Gheorghe

oh, those strange album covers from Verve in the 50´s.... and the short and not very adecvat liner notes written by Granz himself I suppose. There is no artest named, but from the hat and the tenor saxophone I suppose it´s Lester Young

Yes, that may be the reason. Sure, I´m not stuck to "old school" bass players from the be bop days , though when listening to bop, I really love all of them , Gene Ramey, Tommy Potter, Curley Russell, Al McKibbon, and I think the first great bop solo on bass could be Ray Brown on "One Bass Hit", which is really great. And I grew up while Ron Carter and Buster Williams where top and I love them both, and many many others who play today. So I think it must have been painful to have such a great recording history and then it´s over. I´ve heard that Gene Ramey became some clerk at a bank office , but still played occasionally. Did Curley Russell also take a day job, because I think otherwise he couldn´t have survived ....? Great you did know him personally. Especially when I was a youngster and just had discovered bop because I had heard Mingus´ Parkeriana with Dolphy and wanted to know who is "this Charlie Parker" who had inspired Mingus.....sure....,.......I would have whished to get to talk about people who lived and worked during that time. And as busy as Curley Russell was, he might have had a lot to tell about all those nights at Birdland, at Royal Roost , about Bird, Bud, Fats, Dameron and all those who were dead when I started to listen to jazz. Thanks God other key figures like Diz, J.J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Dex, Max Roach, Klook were alive, recording and performing at that time

I don´t know how the situation is now, but during the 60´s there was a kind of people from intellectual or semi-intellectual level, who embraced everyting that´s "modern art". They had those modern paintings at home and went to concerts of 12 tone music and I sometimes wondered if they really can figure out what this modern painting want´s to say or what that 12 tone music want´s to express. My father, who sure was an intellectual person, he was interested in "difficult" classical music like Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler, read heavy stuff like Nietsche and played chess, once went to a concert of some 12 tone music, and while smoking a cigarette during intermission another gentleman who didn´t have the musical ears of my father said "gee, that´s wonderful (the "music"). My father answered: "I don´t know, since I don´t have musical ears". "Why ? You supposed to have musical ears" My father "I also thought I have, but now after listening to this I know I don´t have musical ears". And we didn´t have modern paintings at home. I have heard some - at least for me "atonal" sounding string quartet on Ornette Coleman´s "Prime Design - Time Design". The opening is wonderful with that theme that appears as "New York" on an earlier album "Ornette at 12", but after that I couldn´t figure out nothing until the end that again makes sense to me". I also have a strange Max Roach CD from the 80´s with a string quartet. Only Roach and strings. Well I thought, maybe it is like the "Double Quartet" which I dug, but it was completley abstract fiddlin´ and I listened to it one time and that it was.... And about painting, well I saw some strange OC painting on the cover of "Empty Foxhole" and can live without that painting, but the music is great. And there is a lot of Miles Davis painting from later years, but I can live without it but couldn´t live without the music of Miles....

Of course Erich Kleinschuster was a very important personality on our jazz scene here in Viena. He also had his radio program "Jazz with Erich Kleinschuster" and did a lot of teaching and was such a fantastic trombonist. He was originally from Graz, another town in Austria with some jazz history (Sonny Rollins-Max Roach in Graz, Coltrane 1962, Jimmie Giuffre 1961 and a lot of more, and an own jazz conservatory. He had his own sextet in the seventies/eighties, and I remember once he sat in with another great musician from the States, I don´t remember who, and called "Move" at a really fast tempo. I was a bit too young and shy then or didn´t feel "ready" so I had no musical encounter with him, sad.

You are right, I had read about that tax thing and I remember Woody Herman in 1985 looked very tired and maybe he also had some heart condition or breath shortness, he gasped for air after the short clarinet solo he played on a slow blues. Anyway there was an air of death since George Duvivier was scheduled for bass and I would have loved to see him, but he was nearly dead and had to be replaced. Later I heard that he died right around the same time, july 1985 I think...

Big Band was never my strongest point, but during my time, I mean my generation maybe the first choice was Thad Jones-Mel Lewis. I saw the Thad-Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band and it was a wonderful experience. After Thad Jones left, I saw it as "Mel Lewis Big Band" but maybe two good tunes from the old Thad Jones days were played, the rest was Bob Brookmey compositions and most of us were very disappointed, it didn´t appeal to our tastes.... Of course, I also saw and loved the Sun Ra Arkestra in the late 70´s still with John Gilmore and Marshall Allen featured, plus the very nice singer June Tyson (singers normally are not my greatest love, but Tyson was wonderful). Oh yeah, and I saw the Woody Herman Herd of 1979, with Nick Brignola playing, they played quite modern jazz. It was on a festival feature and others scheduled were Elvin Jones, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Chico Freeman, so I was not sure what it will be like. The typical pre bop swing bands was before my time and not really played during my youth, so I had expected an old man with some very old stuff you sometimes saw on old black white films, and was very surprisesd that it sounded modern....well Woody himself was really an old man, playing one or two short shots on his clarinet, but the band played a different style.....

I have read so much about that tour, I think mostly in some book about Chet Baker. The music must be great and it has a fantastic rhythm section. But I heard it was almost impossible to make it happen, because away from music they almost were fighting, I mean two live long junkies with bad temper, and though Chet was playing better than ever since his comeback and mostly over here in Europe, Stan Getz was the bigger name...

Amen to that. First of all I listen if the drummer is good. Only a very good drummer makes things happen. Yesterday I participated at a jam session and the first drummer who played was just mediocre and anyway left after one tune. Later in the evening the fanstastic drummer from the opening band got back on the drum chair and it was heaven on earth. Ellington and drums......I must admit I don´t have much Ellington on record. I love to play some of his ballads, but must admit I got to Ellington through the "Monk plays Ellington" so I have more the Monkish touch and voicings in those things. I further have Ellington-Mingus-Roach....... and I mean Roach. Best choice and like Mingus one of my all time favourites. On the other hand, the second Ellington I have is a Trane and Duke on Impulse, which my wife bought for me. Very nice on the tunes where Elvin Jones is on the drum chair. But there might be one or two tunes, where the use Elllington´s regular drummer, I forgot his name, but I didn´t like it. I mean he plays rhim-shots constantly behind an otherwise great Coltrane solo. Well Coltrane was such a genius that he didn´t let it bug him, but for a lesser musician it would have narrowed him down, and the drummer is supposed to push you to the highest inspirations......

Stolen Moments, well easy. I hadn´t known it until 1980 when I also played bass fiddle for some years as a second instrument and was invited for a gig with guys who were even younger than me (I was 21 at that time), and they had some sheet music of what they wanted to play and one of it was "Stolen Moments". Well, some medium hard bop in minor, if I remember. They had a lot of such tunes of safe medium hard bop, like "Moanin´" "Blues March", "In a Mellow Tone" and stuff like that. Easy to play and to solo, but it didn´t exite me really......

I don´t have very much big band stuff on records. But I saw Woody Herman 2 times live. The first occasion was in 1979 with the Herd, I think they had Nick Brignola on bs..., and exactly during that time the Concord-LP with star guests like Dizzy, Woody Shaw and Stan Getz was for sale. And this was the LP era. At least during the time I heard him. I later re-bought the album on CD. The only other Woody Herman on LP I have is "Bird and the Herd". The last time I saw Woody live was in 1985, but strangely it was not the Herd, it was a kind of all star thing in the "Concord-Style", I think Buddy Tate and Al Cohn were featured.

Oh, I didn´t know he had brought Alfred and Rudy together. Maybe, this is the reason why he got a record date on their label, though he was not up to the standard of other BN-recording saxophonists ? On the BN-Film he looks like a really rich man. I suppose, he made his money from other sources than playin music ?

I just read it. I always did like his bass-playing, he was really strong and is great even on the ultra-rapid speeds of Dizzy Atmosphere and Little Willie Leaps on that Night at Birdland 1950 with Bird-Fats-Bud-Blakey, or on the Blakey´s "A Night at Birdland" where he is very fine. Though he was not known for soloing much, his short solo-spots on Night in Tunisia, or on a minor blues on maybe his last recording 1957 with Cliff Jordan-John Gilmore are very nice and making the point. In Ira Gitler´s "Jazz Masters of the 40´s" Gitler writes, that in the sixties he played with hotel bands in those resorts of the borș-district in Upstate NY. Why had he stopped playing in jazz surroundings, was it the maybe better paid and safe jobs in hotel-bands ? Did he play until the end of his life, or what was his life about in later years ? I had heard that he was from the Bronx.....

It is "Blue Note - A Story of Modern Jazz" from 1997, that´s about the time I saw it and recorded it on VHS.

As I posted earlier, I saw him on the famous Blue Note Documentary film. I think to remember he was an older man, obviously quite rich, with a big cigar and in a fancy house. But then I hadn´t even heard his name, since he might not have been exactly on my main focus associated with BN (the classic hard-boppers and the modal into avantgarde stuff from the 60´s , and from the old times the classic bop sessions of Monk, Bud, Navarro....) So I was quite astonished to read about an album under his own name on that great Label, but I don´t know what Lion and Wolff had heard in him, since it doesn´t seem to fit to the music they recorded usually, it doesn´t have the "BN-magic" . So why was he chosen to be featured on that documentary film , since they got some really important artists like Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard or to a lesser amount Lou Donaldson talked about their time with BN. Well, others I seem were chosen because the more important figures were allready dead or not available for interviews. I remember a really old and dead-sick Tommy Turrentine was seen, I would have liked to see more music and less talking....

Maybe the Brew Moore thing might be interesting. I have a Brew Moore Steeplechase live from Montmatre from the mid 60´s, but I forgot the title, it is nice playing, maybe the piano-player was not exactly my taste as much as I remember, now again I have no idea who the piano player is on this, hope he swings better. Not that Brew Moore was such a giant, but he could hold his own even with fast company like Miles, Bird, Bud, Howard McGhee. He is cool.