a Plain Brown Wrapper" before Bob Krasnow remixed and overdubbed all of it against the band's will.  There are tons of albums compiled out of bonus tracks from expanded CDs, fitting together whole albums that could have been, chronologically.  The best of these "alternate albums" go to great lengths to fit the tracks together, adjust the sound to match, and make covers for them.  It's a fascinating exercise in musical archaeology.

For instance, this week I made:

• Miles Davis - Black Album: a planned 6-CD retrospective on Columbia when Miles jumped ship to Warner Bros, was to include lots of unreleased tracks and some unreleased live stuff.  For reasons unknown, the release was canceled.  The compiler cut it down to 2 discs, just the stuff that showed up as previously-unreleased bonus tracks on later boxed sets
  
• Rod Stewart - ...Featuring: Rod sang with several bands before joining The Small Faces (which became Faces), some for just a song or two.  This CD collects a lot of rare appearances
  
• Climax Blues Band - Loving Machine: When the CBB catalog began appearing on CD in the late 1990s, each album was filled out with bonus tracks recorded at the same sessions but left off the albums for space reasons.  This CD compiles those, plus rare single B-sides and odd foreign releases that never appeared elsewhere
  
• Frank Zappa - Son of Hot Rats and Hats Rot: The Zappa Family Trust recently released a 6-CD boxed set of "The Making of Hot Rats" which includes lots of studio jams, alternate takes, partially-completed takes, studio chatter, etc.  Hard to listen to six discs of that.  But this compiler pulled out two CDs worth of unique material not found elsewhere, mixed in some live stuff and rare singles and edited it all together into two sequels to "Hot Rats"
  
• Fanny - No Deposit, No Return: Similarly, the great all-girl rock band Fanny had a multi-disc set a couple years back which included tracks done by the members both before and after their abbreviated run
  

Anyway, you get the idea.  There are HUNDREDS of these things out there, and reading up about WHERE the compilers found the tracks, and WHAT they had to do to them, and WHY the original albums never came out, is fascinating to a music geek like me.

A friend of mine sent me an article about Norwegian jazz, something we've been exploring together for years.  The writer did a shitty job, leaving off most of the best proponents of the genre (in addition to being unable to count).  We made lists of artists that SHOULD have been on the list, and my friend mentioned Magnus Öström, a bass player.  The name sounded unfamiliar, so I started looking online for albums, and found three.  I queued up the 3 to download when it suddenly hit me that one of the album covers looked familiar.

Checking my racks.  Yep, I already had two of the three albums!  Wouldn't have been the first time I accidentally bought something I already had.

So I did the one I didn't have, and while it was downloading I read up on Magnus.  Turns out he was the bass player in E.S.T., the Esbjörn Svensson Trio.  When Esbjörn unexpectedly died in a skin diving accident a few years ago, Magnus shifted gears and started his own group.

I had a "best of" E.S.T. but hadn't really explored them.  I searched through their catalog and put together a "next best of" compilation.  The combination of drums, bass and acoustic piano -- very hard-edged, driving piano -- reminded me of a couple mid-70s albums by Patrick Moraz and Bill Bruford.

I had dubbed these two LPs to CD many years ago, so I pulled it out and played it.  It was one of the earlier LP-to-CD conversions I'd done, and I'd been proud of how good it sounded.

But compared to the digital E.S.T. recordings, it wasn't nearly as good.  Plus there was surface noise on several tracks.

Checked online and found them posted. Downloaded the albums and reburned my CD-R using tracks ripped from the CD remasters, which had been released in the interim.

Oh my goodness.  In addition to no surface noise, the piano is a whole lot more dynamic and clear, and there's an additional half octave in the drums.  The old CD went in the trash happily!

I will never in my life understand the people who say vinyl sounds superior.

After a couple days of pursuing and burning copies of obscure electronic music from Cologne (don't ask), I decided today to take a severe left turn.  That's the wonderful thing about music, you can easily enter totally different worlds.

There used to be a popular dance band in Seattle called Jr. Cadillac.  Guitar, bass, drums, horn section and vocals, playing Chuck Berry, Little Richard and a lot of originals in the same easy-to-dance-to style.  I remembered them from my ill-spent yut.

Didn't find much online in terms of legal downloads or albums to buy -- guess they were too much a strictly local phenomenon -- but discovered they have a website with beaucoup music samples, which can be downloaded with a right click.  Also discovered a bunch of YouTube videos, which can be converted to audio files.  Between the two I got 46 tracks, 3-1/2 hours of stuff, more than enough for two CDs worth.  And damn it's still some good rockin' old time rock and roll.  The shocker?  The band is still together!  They have a tour schedule posted for 2020, as soon as the quarantine lifts.  Wow.  They just celebrated fifty years together.

This reminded me of Sha Na Na, the retro '50s do-wop band who played Woodstock.  I downloaded a free 20-track best of.  Not something I'll listen to often, but fun music to put a smile on your face. Don't know if they're still together, but they lasted a good long time too.  I think Bowser died a few years ago.

All of this was triggered by accidentally, this week, stumbling into a bunch of Seattle stuff from the late-'60s and early '70s.  Seattle's music scene has always been vibrant, but that period was dynamite.  I used to know a couple engineers, musicians, hangers on back then when I was, peripherally, in the music biz myself.  In researching this stuff I've gotten back in touch with some guys I haven't seen since, like 1976. It's trippy. Truly trippy. Everyone's feeling very "outreachy" about now.

In the pursuit of old LPs I used to have -- and in furtherance of another project I'm working on -- I ordered an LP of one of the earliest sound effects record I used to own, called "Ambience Two."  The first LP in the series, "Ambience One" (1970) has been re-released on CD in 1987, although nobody shows it. I ran across a copy earlier this year and snapped it up.  The second one apparently has not been re-issued -- no idea why they'd do the one and not the other.

"Two" has the sound of a fireplace fire on one side, and a peaceful valley full of cicadas on the other.

Here's a thought experiment: how do you distinguish LP ticks and pops from the sound of wood crackling in a fireplace?

The answer is duration. Ticks and pops last a half-dozen samples or less. The crackling sounds of the fire are a hundred samples.

It pretty quickly became easy to distinguish the two, and luckily the LP was in almost as good a shape as claimed. Got it cleaned up in one day.

NoCoPilot wrote:

In the pursuit of old LPs I used to have

This morning I had a weird thought, I wondered if I could recognize, locate, download and burn one of the first albums I ever had.  It was a Chipmunks album.

Yeah, Chipmunks album.

The very first David Seville/Chipmunks album was called "Let's All Sing With The Chipmunks" and it was released in 1959.  I was five years old.  The songs sound right: "Alvin's Harmonica," "The Chipmunk Song," "Old MacDonald Cha Cha Cha"....

All the tracks were available on YouTube.  Sound surprisingly good, actually.  Recorded in stereo.

"David Seville" was of course the pseudonym of producer/singer/songwriter/actor Ross Bagdasarian.  He released some novelty songs (& instrumentals) under his real name before coming up with the idea of doubling the speed of the vocals and making "Chipmunks."

Not too long ago I ran across "Frosty The Snowman" by Nat King Cole, from 1950, where he doubled the speed of the background singers.  Not sure if that was the first instance, but it was seven years before Seville had his first hit "Witch Doctor" (1957) with double-speed vocals.  So I also found a whole lot of Seville for free on YT.

Made a CD of Pre-Chipmunks Seville.  Some pretty rad stuff for '57.  But none of it was familiar.

The Chipmunks CD?  I'm five again.

Which Mrs NoCo always accuses me of acting like anyway. (Although TBPH I think I was weaned by five.)

A couple months ago I had the urge to hear "Ljuba Ljuba" by Shango, which was on one of the earliest LP-to-CD transfers I did.

But it was not in my CD rack where it belonged, between ShaNaNa and Ananda Shankar.  I searched all the way from Shadowfax to Dmitri Shostakovich.  No luck.

I figured it got misfiled sometime, and I'd run across it eventually.

Finally did today -- filed clear across the room with Joe Sample!  How the heck did THAT happen?  

I have too many CDs.

In the Norman Granz book I’m reading, the first “jam session” he organized was June 15, 1942. He got two of his friends — pianist Nat Cole and saxophonist Lester Young — to meet him at a music store which had recording facilities. They waited “several hours” for Nat’s guitarist Oscar Moore to show, but they gave up and called Norman’s friend Red Callender, a bass player, instead. The drummerless trio cut four sides, unrehearsed, first takes.

I went looking for them.  Found them, along with another trio consisting of Nat, Lester and drummer Buddy Rich.

Dynamite stuff.

I had some recordings of Nat’s jazz trio, before he started singing and went in a whole different direction, but these sides are stellar. Hard edged. Dynamic. Startlingly forward-looking for 1942.

Pink Floyd took their name from two obscure blues men mentioned in the liner notes to a Blind Boy Fuller album, Floyd Council (1911-1976) and Pink Anderson (1900-1974).  Floyd only recorded six songs in his lifetime where he sang, and another several where he played guitar behind Fuller.  All were easily found online.

Pink Anderson is a bit better represented, with about 4 dozen songs in pretty good fidelity.

So naturally I had to put together a "Pink+Floyd" album which I called "The Anderson Council."  I thought I was being so clever, but it turns out there's already a band called The Anderson Council.  They pretty much suck.

I was never much of a fan of Duke Ellington, but reading the Norman Granz book has caused me to purchase two cheap boxed sets, containing in total 14 LPs.

He certainly bridged the gap between jazz and classical.  He used a big band jazz orchestra, not a string orchestra, but his compositions were every bit as written out and heavily rehearsed as classical music.  It is "serious" music in a way most jazz is not.  Modern Jazz Quartet plied somewhat the same waters, although Milt Jackson was not above pilfering a classical melody to make his point.

Different conductors use big band orchestra different ways.  Harry James and Gene Krupa And Buddy Rich had bands that played loud and fast and in unison.

Ellington's is slower, with a lot of pauses.  This is not dance music.

Ellington's "signature sound" and the reason I was never very fond of him is his use of portamento in the horns.  That's where the players slide from one note to another in a continuous slide.

Outside of a trombone, this is devilishly hard to do.  Yet his entire front line did it luxuriously.  

Never was a fan, regardlessly of how hard it is.  It just strikes my ear as out-of-tune, like the melismatic singers who bounce all around the root notes of a melody as if they can't quite control their voices properly.

Norman Granz had trouble hanging on to talent during the Second World War, as his black jazz stars (like Lester Young, Otis Johnson, Jo Jones, & many lesser knowns) kept getting drafted to serve in the infantry.  Meanwhile the white bands (Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, et al.) were engaged to entertain the troops from the bandstand or on newsreels and V-Discs.  The war pretty much put an end to the Swing Era, as big bands all across the country were decimated by the draft.  The white ones played while the black ones fought.

I so enjoyed the "Wartime '78s" CD I made, that when I ran across a 3-CD boxed set today (for $4.99) called "Over There: Music of World War II" I had to snap it up.  It has a lot of songs on it I'd never heard before, and some I had.  Also a couple surprises.

The music of 1938-1945 reflected the times. Besides the jingoistic patriotic songs -- "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," "Over There," "American Patrol," "The G.I. Jive," "I've Been Drafted (And Now I'm Drafting You)" -- there was also the darker side, the songs we no longer celebrate, or even acknowledge: the propaganda songs.

• We're Gonna Have To Slap the Dirty Japs
  
• The Last Page of Mein Kampf
  
• You're A Sap Mister Jap
  
• Stalin Wasn't Stallin'
  
• Hot Time in the Town of Berlin
  
• Slap The Japs Right into the Laps of the Nazis
  

(Aside: There was also a substantial output of Disney cartoons aimed at fanning wartime enmity toward the "Krauts" and the "Japs."  These days I'm sure Disney would rather you not remember this history....)

Officially, the Reich banned all jazz as "degenerate music" ("entartete musik") in 1938.

(An odd caricature, as the demeaning black musician is wearing a Jewish star...)

However Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, recognized the popularity of the music, as well as the wealth of jazz musical talent in Germany. He allowed a few bands to continue if they "tailored" their lyrics to the propaganda needs of Hitler.  Thus it was that Lutz Templin, Fritz Brocksieper, Kurt Abraham, Willy Berking and others performed for recordings and broadcasts to British audiences as "Charlie and His Orchestra," taking popular swing numbers of the day and rewriting the lyrics to put a pro-German and anti-Semitic twist on them.  The music is well-played (though unoriginal) and the lyrics are, even today, fairly shocking.

I've spent the better part of today tracking down WWII propaganda songs -- from both sides of the war -- and making a CD.  I'm pretty sure I'll go to hell for this.