[78-L] Commodore was Remastering re-writ

[Thomas Stern]

I believe there was a Jelly-Roll Morton complete Commodore (General)
recordings on GRP.
Is GRP part of MCA/Universal?  How good/bad is the mastering on the GRP
series?
Was the GRP arrangement made after Milt Gablers death?
Also, looking at currently available Billie Holiday CD's, there is a VERVE
Commodore
Master Takes, and the GRP complete set listed.
Don't see the JRM, nor the Commodore Story....
Is Jazz of this era (commercially) dead?
Best wishes, Thomas.

-----Original Message-----
From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com
[mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com]On Behalf Of Jeff Sultanof
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:40 AM
To: 78-L Mail List
Subject: Re: [78-L] Remastering re-writ


I was at an International Association of Jazz Educators convention when the
Commodore catalog was announced as acquired by MCA with great ballyhoo. The
only issues I remember (I wasn't clear either) was a "Best of Commodore," a
Billie Holiday 'complete' and a Holiday 'Best of.'

Jeff Sultanof

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 11:38 PM, David Lennick
<dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:

> LET'S TRY THIS ONE AGAIN..a bit garbled the previous time.
>
> I haven't encountered too many Commodore releases, although I picked up a
> "Billie Holiday Commodore Masters" disc from 2000..which had a few tracks
> that
> were definitely not the ones issued on 78. GRP, through Universal.
> Randy referred to an Andrews Sisters messup, and that's one I recall along
> with
> an Al Jolson (maybe) and the Jascha Heifetz Decca Years (definitely).
> Philips
> had even worse results with a series of historical recordings which
sounded
> like bad short wave radio.
>
> dl
>
> Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> > Dan Morgenstern still tells the story of a gathering of press and and
> jazz
> > historians at RCA to listen to No Noise 'clean-ups' at a pre-release
> party
> > for the three-CD set of early BG and his orchestra. While the engineers
> did
> > remove a lot of noise, they also took out bass lines and drum parts. Dan
> > said that some tracks were so bad they sounded like they were played
> > underwater. This disastrous reception sent engineers back to the drawing
> > board for that set, which still had many tracks where actual music was
> > removed.
> >
> > I will also never forget (and perhaps David, these are the CDs you mean)
> > when MCA acquired the Commodore catalog and issued Billie Holiday and
> 'Best
> > of Commodore' CDs. The sound was distorted and disgusting.
Interestingly,
> > Commodore is a catalog which is still MIA on CD.
> >
> > That was also when I found out that the people at MCA didn't realize
that
> > they owned a catalog named ABC-Paramount. One of their employees asked
me
> to
> > 'suggest' some reissues to him, of course not offering to pay me a red
> cent.
> > I developed a bad memory quickly.
> >
> > Jeff Sultanof
> >
> >> I still remember "NoNoise" and still shudder at the disasters it
> wreaked.
> >> Or to
> >> be more accurate, the disasters wreaked by the engineers who turned it
> on
> >> full
> >> blast and left it running overnight and issued the results on
> unlistenable
> >> MCA
> >> and Philips CDs in the mid 80s.
> >>
> >> dl
> >>
>
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