Unknown (well, almost) Don Byas

Hi, everybody

I have been away for some time and now as I am back – I am also back to work. So I am sorry if now I only add something to this blog that is also on my website. But since I guess no-one ever found it there, I decided to put his beautiful (and very rare) record up on my blog as well.

The Don Redman Orchestra Basel 1946

REVISED ENTRY: The title of Track 6 has been identified.

The 1946 european tour of Don Redman’s orchestra looms large in the memory of european jazz fans of a certain generation as it was the first opportunity to have a first hand experience of the recent developments in american jazz. Although Redman had no genuine Be Bop musicians in his band, there were a lot of creative spirits in it that did not miss the revolution that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had started. And with For Europeans Only Redman had even brought a Tadd Dameron composition with him. It has to be said though, that not everybody liked what he heard though. And people who did like what they heard were sometimes thrown out of their own Jazz appreciation societies and Hot Clubs because of their “progressive tendencies”.

In 1983 danish company Steeplechase published the September 15 concert from the K.B. Hallen in Copenhagen:

and in 1999 swiss company TCB released a part of the October 27 concert from Victoria Hall in Geneva (on the sleeve it reads “Eictoria Hall”):

Recently I found some more music from this tour in Otto’s archives. These come from the October 31 concert at the Küchlin Varieté in Basel, Switzerland.

The Küchlin Varieté in Basel, unknown date.
Photograph from www.fdb.ch

I have decided to put all of the surviving music from the Basel concert up here, as I think it is historically very important – and the rather bad sound quality robs it of any commercial value it might have.