Gheorghe

I have those early 1946/47 trio recordings as a Japanese LP that I bought decades ago, very expensive, and a painting of Lennie Tristano on the cover. Very short playing time, but very fine music. Those ballads are really great and he played them on broadcast too in 1947 for Barry Ulanov.

Great. And he doesn´t just copy Bird, he has a lot of own things to say. They are great and you see they have fun.

Just wonderful both of them. They really can play. Again I hear some very nice Mobley licks, and the piano player has listened to Bud, and that short stride section is great. Some years ago, in my home district there was someone who also did kind of private house sessions at his home. He once had a club in Hamburg called "Jazz by Ralf" and I was a regular. Sorry to say it was during a period I didn´t want to perform. It was only once during a kind of repetition that I asked if I "can try the piano for a minute" and played "Bouncin with Bud,some chorusses and that Ralph called "I remember Clifford" and sure I played that too.

Ronny Matthew with T.S. Monk, I can imagine that. Matthew loved Monk, I witnessed it on a soundcheck, where he played a few bars of a Monk ballad and it sounded exactly like Monk, and everybody smiled. And you can here it on a tune dedicated to Monk on Griffin´s first comeback album "Return of the Griffin". Hayes featuring Dizzy Gillespie ? I didn´t know something like that exists. I saw a Diz Allstar Group in late 1983: Diz, Harold Land, George Cables, Herbie Lewis and Louis Hayes, but I have not heard about a recording they made..... anyway it was great.

That´s wonderful ! I like it so much. They sound wonderful, two tenors somehow in the Mobley tradition, and a very good piano player. Very fine bass work, only a drummer is missing. But once again, those are great musicians

Hello, didn´t know we are three guys here from Vienna. Yes, classical CD stores..... there is one very small store in my district (Hietzing Ekazent), and sometimes they have a few jazz CDs also. But really jazz sortiment, that´s gone. I was a regular at "Radio Kratz" in Mariahilfer-Strasse, and at "Red Octopus", then until last autumn, if I was in Vienna 1 district with my wife, we would have a look at the EMI, where we always found something.

In my case they just were there suddenly, I hadn´t heard of them before their huge contributions on "Me Myself an Eye" and thought who are they. Then the next year they performed as the Brecker Brothers, but some of the older folks didn´t like it. So I´m not sure if Mike Brecker was so well known over here in Europe before people bought that last Mingus album and eventually the remainder of the session on "Something like a Bird".

Sure it must have been nice to seem him play. The last time I saw him (great evening, even my wife was with me and liked it), must have been around the early 2000´s. He played fine with a trio, did some tracks on piano also (very very Monkish, it almost could have been Monk himself). But he seems to have a hard time walking, something with his legs, but I am not sure.

A very nice Archie Shepp album. I heard him quite often, is he still living ? The pianist Ken Werner is very very good. I heard him with Shepp already in 1980 , it was a quartet Ken Werner, Santi Debriano, John Betsch, very fine......

I also listen much more to Lieb. And since I mentioned "Chick Corea" there was a world tour in 1978 featuring Liebman, but it seems it was no material was released for record.

I like the British author Jeffrey Archer and have some of his books. But for fluent reading I read them in romanian language. this one is the "continuare" of "Kane and Abel" ( Cain și Abel ) and when I´m through with it there will be a third volume , something with "President"....

Well I was there when he was still a very young musician, he and his brother Randy were new heroes, they got very famous both for "Brecker Brothers" and they played very very much on the last Mingus session , the most soloes, so they really had something. Once in Italy I heard some local guys spinning a tape on the beach, it was some acoustic band with Chick Corea, Randy Brecker, Eddy Gomez and maybe Peter Erskine on drums. The guys somehow felt that I am into that great music and invited me to have a taste of their bottle of wine or grappa and we smoked a cigarette together........but......... I was not alone in holiday, you know that blonde girl with long legs who was with meon holiday and got impatient that I hang around with some boring guys who listen to "jungle music" ..... she wanted fun, fashion, dancin, and I wanted....... oh yeah.... so I decided to leave it there ...thinking that there will be enough time for music after the italian holiday, lost the trace of the album. but I still remember that Mike Brecker-Chick Corea Thing, has somebody an idea what it could have been ?

Those were the days. I also purchased this very soon after I started to learn something about bop. Though the 70´s was more electric jazz, this Spotlite somehow started. I first had thought that Tony Williams is THE drummer Tony Williams, since we all knew HIM and he was some kind of an idol. So it took me a long time to get to know that it is another Tony Williams, since I had thought Tony the drummer genius maybe found some time looking back to the roots and founded a lable as a kind of "hobby".... But as I said, some of the guys who was a bit older than me, had not only Trane but had some Bird also, he was a kind of "James Dean" of jazz for them. And the Mingus composition Parkeriana....., so I really got somehow "hooked" on Diz, Bird and Bop in general. And some went´with me, the guy a went fishing with when we were in the boat we hummed all those Mr.B. tracks and the "Ernie Bubbles Whitman announcements of "thank youuuuuuuh". And another one was the "Afro Cuban" which you mentioned. Some others were hard to listen too, to bad sound quality, sometimes only a few fragments, like the "Gene Roland".... One of the musicians then, the young Nicolae Simion always asked me to spin Bird´s Appartment Sessions" especially "Little Willie Leaps". Mostly for studying the saxophone lines. Anyway, on the "Appartment" you don´t hear much of other musicians....., only for super super fans......

This must be interesting too. Never heard about that label but I think somehow I lost the trace. When I was younger and could memorize more, there were not so much labels, you had CBS, BN, Prestige, Impulse, the more conservative Verve and so on, and nowadays there is such a little fan community we are like rare whales in the ocean and don´t meet others like it was or browsed through the records in the shops. I sometimes think there are much more labels but less people who listen to that music..... But those were only thoughts that came to me, the point is that I´m sure those two volumes must as same interesting as the Uncle Pö´s . I heard there is a Timeless record also. Timeless is a wonderful label, but the shortness of a studio album, only 40 minutes could not capture the impressions I got from those two hours live music. Maybe this was also to big big disappointment, when I bought the 36minutes Studio VSOP, having been used to the live double albums....

The Trio Barron-Williams-Riley was also part of the Ron Carter Quartet that played in 1979 at Velden Jazzfestival. Carter played the piccolo bass only on that occasion.

I love it. And Buster Williams is one of my favourite bassists.

Hello friends, Before our last record shop in Vienna closed, I purchased this double CD since I allready have some from this series. Now I had the time to listen to it and what can I saw, it´s fantastic. It´s some of the best all acoustic jazz I heard in the last months. I must admit I hadn´t paid so much attention to Junior Cook until then. In my memories he was a solid hard bop tenor who had played with Horace Silver, but I hadn´t known he can play as great and daring as he does on this one. They all are what I´d say is my idea of perfect musicians. With the exception of Junior Cook I had them seen live separatly: Louis Hayes with Diz, Ronny Matthews for some years with Griffin, Woody with his own group, Stafford James with Woody. Great tunes, maybe the most exiting is "Itchi-Ban". Listen how Louis Hayes really lifts up the stage as a great drummer must do. I just closed my eyes and listend to every aspect of it, each phrase of the soloists, really exiting. And Ronny Matthew was a fantastic pianist, maybe too underrated. He was the highlight of the Griffin Quartet of 1978-80. I just saw that this group also made a studio recording for Timeless, but I see it´s very short recording time, so I think I´ll keep listening to that 2 hours of live performance. Highly recommended.

Exactly like me. Never was a fan of them, since I always thought a standard type piano trio is a step back during a time where things start happening.... away from the old hard bop clichés , slowly opening up things like McLean or Hubbard or Shorter would do. But I have the LD+3 and think I listened 2 or 3 times to it when I wanted just to have some fun with some easy music. The thing I don´t really like on trios like this is the lesser implication of the drums and the bass also. Just timekeepers don´t make me happy, especially on drums....but also on bass. So you have a high and mighty piano player and two supporting musicians......

Why I didn´t ask him...... well I heard things that he is not the kind of guy who likes to talk to fans. So I thought he might refuse me or they wouldn´t even let me get inside to "meet him". And at that venue they had a completly separate area for the artists , you wouldn´t meet them at the bar like in other clubs. I got autographs from Art Farmer, from Dave Liebman, from Eddie Lockjaw Davis and from Curtis Fuller. I didn´t ask Woody Shaw for an autograph since I had heard he is nearly blind and thought it would be unpolite to ask him.... All the above mentioned musicians asked me my name and wrote dedications..... really wonderful human beings...

This together with "We Get Requests" are the only Peterson albums I listen to sometimes, they are really nice and if I´m exhausted and don´t want to "figure out" much things, just close my eyes and relax, it´s okay. Oh , and I have also "In Tune" with the Singers Unlimited with Peterson, it was somehow en vogue when I was a boy....

Thank you very much for that interesting remark ! Yes I did, because one of the guy also had "Steamin´" the old Prestige Album, and another one borrowed me the 3 LP album "The Great Concert of Mingus" (America Label, Paris 1964, with Dolphy) because he didn´t like it (too far out he said, but I loved it and was allowed to keep it). So I got back to Bird by reading the liner notes of Prestige, and hearing "Parkeriana" on the Mingus-Dolphy stuff. I thought "who must be that Charlie Parker if stuff can cook like that "Parkeriana" and "Salt Peanuts" on the Prestige album. Through Parker I got in touch with Bud, Fats, Dameron and all those. And last not least. I was an aspiring piano player and wanted to learn the music, to understand what Bud did, what Monk did....., so I really have a spectrum from Bop to Electric Jazz , others might say it´s too narrow, but I think for one of my generation it´s large enough, in any case for playing some music.... And I got a lot of encouragement from the late, great austrian jazz pianist Fritz Pauer. I´d be around much and during intermissions or after gigs he had, he was very very kind to me and was not bored if I told him about my efforts, and eventually he let me sit in !

The "Live at the East" was my first LP of him, bought in the 70´s. I saw Pharoah on several occasions. The last time I had the LP with me and thought maybe I let him sign it for me after the concert, and I would tell him that I bought it when I was a teenager, but then I thought he might do autographs and went home with the album unsigned....

I saw Sonny Stitt in 1980, it must have been in March. He traveled as a single artist but was supplied with a fantastic trio for that evening. The great Fritz Pauer on piano, the great hungarian bass professor Aladár Pege , and I think Fritz Ozmec on drums, really a superb trio. But Sonny Stitt was quite juiced. He still played well on the concert, though he did silly stuff like lecturing those three great musicians. And at one point he shouted to the audience "What do you want to hear" and one guy shouted back "Salt Peanuts", and Sonny made that grimasse and played something else (I think "They can´t take it away from me"). After the concert it was planned he would play more at the defunct club "Jazz by Freddie" with the same rhythm section and two other great austrian tenorists Harry Sokal and Roman Schwaller, but it went completly out of controll and after one jam, a Blues in Bb, where he had to sit down, he went to the piano and fooled around on the piano and tried singin.... Really a sad memory....., but the next day a three day festival "Jazz Frühling" started, with Dex, Griff, Chet Baker, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, heaven on earth for 3 days....

There was a change in Miles´ music in 1973: It started with a band still similar to the "Miles in Concert 1972" and early in 1973 Miles after having broken his legs in a car accident still was unconfortable on stage and had a cast, and keeping Balakrishna, Badal Roy and Lonnie Listen Smith from the "1972 Style" with slight indian touch. Then later he created the style that would last until his retirement in late 1975, where he had the group formed by Lieb, Cosey and Lucas, Mike Henderson, Al Foster and M´tume. So the Vienna Concert late in 1973 was another music than the group in early 1973. After Lieb left, it was Sonny Fortune on alto sax. But the repertory of the group from late 73-75 was quite similar, about the stuff you hear on "Dark Magus", "Agartha" and "Pangaea". That was "our" music when we were 14-16 years old and during school intermission we would do percussion patterns on the tables and seats and one would imitate the wah wah trumpet sound with his voice and bend down, and the others jumped around until after intermission the next lesson would start and the teacher would yell at us to stop. And we bought those huge sun glasses and tried to "act cool". It must have been like the kids in the 40´s imitating Diz and so on..... I remember how all came by when I told at school that I had got "Pangaea" while the others "only" had "Agartha"...... My mother was a bit desparate , she would say "why can´t you bring neatly dressed boys who play nice instruments like let´s say a violin. So, sometimes it was a shambles after they left, and she was unhappy when she saw the signs of beer bottles on the good old Bosendorfer Piano. But...... despite of my livestyle I was blessed to be very good at school so things like that.....loud music, long haired older guys, beer bottles and cigarettes were tolerated. I told you that to give an idea of how it was to be a fan of the so called "New Miles" as older people called it.

Well about Elvin we know much: He was married for decades to his japanes wife Keiko. She was always there and tuned his drums before the gig. I saw her on stage doing that before Elvins group started. In Laurie Peppers book about her husband she describes here very well, and that she lectured Laurie how you might "handle" a husband who is into drugs, to keep him off the bad guys, to take care of his money and buy him "presents" like jewellry, sharp threads, expesive watches and so on, to keep them reasonable happy.... Pharoah, as much as I know, married a much younger woman and they lived on the Coast and I think they have a child too. There was an interview with Pharoah were he said that, but he also said he hated the place were they lived.....