Longest career

Having done a certain amount of work (the easy part, bgz took on the hard work in the first place) in getting a significant amount of Steve Lacy's output onto the database, I see that his first album (at least, on the DB - I think that was his first recording) was 1954, and the latest one (again, on the DB) was 2000. I gather he died soon after.

That makes a productive and prolific career of (counts on fingers) 46 years. Putting this in perspective, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr need to release something in 2008, and the Rolling Stones something in 2009, to equal that.

I haven't a clue whether Lacy has the longest career in the db, I haven't gone anywhere near looking for it - but it must be pretty close.

So, the question is: who's had the longest career? This could be taken in two ways: the longest career of an artist, and the longest career for a band (and I reckon the Rolling Stones are looking good for that one).

Of course one has to eliminate the existence of compilations (but as there's a flag for that, this should be straightforward to do).

Well, the Steve Lacy Three album from 2000 is actually a reissue of a 1981 album credited just to Lacy. And the Steve Lacy Trio album from 1999 is a live recording from 1997. So I think that would take a few years off his career as it's represented in the db. Still, 43 years is pretty impressive...

Then again, we've got albums featuring Paul Motian from 1957 to 2003, and he's still going strong!

Make that 2004, now that the Marilyn Crispell Trio has been added. So we're up to 47 years for Motian.