Gheorghe

Yes, this picture of Mingus on the White House ground, were Jimmy Carter greeted and hugged him and Mingus burstet out in tears. So sad. And really sad the story Max Roach told later, that he was also on that White House festival and someone went to Max and said to him "Mingus want´s to say hello", and Roach didn´t go, he said he still was angry at Mingus for some hassles decades ago with the Debut-Label. And Roach later felt sorry that they couldn´t make peace. As you say, nobody knew about his illness, at least here in Europe. We saw in summer 1977 that he walked with a cane, but we all thought that maybe he had a slipped disc or problems with his knees during to all that overweight, something that´s normal for overweight people who are 55 years old. When he chancelled that following tour at the end of November 1977 (with Coryell, Scofield and Catharine), we were very disappointed but tought that maybe he has a knee operation and the following year he´ll be ready and steady again. Then the last album "Me Myself an Eye", where Mingus didn´t play bass. On the back cover Mingus is in a wheel chair, we thought that he wanted to make an album during reconvalescence after some operation, concentrating more on his composer roll than on his bassist role. I am very glad that I get so many responses on my topic. Makes me happy to exchange impressions with other Mingus fans all over the world. But on interesting thing: Most of you seemed to have seen Mingus live much earlier than in my case. You refere to concerts between 1972 and 74 (with the exception of the 1976 performance with "Isabel´s Table Dance". Is it possible you didn´t see him in 1977 because he played more in other continents like South America, Europe and North Africa. Here in Europe he was very very active during his last active year.

This was my first Montgomery album. Fantastic !

I know you are a Mingus fan, I think for much time you had a Mingus pic in your avatar. But I was sure you saw or heard much more Mingus than me. We here in Europe, and me being still underage in 1976 (In 1977 I was finally 18) it was much more difficult to get to other towns or even other countries to see festivals. hi@ll: Come on, come on, I´m sure there are more Mingus freaks.....

Hello Friends ! We have discussed very much about Mingus in several topics (Carnegie Hall 74, Mingus Workshops 64 etc). I would like to start a discussion about live performances, mostly with the bands with Ricky Ford , Jack Walrath, first Danny Mixon and then Bob Neloms. I´m sure there are a lot of buddies around, who are about the same generation like me, who also saw performances in that period and would like to share their impressions here. Well, around 1976 I was a teenager and already a very very big fan of Mingus. I even can say that Mingus was one of my very first guides to that great music. I still didn´t have a car, but had a lot of jazz buddies who were about 5 years older than me, and if someone had a shabby old car or a bus, they invited me to go with them to festivals. It was cool for my parents, if school was okay and it was. In summer 1976 there was the Willisau Festival in Switzerland. Mingus had his band with Jack Walrath, Ricky Ford, Danny Mixon and of course Danny Richmond. Usually during that years, the band started with "Song for Harry Carney" with that ostinato bass figure and quiet voicings, but it was a bit faster than the studio version and the got into dialoques between each soloist and Danny Richmond, really strong. Mingus would play an extended solo running the whole range of his instrument to the highest register, full of tension. The second tune might have been "Fables of Faubus" with Mingus shouting the "Faubus Song" (name me someone, who´s ridiculous.....), extended solos by all five musicians. Then was "Sue´s Changes", really wonderful, a very long version. The last tune was "Remember Rockefeller at Attica" done very fast. And they closed with a very very short version of Cherokee/Koko , and incredible tempo. In september 1976 it was in Vienna at Stadthalle, the same band of course. It was a shorter set, since it was a double schedule Mingus and then the Thad Jones - Mel Lewis Big Band. Mingus started with "Fables" and then "Sue´s Changes". During the solo parts I remember that Mixon got into some stride piano, and then some swing with bass lines in the left hand, very much to the delightment of the audience. And they closed with that short signature "Cherokee". In 1977 it was the same band, but Bob Neloms replaced Danny Mixon. The great thing about 1977 were the live versions of the tunes from his newest albums "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" and "Cumbia&Jazz Fusion". They toured very very much, first the States, then Buenos Aires, then Europe and Tunisia. At that time, some young bass player from Buenos Aires studied bass in Vienna and brought a tape, which he had made with a little cassette recorder with integratet mike. Of course not the best sound quality, but good enough to hear all the music. Again, " Song for Harry Carney" even more exiting than the year before, Cumbia & Jazz Fusion with all those sections, first that ostinato thing with the dialoque between Ford and Walrath, and Walrath was really fantastic on his latin solo, then the straight ahead part, the short ballad motiv and the spanish sounding solo of Neloms. Then that two beat stuff with Mingus shouting his rap about "Mama´s little baby don´t like no shortnin´bread" It went along with "Mama´s little baby wants truffles, caviar, diamonds, diamonds in the nose, diamonds on the toes......" There was a funny thing Mingus did on Cumbia at the ending. It was like fading out, and then only Mingus walked on , tapping his foot , and playing higher and higher notes, until only his foot tapping remained. "Three or Four Shades of Blues" much better than the studio version. And faster. "Noddin´ya Head Blues" with a long bass intro by Mingus. He was really in top form. In Europe, they also used to start with "Song For Harry Carney" and would play both "Cumbia" and "Three or Four Shades"..... that´s what we heard. Mingus usually announced the titles and became angry only when he snarled "No flash bulbs allowed", or if he saw that somebody would tape the show. And once the mike was off when Mingus would start that "Mama´s little baby" rap, and he snarled "put that mike on, put that mike on, put that f**** mike on !". I think this was also on TV. It is said that we don´t know anything about his trip to Tunisia..... I think that after the tour he had a schedule at "Village Vanguard" and then went again on tour. I heard, that in Boulder, after the concert he went to the piano and wanted to play something for the audience, but had to stop, because the sound engeneer had started a Weather Report tape. The album he made for Hampton "Who is Who in Jazz" is a little strange. But all my respect for Hamp, that he dug into Mingus´ music, it´s quite astonishing that he played solos on tunes that he might not have known before and that have difficult changes. Only the arrangements were not really hot. Mingus played some astonishing solos on "Peggy´s Blues Skylight" and "Just for Laughs" (Rockefeller at Attica) and again shows how he plays the whole range of the instrument. We were looking forward to his autumn tour in late November, it was already scheduled with Larry Coryell , Philipp Catherine and John Scofield, to promote his album and were ready to travel to Germany to see this, but in the last moment it was chancelled. A bitter disappointment. There was also discussion of a further Atlantic Album, this time to bring Mingus together with Stanley Clark. But it didn´t happen since Mingus said something that Clark wouldn´t or could´t play A Train, which is nonsense, since Clark know all the stuff from the tradition to funk, and for example his playing with Dexter on "Tangerine" is really a highlight. There was a DB interview of Mingus with Arnold Jay Smith, but at that time I still was not a DB subscriber. Maybe someone can show that DB interview with Mingus ?

Yes, it´s written in the liner notes of the album. I remember as a youngster, I must have been 15 years when that brown album with Mingus with the Sombrero Hat was in the record shops, I was quite astonished that they play so much straight ahead , because my first impression of Mingus was the stuff with Dolphy with all those tempo changes and all.... But I can´t really get with that last three minutes of C Jam Blues, that´s somehow "pseudo free jazz", with Mingus and Richmond desperatly attempting to find an end, but those two Adams and Kirk don´t pay no heed to them..... (I dig "free jazz" or at least quite some of it, but this 3 minutes outing does not really make sense to me, I usually stop the LP at that point......

Charlie Chan on albums he made, when he was under contract of Verve (Massey Hall, Miles´ Collectors Items).

I remember he played around the early 80s with Austrian Avantgard-Jazz Pioneer Fritz Novotny (Reform Art Unit). Burton played one of Novotny´s compositions "Pannonian Flower" and then called Monk´s "Crepuscule with Nelly". I didn´t know he was of romanian descendance, I could have talked to him in his language......

Thank you so much !!!!!! I just preordered it. That´s a must for me.

but I have not seen it yet on CD on Amazon. I would like to purchase it on CD, much easier to handle.

Sorry to hear this: I saw him with Horace Parlan and have the Steeplechase LP with Parlan, Eckinger and Danny Richmond. such a great bass player. RIP

Yes, really exiting with all those musicians, an interesting jam and I remember the 70´s when this came out and I purchased it. For me as a beginner, I was used to the more expanded forms of Mingus like Faubus and Meditations...... that´s how I started to become a big Mingus fan...... I would like some time to start another thread about Mingus, about the period after Adams and Pullen, which for many of our generation was the band we saw live in different places all over the world. I saw Art Farmer on so many many nights here in Vienna, It was usually Art Farmer, Fritz Pauer, Harry Sokal on tenor, and very fine bassists and drummers (in later years very often Johannes Strasser and Mario Gonzi)

Such a great edition. I first had bought the Fats Navarro BN double album in the 70´s (that brown paper bag cover series), and than in the CD Era I bought this one.

I think I have this as a Prestige Cliff Brown Memorial Cd. The first half is in Sweden with Art Farmer, and the second half is the Atlantic City Band Tadd Dameron had in 1953.

Don´t forget Sonny Rollins "Road Shows Vol. 2) where Ornette has a guest performance on "Sonny Moon For Two". This was on Sonny´s 80th Birthday and I think Ornette was also an octogenar.

I have this also. That´s about how they sounded when I heard them. Fantastic live album.

I think shortly after I heard them, Workman was replaced by Calvin Hill. Somehow I had liked Workman´s bass sound more then Calvin´s . And even a year later, Billy Harper was replaced by Odean Pope. Many like Odean Pope, sure he is great, but I liked Billy Harper more. Pope has a strange tenor sound, it sounded more like some strange instrument, maybe a bassoon or something like that.

Well, I have Jutta Hipp´s two trio recordings from the Hickory House and the one with Zoot Sims, very nice, she could play, but nothing revolutionary. I read an interview with her in the 80´s when she wasn´t active anymore and when she was asked about her time in Europ with Hans Koller she said she doesn´t like that kind of music anymore. I have read those rumours with Leonard Feather. But you mention there were other reasons for the demise of Hipp´s musical career. What reasons was it. Why did she disappear from the scene. I heard, she was quite struggling for living. She could have returned to Europe to continue her career. Really a mistery to me.

The first recordings were with drummer James Zitro on the ESP label in NY 1967. I think, Allen was only 19 years old then. About the age I had when I played with him for the first time. Later in the 80´s, when we had a gig, he brought the album "Zig Zag" where he is featured. Such a great musician !

I saw them in the late 70´s and it was FANTASTIC. I was so exited before the concert, I mean, THE GREAT MAX ROACH. As much as I remember, one of the tunes was "It´s Time", and there was "Peaceful heart" and a very very interesting version of "Round Midnight", were I think they played the A-parts in 3/4 and changed into 4/4 in the brigde, very fast. This was one of the craziest versions of "Midnight" I ever heard. And there was some Roach drum solo: "The drum waltzes" and "Mr. Hi Hat". The next day I hurried to the record dealer to ask for Max Roach LPs. The above mentioned LPs were not available, he gave me "Speak Brother Speak" because the "America" Label was very present then and easy to purchase. On "Speak Brother Speak", the drum solo of Roach really reminded me of the solo he played the night before at "Kongresshaus". That´s was the place were they played.

I love it !

Allen Praskin "Just Friends - Just Jazz" from 1979 live at a Jazzclub in Mannheim Germany. I had the honour to play several dates with the great Allen Praskin, when I just was a beginner. It started around 1978, after the great late Austrian Jazzpianist and composer Fritz Pauer asked me during intermission, if I would like to sit in for one number. It was fast company: Praskin, Karl Ratzer, Fritz Pauer, Paolo Cardoso and Fritz Ozmec.

This was in the record shops in the late 70´s. I really don´t know why I didn´t purchase it. There would have been a lot of Galaxy albums that I would have liked. Ron Carter: Well I can understand your point of view. Ron Carter usually was recorded quite loud and he had a very modern sound, very "electric" due to the pickup, I think I remember we used "Underwood Pickups" then. Ron Carter also had a lot of gimmicks with glissando, with double grips and so on. I can imagine that this maybe didn´t fit to Red Garland´s music. But during that time, we loved Ron Carter very much for the more modern sounding so called "acoustic" jazz, like let´s say the "Milestone Allstars" and above all "VSOP". Anyway I was much more a Ron Carter fan than let´s say all that super fast high note stuff that Eddie Gomez did on solos. You can compare it on McCoy Tyner´s "Super Trios" from 1977.

One of the best hard bop albums of all time. I heard sometimes, that it was almost a signature theme in japanese tea houses where they played jazz. "Cool Struttin" and Lou Donaldson´s "Blues Walk". And last not least: One of the best album covers ever.

Yes, the later band with Turre, Mulgrew Miller, Stafford James and Tony Reedus was the one I saw. Fantastic ! Years later I saw Woody Shaw as a single with some picked up rhythm section and it was a very embarrassing and disappointing performance. All those great originals like "Moon Train" "To kill a brick" etc. had disappeared and he played stuff like "Tea for Two". Now, nothing wrong with "Tea for Two" but I had expected something else....., Woody Shaw was very thin and skinny then.

Yeah, that´s how we kids looked around 1965,66 Most boys looked the same, and that terrible haircut all boys had. I have many memories about my childhood, but everything seems to be a black-white film or black white fotos. Ugly kids and ugly adults