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Author Topic: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others  (Read 32385 times)

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Offline Rivers

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #105 on: December 03, 2007, 05:16:20 PM »
A very mini review of A Richer Tradition Country Blues and String Band Music: It's excellent, great program, great sound. As you would expect there's a lot of cool material mixed with bordering-on-the-totally-crazed jug band music.

Some of the tracks strike me as pretty sophisticated, jug band instruments playing old jazz progressions. I find that pretty inspiring in terms of what you can do with that instrumentation. Some of the vocalists, mandolinists and washboard players stand out as being seriously good. The jug players are all over the map style-wise. Some clearly have had a few and think they're Louis Armstrong...

Sound quality seems to be good to excellent, I A-B'd with some Yazoo tracks. I haven't listened to all of it yet but I believe JSP have done a fine job and it's easy to predict this will become a classic. Great for playing to the uninitiated to confirm their suspicions that you really are crazy, though nothing will ever beat the Mississippi Mud Steppers' Alma Waltz for that.

Alma isn't on here but Jackson Stomp is; I just made a quick comparison, the version of Jackson Stomp on the JSP is better than the Yazoo mix on Before The Blues Vol 1. I have nothing negative to say about this release.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2007, 05:40:31 PM by Rivers »

Offline Michael Kuehn

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #106 on: December 09, 2007, 07:44:41 AM »
I picked up the "A Richer Tradition" boxed set, and immediately discovered some mislabeling on Disc A -- haven't gotten to the others yet, so I don't know if this carries on to the rest.

Cut 13 is labeled at Ed Bell's 'Frisco Whistle Blues,' which clearly it's not. That is cut 12. 'Two Ways to Texas' is listed as 14, but it is actually 13. Mooch Richardson's 'T And T Blues' should be cut 15, not 16. Tom Nelson's 'Blue Coat Blues' I think is cut 16, not 12 -- I'm only guessing at this one, since I know he was a fiddler and this is a fiddler's tune. And Lewis Black's 'Gravel Camp Blues' is cut 14 -- I think -- not 15 as shown. But otherwise I'm not familiar with some of the artists, so it's hard to tell what else might be screwed up.

Somewhat disappointed in the mistakes, but the music is great. It was worth the price if only for 'James Alley Blues' by Richard Rabbitt Brown. What a great song -- interesting guitar work, great vocals, and some of the most peculiar lyrics I've heard in a long time: "Sometimes I think that you too sweet to die, And another time I think you oughta be buried alive."

Mike
« Last Edit: December 09, 2007, 08:02:32 AM by bluesmikedk »

Offline Rivers

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #107 on: December 09, 2007, 09:26:52 AM »
Yeah I'd noticed that track displacement, hadn't gotten around to checking if it was the Gracenote DB used by iTunes that was wrong or the disc vs. packaging track listing. Thanks for sorting it out. I didn't notice any probs on the other discs.

Offline Michael Kuehn

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #108 on: December 09, 2007, 10:26:07 AM »
Yeah, I thought at first it might be Gracenote DB also -- so I wanted to check all that before posting. Good to know that the other discs are okay.

Mike

Offline waxwing

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #109 on: December 09, 2007, 11:30:59 AM »
I picked up "A Richer Tradition" in my foray to Down Home yesterday, in disappointment that they didn't have Lead's Last Sessions.-F-, but I haven't had a chance to listen, yet. Thanks for the heads up on the mis-info.

So, I was thinking as I was perusing several of the JSP boxes, "Crap, do I have this one or not?" over one or the other. I guess I need to make a list. But the JSP site is so out there with massive graphics that you have to crawl all over to get any info (info not being their strong suit-G-). Does anyone know where one could find, A) a list of all JSP boxed sets and B) info on remastering of the various sets. I can't find any info on the "A Richer Tradition" box at all.

Anyway, I though maybe we could create a list here. Later we could branch out into some of the other companies that do boxed sets as well. (Light goes on! -  say, does the Penguin Guide have an index by labels?) Anyway, under the assumption that there is no easily discoverable list, I thought i'd start out with the JSP boxes I have. Maybe we should categorize by genre, mine all falling into pre war blues, I guess.

[Edit] Ok, I found the catalogue list on the JSP site, but, since I already typed in all the info, I'll post it anyway and folks can add to it if they want. The JSP list is a graphic and I'm not savvy enough to export it to any text formats.

JSP7706 - Blind Lemon Jefferson - The Complete Classic Sides
JSP7711 - Blind Willie McTell - The Classic Years 1927-1940
JSP7714 - Blind Blake - All The Published Sides
JSP7715 - Legends of Country Blues - The Complete Pre-War Recordings of SH,  SJ, BW, TJ & IB
JSP7716 - Memphis Minnie - Queen of Country Blues - 1929-1937
JSP7723 - The Paramount Masters
JSP7730 - Texas Blues - Early Blues Masters From The Lone Star State
JSP7745 - Memphis Jug Band With Cannon's Jug Stompers (John R. T. Davies)
JSP7752 - Memphis Shakedown - More Jug Band Classics
JSP7754 - Atlanta Blues - Big City Blues From The Heartland
JSP7781 - When The Levee Breaks - Mississippi Blue - Rare Cuts 1926-1941
JSP7798 - A Richer Tradition - Country Blues And String Band Music 1923-1942

So, noticing as I went through that Davies was credited with remastering the MJB-CJS box, I have to say, I really like Richard Nevins remastering of the JB material on Ruckus Juice and Chittlins, Vol. 1, a lot better. Down Home still didn't have Vol. 2 in stock so I had to order that, too.

All for now.
John C.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2007, 11:33:28 AM by waxwing »
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Offline Rivers

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #110 on: December 09, 2007, 11:46:21 AM »
Wax, I know what you mean about JSP's appalling web site. I would build them one for free if they asked just so I could find things.

Here's a partial solution. http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.asp?qsrch=A&WRD=JSP+Records&z=y

You'll see a lot of items that were recorded later than the stuff we're interested in.

Don't bother doing the same search at Amazon, the results are mixed in with all kinds of unrelated junk.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2007, 01:26:42 PM by Rivers »

Offline Stuart

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #111 on: December 09, 2007, 12:03:41 PM »

Offline Rivers

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #112 on: December 09, 2007, 12:07:36 PM »
Way to go Stuart, that's a much cleaner list and grouped by category.

Offline rjtwangs

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #113 on: January 07, 2008, 03:25:04 PM »
I would appreciate any input regarding the JSP, Proper. any others you may recommend, box sets with regards to sound quality and packaging. Any favorite collections?? I have just ordered the Blind Blake box on JSP. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

RJ

Offline Johnm

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #114 on: January 07, 2008, 04:05:29 PM »
Hi rjtwangs,
Welcome to Weenie Campbell!  If you click on "Tags" up near the top of your page, just left of center, you will find categories of tags for Yazoo Records, Document Records, JSP and Proper.  Click on the appropriate tag and you will be given a variety of threads that discuss the re-issues put out by these various labels.  Since the answer to your question can be found in these threads I am going to merge this thread with the JSP thread.
all best,
Johnm

Offline rjtwangs

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #115 on: January 08, 2008, 06:17:12 PM »
Thanks John, I've read the tags about the JSP box sets, but, they are all dated 2005, is there an update? Have they gotten any better? I guess I have the same question about the Proper box sets. If not I guess I'll just get the the sets that are available. Thanks for all the help. Are you folks familiar with Bluebeat Music??

RJ

Offline Rivers

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #116 on: January 09, 2008, 08:05:53 PM »
We've started a new weenie series in the content management part of the site. It's all about making worthwhile liner notes more accessible, substantial CD liner notes often being necessarily in so small a typeface they are very hard to read.

First up is A Richer Tradition, Country Blues and String Band Music. We've obtained, um, partial permission to do this, and will remove them if any additional copyright holders object. Several folks around here happen to like this release and so it seemed like a good place to start. Neil Slaven's liner notes are a damn good read being informative, interesting and droll throughout.

To access the notes for the four CDs click on the left menu item 'Album Info', or click here.

Feedback, suggestions and requests are welcome, it would be nice to build this up a little bit in future.

Offline CF

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #117 on: January 10, 2008, 09:19:25 AM »
I gave CD B of the Blind Lemon Jefferson JSP box a listen the other day & really enjoyed it . . . the multpile takes of Matchbox Blues are very interesting & thank god for that sole record from the Okeh session: the sound quality is so much better than the Paramount stuff. Altho', again, Lemon sounds better on Yazoo I'm constantly surprised how much better some of Lemon's stuff sounds, overall, than I remember.

p.s. River, I think the liner note thread is a great idea. Hope this is something that can continue . . .
« Last Edit: January 10, 2008, 09:21:50 AM by cheapfeet »
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Offline CF

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #118 on: January 10, 2008, 07:57:05 PM »
Review of a couple JSP box sets over at Big Road Blues

http://sundayblues.org/
Stand By If You Wanna Hear It Again . . .

Offline rjtwangs

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Re: JSP Boxed Sets--Blind Lemon & Others
« Reply #119 on: January 10, 2008, 08:15:23 PM »
As for a complete list of JSP box sets and other releases try this, it's from CD Universe, I hope this helps...

RJ

http://www.cduniverse.com/sresult.asp?style=music&HT_Search=xlabel&HT_Search_Info=JSP+%28UK%29


 


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