[78-L] Kansas City Jazz (Decca DL-8044) 78 rpm set info?

[Michael Biel]

From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>> Anybody got Dexter's book handy? I had a copy but it disappeared
>> years ago, so I'm relying on faulty memory (as Dexter might have been). dl

I have the book but it also is not handy.  Since Avakian did not do
anything for Decca after this -- and he had gone on to Columbia --
perhaps Dexter was involved in the Gems of Jazz series and some of the
others.  When did he go on to Capitol?  Perhaps it was the jazz
anthology series at Capitol he was talking about?

But I really think you might be confusing Dexter's story for Avakian,
because he was the one who was a kid when proposing the album series --
and he has even claimed to have been in high school when he wrote the
letter to Brunswick that eventually got him the job at Columbia at the
time the Chicago Decca album came out.

Mike Biel   mbiel at mbiel.com  


On 10/8/2010 10:33 AM, Michael Biel wrote:
> From: David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>> One of many great anthology albums Decca issued in the early 40s. Dave Dexter
>> Jr wrote about instigating that series when he was still too young to vote. dl
>
> If he said this, he lied. The series of Decca jazz anthologies based on
> cities was proposed in 1938 and started in 1939 by George Avakian.
> Avakian was at Yale when when he thought of the idea and suggested it in
> a letter to Decca as they began their album series. He started
> producing the Chicago Jazz album in the summer of 1939 and it was
> finished and issued in the Spring of 1940. He was too busy at school
> for the other two and suggested that Steve Smith should produce the New
> Orleans set and Dave Dexter do the Kansas City set which was the THIRD
> one.