Shellac Shanty

Yep, you can see what I have been doing! Encoded a BUNCH more of these 78s I got in a nice haul a week or so ago. And, let me tell you, some of these were in darn near mint condition... one of them is even autographed! We'll get to those later on...

Let's start it off with another CLANKER OF THE WEEK. It is only Monday, but I think that this thing rates almost as high up as the infamous Patti Page Snowman song (shudder). But, hey, what do you expect with a title like Cornbelt Symphony. Oh, this one is CORNY alright, teeth-grittingly so. I would have to give Jack Smith & The Clark Sisters an 8.5 on the Clank-O-Meter for this one... and, have the insulin handy, too, because it is full of that cloyingly sweet high fructose corn syrup as well. Yeeargh.

The back side of this disc isn't much better, to tell you the truth. Cute, but it is a piece of Wonder Bread mexicana called Cuanto Le Gusta. Can't even get it spelled right... what were they THINKING? This side does for American-Mexican relations what Jimmy Doolittle did to Tokyo in 1942. That's right.... bomb. Why, Capitol, why?

Remember the Evelyn Knight disc a few posts ago? Well, I found some more of HER high fructose syrup-y sweetness... four sides, actually (again on the GOOD Decca shellac)... two (A Little Bird Told Me, and Brush Those Tears From Your Eyes) with a vocal group of sweater-wearing all-American boys called The Stardusters, and two (Buttons and Bows and I Know Where I'm Going) by herself, with an orchestra backing. Mannie Somebody... both tunes were from the movie "The Paleface". Another non-memorable cinematic excursion into Saturday afternoon, I'm guessing. I don't have the discography site handy, but I wonder when the Buttons and Bows side was recorded, before or after Doris Day's version. I actually kind of like Evelyn's better... sort of like Day and Knight.... OK OK, bad pun. We'll move on.

Let's stick in a little more Western pop here... this is actually one of my favorite pop western tunes, and one of my favorite recordings of same. Eddy Arnold (the Tennessee Plowboy, or so it says on the label), singing Anytime. This is a great record. Sung well, played well, recorded well, what more can I say? Hats off to RCA Victor, they did this one good. And you'll have it stuck in your head for a while, which is not a abd thing. Even the B-side, What A Fool I Was, is a good follow-on tune, a little more Western, but still a darn good number. Eddy knew how to pick 'em, I reckon.

Continuing on down Wonder Bread Lane, we have a couple of Al Goodman sides. Al occasionally swung the band fairly well, but was better known for his sweet work. These two, When I Grow Too Old To Dream and Deep In My Heart Dear, are just that, very good sweet-swing tunes. Columbia cranked out a bunch of stuff like this, just right for dancin' and romancin'.

One more sweet thing, by the master of the croon, Der Bingle. This is an older Bing, with Matty Melnick's orchestra backing him up, performing an old standard, Deep Purple. Der Bingle at his shellac-y pre-war Decca blue-poo noisy best. I was going to do up the back side of this, Stardust, but there was a groove dig in there waaaaay too bad to get a good encode. Sorry, kids, but what I have coming up will definately make up for it.

Let's shift the gears and go to a pair by Dennis Day, with Freddy Martin's ORchestra backing him. This was on a vinyl 78, one used for promotional use. These vinyl 78s got sent out to radio stations and some big retail clients. They usually didn't last too long, as the stylus tracking forces of the day (numbered in many-grams) would do a very good job of destroying the record after a few plays. Fortunately, some survived, and when found in decent shape, can result in a really nice recording. This was one of those. Dennis does a stirring rendition of J.P. Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever, and then backs it with a little novelty number called Come Into the Parlor. Cutely done, and very Irish... well at least at first, anyways.

Now, let's swing this thing a little bit.

Frankie Carle. Not known for whipping a band into a frenzy like Goodman or Prima or either of the Dorsey Brothers, but just the same, this is the SWINGINGEST version of The Glow-Worm that I have EVER heard. Columbia did a brilliant job recording this as well, because it is not too often a case where you can hear the band 'breathe' with the room acoustics. This 78 is one of them. Nice, nice, nice. And the B-side, Penguin at the Waldorf is right up there with it, both for swinging and recording quality. WOW. I love it when you get 78s that are in good enough shape and recorded well enough to show off just how GOOD a shellac disc can be.

While not in the audio quality realm of Columbia, this ARA pressing of Illinois Jacquet's band, The Jacque Rabbits, makes up for it in heavy-hitting swing. And these two sides knock back to back home runs, let me tell ya! Start off with Illinois Stomp, and you can hear just how hard the band is going at it. The B-side, Ladies' Lullaby... well, if this is a lullaby, I'd hate to hear the alarm clock! Grab on, strap in, and hold tight, this one is a killer-diller!

Just to slow it down a piece, we'll give up a Mindy Carson pair, backed by the Glenn Osser Orchestra. Mindy did these on Musicraft, a lesser-known label, but they still had some fine stuff to sell. Not all heavy hitters, but enough to keep the coffers gonig for a few years... These two are as lightly and sweetly sung as any, but Mindy has a little fun with them, fun enough to add her to my 'Keep Your Eyes Open For More' list. Pianissimo and What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For are two very very nice pieces to catch your breath with. Cutting in, please....

Our last pair for the night... Ray McKinley. He recorded these two for Majestic, the first, with Teddy Norman on the vocals, is a nice little sweet number entitled One Love. More of what Ray was known for, yes yes yes... a nice little tune, swung and swooned, and all that. But what makes this record special is the A-side (and it looks like the B-side was recorded BEFORE the A-side was, according to the matrix numbers), Down the Road A Piece. Whoa. Dissonance. Almost a be-bop boogie piece. Ray McKinley doing vocals. And then it goes into this hard, hammering, swinging, coming at you like a steam engine ready to rock off the rails, hold on Gertie! This is the REAL DEAL, kids! And (!!) it was recorded well enough for you to really get a feel of how hard this thing ROCKS.

AND (!!!!) IT WAS AUTOGRAPHED BY RAY HIMSELF!!! LOOKIE!!!



If you want to see a larger pic of this, click here.

Sweet, huh. I thought so.

Well, this is MORE than an album-full, and should keep y'all going for a day or two. Granted, with the ELAC, I can churn these out in greater numbers than before, and I'm starting to like it better. But, I still need to get the Fons running so I can do up some sixteen-inch transcription discs I landed a couple of days ago... those will have to wait for a good while until I figure out how to get a transcription table re-rigged.

So, have a good'un, enjoy the 78s, because, more are coming!!!

Well, you've heard the posts, here's how they get from point A to point B... kinda.

Someone said that it is cathartic to share messy spaces and be amazed at how anything gets done, but here's the litany.....


Here's the stack of stuff to do for the MoodieToonz blog, plus a few 78s in the mess somewhere...


And here's MORE LPs and a few albums of 78s to do up...


The main guts, a TEAC 4300 reel deck, Kenwood KX-5530 cassette deck, and the Marantz 2252 with the Pioneer PL-71 atop it. ALL this stuff was bought from thrift stores or estate sales.


Another look at the ELAC and the Vac-O-Rec... both are thrift store gems, the ELAC for 5 bucks, the Vac-O-Rec for three.


Here's the 10-dollar Pioneer table I use for any LPs and 45s. It's doing a Ronnie Aldrich LP for the MoodieToonz blog now...


A side-view of the 'operating position' with another rack of recent finds that need to get encoded. I also do amateur radio so there are scanners and stuff in there, and even a couple of satellite receivers. And the many cans of soda...


The headon view of the computing position. Where all the editing and remastering takes place.


The three boxes in the garage, the one on the left is the audio remastering machine, the cnetre one is for audio out-streaming (currently streaming the Tiki Radio stream found in the side-bar), the one hidden on the right is used for aircraft spotting and monitoring (ACARSd server).


The TV I watch when I get bored or during a long boring encode.


About five percent of the total amount of cassettes I have.

As you can see, I have a lot of CRAP in here, but it's all GOOD crap :)

And, for all you kitten lovers, here's the newest addition to the house...

As promised, here it be! At least the first disc of the live stuff... RCA Released this some time in the late 50s or early 60s, in a 2-LP box set, with a nice little booklet of liner notes. The notes takes the reader through Artie's rise and hey-dey, all the way to when he got tired of the limitations of swing (to him) and just didn't show up one night. That spelled the end of the outfit, effectively, but Artie did do some projects after that fateful night in the Cafe' Rouge...

These cuts show that Artie's outfit COULD swing, and swing hard. There's a couple of early Buddy Rich efforts in here (you can hear him pushing the band, both on the traps and with his verbal coaching) that show just how brilliant he was going to be in the future. Tony Pastor gets his chops in as well, both on vocals and on a solo on tenor.

Here it is, then... Artie in the Blue Room

AND!!! Since I got on the stick and it is still Thursday, I went ahead and did up the other LP for your pleasure. This one has recordings from a little later on in Artie's career, right before he decided to vamanos a Mexico and leave the band to Tony Pastor. This band swung harder than the Blue Room band did, and I'm of the opinion that it was due mainly to one individual, kicking the band hard from the traps... one Mr. Buddy Rich. It's a case of one person making all the difference in an organization, bring that certain 'spark' that lights the inspiration of the rest of the outfit. Buddy had a way of doing that, all the way to his going to the next life.

As an aside, I was in Chuy's in Tempe, Arizona years ago, and could have SWORN I saw Buddy's ghost. He played there a lot in the early 80s, and I had the pleasure of seeing him live there several times. I also got to see him in the Portland, Oregon area in the late 70s as well.

One of my favorite episodes of Johnny Carson was when Artie and Buddy came on... they spent the entire 90 minutes reminiscing about "the days", and it was some of the most compelling television ever. I wish I had a copy of that program...

Anyways, enough drivel, enjoy Artie in the Cafe' Rouge.

Stil no luck on getting Vol. 2 of the Benny Goodman airchecks, I went to the thrift store where I got volumes 1 & 3 (and this Artie Shaw set), and..... nada. Maybe some day the Gods of Shellac Archiving will bless me with volume 2.

Sigh...

I am having SO much fun with this ELAC, I have the tonearm balanced and everything... it's not an SME but it'll do until I can get the Fons replaced (that one had individual speed control on all three speeds, plus the plynth was set up for the SME arm).

So, while we wait around for the Artie Shaw set, here are a few more 78s I had on the 'Pile of Doom' for you to listen to...

We'll start with a little bit of political history/propogandizing from right before World War One. The US had not been drawn into the War to End All Wars when these were recorded, but the writing was definately on the wall, and songs were cranked out to get the populace ready for the coming fight.

The Peerless Quartette recorded this song, You'll Be There, to get the boys all ready for going into the trenches against the Huns. The basic theme is this: when our allies in Europe are getting the bejabbers gassed out of them, you'll proudly be in the trenches, fighting for the Good Old U.S.A. Hmmm, kind of like what Fox News and CNN are spouting now, with the current state of affairs in Lebannon... hopefully cooler heads will prevail and the Israelis can find another source of fresh water for their country without dropping white phosphorous bombs into houses in the neighboring countryside. No, ladies, and gents, I'm not a Hezbollah apologist, but neither do I buy the current rhetoric coming out of Tel Aviv. And, if it gets Syria, Iran, and eventually the U.S. involved, things are going to stink mighty mighty bad.

Which leads me to my next selection, the reverse side of the record. Aaron Campbell and Henry Burr recorded this little ditty, Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You, probably to get those who emigrated to the U.S. to either back up their newly adopted country or get the heck out. At the time, there was a MASSIVE German immigrant population in the U.S., and they were none to keen on going and fighting the forces of their homeland. As I recall, the Irish immigrants weren't very keen on the idea either, helping the British and all. So, one piece of flag-waving jingoism was placed before the peoples, and the Columbia Gramophone Co. did their part. They must have, because there were a massive amount of these sides pressed (as indicated in the last number of the matrix number, which you'll find in the ID3v2 tag).

I guess I need to say that I am VERY Patriotic, but I can't stand having a populace be manipulated by media to go off and fight and die for causes that mean little or nothing to a majority of the people in this here Constitutional Republic. I love my country, it is just that I am mad as hell about the governing thereof by a certain cabal of greedy corporate facists, while the rights, liberties, and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution are being trampled into the dirt by the very government that was sworn, individually and corporately, to uphold it.

America is not a democracy. It never was, and was never meant to be. Democracy is 10 wolves and 1 sheep deciding on the dinner menu. Do you want that? I sure as hell don't.

Soapbox mode off... but every so often, I'll post some reminders that manipulation of the populace by the media is NOT a new idea... it has been going on a lo-o-o-ong time.

Just wait until we get into a study of the race and minstrel records of the early 1900s. Makes me ashamed to be a Caucasian.

Soapbox mode REALLY off now.

Let's talk about love. A majority of these 78s deal with that, in several different musical genres... we'll start out with the almost-banal, yet somewhat swinging performance of Evelyn Knight (with the Jeff Alexander Chorus). Love's A Precious Thing... man comes, man puts stars in woman's eyes, man takes off and says "Keep on loving!"... o-o-o-o-ka-a-a-ay... even in Wonder Bread Land, teh girl has stars in her eyes I guess... but it's a nice tune, and after the third or fourth playing kind of grows on you. Recorded on Decca when their shellac was good, probably early 1950s.

On the back side of this is another, more introspective love song, If I Ever Love Again. This song, I think, takes place about 2 months after the guy in the previous song took off. I speak allegorically, of course. But it's a nice little love ballad, so what the hey. You may hear some thumps in this song, because the disc has a crack running through it, but, once again, CoolEdit did its' voodoo (that it do so well), and the track came out pretty darn good.

Going from Darn Good to Gol-durn Good, we go now to Gallatin, Tennessee, to the studios and pressing plant of Dot Records. This pair is by Big Jeff and his Radio Playboys, and is some hootin' good country swing. For those into labels (on the records) this release is on the original yellow and black Dot label, that is clearly marked "Gallatin, Tennessee" on the bottom. These releases usually had some very good western and 'hill-billy' music on them, and are somewhat sought after. This is definately pre-Pat Boone Dot Records. Step It Up And Go is a good swing-your-partner tune, with some nice pi-annah and fiddlin' in it, whereas the flip side, After We Are Through, is a howl-at-the-moon, done-broke-my-heart lament. Still good examples of early 50s country-billy, both of them.

Next up, we'll endure some of the poopy pre-war Decca shellac for a pair of love songs by none other than Ella Fitzgerald. These are crooned, more than swung, but she still had the sultry pipes! On This Love of Mine and Jim, she's right in with it as the combo grooves slow while she heats it up. A side note, This Love of Mine was co-written by one Frank Sinatra. Cool, huh.

Finally, we have one of my absolute favorite sides in shellac-land, Life Gits Tee-jus Don't It by Carson Robison. Released on MGM, this is just a great great song about the perils of procrastination and lack of motivation. This was posted on Lee's MY(P)WHAE blog a while back, and I gleefully downloaded it. Lo and behold, in this last batch of 78s I scored, here it was, and in PRISTINE shape to boot! Happiness abounds!

Wait, what's this on the flip side? Could it be? After so long? and on the back side of such a great tune as this? We have, ladies and gentlemen, our CLANKER OF THE WEEK! Wind In The Mountains. Hoo boy. Carson, you should have stuck to just one. Not only is the performance beyond lackluster, it sounds like someone put wet socks in the microphones of not only Carson, but the string band that backs him up. You can tell the sadness in the tune by how sad the musicians are that they had to record this. It must have been an effort... I give it a 7 on the Clank-O-Meter, partly for the performance, and partly for being paired with a great tune.

OK, we're done for tonight, I'll get started on the Artie Shaw here tomorrow so you can enjoy it during the weekend.

Don't forget to leave comments!

In answer to the request for more of the MGM Benny Goodman airchecks, here is Volume 3. Wait, where is volume 2? Certainly not in the LP jacket that said Volume 2... I was encoding these up the other night and tried to follow the tune list on the jacket, and things weren't synching up... so I looks on the label and it says "Volume 3". Sigh. And, no I haven't been back to the thrift store to see if they have a Volume 3 jacket with Volume 2 in it. And I really really need to because there is some stuff on Volume 2 that is supposedly rare.

On the jacket liner notes for Volume 2, there is the story as to how these recordings came to be. Apparently, Benny, when he was going to try something new, such as a new chart, or a new voicing on a current arrangement, would have records cut of the performance of the tune, so he could review them over his late breakfast the next day. Somehow, these survived, and MGM got their paws on them. They released 3 LPs (that I know of) of selected discs, and, voila! They could have done without the crossfading bit though...

These discs, for the most part, came from the "Camel Cavalcade" program, and, as one commentor stated, showed a very different side to Benny's playing than what was done in the studio. THere is a TON more energy on thiese sides, and you can hear Benny & the boys laughing and cutting up in some of these tracks. They sound like they were having an absolute blast, which is (as a musician, myself agrees) the best space to be in when performing.

I wonder if any effort was made to get ALL of these discs together and some kind of box set made up... there'd definately be some demand for it, especially if these haven't seen the light of day for some time...

Anyway, while you're pondering the ramifications of this, enjoy the 3rd LP in the set, while I scamper off to the thrift store to see if they still have volume 2.

BG Performance Records, Volume 3

Coming up, Artie Shaw 2 LP live set.

Well, the next thing underneath the George Archer set on the pile-to-get-encoded was this interesting Capitol set of Stan Kenton sides. The album is called "Encores" and contains some pretty interesting stuff, including an appearance by none other than bongo-king Jack Costanzo!

I had an issue with the first disc, as there was a huge crack & piece of it sitting in the bottom of the sleeve. Not pretty. But thanks to CoolEdit, I managed to make a listenable effort from the 2 affected sides.

Here's the cuts and soloists on them:
- Capitol Punishment - a Pete Rugolo chart, with Boots Mussulli on alto and Kai Windig on trombone.

- Somnambulism - a Ken Hanna chart, with George Weidler on alto and Milt Bernhardt on trombone.

- He's Funny That Way - Pete Rugolo's arrangement with the Misty June Christy on sultry vocals.

- Abstraction - another Rugolo chart, this time Stan takes on solo duties, with Eddie Safranski on bass and George Wiedler on the alto.

- Peg O' My Heart - Pete's arrangement of the standard, with Stan on piano, Eddie Safranski on bass, Vido Musso on tenor and Kai Windig on trombone.

- Chorale for Brass, Piano and Bongo - Rugolo wrote and arranged this, Stan on piano, Milt Bernhardt on lead trombone, Buddy Childers on lead trumpet, and bongo king Jack Costanzo on bongos.

Nice stuff this, bridging the gap between jazz and something you might hear on a 1960s Italian film soundtrack. A couple of these cuts were cutting-edge, even for the Kenton band in the 1950s!

For the most part, this set was in very nice shape, even the disc that had the big chunk out of it (which happened between the thrift store and my house, which frustrates me to NO end...) was in very good looking shape.

More coming, including another batch of BG airchecks on MGM LP (by request)!

Well, not quite new, in fact, it's pretty damn old. But it will play 78s decently enough to do encodes without having to initially record them into the computer at 45rpm and use CoolEdit to adjust the speed... it is an old ELAC Miracord 50H that I bought years ago at a thrift store (naturally), stuck on a shelf in the shed, and forgot about. Until about a month ago, when I saw it in there and hauled it into the garage-studio... and forgot about. Well, now that I'm done with work for a while, I finally loaded up a cartridge to it, hooked up a phono preamp and hooked it into the Marantz as an auxillary device, cleaned it up a little, and BA-ZAMMO. New turntable. Yay-ness!

I'll start out with a couple of test-runs I did up on the ELAC, nothing very substantial, but still an indicator of how to get things rolling again....

Blue Barron was a band leader in the late 40s and early 50s. He leaned somewhat towards the post-swing 'sweet swing', which morphed into the wonderful world of early 50s popular music. This here side is an example of that sweet pop-ness, a little thing called Bubbles. This is from a MGM 78, with vocals by the Blue Notes. Not too bad, but, not exactly earth-shattering, is it.

Moving back in time, we have another example of cuteness by a group that was more known for a Western sound, but not really quite there. The Milt Herth Trio was not really known for foot-stomping country swing, although they did do a few numbers that were up there in the Yee-Hah Factor. This record is not one of them. Huckleberry Duck is a cutesy little dealie with organ (probably Hammond), piano and drums. The redeeming feature of this side is what might be taken for boogie-woogie house-rocking piano in the second half of the record. Interesting, no?

The B-side to this disc is a vocal effort by Milt, Worried Mind. Written by Jimmy Davis and Ted Daffan (of Ted Daffan's Texans), this just kind of sits there. The one thing I noticed is that Milt, for some unknown reason, sounds like the droning vocalist heard on some of the WW2 German propoganda-swing records done by the ubiquitos "Charlie & His Orchestra". Spooky, in a strange kind of way.

I was feeling brave and wanting to try an acoustic recording, and, lo and behold, I found another 9-inch Emerson disc from 1917, laying on the bench amongst the piles of LPs (which got moved into another pile so I would have room for the Miracord on the recording bench. Full-O-Snap, done by the Emerson Miliraty Band, actually came out pretty good for an acoustic record... I think I may have to redo the other Emersons with the new technique (recording in stereo and zero-ing out the gain on the left channel), because this thing came out GOOD.

OK, now to the meaty stuff.



I have a set of Bell (Hawaiian) 78s by George "Tautu" Archer & His Pagans, recorded in 1945. Now THIS is Original Tiki! I only have 3 of the 4 discs in the set, but I'll share all 6 sides with you. These are actually more Tahitian than Hawaiian, but they're still a gas.

Ama Ama
Hei Porohiti
Marcelle Vahini
Maruru A Vau
Reva Taua
Toerau

I really should say more about George 'Tautu' Archer, except for... there's no liner notes on this album! All it says is that these were recorded in 1945 in studios in Honolulu, and that the album consists of Tahitian songs and chants. They sould almost Hawaiian, except for the language is different, and instead of occasional English inserts, some of the vocals are in French (Tahiti was part of French Polynesia).

OK, that's it for this round, I'll play with the new ELAC for a while and get you some more shellac stuff.

Quandry solved!

Actually not by my own choosing... there were a couple of cuts on the Masterworks LP set that had groove digs on them that I couldn't overcome. Not happiness. But, since the set is still available on CD, no great loss.

So, on to Step Three: The Benny Goodman Performance Recordings LPs I found in the same trove. Here is the first volume! These are airchecks from 1937-1938 era, when Harry James and Ziggy Elman were countering the very talented sax section containing names like Adrian Rollini and Vido Musso. The band was appearing on the Camel Cavalcade radio show, and playing a long-term gig at the Madhattan Room in New York City. This was a kicking band, a tight trio, and a very fluid quartet.

And none of these recordings were released as heard here on Columbia 78s. None.

This was MGM's attempt to ride the coat tails of Columbia's celebration of Benny Goodman's 25th Anniversary, with a release of their own. They must have combed the vaults of radio program masters that they owned rights to to get these tracks, and they did one heck of a good job on this set, at least in my opinion. How they got the rights to do this? Maybe someone on the 78 list can fill in those blanks, but for now, I'll enjoy these nice snippets of Benny & the Boys doing what they did best... filling up the dance floor and getting the toes of thousands of Americans tapping on their living room floors.

I don't know much more than what is on the copious liner notes (which are due to be scanned and posted hopefully soon), so, until then, enjoy Volume 1. I'll have Volume 2 in a few days, and also some more real 78s for you to enjoy.

I have been away from the Shanty for too long now.... and I have a BUNCH of stuff to encode up for you.

But first, some non-shellac shellac.

I was in a new (for me) thrift store and found a BUNCH of Benny Goodman on LP. These are shellac-era performances, and the one I am going to share with you is an edit of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. This is NOT the 2-record set (which I have another copy of now, and I'll relate the story, because it ties in with why I'm giving this out)... that will come later. I also found some of the MGM-label "performance sessions", specifically volumes 1 & 2 (which I'll ALSO be posting in the near future here). These are, I think, from radio air-checks, which would put them well within the scope of this blog.

This here archive is volume 1 of the 1938 concert as released by Columbia as catalogue number CL-814. Now, I don't know if this is a re-re-re-issue, but there are some differences in this LP and the 2-disc Masterworks set(s) I have, notably that the only tunes on this are "Don't Be That Way", "One O'Clock Jump", the "Twenty Years of Jazz" retrospective (with a different title for the first part of that one, "Sensation Rag" as opposed to "Dixieland One-step" on the Masterworks 2-LP set), and the "Honeysuckle Rose" jam session.

I noticed that the pressings are not as 'clean' on this as the Masterworks set (which I am listening to as I type this). I have the ORIGINAL Masterworks 2 part set (the green-label Masterworks), but for some reason, the second disc on that set was mislabeled and I only have sides 1, 2, and 3. Plus, they are in pretty ratty condition, so I couldn't get a good indication of how crisp the remastering job is/was. The Masterworks set, however, still has a BUNCH of the flaws from the 78rpm masters, specifically the groove grunge in the middle of "one O'Clock Jump". I removed it from the CL-814 files, as well as 'sweetening' it somewhat. On the Masterwork set, it sounds like they went to a DIFFERENT DISC after the noise nastiness. But the MW set does sound crisper and has some more dynamics than the CL-814 release. Still has a lot of the flaws though, from the original set of takes.

I wonder, if someone were to really really go through the Library of Congress discs and the Columbia discs, and do a GOOD re-mastering job, including the cuts that were deemed "too poor for LP re-issue", would this concert be a viable release? I bet it would, especially with the technology that is currently available. Anyone familiar with the concert's liner notes can see just how big an event this was... maybe even get the COMPLETE "Honeysuckle Rose" jam session (it was heavily edited on both the releases)...

So, for the first part of our journey, here is the CL-814 Columbia release, from a Six-eye mono LP that was in fair condition when I got it. It is in .rar format, in mono 160/44 FHg MP3. I hope that the sweetening I did doesn't cause cries of "Heresy!" amongst the purists....

Download the CL-814 LP archive.

I'll have the 2-disc set coming in a few days, as well as some more 78s I found in the recent weeks.

- - - ADDENDUM - - -

After doing some looking on the net, it looks like Sony Legacy released the ENTIRE concert on a 2 CD set in 1999. It is still in print, so........

It has the ENTIRE "Honeysuckle Rose", and the songs that were removed from the original LP release. BUT, there's a LOT of surface noise on the tracks, according to one of the reviews.

So...........

I think I'll remaster it for myself since the full version is still apparently in print. Sorry, kids.