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[ARSCLIST] Unknown 1960 Quincy Jones Paris concert



Recently I acquired a stack of French quarter-inch studio masters from the late 1950s and early 1960s on Pyral and Sonocolor tape stock. Most are pretty stable, with minimal damage and oxide shedding. However, the recording sheets and tape boxes were in something of a muddle, so over the last few months I've been auditioning some of the more anonymous reels to try to identify their contents.

Among these there are two 15ips mono reels of Sonocolor marked simply, "Quincy Jones - bobine 2" and "bobine 4", respectively — i.e. tapes #2 and #4 of an original set of at least four. My two consist of 42 minutes of what appears to be a hitherto unknown live concert by the big band that Quincy Jones brought over to Paris in early 1960 for the ill-fated Harold Arlen stage-show, "Free and Easy". With Q making announcements in French, the performances are spirited and fidelity is excellent, even if the balance is sometimes a little wayward.

I've compared these performances to all other published European concerts I can find by the Q.Jones orchestra at that period, and they seem to be entirely distinct. However, the large room-acoustic is similar to the "Live in Paris circa 1960" CD, so possibly this concert also took place at the Alhambra Theatre, Paris.

I believe that Quincy Jones had a particular affection for that band,and I've made various attempts to contact him about it over the last year. However, his corporate carapace seems to be entirely impenetrable. Anyone have any contact ideas?

Tony B.


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