I didn't realise the tapes were missing. Do you know what the source was for the Vocalion reissue a few years back?
They were assumed lost when Tony Higgins was compiling Impressed comp, but looks as though they have been discovered according to Mike’s post from Discogs (maybe TH found them). As I say, Jonny Trunk usually credits needle drops - both Moonscape and Plays Moondog sound excellent btw. No idea about the Vocalion.
Edit - this from Tony Higgins several years ago, and I remember another interview with TH where he mentions Universal/Polygram only allowing him to copy the tapes and not remove them from the vault. So maybe the digital source copy used by Trunk et al was originally made by Tony Higgins:
Tony on
September 6, 2018 at 12:32 said:
Hi, I wrote the sleeve notes for both volumes of Impressed, and sourced the tapes we used for the mastering – the Lansdowne tapes were held in the old Polygram archive in Germany (incl Hum Dono which was always assumed lost). The Fontana/Argo/Decca material was from tapes held in the Decca archive in Hampstead. The image of Giles at the DJ controls was taken in the club in Old St called Cargo. I also worked on the BBC TV series Jazz Britannia, researching and writing the script. After Impressed 1 & 2, I suggested to Universal that they do a comprehensive reissue series of selected albums – Garrick, Westbrook, Tubby, Ardley, Rendell Carr, Harriott etc.
They initially agreed and so we set up the Impressed Re-pressed sub-label. The first batch was Amancio D’Silva ‘Integration; Garrick ‘Troppo’ etc, five in total. Sadly, Universal didn’t want to do LPs just CDs – and even then they skimped on the packaging and artwork. I had flagged about 30 titles to reissue. Come the second batch, they decided just to do five Tubby Hayes CDs and basically use the Japanese reissue CDs and sources, not go to the tapes – which existed. Again, cutting costs. There were no more in the series after that – there were personnel changes in Universal and the meagre support for the project that existed was gone
I did manage to compile a volume 3 but it was never released but did slip out on a blog. Roll on to about 2009, I contacted Universal with some other ideas: a comp of Japanese jazz and European jazz drawn from their own catalogue. They agreed, so I duly comped and wrote sleeve notes: 20,000 for ‘Jazz Japan’ & nearly 40,000 for ‘Jazz Europa’. I delivered the comps and notes. I then suggested why not have a trilogy? So, I convinced them to agree to a third, another British comp, ‘Jazz Britannia’. I selected the tracks and wrote 40,000 words of notes. I even got Don Rendell to write an intro piece.
Rolling on a decade, I did manage to complete a comp of Japanese jazz for BBE Records, ‘J Jazz: deep modern jazz from Japan 1969-1984’, released in Feb 2018. Vol 2 coming early in 2019. Plus a full album reissue programme: the BBE J Jazz Masterclass Series.
Finally, the fingerprints on the Impressed sleeves are mine.
@The_Jazz_Dad
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