Gheorghe

Fast company. Will there be a live video as there have been some with Big George at Smalls ?

Hallo Jack, thank you for your worthful input. I had wondered where you have been. Lookin´ forward for further exchanges of thoughts and experiences again like we did before I couldn´t find you again.

Great book I have read it in February-March and it brings memories back to great evenings I witnessed. Strange that even in the 90´s and later there still was so many folks who bemoaned that he doesn´t play like in the 50´s . Really scary, I mean I genius makes and creates music all his live long and people stick to "the 50´s". But one thing I also didn´t understand. All that yoga or zen stuff or how you call it. I don´t know nuthin´ about it, but great if he dug it, but I can´t understand that he states that it has also to do with the American Songbook, what has bein happy or sad or fallin in love or fallin out of love or selling a cottage when dreams didn´t come true, what has this to do with meditation ? Sure, he must know it, he knows everything....

The only ones I know or knew was Tony Williams (anyway a favourite of mine since I was a boy), Sun Ra (same key experience), Joe Henderson (also from first hearing for forever) but don´t know who is a Mo Kofmann, Looes Tubes. It has also been quite a time since I heard Herbie. Well in 1974 or so we all listened to Headhunters, and later I had all them V.S.O.P albums that´s some stuff (Headhunters as well as V.S.O.P) that I stilll can listen to and get a kick out of it..... John Lewis.........it took me until I was in my mid/late forties that I began to dig the MJQ. I was not "prepared" for it when it existed, maybe to much Sun Ra, Pharoah, Ornette, Mingus, electric Miles - fed to enjoy that more quiet chamber jazz.....

Mercury is a forrunner of Verve ? I never was clear about it, it seems it was like that as Bird on some live performances while talking to the MC mentions the "Mercury Label". And those string stuff was on Verve. I remember very well I was at Saturn in Cologna in the late 70´s . Found a lotta stuff I didn´t find in Viena. Japanese pressings of Verve.....well I think I had the Bird on Verve albums, all those "Strings" Cole Porter Songbooks, and South of the Border stuff as I remember, and I think the Bud Powell albums, all those "The Lonely One", "Blues in the Closet" also was japanese pressing......I don´t listen to them anymore, get no thrill out of ´em.

I still have quite a few Horace Silver Albums. One that has "No Smokin´" on it, than the one with the Jazz Messengers, than those Further Explorations , and the one with "Strollin´", mostly because it´s tunes I perform. I think, as the 60´s went on, I lost the trace, Cap Verdean Blues or what it is, is nice. I think there is also a live album "Village Gate" with some great tunes......

How is it ? I think the only solo Monk albums I have is something from Londra 1971 and one from San Francisco in the 50´s. The Londra album is great, the San Francisco has a bit a hesitate playing, I like the solo more with that Monkish stride. I might have seen the cover of your album in some books, but you know all those CBS recordings went so quickly OOP.

Wonderful ! Man, I didn´t know that record, sounds much better than any other early Chet Baker. I was astonished to hear that his sound is so similar to the sound of the trumpet player who´s in my band. About the bridge: It´s funny, it was my trumpet player who told me there is originally another bridge. But until he had mentioned it to me, the only version of that song I have heard in my live was the Miles version on Blue Haze. But really, I think if all Chet Baker records before the late 70´s would have sounded like this, I might have had some of them. So the only Baker I know is from 1978 on, when I loved him and heard him very often until very short before his death. Well, bridges with the fourth up is not unusual in jazz. I first of all think about "Good Bait", and "Nutty" , and yeah "What´s New"......

Thank you guys, It really had scared me but now it is ok I hadn´t known this, you know, always music music, and otherwise blinders like a horse...

Those two volumes are my favourite Jimmy Smith. I´m not really a trio listener, so I like more the albums with horns, and here I find my favourites plus Art Blakey.

It really is. I saw him with Kirk Lightsey in ianuarie at Porgy´s , together with Paul Zauner. Anyway the record is on Paul´s label PAO records. Had a long conversation with Kirk after the gig, wonderful musician and wonderful man....

Hello Friends ! My favourite drummer here in Austria ist the great Dusan Novakov. Reading on Wikipedia with whom he played reads like a Who is Who dictionary. I love him, he thrills me, he is a very special friend and........last not least, my own drummer since last autumn. Some month ago he gave me his CD from the PAO Label : "Tales" is a wonderful album with some of my favourite tunes, stuff like a very remarcable "Fables of Faubus", some Wayne Shorter tunes, the rare "The Best Thing For You", a stunning "Embraceable You" and the musicians envolved in that projekt also include the great Kirk Lightsey, who is on three tunes of the album.

Sure, Doug Watkins was solid, but I heard much more bass virtuose solo from Chambers, who could play horn-like solos and he was my first idol when I started to play some bass, 50+some years ago..... My first Doug Watkins hearing was on some Coltrane recordings with Wilbur Harden and when it comes to the bass solo spot, he just walked on like comping, didn´t play a "solo" so I was a bit disappointed. But let´s say, I might see it else now.

I loved him and I think the Montmatre Collection ,I mean that Dexter Gordon album with that faster version of Like Someone in Love, is my favourite Dexter recording, BECAUSE of Tootie !!! Sorry I never heard the Heath Brothers.....

Dear friends, I´m back after 17 days in Dominican Republic, and since I don´t post only from at home, but also from another place (other e-mail-adress) I always could log in with my nick and my password, and now the system want´s my mai adress and my password, I don´t understand that, how can I do log in as usual from any PC ?

Oh so sorry, I had wonderful conversations with him.

Always love to hear Bud playing Round Midnight, mostly at Birdland on the CBS recordings "One Night at Birdland" and "Summit Meeting at Birdland", And a fantastic trio version is on the ESP record "At Blue Note Café" in Paris. And one of the most moving performances is I think on a Danish video, fantastic version, and Bud seems to flirt with a young girl in the audience while playing it....

Funny, I would have said the same. I bought them both in the late 70´s at the old "Radio Kratz" on Maria Hilfer Strasse , and still love them most.

"better with horns" camp......sounds interesting. then I also might have been fallen into that camp, as early as I have been listening to jazz. My first records were Miles Quintet and Mingus Quintet and the first pianists I liked were Garland in the Davis band and Byard in the Mingus band. Even the first Bud I ever heard was with Bird and Fats so it´s natural that I miss something if there is no horns. Chances to hear OP with horns exist mostly from the Pablo Years, I have that Eddie Lockjaw disc with OP, well I also have Jaws with Tommy Flanagan and it´s natural that I like it more with Flanagan. Erol Garner I heard also first with a horn, no one less than Bird when I first heard "Cool Blues", and I have one Erol Garner album "Up in Errolls Room" which has a pick up horn section. Also most Bud Powell I have is with horns : Blue Note with Fats and Rollins, and one with Curtis Fuller, and one with Dexter Gordon, one with Blakeys Messengers, one with Hawk, with Griff I think, with Don Byas that´s what I think I have.....

Well, maybe some analysis of mine is too critical, but that´s because I admire Bud Powell so much and took the best from him to learn something about the piano and still do. It also has to do with my listening habits. I can´t just listen to some good piano lines and blend out the rest, I mean it doesn´t need to have good sound quality since I´m not an audiophile and after 50years of playing on stage my hearing is quite f....ed up. But what I need is a good performance or session where all the others involved contribute to the music: In a trio the drummer and a good bass player, in group performances .....well I like them most..... Starting from the very very first moment I heard Bud at the piano (the Birdland 1950 stuff with Bird and Fats, Curley Russell and Art Blakey), I got my standards to reach that level I hear on that recording, technically and musically. So, if you ask me about post 1958 recordings......let me see: 1959 with Art Blakey´s jazz messengers ! 1960 Essen Festival, trio and quartet with Hawk. A trio performance with Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clark at Blue Note Café Paris, with very good drumming Sideman performance with Dexter Gordon in Paris, Tribute to Cannonball with Don Byas, to a lesser amount "Blues for Bouffemont", Bud still has something to say, but is a bit slowed down, but good Art Taylor.

I would like Bud Plays Bird, it has some great moments, but there is two things that I had observed. First of all, there is some tunes Bud never played, and it seems that the label had given him sheets for Bb-instruments, which is especially true on typical Bb tunes, if Bud plays them in C. Though there are great moments, it does not really catch the spirit of Bird or of Bop in general. Art Taylor seems to be on autopilot, you don´t hear interesting drum patterns, and even if the bass is ok, if a drummer is not doin his stuff, there aint much left for me to listen..... Another point: Did you hear the Bud album where at least a half album ist done with Curtis Fuller ? I like the Fuller tracks very much, but almost hate the side with the trio tracks only. It´s really some boring stuff, a slow blues but not as strong as another blues on another album, some workman type medium tempo stuff, where Bud completly f...cks up the bass solos by Paul Chambers. You can comp a bit for the bassist when he soloes, but here it sounds like Bud want´s to destroy Paul Chambers´ solos. And the worst thing is a faster tune based on "Strike Up the Band".....but it is not even a tune, it is just runnin´ on that changes without any theme and it´s a wild cacophony, since nothing seems to work out ......

Very interesting to read about the listening preferences in your country. Yes, I can imagine it sold well in Japan, I have heard there were tea houses where they spinned a lot of hard bop, things like "Cool Struttin" by Sonny Clark and "Blues Walk" by Lou Donaldson were big hits in your country and "Cleopatra´s Dream" is a similar thing. Toshiko Akioshi is a top musician and we musicians have another situation like the avarage listener. We have learned a great deal of our knowledge about bop by listening to let´s say Bud Powell, but never had the ambition to collect each record and at least for a musician "Cleopatra´s Dream" does not offer much to do, it´s just a repeated phrase and the bridge does not offer much variation, so if we might play it with horns , with a good drummer and so on, we can "swing it" but there is very very little space to create something out of it. Same with "Danceland" or "Duid Deed" or what they are called. There is also an F-minor tune at up tempo, but it´s the same changes like Dizzy´s "Be Bop" and you can do much more with Dizzy´s tune with that tricky intro and so on, and as rhythmic pattern for drummers, than the more simple tune on "The Scene Changes". A pro pos: That title tune is quite weak, it is a bop tune in E-flat but only a far cry from "Wail". If I wanna play a Bud tune in E-flat we gonna play "Wail". The RCA records.----- well I never heard the Lullaby to a Beliver. I heard the happy stride tune on "Scene Changes" but it´s only an 8 bar pattern, repeated ad infinitum. Hear Bud doin´stride on "Nice Work" or on "Thou Swell and so on" or on some Monk tune, much better. I don´t know so much about Bud´s every day live, but at least from what I read in Peter Pullmann´s book the late 50´s was a very unhappy period for him. Hard to get gigs, after the "Birdland ´56" tour ended, he tried to sit in with Lester Young but it was not very successful, and there was very little occasions to perform in night clubs and if he did, I think he didn´t see a Cent, everything was "administrated" by Goodstein or later by Buttercup. He was not a free man.

I don´t know what reissue mine was, I had bought it in FL in 1999 at some shopping mall in Miami. I don´t think it was a RVG, it was older, but a CD and sounded fine. But more important for me is the music itself. I knew a guy who always did spin "Sidewinder" which I never did like as much as "Search for a New Land".... I consider it on a much higher musical level than "Sidewinder", which somehow bored me a little.....

"Shape of Jazz To Come" ......this is the one that has "Lonely Woman", is it ? That tune was the absolut favourite of my mother in her very last years, she died only a month short of her 102nd Birthday last year. She loved that tune and at least in her mid to late 90´s she still was movin around and loved a little wooden bench near a brook and told me "tell them burgermasters or who it is, to name that bench officially "Ornette Coleman Bench"..... My own experience with Ornette Coleman had started with "Empty Foxhole" and "Crisis" in the early 70s. When I finally found "Jazz to Come'" it sounded more like a straight ahead thing and I didn´t understand why critics or publics called that "Free Jazz" which it definitly isn´t . I was very open for Free Jazz from the very start of my listening to jazz......

The "Scene Changes" is at least for me a bit of a strange album, it has a very narrow range of moods, most tunes are medium tempo minor tunes, very similar to the style of Sonny Clark. And though Art Taylor could play very fine drums, he is pure and simple too subdued for my taste here. It sounds like a monotonic, quite metronomic brushing, there could have been done much more rhythmically, and that´s the quintessence of bop or hard bop. Bud Powell in Paris has a good drum sound, but a drummer who just doesn´t fit to Bud. It should be Kenny Clark who also lived in Paris, but Kansas Field is not really a drummer who fits to the bop tunes. I think the best tunes on this are "Little Benny" which actually is "Crazeology", and "Reets and I", and "Jordu", but on "Dear Old Stockholm" he busted the form, on "Parisian Thoroughfare" he is not really in demand. The two ballads are very fine !