Gheorghe

New Years Eve/Revelion will be a challenge for us. We don´t drink and looked for some "Kindersekt" for opening it at "ora 12:00", but the only brand here is something with sweet cherry aroma ... I suggested "San Bitter" but my wife doesn´t like it. But it doesn´t matter . What count´s is a happy , succesful and healthy New Year which I wish all of you .

Though the electric jazz , jazz rock was the style of the 70´s I had less access to Weather Report than I would have had to Headhunters, RTF, electric Miles . I don´t know what the reason was or is.....

Finally I had the time to listen to this. Never heard it before. That´s really a great thing Al Haig does. Too bad he died when he was only 60 years old. He could have had a great career as one of the surviving bop musicians. Al Haig, as I consider, had a rough start. He played with Bird and Diz as early as 1945. During that time his piano playing sounds "stiff" in a way. At that point it still didn´t sound like bop. But in 1948, 49, playing with Bird at the Roost and recording with Wardell Gray, he really had it all together and was the best pianist next to Bud, I mean at his own, not really copying Bud. I always think about this when I remember how I started to play. My first attempts to play "bop" sounded like a cross between the early Haig and maybe Sadik Hakim on those 1945 Savoy recordings..... when I heard it back on tape I was puzzled it sounds so "stiff and edgy" and doesn´t flow. It also took me years to get that edge off..... And don´t forget: In an 1964 interview in Paris, while recovering from TB, Bud stated, that Al Haig is his idea of a perfect pianist". Back to Dizzy: Yes, I also found an urge to get the later Diz-material for stage performance. All guys play "Tunisia" and so on, but nobody plays "And Then She Stopped" or "Fiesta Mojo" ...

The strange thing is I didn´t see Joe Henderson live in the 80´s. I saw him twice, in 1978 and 1979. Archie Shepp, whom I have seen first in 1979, I saw a year later in 1980 with a quartet with Ken Werner, Santi Dedriano and Joe Betsch. I didn´t see him together with Horace Parlan, but saw Horace Parlan in 1983. I took a girl to the gig and we were in the first row and at some point, Mr. Parlan looked at us and said "and now..... Like Someone in Love" ....... I have not seen the Art Ensemble, but I think I saw some of there musicians around Chico Freeman, Don Moye was on drums and Malachi Favours on bass....., but that must have been in 1979.

I was lucky I saw quite some of those from your list performing live: Sonny Rollins (oh boy, he was 49 when I saw him) Lou Donaldson (the last time I saw him he was 87 ) Benny Golson on several occasions when he was in his early 70´s Roy Haynes when he was about 80 Marshall Allen when he was 95 and looked much younger. But sorry to say I never saw Kenny Burrell live. It seems he didn´t tour that much in Europe/Austria..... I saw Dick Hyman only on the Charlie Parker Dizzy Gillespie film "Hot House", but some idiots filmed only his hands, so you can´t see him playing.

Yes, I noticed that in the early bands. When I was just a starter to dig into so called "Free Jazz" I was quite astonished that even on the Atlantic Album "Free Jazz" with the double quartet there is mostly walking bass. But soon I could purchase the two Impulse albums "Crisis" and "Ornette at 12" and they are much more advanced, they have a more "free" approach. And this was in the late 60´s.

Yes, maybe it wouldn´t be my first choice. Don´t misunderstand me, I don´t want to appear "dumb" if I wouldn´t read WHY jazz happened, I´m very busy to hear it, enjoy it study it and play it. Other things....I have enough stuff to figure out in professional live and as older and more experienced you get you have to keep up with it and study what you become involved with. So if I read a book about music or musicians I want to keep it in that manner. Even the much discussed Peter Pullman book about Bud has a bit too much about all his times at pshihic wards with medical records and all that. Its a quite complete documentary about his live and his efforts to meet people who knew him and are still alive, is great. But it could be a bit more analysis of his music. If not in a manner as exact like the Fats Navarro book, which in large termes might be too complete for music lovers and listeners, but at least more about his playing in different periods, that might be interesting. How his chord progressions became more interesting, and his touch at playing let´s say Ballads became more profund.....

Yes this are the two versions of the tune I have on record....

Was he the composer of that fine bossa tune I heard on a Freddie Hubbard album, maybe also on a Messengers Album with Freddie in the group ? I remember that even my wife liked the "feeling of the tune" , but I was quite astonished it´s not a brazilian composer.... But most of all, how Freddie and Lee Morgan cooked on that tune, which sounds like some palm beaches , sun, holiday resort and relaxin at the pool.... that happy feeling of summer vacation...

so my onomatopoetic name "Dinger Ringer Boom" must have been a further developement from the onomatopoetic name given to it by British colonists....

looks like "The Evil Prince of Darkness", could be a Miles cover like Tutu or how they were....

I can understand that very well, with "readers´ preferences and expectations..... I also have books that are too much for me. Especially if it´s more about social aspects and very little about the music or the live of the artists. I think I have two of them , one is about Mingus and is titled "The Angry Baron" I think but I tried to read it and gave up. Same with a book about Bud Powell, I forgot the author, but there is mostly social studies about population during that generation and so....

Yes, I can imagine that, I mean Rollins praising Tracey. About Griffin, yeah those Five Spot discs are fantastic, but later I read "The Little Giant" , the bio about Griff written by Mike Hennesey and Griff is quoted that as much as he loves Monk and loved to play with Monk he sometimes was not pleased with Monk´s comping and was best when Monk layed out during Griffin´s solo, which Monk anyway did often (doing his little dances).... But we must think about one point: If a pianist has a certain style (Tracey being Monkish), this is mighty fine, but on the other hand if you are a "houses pianist" at a club and have to play with different artists, among them Stan Getz for example), you must support them, not try to force them to go into another direction. I say this because at the very beginning I made the same mistake, until a name musician told me about it, that I might work on it and this was one of the greatest lessons I got. We in Vienna had a wonderful pianist and teacher, his name was Fritz Pauer and many readers might have heard about him or even have some record of him, maybe his famous "Blues Inside Out" with Jimmy Woode and Tony Inzalaco....... well Fritz Pauer could play any style !!!! I heard him with dozens of musicians. He could play in a more mellow mood for players like Eddy Lockjaw Davis, Harry Sweets Edison, in a more Bud Powell manner with Griffin, Sonny Stitt or Cecil Payne, he was great in modal a la McCoy Tyner for Dave Liebman , and so on ....... ad infinitum. And he was perfect on stride and he was as near to Monk as you can get (he even wrote a very fine medium tune "Spelunke" that sounds exactly like Monk, without copying him. I was there when he introduced it to the audience..... All musicians loved him and enjoyed to play with him.

oh yeah, "Hannibal Books" in Vienna ..... I know they translated a lot of stuff, but I already had the original editions in english. I can understand your point about some rougher reading for non-musicians. It can be vice versa also: I have some individual biographies in German , I think it was "Oreos Press" like let´s say "Dizzy Gillespie-His Live, His Music, His Records" or same with Mingus. I wish I could have written those books and try to make a bridge between Listeners/Music Lovers and Musicans/musically trained people so it would cover both different kinds of listening to music. The Mingus Author obviously was not a musician, because I think he didn´t hear, that different titles (and Mingus often changed titles) still are the same tune or at least the same chords. But I would like to understand better how non musically trained jazzfans listen to a record or a live thing: Do they more listen to the whole thing and the "mood" or "rhythm" of a piece, somehow in that manner ? If I listen to a record I like, I really enjoy it and it makes me glad, but as well I hear in what key they play, and hear exactly where they are, how the structure of the tune is, if it´s chord progressions of a standard tune or if it´s some other number of bars or other chords. I mean, we don´t count bars, we don´t write down the chords, it is evident like colours or structures on a picture. So I really would like to get to know it from another point of view. Yes, Stan Britts Gordon Bio is very fine. It was written when Dex still was alive and I think the book ends with speculations, if he would return to playing and recording or not...

Maybe this was the concert I saw on ORF2 then. I was in "Ausseer-Land" then for two weeks fishing and at night I saw it on TV. Maybe that´s the reason why I was not there, when they played at Stadthalle. And yeah, the Stadthalle had bad acoustics..... I saw Miles there, I saw Mingus (it must have been the 1976 edition with Walrath, Ford, Neloms)..... Much later, Hancock with Wayne Shorter was at the Opera House. And some concerts were at Concert House too. Those were the days when those "holy venues" sometimes were overcrowded by "wild young hipster". The old staff must have been shocked to see long haired "hippies" or "gammlers" (as older people called long haired men) instead of tuxedos and evening-dresses.....

Well I heard or saw Tracey only on records or DVDs. He seems to have some influences of Monk, and maybe those players who wanted it more straight with more traditional chords and lines, didn´t like that. Like Monk, he is great for his own music, but some players like even the great Johnny Griffin told that they had difficulties with his comping...

My first book, decades ago was "Jazz Masters of the Forties". I found it in a bookstore in Basel, Switzerland in the 70´s. Most of the other books are name biografies, I have Dizzy´s autobiography, at least two books about Bird, that came out in the early 70´s, a book about Fats Navarro, a book about Bud, about Dex, one about Monk, so I have really some biographies about key figures of bop as well.

Really a great regathering of original bop stars.

Once in the seventies a young kid borrowed me a book about the famous club, written by his owner Ronnie Scott. It had another cover, a kind of caricature of Mr. Scott, and a lot of memories of Giants playing at his club, some happy, some really sad as Hawk at the very end of his life... and about two tenorists that were have to deal with for the fine british rhythm section, they were Don Byas to a lesser extent, and above all Lucky Thompson....

Well, maybe because BillF and sure a lot of other readers who might be Bill Evans fans wondered why I praised McCoy as having been as much influencal like Bud before that and omitted the name of Bill Evans and explained why. For a group musician it was always important for me to fit in the formed band or the leading soloists and during the 70´s a gread deal of Sax Players liked Trane and Post-Trane stuff and modal. You coudn´t do that on piano without having McCoy Tyner as a kind of inspiration from the start, a kind of "schooling" by listening to at least some stuff he did, to fit in what was called by musicians and audience. That means not only musicians, but music lovers too. Maybe the Bill Evans clique was a very close and more reclusive one, since the folks you could talk to and meet every night in the joints and at concerts it was more the McCoy type of music that was heard, if it was about piano....

Sorry to say no, because he didn´t donate them to me, but let me listen to them. I remember especially well the 1982 "Pannonian Flower" he worked on during that time, and the tape with Burton Green. Burton also played the Novotny composition with them on concert, and then in exchange of requests he called Monk´s "Pannonica", great memories, but only in my head.....

In the 70´s and early 80´s the Austrian Free Jazz Icone Fritz Novotny (Reform Art Unit) had his radio show about Free Jazz on ORF Ö1 . I knew him personally and got a lot of listening advices from him. I already was a fan of Ornette Coleman and others, and he gave me tapes to listen, stuff he did with Reform Art Unit and a concert they did with Burton Green....

Hannibal Marvin Peterson was very popular in my youth. He played at "Jazz by Freddie", the defunct famous Viennese jazz club. And at some point, his "Children of Sanchez" sold very well. I don´t have the album, but they spinned it often in clubs when there was no live music on schedule... My first approach to Pharoah Sanders was in the 70´s his Impulse album "Live at the East". I wanted to have Mr Sanders sign it for me and tell him that it was my entrance into his great music, but then....... I was too shy. He didn´t look like someone who meet backstage and who might say "gee, that´s nice. What´s your name..... and sign it for me"....

Maybe he was not so popular among upcoming piano players at my time. Those who studied at Jazz Conservatorium under the great Fritz Pauer were told to listen to Bud and transcribe pieces, and to McCoy I think. Bill Evans I don´t remember ever coming to Austria. I heard his slower, a bit laid back approach on "Kind of Blue" and one live album of the sextet from the late fifties, but not much more. I think there was a group of people who listened much to him, but it seems that was a more narrow circle around here. At least, among the people I knew and played with, he had a lesser role than people like Miles, Trane (who also came to Austria when he was alive), and from that point further..... Once I got a sheet of "Waltz for Debbie" and played it from sheet and some chorusses on it, but forgot it after that. As much as I remember it sounded very very romantic, but in another kind than the most ballads I heard and played. It´s more like some romantic classic pianist from the 19th century, like Robert Schuhmann I think. But I´m not really an insider in that category....

I heard Lou with a quartet featuring Herman Foster on several occasions. But once there was a stupid thing on a festival when Jackie McLean and Lou Donaldson were on the same day and hour in different halls. I had to choose Jackie McLean on that occasion as a more demanding music. But on other occasions it was nice to hear this quartet, only that Herman Foster overdoes it a bit with his heavy chords. You hear it too often. Later he went back to have an organ in his group....