Rare, commercially unavailable vintage & jazz music.

[davidraphael]

It's amazing how much great vintage and jazz music is only traded by collectors but was never commercially released (ie, was recorded for release but never released; was recorded by radio stations but never released officially; are outtakes from album sessions; are liberated bootlegs).

Does anyone have any such recordings in their own collections? (no mp3! originals or lossless only!)

I'm interested to see just how much is out there.

Here's a partial list from my collection (only pre-1960 stuff):

Benny Goodman Small Groups - Radio Airchecks 1939-41
Benny Goodman - The Complete 1937 Madhattan Room Broadcasts (6 volumes)
Louis Armstrong - Chapel Hill, NC - 1954-05-08
Duke Ellington - Live at Alu Palast in Hamburg, Germany, June 10, 1950 (from British Forces Network acetate)
Duke Ellington - Unissued recordings by Danish Radio 1957-70
Frank Sinatra w/Tommy Dorsey Orchestra - Avalon Ballroom, 1940
"Frank And Dean's Hollywood Party" - May 14, 1959
Frank Sinatra - Monte Carlo, Monaco June 14, 1958
Nat King Cole - Live in Los Angeles 1944
Count Basie & His Orchestra - Newport Jazz Festival 1959
Lionel Hampton - Live at Sportpalast in Berlin-Germany, 1953-10-04
Kenny Burrell - Newport 1959
Miles Davis - 1958 Spotlite Lounge Radio Broadcasts
Miles Davis - 17-07-1955 w. Thelonious Monk
Miles Davis - 1955&1956 The Making Of Round About Midnight (album outtakes)
Oscar Peterson - Newport 1959
Sonny Rollins Trio- Live in Zurich-CH, 1959-03-05
Art Blakey & Thelonious Monk sessions 1957 (album outtakes)
Charlie Parker - Kansas City Acetate, 1940-05-xx
Charlie Parker with Woody Herman Kansas City 1951-07-22
Charlie Parker - Hi-Hat Club, Boston, MA - 1954-01-18
Charlie Parker - Birdland, N.Y.C., NY - 1953-05-29
Coleman Hawkins Munich-Germany, 1950-01-19
John Coltrane - 1951 radio broadcasts
Louis Jordan - AFRS - Jubilee Radio Shows
Red Norvo Trio (Mingus, Farlow) - 1949-1950

below, images of typical radio transcription discs/ acetates

 

[Chas]

No, but I darn well wish I did. Never seen any in my record hunts.

 

[davidraphael]

These recordings can be incredibly rare - often only one copy is extant - so I'm not surprised you haven't found any. Neither have I.
The best case scenario is when someone finds an acetate or transcription disc, realises what they have, and then gets an expert/sound engineer to professionally digitize.
It is these digitizations that are usually traded.
Of course, people with a LOT of money also trade the original discs.

The best place/time to look for these items is when old radio stations close down and throw out old reels, discs and acetates. I've heard of people looking through the trash at radio stations or recording studios!

More often than not, I'm sure it's a case of just being lucky enough to know someone who knows someone who knows someone etc

In terms of trading digitized copies. This can be done with some, but not all, recordings. Some will be available via bittorrent sites (though I'd recommend a site that specialises in music trading and observes audio trading rules).
I've been collecting since 2005 and waiting for these things to pop up can be a long wait and a hard hunt! The earlier the recording the harder it gets. Availability tends to pick up from the 1960s on when more professional recording methods became possible.

 

[davidraphael]

Conversion to mp3 or any lossy format is thoroughly discouraged, but I've a created a short sample so that you can hear an example of these kinds of discs.

This is Benny Goodman playing Stardust from the Manhattan Room, Hotel Pennsylvania New York, NY on 1937.10.27:

This link is directly playable:
[video]http://www.zshare.net/audio/9343518798b001ee/[/video]


And here are photos from the actual Manhattan Room shows in 1937:

 

[Tomasso]

An friend has a stock pile of recordings made at his family's jazz clubs in Chicago. I'll have to ask him what he's doing with them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Madhattan Room broadcasts were released on LP on the Sunbeam label in the early '70s -- a series of 10 albums with two broadcasts per record. These releases have been reissued several times since then, both legitimately and thru bootlegs, and are still easy to find. The original recordings were airchecks made by the legendary recording engineer/jazz buff Bill Savery.

 

[davidraphael]

ah! that I didn't know. But now that you say it it doesn't surprise me - the Manhattan room broadcasts are probably the most famous, which is why I posted the sample. I should also have made the connection because these shows were not allowed at one of the music trading sites (a sure sign that they either contained some commercially released material or were compressed). Now I know which.
I also don't have a proper trader's 'lineage' for my Manhattan room shows, so I can't trace where my copy came from.

However, with the vast majority of the other recordings, I do have a source lineage and I know 100% for sure that they have never seen an official release.

My Manhattan room recordings will now get filed in my out-of-print section instead. Why such great stuff goes out of print I will never know.



@Tomasso : that would be absolutely incredible - please do keep me posted!