Howdy. I just found Back Room Romp on my shelf. And it’s a funny case. These tracks are all by bands in Duke Ellington’s orbit but none is led by the Duke himself — Rex Stewart, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams. I think we have those artists already.
The disc itself shows “The Duke Ellington Small Bands” for the album artist. We have no cover art, so you’ll have to trust me until I get those uploaded. I didn’t see any artist like this, and for that matter it’s not an actual artist.
For the first pass I’ll get the booklet scanned and uploaded. But is there some similar release off which I can model the edits to the tracks? I suspect it’s going to be a real mess, as those are all currently credited to Duke Ellington.
It sounds like a “XYZ Artist presents” type collection. Or “Charlie and friends”. Can’t think of an example, but I would add it as “The Duke Ellington Small Bands” as a compilation under “Duke Ellington” as that more sense that just Various Artists.
I’d also credit each artist on a track by track basis.
Thank you! Since these are remastered in a sound-damaging way, I assume I would best keep the recordings distinct from the originals, but align the artist and work metadata with the originals?
The recordings should be identical, by the MusicBrainz definition (so you don’t need to make new separate recordings). Remastering doesn’t mandate a new recording. These were made in the 1930s and 40s, so the mix is the same.
ok thank you! (i found a stub release with bad data out there too. i’m merging those releases/groups first, then will merge the recordings with the original. i had written on the comment that i expected to keep them separate, but based on your clarification, i’m happy to merge the recordings, as it will be easier )
The typography on the cover/spine/medium clearly credit this to an ‘artist’ of The Duke Ellington Small Bands. I didn’t scan the medium here but you can see it on the Discogs entry. There’s nothing printed that would support Duke Ellington as album artist, and yet The Duke Ellington Small Bands is kind of nonsensical.
Is this:
Back Room Romp by The Duke Ellington Small Bands (which isn’t a proper artist)?
The Duke Ellington Small Bands: Back Room Romp by Duke Ellington (which matches Discogs, but isn’t supported by release medium or printed matter)?
The Duke Ellington Small Bands: Back Room Romp by Various Artists (which may be technically accurate but very unsatisfying)?
The Duke Ellington Small Bands: Back Room Romp by The Duke Ellington Small Bands (which seems silly)?
None of these is appealing to me, so I cast myself at the mercy of the jury.
I think options 2 and 3 are viable ones. I agree that the ‘various artists’ is unsatisfying, so I would go with #2. I think it’s justifiable since Ellington is the common link among all the bands. There’s a reason why the guidelines are guidelines and not absolute rules.
Yes, the comparable Mosaic release just uses “Duke Ellington” as release artist. He plays piano on all the tracks and organized all the sessions and composed the Works
Why did you relink the recordings instead of just renaming? A simpler work flow would have been to rename the tracks, copy those names to the original recordings. And after that do a merge of all the recordings.
Yes, you will get orphans this way if anything is linked, i.e. a link to a work or AcoustId will keep the old recording around. What is worth doing at this stage is using the Mass Merge Recordings tool to merge the tracks that would be orphaned. Otherwise they get harder to go find and clean up.
Renaming? I didn’t think I could do that, since the point is that the artists changed; the tracks had been credited to Duke Ellington with recordings under his artist. For the most part, the track names were the same, it’s the artists that changed, and per the research that @riwood had graciously done, I knew what recordings these actually were.
If it’s the case that I can merge recordings across artists, please point me to something that describes that workflow and I’ll be happy to follow it next time I hit this, which I sincerely hope is never
It sounds like you know of a tool that will help clean up the old ones, and I’m happy to do that sooner rather than later.
Do you use scripts? The Mass Merge Recordings script from @jesus2099 can merge the recordings of two releases together.
In this case the Recordings will be merged. Keeping the artist names of the recording you target. This is about keeping the MBIDs as they will get redirected.
The more normal way of doing this is to edit the release, correct the artists on the track list. Then on the Recordings page tick the box to copy all the changes to those recordings. After that save the changes for the release. You’ve now corrected the artists on the recordings (or at least added to the edit queue). Then use the Mass Merge Recordings script to merge all the incorrectly named tracks into the correct older versions.
After a few days wait you then have an updated track list, pointing at the correct recordings, and all old MBIDs are pointing at that one set of recordings.
The point is you spotted an error, and correcting the track list you could have also corrected those recordings at the same time. These are the same recordings, just wrongly credited.
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