Re: [mb-users] Artist vs. Artist and His Orchestra

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 11:32 PM, Brian Schweitzer <
[email protected]> wrote:

>
> I think it's a side issue to that question.  It addresses how to get
> "Artist & His Orchestra" releases to list on "Artist"'s page (as well as
> the pages for the members of that orchestra).
>
> With specific regard to merging, I'd repeat my objection to doing that.
>  "Artist & His Orchestra" is not the same thing as "Artist".  This I would
> think a similar situation to the (very obscure/unknown guideline here) Band
> With Main Performer Name guideline [1] - think of Marilyn Manson the
> person, vs Marilyn Manson the group.  We keep those separate for good
> reasons; I think we should keep these separate for the same reasons.
>

> We have two apparently different types of artists here.  The first is
> artists whose name looks like a collab, but where that actually is the
> group's name.
> Examples:
> a) "Bob Marley & the Wailers" - there was no "the Wailers" at that time;
> the band was "Bob Marley & the Wailers", and included Bob as a member.
> b) "Davy Jones & The Lower Third" - again, there was no "The Lower
> Third"; David Robert Jones (aka David Bowie, aka Davy Jones) was 'merely'
> a member, not a collaborator with some separate group.
> There's other examples in the mentioned
> http://musicbrainz.org/tag/do%20not%20split/artist
>
> Second, there's the "Tom Foo & His GroupType" artists.  I'd suggest that
> these really are the same as those mentioned above, except that it's easier
> to see that "His Orchestra" isn't a standalone group, compared with
> something like "The Lower Third".
>
> Personally, I think the best solution at the moment is to keep these
> separate, and as "group" type, with some notation such as that specific tag
> to indicate that this is not an artist which would be proper to split.  The
> only difficulty would be the mentioned "not showing those releases on the
> person artist's page issue, and there I think we'd have to ask for server
> support.  But even without that server support happening immediately, I
> think that's the more correct and more flexible solution, vs just merging
> and creating all those accompanying problems/limitations/erronious data.
>

"Artist & His Orchestra" as it pertains to the example that started all
this (Percy Faith) is essentially the same thing as "Artist".  Any
orchestra that played with him became "His Orchestra" -- a shorter and more
poetic way to say "Artist... but it's orchestral music, not just some
schmuck banging out love songs on a piano or something." It's not possible
to keep them separated because they're used so completely interchangeably,
even within the same release:
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=1557192 -- and on reissues:
http://www.amazon.com/Percy-Faith-Subways-Sleeping-Waltz/dp/B000066JEB .
And from a cursory glance, Faith wasn't the only one for whom the
distinction was treated haphazardly:
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=2025132
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=1377545
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=3786353

It seems like between the 50s and 70s, this was somewhat common practice:
"and His Orchestra" or "and His Orchestra and Chorus" were appended to the
artist name primarily as a method of describing the kind of music the
release contained, rather than a way of giving credit to the ensemble.
That's not to say this is *always* the case; there were definitely
ensembles (mostly Jazz) that had distinct and somewhat fixed members, but
those were usually of the "Artist's Quintet" variety, with the players
credited by name on the album, rather than "Artist and His Orchestra",
where the orchestra musicians remain anonymous.  In this case, artist
credits seem to me like the most appropriate way to handle these releases,
with AR credits on releases for the rare instances where the orchestra's
musicians are actually credited and known.  We shouldn't try to apply the
same one-size-fits-all guideline to "Artist and His Orchestra" that we
would to "Artist and the Band" or "Artist and Artist".

--Torc.

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