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Sehr scheen 😂😂😂 ....

Crazy, last night I had a dream that I got a call to play with that Mingus Ghost Band !!!!!  Maybe because it was related to a thought I had those days to arrange Mingus´ piece "Three Worlds of Drums" for being played by my group. It would be natural, because Mingus rote this originally to be played by his own band which would have happened if Mingus would not have been struck by that disease that killed him.  I also heard that his band (Walrath, Ford, Neloms, Richmond and maybe Eddy Gomez replacing Mingus on bass) continued to perform at Vanguard, when Mingus couldlnt handle the bass anymore. And that they played "Three Worlds of Drums",  but it was never recorded. So I thought this might be interesting.  I hear Elvis Costello is or was a great number in UK in another kind of music genre. I don´t really know I only saw him once in a video sittin´ in with Chet Baker´s band, but don´t remember much about it, since I was concentrated only on the thinks the  Baker band played without guests. I think there was also a "Send in the Clowns" done by another great British singer, but while Elvis could do some American ballad singing astonishly well, that "Send in the Clowns" was just zero, really a mess........but it looked like the interpretist was very very drunk...... Oh I remember that and had it, but kinda sold it when money was scarce, ya know musicians, you posess some record for short time.  I think I remember "Chair in the Sky" was one of the things Joni Mitchell sang on that album "Mingus". It is possible it was composed by Mingus, one of those legendary very last compositions where he could not play even piano anymore and had to sing into a tape recorder. I think there was some contracts he had fulfilled composing that way. Incredible !  He was dead sick and still composed for the N.Y. Ballett "Pilobolus" and for an Argentian String Orchestra plus Jazz Quintet".......... incredible !  I have so many connections to Mingus´  music since he was my idol at a very early age, I even bought a bass because of him, I saw him live, he was there when it all started for me ! 

Now a bassist who was very much in action in the late 70´s here in Viena: His name is Bert Thompson and he was great. He played with Fritz Pauer, with Art Farmer, and with virtually all US stars who visited Viena.  I have heard that he originally was a US Soldier based in Germany and later moved to Olanda, where he also took a non musical job as translator or something like that.  Another great, Austrian bassist from the time of my youth was J.A. Rettenbacher, who even had played with Monk in Berlin. I think he lived in Germany and came back to Viena in the early 80s, but beside a short lived project that was named "So Near So Far" (like a tune from a Miles album) there was not much happening anymore. He was a regular at "Jazz-Spelunke", a joint in Viena where you met musicians, and could perform, but only until 10:00 pm since it was a house were other people lived in.  Another regular was his little brother Harry Rettenbacher, also a great bass player sometimes, but a tragedy since he had had a bad accident, lived in poverty and didn´t even have a bass anymore. He would come to my house I mean I took him to my house so he could play on my bass fiddle and to talk and drink. But he was too uneven or unrelieable for substantial gigs so eventually I lost contact. I only remember in his last years he was a kinda "story teller" in the bars, cadging drinks from regulars......  .  For german reading folks: His greeting for me was "Gerhard, host aan zwanz´ga ? (Gehard, hast Du 20 Schilling für mich) and I would give him 20 Shillings.  But once I came in and before he would ask me I would say "Rettenbacher, host aan zwanzga für mi´? And belive it ore not, he GAVE me 20 schillings !!!!! 

Beautiful Cover Art for sure ....

I think I know him mostly from his bass parts on Bud Powell Volume 2 and maybe on some Verve or Victor also from the 50´s. He was a very good bassist. I saw him also on video on a thing that was called Dizzy Gillespie Dream Band from the 80´s with an All Star Big Band and an All Star Quintet.  My hope to see him live was not fulfilled: He was scheduled to be with Woody Herman in an All Star small group also in the mid 80´s, but in the last minute he had been replaced by an unkown young bassist, who was very good, but he was not George Duvivier. I remember that concert very well because it had Al Cohn AND Buddy Tate on tenor and Woody himself played some fine clarinet and even some vocal...... the last time I saw Woody Herman...... I don´t remember to have seen Duvivier´s name on later jazz albums from the 60´s or 70´s . Maybe it was the times changing. Like the way Paul Chambers slowly disappeared from being the most recorded bassist, when other bass greats like Ron Carter, Richard Davis and Jimmy Garrison took that role.......