[78-L] Happy Birthday, Satch!

[Michael Shoshani]

On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 12:37 -0400, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> Schaap is a very bright guy with a bit of an ego problem (i.e. he thinks he
> knows everything). I believe I've told my Schaap story on this list; I won't
> repeat it unless someone asks.

Part of me wants to ask, part of me doesn't wanna know.

I have my own beef with Schaap. I do like the "Complete Ellington at
Newport" CD and I thought that Seth Winner's synching of the two
disparate mono tapes was quite wonderful, but Schaap's liner notes made
the original album come off as so much 'cheating' foisted off on an
unsuspecting public.  He basically intimated that the studio
re-recording and audience-dubbing of most of the album was a serious
disservice to the record-buying public, who were thus hoodwinked. 

This completely overlooked the fact that a) this was SOP at the time, b)
at least one Newport-performed composition was not even finished during
the concert - the studio version has it the way Ellington intended, c)
the vast majority of record buyers were unable to attend Newport and
would have neither known nor cared about any difference in the
performance, and d) Duke Ellington had creative control over his
releases. The studio recreation was done with his active participation,
and he saw nothing wrong with it.

The Schaap liner notes consequently came off very bad on George Avakian,
who as I recall had a few words of his own on the subject. 

MS