Were you collecting in the 78 era?
Oh no, not quite. I'm not that old. I meant to say that music from that period is of considerable interest to me. A lot of 78 music from the 1930s and 40s has made it on to CD. And, unfortunately, a great deal of it still languishes in obscurity.
Sometimes it helps to know a little something about the labels of that period to pick out stuff that might be good. I try to scan through these things rather quickly when I am buying a lot of them because picking this stuff out can be time consuming.
Here's an interesting one. I never heard of Charley Shavers and His All American Five. But I did now a little something about Keynote Recordings and figured it was probably an interesting pair of jazz sides so I slowed down long enough to read the credits. Hmm...Coleman Hawkins and Teddy Wilson. Yep, any jazz fan would be familiar with those names. So I snapped up several sides featuring this group.
After researching Shavers I learned that he played with Lucky Millinder in the 1930s and Benny Goodman in the 1950s.
--Jerome
