Artie Shaw - Self Portrait

[Eyeball]

[Eyeball]

[Jonas]

[...]

I guess I don't understand either why you wouldn't DJ more of them. Do folks in Uppsala tend to dance to groovier or slower music? At least in Seattle, when I feel I need to bring some "lindy-hop" music and up the energy, if I turn to G5 or the 1938 CD I'm set.

[...]

We don't really have a groove community here, a lot of us deejays spin vintage stuff, but of course there is a mix.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that our main venue has a pretty shitty sound system, and the acoustics of the room are not the best, so the material we play has to have a fullness to it not to be completely drowned out by the patrons. That means we play a lot of Jonathan Stout, Kansas City soundtrack, Mora's Moder, etc, to get the music through to the dancers, as well as solid, heavy vintage, like Ellington Blanton-Webster material and the likes.

As soon as I go to Stockholm to dj, especially at Chicago (run by Lennart and Zacke of the Harlem Hot Shots), I have better acoustics and a better sound system to work with (although far from ideal), so there I can pop out a wider variety of the material I like, mainly 1930-1945 stuff.

I just might get the G5 cd and the Swing Factory cd...

/Jonas

[Eyeball]

[Eyeball]

http://www.tazrecords.com/njr/njr000555.jpg

[Jonas]

Ah, John, now I need to get me a player for 78's/45's/33 1/3's as well, don't tease me please

I really am on the cd route only right now (for convenience), but if there are readily avilable LP's with much better transfers than the readily available cd's on the market today, I may be conned into looking into that too...

/Jonas

[Eyeball]

[Eyeball]

The above LP covers (for the most part) were basically what was out on LP when I began buying Shaw in junior high in the mid 60s (!!!).

It was all good stuff and it was all new to me.

I didn't have a clue as to what I was buying. It worked out well.

Even the cheapie RCA Camden LPs had good liner notes and the sound quality on these ranged from pretty good to very good.

I think that REISSUED BY REQUEST was the first Shaw LP I bought, shortly followed by all the others. That LP actually *had* been reissued by request (apparently) for it had been available just a few years earlier as 'A MAN AND HIS DREAM' with a different and more opulent screamingly 1950s 'bachelor' cover.

There were a couple of other earlier Camden LPs ONE FOOT IN THE GROOVE and SWINGS SHOW TUNES, but I am pretty sure they had been cut-out by he time I began buying b/c I never saw them until years later.

Shaw was pretty well represented on LP at a time when a lot of major bands had been neglected.

The reissues were haphazard to an extent, but they were all programmed very well and the material was all choice to begin with, leaning heavily on the 38-39 and 45 bands, with some 40-42 stuff tossed in if it was not tooo pop-ish.

It was great discovering all that stuff for the first time. You were at the mercy of the record companies and the producers of the LPs, but they done good.

[Mr Awesomer]

What compilations do you have those 1938-1939 recordings off? Many are available from "Self Portrait" and "King of the Clarinet", while some, like "Indian Love Call", "Oh, Lady Be Good", and "The Man I Love" have to be tracked down in other places.

Those as well as the Chronological Classics covering the years 38 and 39.

[djstarr]

For deejaying, now that you have some duplicates, would you use the G5 material from "Complete Gramercy 5 Sessions" or from "Self Portrait"? Would you use the broadcast material from the Swing Factory cd or from the Self Portrait set?

/Jonas

Since I'm still dj'ing off of CDs [I'm promising myself a laptop for my bday this summer!], I will probably only burn the new songs from the Self Portrait; I think the tracks on the Complete Gramercy 5 Sessions sound fine. My ear also doesn't distinguish that well on sound fidelity, so I may not be the best person to ask.

[djstarr]

A few more notes from the Self-Portrait liner notes; I can easily tell Artie Shaw vs. other clarinetists since [especially near the end of the song] I'm asking myself where the treble knob is! So I can turn it down - Artie is SO loud.

Come to find out, he played a Selmer clarinet when playing in front of a big band "A Selmer has more bite, more shout, and you can hear it better over a big band". He switched to a Buffet [top of the line, standard orchestral wood clarinet] when he recorded the later Gramercy 5 small group tracks during the 50's. Very different sound on those tracks.

The other part of the liner notes I appreciated was his experience playing for the troops in WWII, "...I had never realized what an immense impact our music had on American kids. It was astonishing, seeing the looks on the faces of those kids as they listened, and realizing that what you'd done had real significance to these men."

And the closing remarks "At some point -- probably while I was in the Navy, as a result of seeing the way those men reacted to our music -- it began to dawn on me that whether I realized it or not I'd created a good-sized chunk of durable Americana. Something lasting. If that's the case, I can't think of a better footprint, and a better legacy, than that."

[djstarr]

Buddy Rich - not a lot of subtlety there.

Listen to him on the Shaw and Dorsey pop tunes and ballads when he is compelled to tone it down, but still keep it interesting. He's brilliant.

Thanks for your notes John - I do try to keep an open mind so I will check it out; I'm more familiar with Buddy Rich from his band leader days.

[djstarr]

I'd take Man from Mars, Carioca and the soundie version of Lady be good over of the stuff Wettling played on. Rich - especially before 1945 - is rippin'.

ok, so I might be screwed up here a little bit, maybe John or Jonathan can help me out. In the music notes on Self-Portrait on disc 1, they have the same band playing on tracks 12 - 23 which list George Wettling on drums. 4 songs have prominent drum solos:
It had to be You, Dec 19 1938.
Traffic Jam, LA June 12, 1939.
Carioca, Summer Terrace/Ritz Carlton Boston Aug 19, 1939.
Everything is Jumpin', Cafe Rouge/Penn. Hotel Oct 20, 1939.

The drumming sounds different on Everything is Jumpin', and it's the same recording as on my "The Very Best of Artie Shaw", which lists Buddy Rich as the drummer.

Based on Jonathan's statement I'm wondering how many of these tracks did feature Wettling - can someone confirm for me? Traffic Jam and Carioca are splendid, so if it is indeed Buddy Rich I will send him an apology

[djstarr]

Let me know which tunes you end up selecting to spin from this set. I find that with Self-Portrait, the Gramercy Five recordings, and Lady Be Good from another album which I can't think of right now, I've got all the Artie Shaw that I like to spin.

Alain, here is what I'm going to burn off of the Self-Portrait. My picks dropped dramatically on discs 4 and 5, those are from 1946 - 1954. The tracks with Mel Torme are historically interesting, but not that danceable; and the later G5 stuff is pretty but long and again, not that danceable IMHO. Also, Artie's favorite band was for 3 mos. in 1949, great sound, but fancy arrangements, which again make it hard to dance to.

In chronological order with my * rating, *** I will play a lot more than *.

** Cream Puff 1936
** The Blues-A
** The Blues-B
** Shoot The Likker To Me, John Boy
* Free Wheeling
* Yesterdays
** It Had To Be You 1938/1939
** Star Dust
*** Shine On, Harvest Moon Same arrg as on 1938 Radio Transcriptions, but shorter - bootlegged off radio by a fan who gave it to Artie
* Back Bay Shuffle
** Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise
** Rosalie
*** Traffic Jam
** Prosschai
*** Carioca
** Rose Room
** Everything Is Jumpin'
** At Sundown
** Sweet Sue (Just You)
*** Man From Mars
*** Diga Diga Doo
* Frenesi
* Temptation
* Blues (From The Lenox Avenue Suite) - Part 1
*** Blues - Part 2
* Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen
* Blues In The Night on Paging Mr Page, better sound here though
* There'll Be Some Changes Made bad sound - live from Atlantic City boardwalk
** Take Your Shoes Off, Baby
*** Just Kiddin' Around
** To A Broadway Rose
* Two In One Blues
** Lady Day nice. Here the band gets Roy Eldridge (1945)
** 'S Wonderful
** Bedford Drive
** Tabu
** Lucky Number
*** The Man I Love
*** The Hornet
** The Glider
* Love For Sale
* Anniversary Song
* Smooth 'N' Easy (1949) - Artie's favorite band
* 'S Wonderful

[Eyeball]

I'd take Man from Mars, Carioca and the soundie version of Lady be good over of the stuff Wettling played on. Rich - especially before 1945 - is rippin'.

ok, so I might be screwed up here a little bit, maybe John or Jonathan can help me out. In the music notes on Self-Portrait on disc 1, they have the same band playing on tracks 12 - 23 which list George Wettling on drums. 4 songs have prominent drum solos:
It had to be You, Dec 19 1938.
Traffic Jam, LA June 12, 1939.
Carioca, Summer Terrace/Ritz Carlton Boston Aug 19, 1939.
Everything is Jumpin', Cafe Rouge/Penn. Hotel Oct 20, 1939.

The drumming sounds different on Everything is Jumpin', and it's the same recording as on my "The Very Best of Artie Shaw", which lists Buddy Rich as the drummer.

Based on Jonathan's statement I'm wondering how many of these tracks did feature Wettling - can someone confirm for me? Traffic Jam and Carioca are splendid, so if it is indeed Buddy Rich I will send him an apology

If I remember my Swing History 101 properly, Buddy Rich joined Shaw on either December 24, 25, or 31, 1938. One of those days. December positively.