Gheorghe

He was also a great composer. There are some of his compositions on "Ghetto Lullaby" where he doen´t play (Kenny Drew is on it), but his compositions are great. Anyway, "Ghetto Lullaby" is one of my favourite Jackie McLean albums. Didn´t he also compose one tune on "Ode to Super", that one where Jackie McLean sings ?

I already mentioned this, but didn´t have the time to listen to it until Monday and Tuesday (after I got it as a present from my wife for our 25th wedding anniversary). What can I say ? It´s the best VSOP stuff I ever heard. And I love that VSOP, in my opinion it can be compared with "Massey Hall 1953" since it also is an absolute top gathering of the very best musicians of the acoustic era from the mid sixties on. To have Freddie, Wayne, Herbie, Ron and Tony together in a group and to witness this when they toured, was some of the greatest musical experiences in my live. Each of them my absolute favourites of that style. When it started 1976,77 I was still at high school and the jazz fans in my school (there was lot of them) discussed it and we changed experiences and albums (I was the first to purchase "Tempest in the Coloseum"). Highly recommended !!!!

Sadik Hakim is also on Dexter´s first recordings for Savoy in 1945. His playing there is very similar to the sides for Bird from the same year. About his playing: Since the Bird sides were about the first bop I heard when I was around 15, I heard the Sadik Hakim piano solos also. But my impression is, that Hakim maybe at that early stage of his career didn´t know how to play bop properly. It sounds like someone, who until that point played other music, maybe classical music and tried to keep up with the "new sounds of bop" without really understanding what´s bop about. People then thought bop is weird and so on, but hear Bird or Diz or Fats or Bud, and it flows, it has that beauty in it and tells us a story. When I myself started to try to play that music, it sounded very similar to what Hakim did, without wanting to sound that way. When I listened back on tape recorder, what I had played before on piano, I was shocked. It sounded like chromatic exercises in a stiff collard way to play syncopes. Like if a classical pupil has to play cromatic scales under severe looks of those oldish ladies who used to give piano lessons (I quit after a few times, when I was a kid, cause that was not "music" for me). It was frustrating: I heard "Bouncing with Bud", would memorize to line and the chords, but it sounded like a copy of Sadik Hakim when I played it. Ugly, with eccessiv use of descenting cromatic lines and stiff. Until someone (I think it was Allan Praskin) told me: "Read the title: BOUNCING with Bud. Do you know what a bounce is ?". That helped me very much. If I listen to a tape of what I played when I was a teenager, I have to laugh a lot now.....

I love it. And Benny Green, yeah ! Hank is so fantastic , I love to hear his solos, each aspect of it, and the nice quotes from other songs. Never heard a better version of "Lullaby at Birdland" than this one. And Benny Green, really nice to hear, as Dex said once: The very very.......slippery ......trombonist ..... Benny Green ! The only downer for me is the Gene Krupa like drumming of Charles Persip. Well, he was a big band drummer, but hear it is uncomfortable to hear that old fashioned use of the bass drum so you almost can´t hear the bassist. So, while Hank is so hip, that rhythm section with a Gene Krupa like drumming really sounds stiff and does not support the soloists, but forces them to keep in a certain direction. In my case, I try to avoid to listen to this drum style, but its hard for me since a band is as good as the drummer is.......

Agreed. Who of us will start a bass-players thread ? Back to Mraz: Well, as I said, his playing with Tommy Flanagan was one of the highlights in my live experiences. By the way, the Festival I saw then, where he played was only a few miles from the border line to the then communist Cehoslovacia, his birth country.

Interesting review of different bass players ! About Ron Carter: I like him very much now, but during the time I heard him most, (70´s ) sometimes his extremly amplified sound and those many glissandi annoyed me and I didn´t find his solos as exiting as those of Mingus let´s say. But now I listen very much to jazz of the 70s and really like it as part of the time of that sound. Paul Chambers was my first love on bass. I was so fascinated about his playing on my first jazz LP (Miles´Steamin´) that I decided to buy a bass fiddle and learn it (autodidactic) as a second instrument. I still have that bass fiddle and very good bass players wanted to buy it, but nope....., though I concentrate on piano and due to some health issues with my left hand in the past can´t handle it any more..... Very interesting the point of view about that George Joyner with Garland. I also was surprised that Garland used on that session a more old fashioned player with the bop sound of Curley Russel or Tommy Potter or Gene Ramey, that someone like Chambers or Watkins. But as you said, I love Curley on the 1954 Blakey session, and on "Blowin´in from Chicago". Ray Brown, well all those years with Peterson....., and sometimes he is too loud. He is terrible loud on the 1956 Bud Powell session for Verve, which otherwise would be a very good album. And in later years he was even louder.

I saw him in 2005 with his band "Fountain of Youth". He was in top form and still looked much younger than 80.

That´s a terrible blow. He was one of my favourite bassists from the younger generation during the time I saw him life. The last time I saw him in 1985 with the absolute dream piano trio: Tommy Flanagan, George Mraz, Art Taylor !!!!

I think until his last occasion to perform it always depended what mood Bud was into. Something had to do with the quantities of Largatyle Buttercup gave him, sometimes it was that someone gave him a drink or he cadged a drink, or sometimes it may have been frustration (his comeback to NY, where he found out that the only purpose was paying back his depts for hospital bills, not "handling his own dough") . So even in the course of an evening it could happen that it started great and then the next set was not up to his standards. Look at the video from Denmark, were Bud plays "Round Midnight" almost exclusivly for a young lady, who looks just fascinated and lits a cigarette, and Bud smiles to her and seems to talk to her through that wonderful music. The best version of Midnight I ever heard or saw..... In Sweden he himself says on Vol. 5 how much he enjoyed his stay. But some pieces are only routine, like the over long "Straight No Chaser" and "Blues for Closet". Maybe he had troubles with the rhythm section and decided to play medium tempo blues form for that reason. Few days later in Denmark he made one of his best studio albums with 15 year old NHOP.

For me too as a reunion, but I didn´t mention it in this context, because it´s a rare thing at BN to record such reunions, they usually used current rhythm sections. As I know, the 1963 date for Dexter in Paris was meant to be with Kenny Drew on piano, who got sick. Dexter wanted to do originals and Bud would not cooperate on that new material. So what came out was a topnotch bop session with some of the most famous bop standards played by three creators of that style with the fantastic Pierre Michelot. That´s my impression on that album. But as I said, it´s quite untypical for BN.

For me, it´s the very best from all BN albums Dexter made in the 60´s. I like them all, but let´s say: "Dexter Calling" would be great, but somehow the great rhythm section, one of the best of all, somehow does not fit to Dexter or vice versa. "Gettin Around" is a bit too comfortable "A Swinging Affair" would be from the same date als "Go" but doesn´t have the same fire.....

Great man and a great life ! Once I read a great story from Austrian Festival Organizator Fritz Thom about his meeting with George Wein on a winter day at Wein´s home (I think it was in the northern part of the States, somewhere with a lot of snow in winter, since Fritz Thom helped Mr. Wein to remove the snow around his house..... and then they stayed in the living room and talked.... I think, it was written in the illustrated program book of the "Danube Jazz Festival Hollabrunn 1985) where a lot of stars from Wein´s schedule performed, including Mr. Wein himself with his Newport Allstars.......

Looked for it yesterday but for sources available for me (Amazon) it is only on Amazon.UK, but why not on Amazon.de ?

Time flies. Wynton is now as old as Dizzy was when I saw him first (1978 or so). And Wynton was the "wunderkind" of 1980 or so, with Blakey, and still very fine with VSOP II in 1983. But I don´t know what he really did after that, only sometimes read his commentaries as he pretends to tell the world what is jazz and what not. But Wynton a living legend who changed music ? Like Diz ? Not at all. He is always scheduled in Europ with that Lincoln Orchestra or something like that. I never heard it.

I wrote my personal "Brubeck experience" in my posting from Thursday ora 09:29 on page 1 ! That´s what I was asking.

What can I say ? That combination is my absolute dream band. I must have it.

If my perfect pitch is still intact: Isn´t the disco part of Disco Monk in G-flat, and the slower "Monkish ballad" part in D-natural ? Both keys not often played in "jazz" ? If I think spontanously, the only D-natural tune that comes to my ear and I play sometimes, is "Thou Swell".....

My absolute jazz entry, before I heard Bitches Brew, was "Steaming". Soon after that I had "Miles in Antibes" and then "Bitches Brew". So I had a mini history of Miles within 3 albums (First Quintet, Seconde Quintet, electric Miles). But how can you handle my writing about my lack of passion for Brubeck ?

Inspired by Mark Strykers article: Sonny Stitt Nightwork with Howard McGhee, Walter Bishop, Tommy Potter and Kenny Clark. Recorded in Switzerland.

Wonderful article, Mark ! Really enjoyed it. I love McGhee´s trumpet from the first time I heard it on Fats Navarro-Howard McGhee Boptet. He is also fantastic on a Spotlite LP "Afro-Cuban" with Brew Moore and the Machito band. On Howard´s Blues it´s just incredible how strong he is. Also like very much his BN recordings 1950 and 53. He had slowed down a bit in the 60´s but still is great on the Black Lion LP "Nightwork" with Sonny Stitt as the leader. Once I read an interview with Howard McGhee´s son "Bootsy", were he says something about his father.

But many rock fans eventually became interested in jazz through jazz rock a la Miles, Headhunters, RTF, Billie Cobhan-George Duke and so on. I still listen often to Bitches Brew but always wonder why it became so popular among youngsters then, since this is quite intellectual music, it´s not so "radio playing" like "On The Corner". It´s strange that I being a 1959 born, rock never really appealed to me, I came to rock through 70´s Miles, Hancock , and so on since this was the time. So it was the other way round. I still meet jazz fans of my generation, who also listen to let´s say Led Zeppelin or so and say this is more intelectual rock. Well, my musical intellect is satisfied with jazz. If I want or must listen to something else, it´s usually "easy music" like shlagers.

I don´t know if those two were mentioned. It seems that the big Festival "Velden 1979" was mostly Milestone stars like Rollins (latest album Don´t Ask" from 1979), Ron Carter (latest album Parade from 1979, Joe Henderson (latest album "Relaxin at Camarillo" ). And the finale was Woody Herman. Here´s the album he made in 1979 with the same personnel I saw, but with great guest stars....)

Interesting that you mentioned "Time Out". When I was just starting to listen to jazz in the mid 70´s, my heroes were Mingus and Miles, and through them I got to Bird Diz Bud and so on, and also through Mingus to Ornette Coleman and so on. Through "electric" Miles also to that kind of early 70´s rock jazz. I also had a kind of names and asked someone from my class, if he knows some of them or can recommand something to me. I had written the name "Dave Brubeck" on that list and he shouted with enthusiasm "You must get into that, he is just fantastic!". So I thought if Miles and Mingus and Bird and Ornette are "fantastic", how must be this if this guy says it is so great. And then I heard that Take Five and Blue Rondo and something like "Unsquare Dance" and it didn´t mean nothing to me. I couldn´t get that deep love for music I got from let´s say Mingus. Just impossible for me. I later heard some earlier stuff on Bellaphone, it must have been some live performance, it was swinging but I couldn´t stand the way Brubeck hammered on that piano, I was used to Bud, Monk, McCoy, Herbie. So it was the wrong start for me with Brubeck. There was no vibrations for me and later I found out that the Brubeck fans is a different category of audience ...... In general, I don´t have much love for so called "West Coast" from the 50´s, though I love much later Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. CTI the same on me. The only two I have is Mulligan/Baker 1974 at Carnegie Hall. For the big sound of Ron Carter on bass. ECM also missing in my collection with the exception of "Lookout Farm and "Drum Ode". And I had to laugh when I read Lieb´s autobio and he said that Manfred Eicher didn´t like drum ode, it was not what he liked for his label.....so....naturally I like Drum Ode since it is not typical "ECM"....

I love those tracks, always loved the way Bud plays "Embraceable You" , it´s like if he would have re-composed it. Same with "Devotion". This is a tune that speaks for itself and doesn´t need improvised chorusses. It would destroy the message of that tune. And "Woddy" and "Burt Covers Bud" (actually Bean´n the Boys, a Hawkins composition ) are just perfect. I like those 1953 recordings more than some of the earlier trio recordings. Especially on the two July 1950 tracks with Buddy Rich it´s too much high register virtuoso stuff, I like more the 1950 solos on Birdland with Bird and Fats, thats more music, not so much high register virtuoso stuff.....

Good reason to listen to a lot of his wonderful albums, on Roadshows there is also recordings from celebrating his 80th Birthday on stage.