Gheorghe

Such a great musician and a first class bebopper.

Well it´s possible I have played the instrument for too much time to be able to remember how I mastered to finger it. Some time ago I was asked by someone if I know a piano teacher or if I could teach her to play piano. I said no, because first of all from where should I know a teacher, I know people who play, and some of them teach at Jazz-Conservatory here in Vienna, but that´s not about the basics, if you go to a conservatory I think you are supposed to allready know the basics. And by the way, isn´t playing an instrument like riding the bicycle? Once you learned it, you never forget it completly, you may get "rusty", but that´s all. The last time I did ride the bicycle regularly was when I was a kid, until I had my driving license. 20 Years later someone invited me to make a trip on bicycle and sure I didn´t fall down, but boy, how my ass hurt after 2 hours on bicycle.... So my opinion is, you don´t forget it, but you´ll be a bit rusty after a long absence from the instrument. I also did bass fiddle when I was young. I´m sure I didn´t forget how to finger and how to pluck the strings, but sure I´d get blisters.....

Your are welcome ! Well, it´s a bit hard for me to think about intentional practice in context with technical exercises, because after 60years of playing (yeah, I was maybe 2 years old when I sat on my fathers lap and started to finger the piano, and not making ugly sounds like non musical kids do, but playing coerent melodies from the beginning) it´s that way that I don´t think about the instrument separatly, the instrument is me. So maybe I played scales at the very beginning, because my dad wanted me to get to know the notes, the keys and above all that I can name the note or the key if he plays it and I had to hide under the piano for not seeing what he´s fingerin on the piano. So my advices might be more about the music itself. Start with slower pieces, let´s say a ballad and when you know the tune and the chords, try to get inside the ballad, I mean reallly inside so you will have your very individual approach to it. Listen for example to Bud´s version of "Polka Dots and Moonbeams". The melody is very very simple, almost childish, so let´s say try to play only the melody, then the melody with chords, and later when you master that, try to make it dynamical, emotional, like it´s on record, but not copying it, but getting your own individual approach. And when you take a swinging tune, try to make it flow. No cuts or stops when you get to the next chorus or get from the second A-part to the bridge..... So my advice is: You want to make MUSIC. If you take much time doing technical exercises, it can get boring. Learn by doing. Many musical carees, if it´s a more sensible kid, completly devoted to the music, a severe teacher who keeps you playing technical exercises could destroy the musicianship. Especially if it´s creative and individual music like jazz and improvisation. So get inside the music, try to play a piece, learn the meaning of the piece and to transmit the meaning on the keyboard. You want to play some tunes for your wife, at a house party and maybe at some point together with other musicians, so what count´s is the music, and I have no doubts that you have musical ears, so you have all you need.

oh ! Right now I saw the same date on amazon.de We´ll see.

I might give it a try again. As much as I liked mostly "Unity" etc. I was a bit disappointed with "Love and Peace". But maybe I have to give it another chance.

I have really many from the 7000 series, and when I was a teenie there very many double albums I think it is 24000 series, but later anyway had them all on 7000 series. Never heard about 16000 series. But I must admit almost all I have is the typical Prestige Rooster of the 50s, Miles, Monk, MJQ, Trane, Rollins, Jackie McLean, Dameron, Brownie....

Thank you soooooo much for this thread ! And thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I would like to tell you mine also, which in some points is similar to yours: When I was young, I also practiced lot. The only difference is that I had played piano for my whole live. Even before I went to "Kindergarten" I could play with my little hands and short fingers tunes after hearing them and had perfect pitch. But playing written stuff bored me and I never was a good reader. When I was in the transition from kid to teenie I started to be fascinated with jazz and "practiced". But never technical exercises, never classical pieces, only aiming to be able at one point to sit in in a band and eventually become member of a band. So it was playing all the standards by ear, and fascinated with Bird,Diz,Bud and wanting to play in that manner, learning all the bop tunes by ear. During that time there was no Real Book, at least not here, and I had to write out the chord progressions to improvise on the tunes. Eventually, the great austrian pianist Fritz Pauer let me sit in when he had a gig with Allan Praskin and Karl Ratzer and from that point on I started to play very much in clubs, sometimes too much so I had to study a bit longer for my degree (not music). During my first short marriage with two kids I still played much, the marriage failed but not due to music. Not it´s the same like your situation: Demanding full-time job which requires also weekend work and night work, but I love it and will do further some stuff even after retireing in late 2024 at 65. And I´m married to lovely and beautiful Miss Serena, for 25 years, and before that we were already together 5 years. I cut out playing in public in 1992 and that remained for the next 20 years. But I always played the music at home, would play as if playing a live set, that means some medium, some up tempo super be bop, some latin and of course ballads, playing better and better as everybody said. I kept in touch especially with my former drummer who is a professional musician and who started to tell me to come back after visiting me at home and listening to what I can do. So I decided from 2012 until 2020 to play maybe 2, maybe 4 gigs each year, and now due to the pandemia , again at home for me and my wife. We both are not to kind of people who make really close friends like others have. I don´t need another guy to tell him private things, and my wife does not have a "best friend" or "girl´s evenings". People I´m in touch with are colleages from the same category, and some who share my passion for fishing, another thing I´ve done almost all my live long. In the future, as we hope at some point to have again the possibility to live withouth restrictions, I´ll be there again, doing this or that little gig. But we don´t have to practice. Besides me who also knows the music and how to play it, the others always have been professionals.....

Maybe after more explorations in Free Jazz and more world music explorations with a lot of exotic instruments and maybe some electric, Trane would have returned at some point to a series of traditional acoustic quartet setting, maybe regathering Elvin and McCoy and after Garrisons´ death Reggie Workman or so on bass. Very good paid reunions for special occasions, maybe some guest appearences with Miles, especially on events like the 1991 gathering of old colleages in Paris....., and maybe some last album of moving ballads, before retirement due to age and loss of breath like Sonny Rollins, with tons of honour degrees and so on. Considering that Trane stopped drugs in the second half of the 50´s and being completly dedicated to music, he really would have deserved to live long like Sonny, who was in the same situation......

Had ordered it in Juni, got a mail from Amazon that it will be delayed and probably shipped in october, since then I never heard anything.

I got this last Chrismas from my wife. Wonderful. The version of "Be bop" is fantastic.

Thank you for your impressions, actually a review. Which album was it. Yesterday I listened to the 1977 Tempest at the Coloseum and love it. That version of "Red Clay".....incredible. Well, maybe I should say it´s not exactly the kind of album for acoustic purists, searching the "pure sound", but on the other hand I´m a product of that time and though I didn´t come to jazz via rock or fusion, but vice versa, it was part of the time. And I was a musician, and my friends were musicians. That was the sound we wanted, and since many of my musician friends were drummers, Tony Williams was kind of our hero. I still listen very very much from what the drummer does, and that was the times, and what young so called "modern oriented" players did, as well as in so called "acoustic, though amplified" surroundings, as well as going electric all the way. Most of us did both. But I´m not speaking about the many amateur bands who played Dixie or something like that. They were kind of a close community and others who liked Trane, Tony, George Duke, or even Charlie Parker, were "outlaws". Once I was asked to sit in in a Dixie band and they called "Sweet Georgie Brown". Well , I tried my best to fit into it without giving up my own personality, let´s say the way Fats did "Georgia Brown" on the 1947 session with a mixed group of younger and older musicians, or Bird and Diz on Band for Bonds, but I also wanted to "honour" them oldtimers with some nice fast stride as I had heard it from Bud let´s say on "Idaho", but though some people from the audience and even the younger musicians who had to play permanent in that band, the leader, an older beer drinking banjo player and ex policeman hated it

Good Point ! That´s it: Not only his bop lines, also very much his harmonies. In that context, very much the later interpretations of Ballads. I´m not good in theory but this way how Bud resolves certain chord progressions, especially in ballads, it became part of me. I couldn´t write that chords, and don´t know what poly chords is, but even if I play other ballads, I have that harmony in mind, it comes from itself, I can´t help doin it. It´s in my mind and that´s how it comes out. During the last weeks, due to COVID Lockdown I can play piano only at home. And that´s how it came I played Hildegard Knef´s "Für mich solls Rote Rosen regnen" just for my wife, and I never had played it and had heard it only when we went to some evergreen dancing on a Danube ship, but it came out in a way like maybe Bud would have played it. She loved it and I think I´ll do it as a last encore only solo piano when gigs will be possible again....

On the Geneva album there are two tracks Bud-Griffin added, which also appear on the Xanadu album Bud in Paris. I don´t know who invented that it was recorded in 1960, since Griff came to Europe three years later, and I´m sure it was done in february 64, when Bud could leave the sanatorium on weekends. Someone was not aware of the story of Griffin......, but they kept that 1960 as date of the recording for decades..... I´m not a jazz historian, I´m an avid listender and a some time player, but it´s a fact that Griffin came to Europe later than Bud . By the way: Highly recommended for reading: Mike Hennesey "Little Giant"....

Definitly yes ! In my childhood in the 60´s many houses had at least an upright piano, those of the upper class had a black Bosendorfer flugel, and many kids took piano lessons. We also had a piano, my father played some classical pieces, but using too much pedal to cover the mistakes, but he showed me the piano and told me the notes, the scales, the cromatic scales and let me say the right note if I turn my back and only hear it. That´s from were I have my perfect pitch. When I was 5 they tried piano lessons, but I was mad at it, I could play much stuff from ear and didn´t understand why I should play scales and boring sounding etudes.....so I cut it out and went on myself. Anyway I became interested in jazz.... The upper class usually listened to classic music, but as you say, if they had "jazz" they had one or two Oscar Peterson or Errol Garner albums, maybe Brubeck but I remember only Peterson and Garner. That was also the first "jazz" I heard , but after someone brought me a CBS- sampler to hear and on it was Davis´"Milestones" and a Mingus thing from the late 50´s , I knew where I have to go further....

I have all those Hank Mobley albums from 55-57 from BN as mini LP cardboard sleeve CDs. They are very fine, but my really favourit Mobley stuff is from the early 60´s for the much better sound of Mobley. I listended to all the BNs, but as older I get, I always get back spinning only some of them, my all time favourites.....

You are right, it really is strange. Of course I also have the CD with the Geneva concert. And yes, Bud´s ups and down were during his whole career. At the end, like after his comeback to Birdland 1964 he could still play great , and in the next set he would play without inspiration. But one strange thing about the Swiss recordings is that sometimes it seems that Bud tends to give space for a bass solo, but after a few bars he forgets about it and plays solo himself again. On other occasions Bud really gives space for the fellow musicians, so it is more a group performance. And one thing that I regret: In the 50´s Bud composed at least three great latin pieces "Un Poco Loco", "Buster Rides Again" and "Comin´ Up", but he never would perform them again. So this sets sometimes get monotonous, since it´s only swing, some medium tempo, some up tempo, and usually two ballads Round Midnight (always great !) and "I remember Clifford". It´s a pity that there never was something with latin touch also. Bud could have played very fine Dizzy´s "Manteca", "Tin Tin Deo" and "Con Alma". Actually, he played once "Tin Tin Deo" with Diz in Paris (with the Double Six).

Hello Friends ! For some weeks I have listened more to 70´s jazz, like VSOP and some electric jazz, but yesterday I was in the mood to go all the way back to listen to that much praised recording of Bud in Switzerland. Bud is really in top form. It´s interesting to compare those tracks with the tracks from Golden Circle only 2 months or so later on which Bud seems to have slowed down a bit. What may have been the reason ? The Rhythm section ? In Lausanne especially the bass player seems to have studied Bud´s Repertoire. He plays a more old fashioned style of bass of the 40´s like Tommy Potter or Curley Russell. The only weaker thing is "Evidence" since Bud doesn´t seem to know the rhythmic conception of that theme.

Oh yes, those Verve double albums were around 1978. I also had the Bud Powell double album from this series

I haven´t heard about that TV show, but when I saw the photo I thought it is Chet Baker. By the way: West Coast is not really present in my collection. I started listening to Chet when he had his comeback, and love what he did in those years from the 70´s until his death, which is really deep and moving. The strange thing is that the first Mulligan-Baker I heard was on the Carnegie Hall 1974 set, which I heard at a club and had no idea who is playing, but recognized the great bass of one of my favourites Ron Carter. Bob Brookmeyer on the other hand......., my only listening experience was that disappointing Mel Lewis Big Band where he had composed and arranged after Thad Jones had left. I had heard the original Thad Jones - Mel Lewis BB and loved it, but Brookmeyers contribution ......well maybe I´m too dumb to dig it, but I just didn´t like it, and there were a lot of guys who were at that festival and all who I knew said the same thing, maybe we all were into another direction....

I have the Pablo album Lockjaw with OP-Trio. Well I bought it because I wanted to hear Jaws. OP is quite ok, though I like another Pablo album Jaws with the Tommy Flanagan trio more, since Flanagan is one of the best pianists of his time. He doesn´t exagerate his tehnical abilities like OP and nevertheless has a fantastic tehnique, and really tells a story when he is soloing and also is great in comping other soloists. My favourite OP album is "In Tune" with the Singers Unlimited, not because I´m such a big fan of Unlimited, and my discography of vocals is quite scarce, but because it was en vogue in my youth and OP does not cover everything, he is more subdued here so I can enjoy the sound more . But as I have mentioned in my VSOP thread, there were different "fan-groups" during my teenage years and early twen years, when I was most involved in the scene: One minority was the 100% OP fans, but they were not so much present in the joints were jazz was played. There was a Jazz LP-lovers circle who met once the month and one evening someone had invited me and there they had also gentleman around 50, named "Hans" and every phrase he spoke started and ended with Oscar Peterson. He would not have tolerated other opinios. But one thing is interesting: Most OP-Fans were just fans, not musicians.

Big deal at the time.....I don´t know. It was more a musician´s kind of favourite. You must know, the small after hours clubs was very much musicians or budding musicians listening and discussing the music maybe not from the way non playing music lovers might listen to it. That´s the way I was brought up: Listen and Learn. I heard it at the mentioned club and no one less than the wonderful alto saxophonist Allen Praskin, who had settled in Europe pulled my coat to it. One day we both were at my place and before the regular rehearsal for a gig startet, he wanted to run through some Monk tunes with me , I remember one of "Four in One", and the other was a particulary difficult tune from the 1952BN session. And Mr. Praskin said to me I should listen to the Bennie Wallace version, the more open approach to the Monk compositions..... like if Mr. Praskin played old bop standards but with the knowledge that there was Jackie McLean, Dolphy, and Ornette after that......, just wonderful. So I´d say it was especially interesting for musicians who studied Monk´s music.....

Hi Peter, but I was referring to both acoustic and electric jazz in my posting from yesterday (as I said we dug both acoustic and electric. We heard old acoustic Miles LPs like "Steamin´" with the same enthusiasm as we listened to "Headhunters".... And not to forget what was before, Bop, Hardbop, Free. And pre bop pioneers like Roy, Hawk, Lester, Art Tatum, Billie Holyday etc. we also "studied".... You mentioned jazz "from the 1920´s". Well I must admit we were listening mostly to what was played live and what WE could play with others, which ranged from acoustic (then so called "modern jazz" to the contemporanous electric jazz. There was a club in Vienna, that presented also some "oldtime" jazz., but in general those bands were mostly amateur bands of older music lovers, and there was also another audience like we youngsters were. They were from aonther generation and didn´t like youngsters like we were, with long hair and all that..... Yes, I also must admit I had very very little Pablo and Concord and more Muse and Timeless, but I think Timeless came even a bit later than the mid seventies. The first Timless I remember was two Blakey albums from 1977, and then very very much, a lot of great US-Stars.... ECM I listened only very very little, the only things I really loved was the two Dave Liebman albums "Lookout Farm" and "Drum Ode". Oh yes, and probably you will also post your point of view about it.

Just have listened to the first VSOP. Just wonderful besides the acoustic set is the sextet with Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, Bennie Maupin, Buster Williams and Billy Hart. And of course the electric band with Wah Wah Watson and Bennie Maupin. The presence of all that music at that time sure made us musicians and fans flexible, that we dug acoustic AND electric. To hear let´s say old Miles LPs like "Steamin´" with the same enthusiasm like "Headhunters". I think there was two groups of fans, those who listend more to "Headhunters" and those who listend more to "RTF". In my case, though RTF has some great music, I preferred Hancock´s bands, it´s more earth-bound and I think or at least knew people who were crazy about RTF were mostly the kind of more philosophical young persons who asked themselfs who they are and what can they do to make the world better and so on.... In the later 80´s I heard a fantastic re-make of "Headhunters" that was called "Headhunters II" with still Wah Wah Watson, and Mike Brecker on sax.

The Bennie Wallace album must have been around 1980. It was very much discussed here in Vienna, it´s top musicians, and it was spinned very often in that fancy old jazzclub "Spelunke" which we had. When there was not live music (anyway, you could play live only from 19.00 - 22.00 because it was an old building and other families had their appartments there), they spinned all those fine records, and we the regulars sittin at the bar discussed the music , just wonderful.

Capurange and Tangerine are my favourite Prestige albums of Gordon from that period in the early 70´s. It was somehow a strange time, acoustic jazz like that was disappearing for quite some years, I always thought the great era of Prestige was the 50´s.