[Dixielandjazz] The art of recording

[Mattias Hallin]

31 okt 2007 kl. 23.26 Marek Boym wrote:

> Well, "Atlanta Blues" is not the only spliced tune on that record  
> [Armstrong plays W.C. Handy] (how
> about "St. Louis Blues," to my ears - the best I've ever heard);
> however, Armstrong was Armstrong ewas Armstrong, full stop.  And,
> still, I, for one, as a listener, would have preferred to hear all the
> separate takes.

As a listener, I wouldn't; as someone very interested in the minutiae  
of jazz history, I would...

What I want to say is of course that by "listener", I mean listener  
to the recording as the artist(s) and producer(s) decided to release  
it, and also just listener in the general sense of listening to music  
for the sheer pleasure of hearing it. If I'm in that listening mood,  
I wouldn't like to put on a record full of starts and stops, studio  
banter and other behind the scenes material.

If, on the other hand, I'm listening in order to analyse and  
understand, to the best of my ability, how the music and the  
recording came about, it is a different story. To use an analogy, it  
is like the difference between reading a book by a historian, and  
going into the archives yourself to find out the same things by  
piecing together the evidence...

All the best,

/Mattias

---
Mattias Hallin · Brussels · Belgium · <cmhallin at algonet.se>

"Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar!
A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!"