Where can I find more Benny Chong?

whistleman123

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Where can I find more Benny Chong recordings? I find a few youtube videos and that's about it! Does he have any albums? Or instructional/tabs/song books?
He's a monster and I'd like to hear and learn more!
 
I wish he would put some things out on Bandcamp or ITunes or something. From the very few things I've heard he is too good a player to be going almost unnoticed.
 
There are samples here: http://www.ukulelejazz.com/albums.html.

A lot of great albums from Hawaii based artists have gone out of print and fallen off the planet. There are several that I want that you just can't get unless you're lucky at the thrift store or you know somebody who can rip it for you.
 
And I, for one, would love to be able to see him play some day. When I was in Hawaii last summer, I saw postings on his Facebook page several times about his gig - the night before!
 
He just plated at a festival in Kakaako in Honolulu. Ohta-San was there also. I didn't see it but a friend told me it was great. I believe he spoke about his life in music and how there was a period where he wasn't playing and maybe that he had played guitar on the mainland with some big names. Musical master of mystery.
 
I just bought the two Cds he has recorded (of just his music), but it was from Mele.com and looking again at their site, I see they are out of stock. Kamaka may well have something that they don't list on their webpages.
 
A lot of great albums from Hawaii based artists have gone out of print and fallen off the planet.

this is something I don't understand now. I can understand not wanting to print albums or CDs that cost money and may have a small following. But it is pretty much free to post on Bandcamp and let folks pay to download. Why wouldn't artists or even record companies want to do that with their back catalog?

There was a blog I followed several years ago where this guy was making high quality recordings of out of print vinyl, never issued to CD, albums and posting MP3 files to his blog, mostly 60s and 70s jazz that I would never had heard of. Of course he got shut down when some record company found out about it and threatened legal action. Of course it was copyright violation but this was material that literally could not be bought anymore and thus could not generate income for the copyright holders. Why wouldn't they want to post that stuff for sale for essentially no cost, pure profit? Makes no sense.
 
this is something I don't understand now. I can understand not wanting to print albums or CDs that cost money and may have a small following. But it is pretty much free to post on Bandcamp and let folks pay to download. Why wouldn't artists or even record companies want to do that with their back catalog?

There was a blog I followed several years ago where this guy was making high quality recordings of out of print vinyl, never issued to CD, albums and posting MP3 files to his blog, mostly 60s and 70s jazz that I would never had heard of. Of course he got shut down when some record company found out about it and threatened legal action. Of course it was copyright violation but this was material that literally could not be bought anymore and thus could not generate income for the copyright holders. Why wouldn't they want to post that stuff for sale for essentially no cost, pure profit? Makes no sense.

I think for local Hawaiian artists it's because:

Most of these "lost" CDs were printed before MP3s were a "thing" and the original files were lost when the studio sold their ADATs and moved to Protools. So nobody even HAS the files, let alone could upload them to iTunes if they wanted to.

Situation B is like you said: it was an artist with a medium sized following. Big enough to warrant a CD back in the day on a small label (that has probably since gone under), but not big enough to keep printing extended runs once the heyday was over.

Just what I can surmise. We'll be able to buy Beatles records until the end of time because it's still making somebody a lot of money. Hawaiian musicians are usually broke to begin with.
 
Most of these "lost" CDs were printed before MP3s were a "thing" and the original files were lost when the studio sold their ADATs and moved to Protools. So nobody even HAS the files, let alone could upload them to iTunes if they wanted to.

My point is that if there is one extant CD available, it can be ripped to MP3 or even better a lossless format like FLAC or WAV and uploaded with practically zero loss of fidelity. If there is one extant vinyl copy, it can be recorded with a good quality turntable with some loss of fidelity but still very good and way better than falling off the planet as you say.
 
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