Selection: For Minors Only (Heath)
Artists:
Bill Hardman (t) Johnny Griffin (ts) Junior Mance (p) Spanky DeBrest (b) Art Blakey (d)Recorded: New York City, NY October 11, 1957
An early Blakey line-up in the years before Mobley/Timmons came on the scene – late 1957 about nails it according to my patented Jazz Messengers Ready Reckoner , updated for the presence of Junior Mance I hadn’t previously picked up on.
What to make of “President Records” France? Well, first principle, you are known by the company you keep. Here’s another title from President, La Camisole pour Beatrice
![Screen-Shot-2012-10-12-at-7.10.23-PM-500x501[1]](https://londonjazzcollector.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/screen-shot-2012-10-12-at-7-10-23-pm-500x5011.png)
Beatrice has been a naughty girl. She’s just broken papa’s favourite 78, her new nightie is a little skimpy, and she is determined to become a dancer.
You have to ask yourself what would the counter assistant make of a grown man bringing this sleeve to the desk? “Umm, it’s for my niece.” Bien sur, bien sur.
What little I could find in the President catalogue suggests a variety of genres, blues, dixie, jazz, pop, basically, whatever sells.
The less said about Blakey’s shirt the better. A strange design that would look more at home on the winner of the 3:30 at Kempton Park.The designer has mixed Black and White photography with accent colour – a trick I often play myself, so I shouldn’t be too harsh.
Vinyl: President Records (France) PBS 6002 220gm vinyl
Released around 1960 on President Records, France, which according to my research is unlikely to be the Ed Kassner company of the same name but who knows. Described by most sellers as “rare”, not the same as “valuable” – a better word would be “obscure”. A few copies seem to be around on French-dominated CDandLP site.
The run out contains those magical letters AB, but also GF. Anyone knows anything, speak up. Though the vinyl is visually near mint, the odd click and pop registers, despite a run through the RCM. I guess stuff gets onto the vinyl during pressing and cooling under less than scrupulous factory conditions.
Collectors Corner
……………..
Lets get real here, there is no world shortage of Art Blakey records. The interest is in Hardman and Griffin, a punchy and vigorous front line.
Source: Ebay, small change
Sellers Description:
I sense some element of cut and paste in the description.
ART BLAKEY’S JAZZ MESSENGERS LP PRESIDENT 1960 PBS6002 1ST PRESS EX. FRANCE THE “ORIGINAL 1960 PRESSING. EXCELLENT VINYL, COVER IS VERY GOOD” ORIGINAL 1960 LP, FIRST PRESSING, PRESIDENT RECORDS (FRANCE) VERY RARE FRENCH PRESSING, SUPERB, CLASSIC BE-BOP!
VINYL: EXCELLENT SLEEVE: VERY GOOD+ ( SEAM SPLIT AT BASE, OTHERWISE GREAT CONDITION FOR AGE)…HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! FANTASTIC TIMELESS ALBUM ! RARE SUPERB TRACKS
Its a little quiet here at LJC, sellers on holiday, and very little “hot stuff” coming to market. Its August, but one or two interesting stories in the pipeline.
LondonJazzCollector 
I grew up listening to this album!
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Hi guys, it was me who scanned that photo of the Contemporary Studio and posted it first on the Hoffman forums. It’s from a book of jazz covers called West Coasting. And yes, it’s obvious that it’s incorrectly described as being from “Way Out West”. “Contemporary Leaders” it is indeed.
Cheers, Cristian
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Airbrushed or not I think he’s rocking that shirt – it’s Art Blakey!
Not the greatest Messengers line-up IMO that title goes to the Lee Morgan/Wayne Shorter pairing. However, they did have the distinction of recording the greatest Messengers album with Thelonious Monk on Atlantic (Junior Mance must have been on the subs bench) – incredible how so many classics were recorded for that label.
Ebay pickings have been good for a bargain hunter like me recently, A Columbia Six Eye for a tenner (Miles at Blackhawk Saturday Night) and Art Pepper + 11 Contemporary Vogue for the same – nothing septic tank about those. Trouble for you LJC is that you’ve got so many records already.
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Art Pepper plus Eleven is the real deal – nice grab for that price!
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Most def – great to hear Art on tenor and it’s got a nice older time swing to the arrangements. Got this site to thank for alerting me to the UK Vogue pressings and when it’s a DuNann recording you can’t go wrong – wonderful sound.
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Yes, I am fortunate to have an original mono, and the sound is divine. One wonders how they packed that many musicians into the Contemporary storage room/recording studio!
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I’ve been trying to find pictures of the Contemporary studio and here’s what I have found so far http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=13333.0 Amazing the sound that came out of such a tiny room & the equipment used.
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Thanks for the link. The first photo, however, is not of “Sonny Rollins recording Way Out West with Shelly Manne on drums”. What we see is Hampton Hawes sitting at the piano, and Barney Kessel with his guitar, in addition to Ray and Shelly. So it must be “Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders”.
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Good spot Eduard – it seems obvious but I didn’t see that first time I looked
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That small detail aside, Soundfountain’s site is pretty impressive. I’d not heard that explanation before, that the UK contemporary cat no LAC stands for Los Angeles Contemporary. Obvious really when its pointed out.
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Yep that Contemporary section is an Aladdin’s Cave of info – love the Shelly Manne stuff
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Thanks for that, now corrected. It’s a shame there aren’t many more photos of the Contemporary studio, but Sound Fountain is great who knew Lester Koenig started the label thanks to Joe McCarthy’s blacklisting,great research
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LAC: L.A. Contemporary? I don’t believe it at all. Fantasy came out on Vogue in the 12000 series and had LAE as a prefix. Should have been SFF, when following this logic.
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Hi guys, it was me who originally scanned and posted that photo on the Hoffman forums. It is from a book of jazz covers called “West Coasting”. And, obviously it’s incorrectly described as Way Out West. Contemporary Leaders, indeed.
Cristian
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it takes a great engineer to create separation in a room that small. Its all about mic placement.
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It is not possible to have too many records: that is a fact well known to, umm, record collectors, however there is definitely a law of diminishing returns. You reach a point where you have many of the records you want, don’t want most of the records you haven’t got, and the few left in your sights are rare and usually expensive.
You got a couple of bargains there I would have been proud to have got. Congratulations on beating the Summer doldrums.
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two unknown words in a collector’s dictionary: too many and all.
if you got ’em all you’re dead.
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The track listing looks nearly identical to Hard Drive. I have to believe Blakey’s shirt was airbrushed with that pattern… that era’s equivalent to Photoshop.
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I have a copy of Hard Drive on UK Parlophone, with the scalloped flip-back sleeve, printed by Garrod – presumably before they merged with Lofthouse. Tracklisting is identical to the President LP, but has a more suitable “hard-driving” abstract cover by Hannan. And has the original 1957 Bethlehem matrix numbers, BPC 6023A & B.
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