Jazz that Sucks

Hi,

(I see the date ... !!! Hopefully you will see this!)

You really want to look at that special on TOM DOWD, for a lot more of this and information that really explains a lot of the early music recordings, right after WW2. 

The recording facilities, were not exactly minimal, but were owned and operated, for the most part, by the movie studios who used it to make sure their "stars" sang and helped make them more famous, by bringing the money home to the studios. (Likewise the studios also created the copyrights so they could not be ripped off ... something they did, anyway!). We probably could easily put together of the stuff recorded in those first 5 or so years after the war ... and then we have, maybe, what might be a better history ... although I can not speak for how things were in Europe, although there was a lot of music in France, Italy and Spain, though I am not sure I have ever seen a jazz list or some group that made a lot of the stuff come alive.

Sean Trane wrote: ... And even in the case of that someone did access to a recording studio, the labels that released and distributed the albums under their name had a right of life and death over the future album's life. ...

I think it was thought (since it was owned by the studios) that a different audience other than their stars would not, and could not sell much. or enough, to make the investment worth while ... but Tom Dowd specifies that some of the black folks only had one chance to record, and in many cases they were ready for it, since the platter could not be stopped, and they had to play it in its entirety! In many ways, it was tougher for them, but I wonder how much this helped many of these black folks eventually get so much better that it was hard not to notice them!

It was very likely that the studios thought that most blacks were too poor to buy an album, or even to see a movie ... and thus, putting together an album for a black person was a problem ... though it looks like Tom Dowd got around it quite a bit!

One of the very tough things about jazz is the history of it right after WW2 all the way to 1960, and how it developed, but at least we know that by 1960, the number of known jazz players that were playing was huge and sooner or later it would be recorded, which happened in the 1960's as far as I am aware ... and by the end of that decade, it had exploded. (This applies to America, mostly, and I'm not sure I am totally correct ... this is as much as I know about it, really!)

Sorry ... not on topic, but in my book, the only arts that are ____ for me, are the fake ones the church has made famous in some statues in Europe! It was, really, ridiculous, and to this day, few folks say anything about it ...