Gheorghe

oh, I personally have not heard about them, but sharp players are all around the world, great !

Didn´t he play with a Chick Corea acoustic quartet ? I remember I was in Italy once in the mid 80´s with a gal and there was a beach bar and the boys who worked there listened to a then brand new album and when I asked them what it is they said it´s Chick Corea with Rand Brecker, I don´t remember the bass and the drums but it was topnotch players and I just stayed with them boys to listen to it and "forgot" about the girl who went back to our place on the beach until I finally came back to her 😀 And: Highly recommended: The two last Mingus albums on which he himself didn´t play bass "Me Myself and I" and "Somethin´ like a Bird". Great Randy Brecker on those two !!!!!

I don´t usually listen to that kind of jazz but "Stompin´at the Savoy" is a tune I always did like, you really can do still a lotta things with that fine tune in that beautiful key of D flat. If Oscar doesn´t overdo this one I mean if he plays at least a bit more sparce (like he would on some records like "Night Train" or on that Pablo think with Lockjaw Davis, I think it could sound nice....... I seems there is not many bari players around here since I must admit I never played with one. But who is the players here ? There was really a good conclave of bari on Mingus´ "Something like a Bird" where you have them great players Pepper Adams, Ronny Cuber, and who knows else, and the really flippin´ on there chorusses and taking 16´s , 8´s , 4´s , there is no better bari battle I have ever heard. But who is on this one ?

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 ! I think when I started to "study" jazz, Tina Brooks still was alive but probably a "Forgotten Man". So I heard his name only when during a time I was inactive I heard about all those BN reissues and this one I purchased. Very very nice hard bop album in the way some others was like "Soul Station" by Hank, and so on.....

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 !!!!!

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.......

Hi Emil: Da BIN ich durch. Waisting time was that, but okay I was sick, but such situations didn´t help much😃

Well I don´t really buy much records, I think I didn´t buy those you mentioned because I was afraid it will be too much NHOP, I think I picked up the "Bitin the Apple" because it had other players, and Shepp playing Bird tunes I have one that is made in France in the late 70´s with one piano player I love very much: Siegfried Kessler, plus Bob Cunningham and Clifford Jarvis, I think I bought it then because it has the same personnel like the date Shepp played at "Kongresshaus", it was also them four. I love the way he plays "Parker´s Mood" and "Au Privave", that´s first rate modern bop...... About buying records I concentrate now on fellow musicians, I wanna here what they do on ther own albums, and I wanna give em support buying them their records....thats some hot stuff they do.

Is "Ain´t no sunshine" such a simple stuff with chord vamps in e minor and some "lyrics" that always goes "I know I know I know......." ? I have terrible memories about that. It was in my "un years" where due to some issues I was largly unable to play in public and when I finally decided to lead a jam session in a 2nd or 3rd class joint with a shit box of a piano we tried to settle an evening program and had a fair 1 set with some good jazz standards but the jam after intermission was a mess, a weak hornplayer, a good but too overwhelming guitarist and then there was a male vocalist and he called something with "Sunshine", but not "You´re my sunshine" or "You are the sunshine of my live" where you still could manage to play some stuff out of it, so it was that quite monotonous e-minor thing with that "I know I know I know" and the guitar player turned on the heat and played them one chord two chord vamps and the only right thing is that I stood up, left the stage and went out into the night to lit a cigarrette until they would be done ......

I don´t have this one, but I have some Steeplechase of Dex, some with Tete Montoliu, and my favourite is those two albums with Jackie McLean (The Meeting, The Source). But tastes are different and especially on those later Steeplechases I just can´t stand him anymore. Too many solos, and quite a lot of clichés , all them double grips with glissando, well and all those years with Oscar Peterson, well I prefer other European Bass players, Pierre Michelot, Günther Lenz from Germany is great, Peter Trunk when he was alive, or the legendary John Heart or so from UK . I think I have one more Steeplechase of Dex but exactly because NHOP is NOT on it. It´s one that has Sam Jones on bass and Al Foster on drums, so that´s the musicians I really like.....

I like Wilbur Ware as a group player, but on one 5 CD set of Clifford Jordan Strata East recordings (which I actually bought for the "Rhythm X" which was one of my favourite in my early youth, I had it on cassette then), well the Wilbur Ware solo CD on it, that´s a bit too much for me. And I think in 1968 Wilbur Ware was already towards the end of his career. My favourite underrated bass players when I had discovered bop (AFTER "free" I must admit), was Tommy Potter and Curley Russell. They the unsung heros of all those murder sessions with up tempo stuff, when there still was no amps and pickups for the bass fiddle. And it´s interesting that they could also play solo very well, only there was no space for much solo then. But Potter could play wonderful bass solos, and Russell the same, both were very very good bassists. In my youth there was a great bass player around, who played with Joe Henderson. His name was Ratso Harris I think, a helluva player.

I also have this, I had bought it after I had heard about Tatum thru Jakey Byard and Don Pullen, the only pianists I knew then. It´s wonderful, maybe then at first listening it was a bit hard for me (bad piano, unusual for me a solo piano no bassist, no drummer no horns), but it HAD something. I remember that version of "Begin the Beguine". Then I didn´t like that tune in general, I associated it with old people, but that intro with a light spanish tinge in it was really sharp, and how he goes into stride in the course of the tune. It´s so great that Woody´s son publishes so many live dates of his father. I don´t have this one , but I have Bremen or so, maybe on other from Elveția, but with another pianist....

Not obscure but underrated : Herbie Lewis ! I love him, he appears on many live dates and recordings sessions but seems to be more a musician´s musician. But I say it was love from first hearing: Saw him with an ultimate Dream Band of Jackie McLean, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Lewis, Billy Higgins and his solo on the first tune "Blue´n Boogie" was a highlight of special quality. I love his sound and his touch of the strings, to hear him pluggin´the bass.....

could not edit the foto, not related to my answer: Sun Ra 1976-77 sounds good, that´s when I also heard him first,

From what year is this? I got acquainted with the music of Sun Ra very early, let´s say even before I knew much about earlier jazz stiles like bop. It was there, it was happenin, and my first Sun Ra album was the ESP "Nothing Is" that I got second hand from a girl who emegrated to Brazilia. Sun Ra and a lotta other stuff that´s hot, like early electric Miles, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and so on, that was my start for jazz. I heard Sun Ra live in the late 70´s until around 80 with Gilmore and Allen in the band and June Tyson singin´. That´s where I first heard older jazz forms like Fletcher Henderson´s "Yeah Man" or similar stuff, as well as the more usual space age free jazz and space chants.....