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From: Art Shifrin <[log in to unmask]> > In the case of Whiteman's 1928 Columbia Concerto In F, you'd have to listen > in this order: sides 1-2-3-4-6-5. BUT between 6 & 5, you'd have to listen > to "Jeanine I Dream Of Lilac Time" and endure Jack Fulton's vocal...assuming > that the info's correct in my edition of Brian Rust's 'The American Dance > Band Discography 1917 - 1942. I think there were personnel changes and multiple sessions involved. It sometimes is difficult to figure out from the ADBD which date which takes were recorded. You might have to go to the Columbia Discography set. There may have even been re-takes of earlier sides done in later sessions. Bix is not heard on all takes of all sides. Numerical order is not always the order the recordings were made. In a case like this the alternate takes of individual sides are more important to hear together, not take the sides out of order. When a long work is recorded out of side order there often is a reason. Sometimes a re-take of a side might be made months later. I haven't compared my Royal Blue pressing with earlier Potato Head pressings to see if there are alternate takes. The casual listener to a long work would not be expected to listen to all the takes, especially in the order recorded. But someone studying the specific work SHOULD. I have examined all the available alternate takes of Rachmanoff's recording of his 2nd Piano Concerto on a side-by-side basis. In the early 40s RCA changed all but one of the takes they were pressing and falsified the sheet in the artist file to indicate a different set of approved takes. Most of the commonly found 78 sets and all the microgroove issues used secondary takes except for the one side where there were no existing alternates. I have worked off of the session sheet for Koussivitsky's recording of Peter and the Wolf because the take ones of all sides were recorded before lunch to get a complete performance in, and in the afternoon they went back and did takes 2 and 3 on a side-by-side basis. Since different reissues have used different takes of some of the sides I have analyzed how to tell which takes were which of the takes that are available. You would be amazed at the number of alternate takes of individual sides of classical sets had been issued. Archives and discographies are very lax in documenting takes in classical sets, and comparing them in their duplicate copies. The differences are usually very minor -- there might be ensemble unity differences -- but in jazz it is often very enlightening to compare alternate takes and the progression of the recording session. > Also, can we coin a term to replace discography? No. > If taken literally, then no cylinders should be listed within them.... Art (Shiffy) Shifrin Then no scroll, magazine, manuscript, talking-book, electronic publication, or other non-"book" form could be included in a "bibliography", which is the word that discography was coined from. We have "filmography" to catalog movies, but not "videography" because that term is used to indicate the act of taking video pictures. So videos are included in filmographies. From the very beginning different media including wire, tape, film sound, and other formats have always been included. The officially recognized international classification term for sound recording is "Phonorecord", even if it is tape, wire, optical recording, or MP3. On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 10:48 PM, David Weiner <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]> > > I have the exact opposite attitude. The body of work of a performer > > exists as it was recorded in the studio. The ordering of the items in > > the album is usually an afterthought that rarely includes the performer > > --------- > Who is to say whether of not the order of tunes recorded at a session has > any significance either? Should we listen to Whiteman's 1927 RHAPSODY IN > BLUE with Part 2 before Part 1 because he recorded it that way? > > Dave Weiner This is a comparison of apples and oranges. A popular album of disconnected songs or musical numbers are not necessarily required to be heard in the order they appear on the album. A continuous work that is recorded on multiple sides because of the limitations of the media is not the same. (There WAS a reason these sides were recorded out of order, although Whiteman's and Shilkret's stories differ -- but that is a different matter.) If you had a 78 popular album that was issued in manual sequence but you wanted to play them on a changer, then you would not be listening to the sides in the "order" that the sides were numbered. You would NOT do that with a symphony set. You might not do it with a Broadway cast album set. But for the pop album of eight or ten disconnected songs, who cares what order the songs are heard in. When you bought the 10-inch LP of the album you had on four 78s the tracks were ordered the way they were numbered, but you might not have listened to them in that order on the 78s, and you might prefer YOUR ordering to that of the LP. And if you used a changer for your pop LPs you would hear one side of a bunch of albums and then an hour or two later the other side of those albums would show up. HORRORS! You are listening to the songs out-of-approved-order! What if you did this with your classical records where you split symphonies and concertos in half? You would do that as rarely as you might listen to Rhapsody in Blue in reverse side order. By the way, Columbia issued the 78 of Gershwin playing his three preludes with numbers one and three on one side, and number two and the andante from Rhapsody In Blue on the other side. You HAD to listen to the three preludes out of order unless you flipped the record several times. And should the andante be played before or after the three preludes? Or not at all? Mike Biel [log in to unmask]