Gheorghe

Yeah, that´s true.

Erroll Garner was quite popular during my youth (70´s) by people who otherwise didn´t listen to jazz. Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner. They didn´t have Bird or Miles or Trane or Mingus etc in their collections, but listened to Garner or Peterson when they felt that they might listen to some "jazz". It was especially upper middleclass people. They always had piano trio jazz, no horns. But sometimes I like a little Garner. Sounds happy and makes you smile, especially the medium tempos with that special Garner Beat. Actually I have only one Garner in my huge collection, it was a present from my wife and it´s "Up in Erroll´s Room", with some brass added. On that one, Garner even plays Dizzy´s "Groovin´ High" .....

But the sound of the Rhodes inspired me to get more into the sound of the 70´s. You can´t play the same chords and stuff like acoustic bop or hard bop. The Rhodes just leads you into another direction. Not like the later Yamaha master keyboards where you can play exactly like an acoustic piano, or the Yamaha pianola I have now for 3 years. Well as you say about carrying that "boy that weights more than a lot of guys who play it" and "those were the days".... I also still must laugh about the next thing, or the next step of electric jazz, when I played those DX7 keyboards, I put it on top of the Fender, and it had those funny catriges, I think 24 sounds on each of them, and had to memorize which one you need for which tune, and quickly because it was live gigs.

I love it. It was one of the favourite of us during those times in the 70´s. It still sounds so fantastic, I never get tired of it. And really a dream team, Freddie, Joe Henderson, Herbie, Ron, Lenny White.

Sun Ra´s "Nothing Is" is from 1966, ESP label. It´s live from a series of concerts. More recently it was reissued with the complete material.

Well, I witnessed a one night gig at a smaller cellar club as late as 1987, were I could see some things. I was early at the club and Woody Shaw was allready there, sitting alone at a table and having a meal (some kind of mixture of potatoes, onion and ham) and a Beer. Nothing wrong about that. But then I saw that the waiter had to bring him a lot of those small bottles of Underberg. He drank them one after the other, I was sittin at the bar, and saw how the waiter told the barman again and again "an Underberg for Woody"..... When the gig finally started, I wondered how he might play after all that Underberg (by the way, Underberg is a digestif bitter, I understand that some might drink one after a heavy meal, but so many of them ??????) . Obviously because of his failing eyesight, Woody had to be led on stage, smoking a cigarette while being led on stage (anyway he was chain smoking all the time). They started a medium tempo "Tea for Two", on which Woody sounded somewhat shaky, and anyway I wondered why the genius I saw in the early 80s with the fantastic group of Steve Turré, Mulgrew Miller, Stafford James, Tony Reedus, played such old standards instead of his own music ..... Then they played "Star Eyes" and I remember Woody announced it as "famous because Charlie Parker played it......I don´t know if you remember him"....some people laughed as this might have been a weak joke or something. But otherwise Woody didn´t seem to be arrogant, well he smoked always and played with the cigarette in his hand while playing the trumpet (like you see on some old Miles Davis and Fats Navarro Fotos) , throwing the cigarette ends carelessly on stage in spite of the fact that there was all those electric cables for the mikes and so..... I think I was not the only one who was quite embarrassed to see Woody like that, because we all had remembered him as a top star. His playing in general was ok, not more than that, in any case not as exiting as he used to be.....

The first Coltrane-influenced Mabern I heard was many decades ago on an LP of Wes Montgomery in Europe, doing "Impressions", where I first heard the great piano of Mabern.

I like those stride solos Monk did in London, also on tunes that´s really hard for stride I mean, like "Trinkle Tinkle", incredible. But strange, on all those London reissues there´s never I photo of Monk from the time the records were made. And I never saw a photo of Monk from his last gigs in 1975/76.

Didn´t the great Dusko Gojkovici record a fantastic album for Enja, titled "After Hours" ? I only heard it on radio then...

Yes, the first ones were also my favourites in the 80´s and I saw them live. Pullen/Adams for example just a few months after Mingus´ death, I think Cameron Brown was on the Bass. "Double Arc Jake" was the highlight of many evenings of listening to jazz with friends (in the 80´s that was still alive, friends coming at your place or you goin to their place and listen to jazz). Horace Silver might have been with Vincent Herring then, right ? Woody Shaw......some bitter-sweet memories: At the beginning of the 80s THE STAR ON TRUMPET, even praised by Miles !!! And something I never thought I might witness in the time I live was to watch how his career went down and how embarassing the last gigs were. About such sad moments I had written only in the bebop books, about the last days of Bird and Bud and so, never thought something like that could happen in the late 80s. Dollar Brand was not really my stuff. I heard that orchestra once at a festival, but since there were others like Joe Henderson, Rollins, Elvin Jones, it seems I completly forgot about it.

The Fender Rhodes was quite much used, when an acoustic piano was not available. For some years I played with a group that got many gigs also in places where there was no piano, so I remember well how hard it was to carry that heavy Rhodes around in the car and downstairs to cellar clubs or on stages, very very hard with that big black case. After some gigs I found the combination fender piano and acoustic bass is not so fine and suggested we take a fender bass player and go more into the direction away from acoustic. Later I replaced the Fender with a combination of 2 Yamaha-Keyboards (Masterkeyboard and DX 7) and so it went all electric, But I eventually returned to all acoustic gigs also, since I never lost my love for acoustic jazz (so acoustic in my case means mike for the horn, for the piano and pickup for the bass. Back to VSOP: I was quite astonished, how much the pick-up sound of Ron Carter got negative reactions here. Especially because that was THE sound of the 70´s. Yesterday I listened again to some VSOP and for example, Ron Carters beautiful slow waltz "Tear Drops" is just fantastic and I listened carefully to Ron´s great solo and his dynamic way together with Tony to set the pace in the faster tunes. And Ron´s sound was quite a model. Listen also to McCoy Tyner´s famous Milestone album "Supertrios" with the first disc with McCoy, Ron and Tony. And by the way: When I started to get into playing jazz, I had got some money after my grandma died and used the money to buy a bassfiddle, to have it at home if we boys do repetitions. And soon I thought if I have that bass fiddle in my room, why not try to learn by myself to play it. And someone gave me a book about jazz-bass playing with some exercises, the author was no one less than Ron Carter !!!! And I really made progresses and for some time really studied hard on bass, first getting blisters but later even could play some gigs when a bass was needed (by the way: there was a special event, really my scariest gig, I might post a story about that, but don´t know where....Musicians´ forum ???).

Isn´t "Repetition" a Neil Hefti tune ? From Bird with Strings. But also a fantastic version of Cecil Payne on flute from 1976 for Muse. Li´l Darling I know from a Red Garland album.

Yes, that´s were I saw it !

Well, I must admit it was that way in my own case too (for 4 years). After some years of acoustic playing and learning very very much on stage, I was called to join a group, that went electric (jazz rock, funk, only own compositions of the members) and when we played live, grand pianos were wheeled back. It was the time with the most gigs, but eventually I got tired of it and went back to acoustic. But it was the times and the sounds of that period. And though my main love was acoustic jazz like Bird &Co, Hardbop, modal and some 60´s free jazz, I also listened very much to electric Miles, Hancock´s Headhunters, Billy Cobham-George Duke and so. I didn´t exclude certain movements of that time, the only thing that was not really my stuff was the more ECM-based, more silent acoustic..... So I also witnessed the slow movements were fusion started to nod also to more straight ahead things, like the monster projekt of "CBS All Stars" from 1977 with players like George Duke, Billy Cobham meeting artists like Dexter, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Maynard Ferguson etc. Not necessarly for the quality of the music, but for the fact that there seemed to be room for a kind of "marriage" between electric and acoustic. From the same year: Jay Jay Johnson-Nat Adderly with a more electric rhythm section in Japan.... Your are welcome, and I am very glad that this thread gets so many responds, different opinions. As I see, the majority of our great members who write so fantastic and inspiring statements, loves acoustic jazz more than electric, or more electric sounds of bassfiddles. As for your question: From VSOP I like most "Tempest at the Colosseum" and "Under the Sky".

This one, with lights out. Every Year !

That´s not NEWS, that´s from the past. Now in our times if you have a gig and you need a bassist, you will find dozens of acoustic bassists. But in my case, and of course in the case of most of my generation (late 50´s born) from the point of view from NOW, the electric bass is what we saw and grew up or if we would have preferred an acoustic bass, we had to live with the situation. Many surviving top musicians (living legends) had replaced the acoustic bass with an electric one, like Dizzy, Rollins and also the late 70´s Woody Herman Herd and dozenzs of others. Max Roach replaced acoustic with electric, when actually all others had gone back to acoustic...... And though, in addition to the then developing stuff like electric Miles and Herbie´s Headhunters, me and a lot of my friends also had a love for be-bop, and if we couldn´t find an acoustic bass player for a gig, we needed at least a good electric bass player.

All the best, Allen ! I think you wrote some very interesting but also critical statements about Dexter, especially referring to his behind the beat playing. It made me to re-analyze some of my earlier impressions, and I thought about you when I wrote that....

is that a dedication to Max Roach (the title "Nommo" is a composition they played very often, I saw Roach live in 78 . Brian Lynch and Peter Washington I remember from Blakey´s last edition of the Jazzmessengers. Vincent Herring I remember from Horace Silver.

Really a great idea. I´m looking forward to it. Will there be also some Miles of the 80´s ? I really liked it in the early 80´s with the first sextet that still played jazz-related stuff and was not so heavy on synthi sounds. Then was a lot of boring stuff (IMHO), and in 1989 at last again an album that sounded more like "jazz" (Amandla). Will there also be room for the Max Roach Double quartet (with strings) ? And Woody Shaw ..... And, at the beginning of the 80´s I still "hoped" that Wynton will become a major new voice in jazz. But there was a lot of so called "young lions", some of them very good but much in the tradition, and some got record contracts and later you didn´t hear anymore from them. Wasn´t there a guy who played exactly like Jackie McLean and did an album with some fast company but later he disappeard (is Christopher Holiday his name ? ).

I forgot to post the album cover I saw her with Joe Henderson in 1978 and she was fantastic. Maybe a slight McCoy Tyner influence, but really really unique. And again in 1983 with Joe Farrell.

Well, yeah, but that was the sound I heard first. When I took up bass temporarly, I also had a pickup. But don´t forget, Ron Carter really had a strong sound and played the bass in the right manner, he didn´t have the strings so down, like let´s say Eddy Gomez had, playing that fast high note shit were you can´t produce a really bass sound. Mingus also used a pick up when I saw him, and last not least, many artists from the so called "acoustic" era like Dizzy and Rollins used Fender Bass. In the bass class of the Vienna Jazz Conservatory were only 2 or 3 who played acoustic, the rest was Fender....

Dream a little dream is wonderful, my wife bought it for me some years ago for Chrismas. Well, she picks up records like this way: She say I had only two Mulligans (Vol. 1 and 2 with Chet at Carnegie Hall 1974) and thought, well he has this artist, but only 2 records, and by the way, during that time I had to play "Dream a little Dream" with a female singer, I had never played it before but she called it for the set, so I did it...

Fitting to the VSOP thread I had opened and to my last posting about Ron Carters bass sound. This one is my favourite from Carter´s late 70s. It came out right at the time I heard Ron with his own quartet. I love it, it´s some studio musicians too at things like the title tune, but there is that stellar group with Chick, Henderson and Tony Williams too. One tune, that nice waltz .... some years ago my late mother in law was visiting us for 2 weeks and sometimes, when my wife and her mother played rummy, I went into the other room , closed the door so I wouldn´t disturb the ladies and by the way I listened to this CD, and in came my mother in law and said, wow that´s beautiful, though she never had listened to jazz, more to dance music....

Agreed ! And I love Ron´s bass sound from those 70´s recordings, also very present on let´s say "Baker and Mulligan at Carnegie Hall 74", something I mostly bought after hearing it in the famous club "Jazz by Freddie" where the spinned the best records when they didn´t have a day with live music. Many albums I bought after I heard them there. In this way I heard it and said "wow, the bass" and bought it. Also very much beloved from guys of my generation: "Milestone All Stars" (Rollins, Tyner, Carter, Foster) Maybe acoustic purists don´t like that direct pickup, or the added contra C (an extension, first I thought it´s a 5 string bass fiddle), but that´s what it was: The sound of the so called acoustic bass in an era that was mostly electric. Ron made the bassfiddle "hip" for people who otherwise didn´t not else than "Fender Bass" or so. It was the bass sound of my generation, and those glissandi and double grips, it was fantastic. Later, in 2002 I was astonished to hear that album "Four Generations of Miles" (George Coleman, Mike Stern, Ron Carter, Jimmie Cobb) and Carter obviously had abandoned that "Carter Sound" and it sounded more in the old sound. Well, I love acoustic jazz, but maybe in the more louder approach, with mikes and pick-up on the bass, and half acoustic (Gibson) guitars, so I can hear it and can get exited. The more "unplugged" chamber music with acoustic guitars and maybe no drums and so on, is not really my thing....

Sure, it was not a be-bop revival band like the "Giants of Jazz" . But especially on "Under the Sky" from 1979 (that´s the title of the album ?), there is a lot of new material, really wonderful. By the way, because Wallace Roney was mentioned here: I also saw "V.S.O.P. II" I think in summer 1983 on a 3 days festival: Dizzy was before them and in top form and got standing ovations. The very nice and articulate Herbie Hancock announced the VSOP concert with something like "we hope that we can get at least a bit of applause after you heard Dizzy...". Sure they got. Well, it was the Marsalis Brothers Wynton and Brandford, they played OK...or even more, they cooked, but it was especially for Herbie-Ron-Tony, that I remember the set. So it was 3 All-Stars with 2 "young lions" (at least from the point of view from then).