The record changer (Jan-Dec 1951)

12 RECORDS WANTED I AM INTERESTED IN BUYING OUTRIGHT small or large collections of Jazz, Sweet, Swing, Personality, Blues, Bop, or Pops. / will pay spot cash for such collections. If you have a collection you wish to dispose of, please write, giving full details of the collection, type, artists included, labels, and most important of all please describe the condition of the records carefully. Then set your lowest price for the lot. I do not buy piecemeal but will take all or none. It is important that you set the price because I do not have time for long correspondence or haggling. If the price looks right and the collection is large enough I will travel to your town to inspect the records and close the deal. If you are on the west coast I have an agent there who will contact you. I am also interested in acquiring dealers' stocks from before 1940 and after 1924. WRITE, WIRE, OR PHONE BILL GRAUER, Jr. 125 LA SALLE STREET. NEW YORK 27, N. Y. 4 Sensational NEW RELEASES on BLUE NOTE 10" LP $3.85 each BLP 7015-Dixieknd Clambake Art Hodes Hot Seven with Max Kaminsky and Bujie Centobie Willie the Weeper/Mr. Jelly Lord/I Never Knew What a Gal Could Do/Chicago Gal/Milenberg Joys*/Bujie/Wolverine Blues/Walk On Down* * Previously Unissued BLP 7016-Sidney De Paris' Blue Note Stompers With Jimmy Archey and Omer Simeon Weary Blues/Moose March/A Good Man is Hard to Find/Panama/ When You Wore a Tulip/Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone BLP 5002-Thelonhus Monk GENIUS OF MODERN MUSIC BLP 5 003The Amazing Bud Powell See Our Ads in the Front and Back of This Issue JhiL CH WLuAk, Shop 33 COLUMBUS AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y. STAR STUDDED SHELLAC john mc andrew There have been a bewildering number of piano solos on records lately, and although I'm grateful, I can't help contrast it with the meager output up to a year or two ago. Of particular interest are eight sides by Ralph Sutton for Columbia of grand old Fats Waller tunes done in Fats' style, some of them previously recorded only by Fats himself. On second hearing they are not nearly as exciting as they at first appear. After the initial pleasure of a different solo rendition of Alligator Crawl, Clothesline Ballet and Viper's Drag, you realize that Sutton — although he is an unusually competent jazz player — just can't compare with the sparkling, champagne Waller perfection. The magic effervescence isn't even suggested. Further, the determined rhythm accompaniment chokes off occasional flashes of spontaneity that might have broken through. Can you picture a Fats solo topped off by a relentless drum and thumping bass? Or the shimmering sparkle of his dewy Clothesline Ballet, Tea for Two, Alligator Crawl or / Ain't Got Nobody interrupted for a guitar chorus or drum-andbass solo with Fats just filling in? Errol Garner is hailed in so'me ecstatic quarters with the same sort of rapture that greeted Art Tatum in the late 'thirties. Already, it is difficult to keep track of the endless platters he has cut for a myriad of labels, standard and unknown: now, Garner is a very good jazz soloist, but too many of his efforts are clouded and often all but obscured by a variety of extraneous accompaniment. A piano solo should be just that with nothing added. In the Garner records — / Cover the Waterfront, Laura, Penthouse Serenade, Indiana, I'm in the Mood for Love, to mention a handful — fresh jazz inventiveness is sacrificed in weaving pretty, innocuous patterns around competent, hackneyed rhythmic intrusions. After several years of Garner, I still cannot evaluate him properly because I've never been able to detach him from the conglomeration of which he invariably is just a part. Alas, they're all presented thusly today — pianists and other soloists. First, the Chorus sprang, weed-like, where one voice was meant to be; and now, like marijuana in a flower-bed the "balancing" accompaniments are doing the same for the instrumentalists. The crushing thing about it all is the conformity to pattern — no deviation anywhere ; all of the recorders, major and minor, hewing to the accepted formula. A recent set that somehow escaped the Decca studios with nothing more than a (Continued on Page 14 )