ERNEST HOGAN - ragtime

Finding out about ENEST HOGAN as the first true creator of ragtime leads me to ask you all a serious question about the limitations of this site. It seems that although HOGAN was indeed the first to publish rags in the 1800s, he unfortunately was before the days of recording technology. 

Is it possible to add an artist with just singles? Maybe it could be done by creating a page and adding the published singles even though they were only sold as sheet music. Just seems a shame that the site has to be limited to the format that was created for PA when jazz has a longer history before, during and after the actually recording process. If nothing else i guess it's time for someone to make an album for Hogan, Gilmore and the gazillions others who have fallen in the cracks of time. Otherwise how about just adding one dummy album and stating in the bio that the album doesn't exist and only serves the purpose of allowing the page to exist due to site constraints. Just a few ideas. Understand if they don't go anywhere 

Also i see the Scott Joplin Elite Syncapations album i just reviewed says 1974 here. It says 1987 on my CD and pretty much every other source i can find on the web

siLLy puPPy wrote: Also i see the Scott Joplin Elite Syncapations album i just reviewed says 1974 here. It says 1987 on my CD and pretty much every other source i can find on the web

yeh, we always state the date of first release as album's release date (at least when it's possible to find it)

in case of Joplin's compilation, it was vinyl LP of 1974 later re-issued on CD

http://www.discogs.com/Scott-Joplin-Elite-Syncopations/release/2525718

In jazz, CD reissues very often contain bonuses. Since physical vinyl album's space is only up to 50 min (for more modern vinyl releases, for older - really shorter) and CD physical space is 80 min, it's quite usual that re-releasing vinyl album in CD format labels try to use free empty space for making  reissue more attractive. Tracks order differs from original too quite often, one reason is when CD contains more previously unissued tracks from same session as on original vinyl, it's popular to place them in original order (as they were recorded, especially on live albums). The other reason of changing tracks order on later reissues is this trick (in combination with added bonuses) makes each reissue more different from original what means it has more chances to be sold as "new" album.

In all cases, there are at least two responsible sources if you want to find out what is the date of original (first) release  - check the info on discogs.com and rate your music(RYM). Never trust allmusic.com and even less - amazon and similar commercial sites.

I check as rule both discogs(first) and RYM (second), in case if them both show same data it usually means that it's 90% reliable.

discogs are more reliable as rule, but they are not all that complete, so sometimes you can find on RYM what isn't presented on discogs and v v.

surprisingly enough, allmusic are most complete of all three (and speaking universally in many cases most complete at all), the problem with them is AM don't care much about original releases, they regularly add reissues as first original releases (using reissue alternate cover art, reissue release date and reissue track list(often with bonuses) instead of original one) without even mention it. And at the same time in some cases they mix it with true original albums data, as a result they are great source when you need to find maximum possible releases for one or another artist, but in all musicological data they are real mess.

In all, combination of three, plus specialized sites for some artists give quite reliable info. One more way to check how good is your data is just searching the album on ebay sales: some sellers are great enough adding full hi-res cover art (incl. back side) where you can find original data right from original source. This way is good for some extremely rare releases if there are no data on discogs or RYM at all.

quite time-consuming work though

A dizzifying explanation! You are an admirable researcher with sights only on the highest quality