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Those two early Kenny Burrell albums for BN are wonderful. I heard Kenny Burrells guitar first on Paul Chamber´s "Whims of Chambers" and fell in love with it. 1956 must have been a wonderful year for Kenny Burrell, he recorded his first two albums for BN and played on others like for example Kenny Dorham´s live at Bohemia.

Terence Blanchard looks like a baby, I always had the impression he has a baby face. As much as I remember from their time with Blakey (I think I saw them with Art somewhere in the mid 80´s , Terence Blanchard played some very very fine, pretty trumpet, and Donald Harrison played very "abstract", sometimes quite atonal, a bit unusual for a band like the Messengers. Don´t misunderstand me, I am hip to free jazz and don´t need it only "smooth", but I remember Donald Harrison´s alto sounded strange in those surroundings.

How about "Bird at St. Nick´s" ? Though the solos of the other musicians were edited, this is Bird at his best. And he is wonderful on those ballads, which he didn´t play often "Smoke Get´s in Your Eyes", "What´s New", "I didn´t know what time it was"....... really wonderful

that´s true, but only bare legs somehow is a loss. Hosiery makes legs looking nicer. Yes, Frank Foster, when he was interviewed about his "Shiny Stockings" he stated that he alsways has been a "legs man".

Bonnie Wetzel, the only female bass star then. I think she also was on 52nd street. I think I saw here name on the bill of a club date there, in the Charlie Parker Memory Book "To Bird with Love".

I read somewhere that Bud, Elmo and Freddie Redd sometimes met Monk at his place and would play and listen to each other and discuss chords etc. I don´t know the swedish album. But from the other records of Freddie Redd I have not noticed much similarity to Elmo Hope. Elmo Hope somehow had a strange style. His right hand is very much in the high register, and the chords from the left hand are in the deep register. He plays very fast, but I think Bud had more melody in his lines. Hope sometimes sounds more dissonant, abstract.

I listened yesterday to "Music from Connection" and "Shades of Redd". This one was originally not issued. Maybe the reason is that some of the ensemble parts are a bit sloppy. It´s still very fine music, but not up to the high standards of the two above mentioned albums.

of course the first Rollins albums I had were the 50´s Prestiges and BN, and then I liked very much the 1963 stuff with Don Cherry, Henry Grimes and Billy Higgins. But I was a teenager in the 70´s and got in touch with the stuff Rollins recorded and did live during that time, too. So maybe many listeners say the best period was the 50´s and 60´s and I even heard people say "I don´t like what Rollins did from 1975 on".... but look, that it was what was happening, Rollins was in his 40´s and very very popular and I´m glad I saw him perform at that time and that we were always waiting for the next album he recorded. Now everything is jazz history, then it was still happening in the present....

I still remember when I first bought it as a 2-LP set from the BN LA-Series, in 1978. That first version of "Round Midnight" is really something, with that voicings from the horns and Monk playing the melody...., and that incredible stride section on "Thelonious".....

I have not heard about him, but the list of artists he played with is really impressive. It speaks for itself.

I love it. That rubato on the beginning of "Thespian" is wonderful. Such a great album.

Very fine. Here another one. Usually I´m not such a big fan of solo recordings, but this one has fascinated me when it came out.

Yes, really ! Glad you mentioned this ! Thanks, Gh.

I also thought about this. I have the CD with the studio material plus a live set with the same personnel , both from Sweden.

This was my very first one.

James Williams was so great, and he died too early. I´ll never forget how impressed I was by his playing on the first Blakey LP I had "In This Korner". And then seeing him perform with Blakey with that band with Bobby Watson and Valery Ponomarev... The last time I saw James Williams was when he played piano in a very strong Dizzy Gillespie Big Band organized for his 70th Birthday Tour in 1987.

The Caravan of Dreams must have been a wonderful location . Once I heard the LP "Opening at Caravan of Dreams" and it´s the best Prime Time I ever heard, and on the last track Ornette plays some really astonishing violin. And I have that LP with string quartet plus Denardo "Prime Design-Time Design". And I have the DVD "Made in America" where you see some parts of "Skies of America" with the Symphony.......very fine. Very amusing those two old women who tell Ornette how much they liked it.

Well he is not a virtuoso on the piano, but has a very unique style. You hear it and know it ´s Freddie Redd . I always had the impression that a lot of his composition work, the way he uses those descending chords was influenced by Bud Powell´s composition "Oblivion". Oblivion has a lot of what seemed to influence Freddie Redd.....

I think I read in Bollemann´s book with his memories about recording artists at the Monster Studio in Netherlands, that Flanagan played exclusivly on Bösendorfer pianos and that there was not a Bösendorfer and Flanagan´s wife said that he would not play it. But Mr. Flanagan tried the studio piano and said it´s great and it turned out to be a wonderful recording session. I saw Tommy Flanagan with George Mraz and Art Taylor at Hollabrunn,Austria in july 1985. I don´t know if they had a Bösendorfer....., the concert was wonderful.....

Indeed it is ! Graz really had a scene for then contemporary jazz, in the 60´s. And some very good austrian musicians of modern music were born and educated in Graz.

When Dizzy was with the Giants of Jazz in 1971, they frequently played "Tin Tin Deo" just as a trumpet-bass duet Dizzy and Al McKibbon. And at one point on McKibbon´s long bass solo you hear a piano in the back ground. I think that´s also Dizzy playing the piano. His comping is a bit similar to Monk from the chords, but different, and rhythmically different, you can hear Dizzy´s rhythm feeling in his piano comping.....

Very fine. Here another one. Usually I´m not such a big fan of solo recordings, but this one has fascinated me when it came out.

only, that this is not a trout, but a carp. I´m not only a jazz fan, but a hobby fisherman too so I know what a trout and a carp are looking like

on the film Dizzy in Havanna you can see Dizzy and Arturo Sandero both playing a four-handed blues on a piano. And yes: Miles in 1983. I saw that band in Vienna at Konzerthaus and Miles indeed played a lot of keyboard. He was really in action and doing everything: Up front trumpet, one had trumpet one hand keyboard, or keyboard. "Star People" is the last Miles Davis album I can enjoy since it still had Al Foster .

Wonderful ! Chet was very often at his best until the very very end. I saw him live in late 1987, that means 6 months before he died and he was in top form, better than ever.