Recently I acquired a stack of French quarter-inch studio masters
from the late 1950s and early 1960s on Pyral and Sonocolor tape
stock. Most are pretty stable, with minimal damage and oxide
shedding. However, the recording sheets and tape boxes were in
something of a muddle, so over the last few months I've been
auditioning some of the more anonymous reels to try to identify their
contents.

Among these there are two 15ips mono reels of Sonocolor marked
simply, "Quincy Jones - bobine 2" and "bobine 4", respectively — i.e.
tapes #2 and #4 of an original set of at least four. My two consist
of 42 minutes of what appears to be a hitherto unknown live concert
by the big band that Quincy Jones brought over to Paris in early 1960
for the ill-fated Harold Arlen stage-show, "Free and Easy". With Q
making announcements in French, the performances are spirited and
fidelity is excellent, even if the balance is sometimes a little
wayward.

I've compared these performances to all other published European
concerts I can find by the Q.Jones orchestra at that period, and they
seem to be entirely distinct. However, the large room-acoustic is
similar to the "Live in Paris circa 1960" CD, so possibly this
concert also took place at the Alhambra Theatre, Paris.

I believe that Quincy Jones had a particular affection for that
band,and I've made various attempts to contact him about it over the
last year. However, his corporate carapace seems to be entirely
impenetrable. Anyone have any contact ideas?

Tony B.