Gheorghe

Is it some augmented form of the original Ornette Coleman Trio ? I heard some stuff I think, where Ornette had augmented his group, especially in the late 60 and shortly before Prime Time. (I loved Prime Time, it was my favourite "jazz rock" beside Miles Davis during that time). I think those records were extremly hard to find. It had took me YEARS back then to get together the two LPs of "Golden Circle". BN was dying or disappearing when I started to love jazz in the first half of 1970´s

It´s interesting from my point of view to see that most fans of LD associate him for his work with organ players. It seems that different audiences have different points of departure in their beginnings of listening to jazz. In my case, the organ was completly absent in my consciousness with the exception of the moments, where Miles plays some chords on the organ when I saw him live in 73/74. It lasted until the mid 80´s when there was a little club that spinned always BN records in the small hours and that was the first time I heard an organ (A Date with Jimmy Smith, the one with LD, Donald Byrd, HANK MOBLEY and Blakey) which I dug and bought. And later some Larry Young albums, especially "Unity". But Lou Donaldson.... I got to hear him on record very very early in my making of a musician, it was when I still was a kid and had the two BN Thelonious Monk albums, absolutly basics for becoming a musician ! And on that one session where Max Roach replaces the eternal Art Blakey, there is LD with KD. "Carolina Moon".....eh ? I think LD was quite unknown in my country until he started to tour Europe in the 80´s. First time I saw him quite late, I was already playing myself, and LD was on stage in 1985. But I remember those tours in the mid 80´s still was a regular quinted with a bass player, a better drummer and an acoustic piano. I had some amuzement when I first saw Lonnie Smith with that Indian Turban, whom I had not known before and who sure is as fast as Jimmie Smith, but somehow after one show with the same gimmicks on following shows, I lost interested and would have loved it to hear LD´s wonderful alto again with a regular jazz quartet, and above all with some better drummer than the last time I heard em ..... Oh that´s a treasure ! I should have got signed a record by LD but allways thought artists sign only newer records of their own since they are proud of their latest achievment. ......... I WAS WRONG ! I wanted to get a record signed by LD and went to the record store to buy one I had thought is very new, it was called something like "Sweet Poppa Lou" or so, and when I spinned it I could not believe this is true. It was some hidous mid 70´s funk without any musical interest. So I had got trapped, the record landed in the garbage can. Don´t get me wrong, I love mid 70´s funk and jazzrock if it´s the Miles Groups, if it´s the Headhunters with Herbie, if it is some of the electric Chick Corea, if it´s Billy Cobham and George Duke, but not that music which sounds like background music in a shopping mall...... So I got no LD autograph.... I am not an autograph hunter since I get a bit ashamed if I ask for something like that, so I didn´t even dare to get Pharoah Sander´s autograph on my beloved copy of "Live at the East".....

I think there was some Ornette Coleman albums that I have read about but that never were available, may it be Sience Fiction, then there was some I think it was called "Chappa Quappa Suite" and so on. Maybe they was on Columbia and usually Columbia cut stuff out from the catalogue as soon as it appeared. They had some great jazz artists, but other than Miles who´s albums always was reissued other artists where cut out of their deals....

I that you ? Can you explain what kind of hat this is ? I think if Monk would live, he would like to have it on his head 😉

I think one side is actually a Tadd Dameron lead session, the so called "Atlantic City Band" Tadd had. It´s interesting that I have also an album with the same title, which is on Blue Note, I think it has Lou Donaldson, but is not the Birdland Jazz Messengers record....

I think I have two of those records: I think they are titled "Tangerine" and one other from the same session, I think they have Thad Jones on trumpet, it could be Louis Hayes on drums, and the great Stanley Clark on bass !!!!! But nevertheless, I think that "Prestige" recordings during that time, meant less money than later. I think..... at least from what I read about Dexter during his stay in Europe, that he became quite forgotten in the States and played only sporadically there...... There is another one I never could purchase though it might be the most interesting: It is something from Montreux with Hampton Hawes, Bob Cranshaw and Kenny Clark and maybe from Montreux. I have a Gene Ammons record with the same rhythm section, where Dexter sit´s in so I would like to hear the real Dexter album to, but to buy the whole compilation only for ONE record I want to here, would not do it.

All time favourites of mine all the great musicians.

All those Onkel Pö´s records are great. From the music anyway. And of course I have heard both of them live many times. It´s only a pity that the great Tete Montoliu is a bit underrecorded or the piano is not well recorded. .....

Maybe he is not much mentioned anymore, but one of my absolute favourites here in Europe was Siegfried Kessler. He lived in Paris and was famous for playing very very often with Archie Shepp. He had it all, he could play avantgarde, he could play first rate be bop and he played the blues like no one else, as I witnessed when I saw him the last time, in 1985 at Hollabrunn with Jimmy Witherspoon and Dee Dee Bridgewater !!!!! Two vocals in one group, a stellar rhythm section, heaven on earth.......

Well that´s a high building, but the design, especially the balconies remind me so much of blocks in Romania. People here call it "Platte" but it gives me a cosy feeling. But that´s not a wonder in my case..... wonderful, some of my favourite music of all times, those two. I would not have recognized Billy Higgins.

Love the Griffin Davis thing if I want to hear something easy just to snap fingers and tap my feet. And I like the humour both of them have in their music. But most of all I like the tracks where they play Monk tunes. Only I don´t dig sooooo much Junior Mance. He has a helluva technique, but overdoes it a bit like Oscar Peterson, and I don´t like at all what he does with "Epistrophy". He destroys the tune that way how he plays it, and Epistrophy is the very beginning of modern jazz.....

Recently I had discovered there was a Mingus-Dolphy thing even earlier, titled "Town Hall Concert" recorded shortly before the trip to France ! I think I had heard it at a Party when I was a teenager and since I already had the 3 LP set from Paris, I was surprised to hear that music on a single LP. But somehow it sounds more "tame" than the wilder Paris Concert. On "So long Eric" they don´t change so much the tempos, they play a straight ahead blues stuff. I must say, I like the stuff without Johnny Coles more. Somehow I don´t dig so much Johnny Cole´s tone, Mingus sometimes had strange choices for the trumpet chair. Like the trumpet player on the two America LPs from the 70´s , his name was something like Billy Preston or so, he doesn´t impress me, but those albums anyway are to much lame duck for my taste. And I think on Mingus Moves he also has a quite weak trumpet player. I was not pleased with Walrath at the beginning, but he turned out to be one of the best trumpet players Mingus had.

Maybe not so much for lasting efect. I remember I had never heard his name before I heard him on the "Americans in Paris" album which sure is not the best one for each of those Americans in Paris. But Lou Bennett sounds nice, I remember on that album he plays "No Smoking" from Horace Silver, which is a number I like very very much and have played very very often in my life. So Lou Bennett sounds really nice on it and has great skills. The only thing is, that it seems to me that before Larry Young came along, all organ players sounded quite the same. But maybe it is the instrument. My organ discography is quite thin, I have this one or two pieces on the above mentioned album, and 2 or 3 Jimmy Smith albums, but more than three Larry Young albums...... Apropos: Larry Young also lived some time in Paris, like Woody Shaw. It´s told that Woody Shaw even had played with Bud, but no recorded evidence of it...

I heard Tommy Flanagan once, he had the same bassist, the great George Mraz and on drums was no one less than Art Taylor !!! I have seen that record you have or maybe even I have it someone, but I have not listend to piano trio records for very very long time . I think I remember I had bought it because a musician I played with mentioned the tune "Denzil´s Best" which is on this record, that´s why maybe I purchased. Those where the days where you didn´t have the possibility to hear stuff on youtube or print sheet music. I spent quite some money for LPs I would never again listen to, which I bought only to learn "one tune" !!!!! I love that album, it seems to have been recorded the same time when Hubbard together with Lee Morgan made those fantastic live sessions "Night of the Cookers"..... The strange thing: I have it as an japanese CD, but it was somehow remastered. I´ m not an audiophile since my hearing is not good and I wouldn´t even care if I´d hear better again, but it´s only the music itself that counts for me. But I have to mention, than my copy, like a copy of Dizzy Reece "Sounding Off" has such a strange bass sound. Very powerful, but it sounds much more like an electric bass or even more a synthy bass.......

Dexter was mentioned, Don Byas, Johnny Griffin, In Viena we had Art Farmer. Kenny Drew lived in Denmark, Horace Parlan and Duke Jordan too, but I´m sure the most prominent pianist who ever lived in Europe was Bud Powell, who stayed more than 5 years of his short live in Paris and performed in all european countries with the exception of East Europe....

Well, I was too young for Armstrong. You know, I grew up in the times, where those who where a bit older than, me who were like my big brothas listened mostly to what is the music you refer to. Mingus was a hero of us all, like Miles, and Bird was somethin like the James Dean of Jazz, Coltrane almost a divine being... you know.... I got acquainted to Don Cherry thru the Sonny Rollins Stuttgart concert 1963 from an Italian Pressing, and later from a friend from Cehoslovacia who had that huge magnetofon maybe Russian production and had "Complete Comunion" on it and the extremly rare "Rhythm X" . We only could dream about Blue Note records, they were more or less a legend. But that cehoslovac hipster had stuff like that, and Cecil Taylor too. So that´s how I got in touch with that stuff. It is to me music as dynamic as Bop.

Thank you so much dear Luciano. I can understand, that though you enjoyed it, it may not be exactly the genre you follow. In the few moments where I have time to just listen to records, I also listen very much to 60´s avantgarde stuff, Ornette, Don Cherry, late Trane, Sanders and stuff, and as I said, MINGUS with Dolphy opened my mind for all that. Since at that time I did not "know" anything else than 50´s 60´s Miles from Prestige records to Bitches Brew, Mingus led me to listen to Free jazz as well as to stride piano (thru Jakie Byard) and most of all Bebop. Until "Parkeriana" I didn´t know nothing about Bird, or Bud or all of them, but thanks to Mingus I went back to that style to really "study" it, because if you can play "Dizzy Atmoshpere" at a speed like 1947 at Carnegie Hall, you have mastered your instrument, and if you can play a ballad deep like "Round Midnight" , you got the depth you need....... finally, bop is the basis of everything that came after.....

Our Delight is a nice tune, most play it in Ab but since I heard the Billy Eckstine band doin´ it in Db that´s how I like it most. Tadd Dameron could it make sound like a larger band even if they did it only with quintet. But I love most the versions from Dizzy Big Band and Billy Eckstine Big Band. Sonny Stitt recorded it on the album 12! James Moody I got to know him, better said because of my wife because she is the person you memory easily stunning girl as she is. That´s why James Moody recognized us after a year. We had seen him in 1999 in Viena, and one year later in Miami, that´s where he came to our table to greet us and tell us that he remembers us !!!!!

I´m still waiting for it, it was pre-ordered by Serena and will be listenable for me on 14 decembrie when there is my birthday. About sound quality: As long as I hear the tenor and Jack deJohnette´s drums well, the world is in ordine for me.

ITALY...... is a wonderful country with a lot of jazz fans. For me before I became a musician (as a kid, when I collected records), Italy was the "Mekka" of Jazz-LPs. I bought mostly those from that striped series "Lineatre" or from the "Kings of Jazz" Series. Especially those "bootlegs" or "rare broadcasts" were my greatest love. I´l never forget how helpful for me was those two Miles Davis albums from 1950-51 of strict bop sessions at Birdland, when I found out, that Bebop is the basis of what I wanted to start. If you can play all that fast shit, you can go into further directions..... It was not possible for me to travel, but my parents got the possibility to visit Roma and I gave them a list of what they should buy for me (Italian pressings of jazz records). And last not least there was the best of all: "HORO" records !!!!! MINGUS..... first time with Jack Walrath, Ricky Ford, Danny Mixon, Danny Richmond (tunes played: Fables of Faubus, Sues Changes, Remember Rockefeller at Atica), and the second time same personnel but Bob Neloms replacing Danny Mixon (Summer 1977: Tunes: For Harry Carney, Cumbia and Jazz Fusion, Three or Four Shades of the Blues). MUSICIAN.......me, yes ! I had thought this is common knowledge here in the Forum Organissimo..... look at the homepage from my profile, (www.bop-explosion.com) that´s an all Leader´s formation that I formed after so much time as a sideman....., and listen to the CD we recorded this year !

I don´t have the album but had a gig and Porgy´s with an US-Altosaxophonist who had "Fire Waltz" on the set list, and it sounded wonderful. About Mingus, he did often play in your wonderful country Italia. I remember very well the two times I saw Mingus live, it was one time in Viena, and the other time it was in Franța, but I think that was his last tour...

Monk solo is the one pianist I like most to listen to solo. He has a fantastic left hands and can combine stride tehnique, and old tunes back into the 20´s (Dinah) with then "modern" solo lines and chords.

I don´t know so many details like lengths of tracks and record labels. The only thing I know is, that the 3 LP set on the French America label was my second LP anyway, when I was just in my early teens. I allready "had" a Miles Davis album and almost wore it out, until I discovered that legendary Mingus Great Concert in Paris. For me it was one of my most important key experiences in my live. What wealth of music, those fantastic changes of tempos and the "further out" parts.....and that hard driving swing on "Parkeriana". As I said, I don´t know which length and how many minutes and even seconds it lasts, and what is the cataloge number😄..... but to spead seriously spoken it was THAT album and MINGUS with DOLPHY, Byard, Clifford Jordan, and the wonderful Danny Richmond that made me THINK more about music, to HEAR SOUNDS and start to open my eyes for more advanced Free Jazz and on the other hand to Bird and Bop, about whom I never had heard then at 13, 14 years. I just was a milestone in becoming a musician.....

Great foto of one of my favourites

Somehow in my youth Verve records most of them were japanese reissues, very expensive, but I didn´t buy so many of them since Norman Granz´ tastes where some very very straight ahead jazz, and very little originals of the recording artists. So it was mostly a mainstream label, very good recordings sound, but sometimes too straight ahead rhythm sections for my taste. I was quite astonished to have later a Jackie McLean Birdsongs recording on Verve. Verve at the time when Jackie McLean was most creative and active, would not have recorded him......