Gheorghe

I will almost remember him as a great composer. He was, almost like Tadd Dameron the perfect composer. I heard so many of his compositions on the old BN records and Prestige records. He played very often at Jazzland for many years, but I´m sure in the last decade or more he didn´t travel anymore. As a composer he was tops, better than an improvisator I think. I liked his compositions more than the way he played, especially in the last 3 or 4 decades. He had a bit a Don Byas tone, but was trying to phrase more like Archie Shepp, and sometimes his improvisations where a bit erratic. I saw him often play "Stable Mates" but to my disappointment he played it mostly as a tenor-drum duet while this would be such a beautiful vehicle for long solos from each one. But when I saw his somewhere at some festival around 2000 , I think it was with Curtis Fuller, Mulgrew Miller, Buster Williams and a drummer whom I didn´t know, he had dread looks and eye glasses but was not Hamid Drake, whom I know, and when they did that "duet" on Stablemate, Benny just didn´t know how to do it, he sometimes put his mouthpiece to the mouth and smiled, but didn´t know what to do. Such tenor-drum duets can be a highpoint, but with players who can do that. Dave Liebman is great in it.

Latin Quarter, which one ? From where or what is the one pic I like , but only for the nice girl, not for them ugly cowboys and so😄

I like both the ESP album and the BN albums. I don´t remember exactly what it was. I think I have : - Golden Circle Vol. I, Vol. II - Empty Foxhole (actually my FIRST LP of Ornette Coleman !) - Love Cry - New York is Now - and of course the one where he is a sideman on tp for Jackie McLean.... It´s strange that the only Coleman other than "Dancing in the Head" that I saw then, was the Empty Foxhole. I´m more interested in the music itself then if Townhall was published by BN or ESP, the music counts that´s all..... I think, that BN had certain demands, that indifferent how far they might go out they still had to get points where they just swing straight ahead. So on each Ornette Coleman LP for BN there is a lot of straight ahead swing, maybe Alfred Lion thought otherwise it would not sell. And I must admit myself, that at the time I got into Free Jazz, those passages where they all "swing" helped me to find a line to the whole further out stuff. This happens with Mingus, it happened with all Free Jazzers who came after him. At least at the beginning. Now if I listen to a so called "Free Jazz album" I find my way also without a swing line in it... Compare the BN´s with the Impulse records Ornette made about the same time (Crisis and Ornette at 12) which are more fare out than the swinging BN´s .

Also agree with Allen, but without the smilie I don´t understand😉

Maybe I should, I think you are right, from historical point of view it might be interesting, case 69 is still mostly acoustic, and 72 was more that indian influenced style with sitar and tablas......, shortly before I heard him with Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey and Dave Liebman..... Maybe then as a kid I was a bit influenced by Miles words about the album "I´ll be tired of it before the day ends, that´s 4 years old music....", that´s why I didn´t buy it when I was just on the pulse of the time at that moment 5 decades ago....

beautiful black pantyhose...

I never saw his name elswhere than on that Kenny Dorham live CD, never had heard his name before and not after.... He seems to be a solid swinger on that album, but maybe I would have liked more rhythm "happening" like what Roy Haynes or Elvin Jones might do, but sure it is okay. But what did he do after that, and in Florida ? Had he other financial sources than music, because I can´t imagine he made a live from playing music, or was he teaching ???

oh I see, well I never heard that, but that mixture of jazz instrumentist and DJ whatever it is, I fear is not for me. I don´t even really understand what a DJ or DJane today makes. I see them with Headphones, and moving and always pushing buttons or so, but don´t know what´s so great about them. My wife tried to explain it to me with mixing sounds or so, but I still didn´t understand nothing😉 Was that last Miles Davis LP that I never listen to, "Doop Bop" a kind of Acid Jazz ? I have that "Natural Soul" CD since I bought it in the 90´s or early 2000´s when there was a lot of Japan-Import BN CDs (Toshiba Series or so). Though not exactly my stuff, I spinned it sometimes, my wife liked it..., but in general all those LD albums is a bit too much for me. I like the one he made with Blakey at Birdland 1954, and the "Date with Jimmy Smith Vol. 1 and 2" with Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd and Art Blakey", maybe "Blues Walk" alltough this has a bit a boring drummer and perc., too smooth for my tastes..... Strange, but I never bought Big Fun, because I had heard that it is more made out of remainders from other sessions. I think I have heard somewhere that it has "Ife" as the only then newer track from 1974 or so, anyway when I saw Miles first time. Ife with Dave Liebman was a highlight of that evening when I first saw that legend they rote books about.....

I´ve never heard Cal Tjader but I remember an album "Stan Getz-Cal Tjader" was on that strongly Mingus bound french jazz record label "America Records". I had heard a little about Stan Getz (I must say more the pre 1950 stuff than the bossa nova that is not really my thing) so I didn´t have no idea who is Cal Tjader, the name didn´t sound really american to me. There was some exotic albums like also one "Gerry Mulligan with Jimmy Witherspoon", but the rest was the jazz I heard (Mingus, Roach, Bird, Diz and so on) I don´t know what´s Acid Jazz, but Bernard "Pretty" Purdie was a great drummer, someone in the category of Billy Cobham or Alphonse Mouzon, anyway great and he does great things on a very strange Diz record from the late 70´s of Diz just with Toots Thielemans, and Bernard Purdie. So what is Acid Jazz, never heard that word, and how did good old Prestige record more modern music of the 70´s ? I never had heard June Christy but how this personnel reads it must be a gas, especially if there is a singer not just bein selfish and don´t give solo space to the others (like Ella in the later days did), but with a regular good jazz combo. Lou Levy, he was not so well known here over in old Europe or Eastern Europe, but he was tops, he was just maybe some milimetru-groove near Bud Powell so much piano that nice guy could play. Saw him with Art Pepper, because he had replaced Pepper´s regular group, who got stranded somewhere, but it was a great replacement, don´t remember the bass and ddrums, but remember Lou Levy.... Sure I Milestone in Miles´ career , I wonder how much spinning it still get´s . I still must have my old LP somewhere in the shelves, but strange to say, I had a wrong start with this album, since I had heard before the versions with Herbie, Ron, Wayne and above all Tony (All Blues, So What) and was disappointed by the much slower and more quiet studio recordings. As I say, I had not the best start with it, and liked Herbie more than Bill Evans, and Tony more than Jimmy Cobb.....

I don´t have much hope to get any answers if I see that there is so little traffic on that forum. Where the musicians. If there is any, I´d like to read about you, and if you also compose ? And how you compose. I think I learned a lot about composing from Mingus, not that I would ever grow ten inches beneath that absolute and ultimate genius and giant, but it was a good point of departure, since until a few years I didn´t know to read or write music, and slowly learned a bit from some google tabels..... So if I have a song in my head the hardest thing will be how to write it down on paper. I took music paper with me everywhere I went , last time this year during the summer spent in my second homecountry România, where I composed 3 knew tunes. Now I have luck, I have a young guy in the band who is a music student AND has them equipments for riting music on computer. Because he told me, that the sheet I rote is not useful (I can´t wright the rhytmic particularities though rhythm is the most important thing for me, but all them dots and breaks to write I don´t understand them. So, since I don´t even know how to record my piano playing, he called me on phone and I played the shit and he recorded it on his cell phone, and he got it, I got all the stuff, written for C Instruments, Bb instruments and Eb instruments, for bass key which I don´t know and what you want.... So like that, composing is a pleasure! But, the most important thing, if there ain´t music in your head, you can´t compose ? As I am a piano player one might thing that I compose on the piano or at least work my ideas further out on piano, but NO. I don´t have no piano when I compose, it would destroy my imagination, since I have to hear the melody in my head, hear all the voices, all the instruments in my head, and the ideas never come when I sit at the piano, they come just on street, havin´coffee, lookin at something nice, or in musical dreams if I´m lucky and remember the melody when I get up.... One of my knew compositions will get performed on my next gig on 10 octombrie in Viena, the title is "Blonde Girl with Brown Eyes".......now who could NOT compose if he sees a magic blonde girl with the brown eyes, exiting exiting, and "poc" I head the melody in my head......was during a fashion shoppin tour, the inspiration was beautiful Serena.....

Very interesting to read, maybe not everything when it is no more about musicians, but anyway: Since I hear jazz I had known that some of my heroes where heroin addicts, mostly Charlie Parker, and Fats Navarro and of course Billie Holiday. During that time I didn´t know there was so much more of them, since other users had more quiet or lesser glamourous lives and was no books written about them: So I was completly astonished, that persones I had thought that look like sober people, like J.J.Johnson and Tadd Dameron was junkies. I heard about so many others much later, mostly also whitey that I was astonished they became users. Bill Evans always looked like a literature professor and more like one, who goes home and has a quiet home with a lot of books, having tea and stuff...., and........he was a junkey ?!!!!!! About Chet Baker I had not heard until 1978, but then I liked his then actual music (never the Westcoast times). And the greatest shock was, when I learned that even in the recent past there were some of the "young lions" who did drugs. Did not say Art Blakey as early as 1971 that heroin became out of fashion, his youngsters in the Messengers Edition all are sober ? I was shocked that Woody Shaw was a junkey and almost blind. He always looked like a model citizen with all them cover fotos with him, his baby, his dad, but some of the hottest and most fascinating trumpet I ever had heard..... but a tragedy and a shock for me because I didn´t have no idea.....I even didn´t know that he was almost blind, I had thought well he wears eyeglasses like most intelectuals..... and so on.... Now I would not be surprised to read, that even musicians I avoided to listen to (Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck) were junkey.....

The Vienna River seen here with floodwaters is very dangerous. Usually small like a brook, it can swell up after a long rain period. I live very near , just 15 minutes to go to that place, but it´s not dangerous because it´s more up the hill. Before the Vienna River enters the City, it´s a naturally flowing small river where I sometimes go flyfishing for browntrout and rainbow trout, I have the angling paper for that river, so it´s legal.....

Incredible ! It was also MY FIRST Gordon album. But then I think what I liked most was the well recorded cymbals of Albert Heath...... But it was not my introduction to jazz. Mine was "'Steamin´" and then was "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus". The latter was of enormous impact on me !!! It opened EVERYTHING for me !

Yep, in mine too. I was still a hi school kid then, but I remember I was a bit disappointed since my point of departure was the band with Dolphy and Jakie Byard, and I had hoped that if 1964 was so many "steps beyond" but still had sections of the grooviest swing I ever had heard, I had hoped that 6 years later Mingus would be even further out. I had not known that 1970 was a very bad time for Mingus, but on a video I saw how he was on "autopilot" on those sessions from 1970. No real fire.....well Bobby Jones is very good, but I think there was a racial problem too and he just was there when Mingus was not really Mingus.... Bobby Jones lived in Germany I think I remember, once met his widow and his stepdaughter, a fine chick than, she used to sing some songs with our band.... I know that you love that record and me too ! Dexter was one of my early heroes. I think at first hearing me and my friend was a bit unnerved by that laid back phrasing and some other points, but after a week or so we became heavy "Dexter Addicts". We even tried to imitate his speaking voice, I think I still can do it, even much easier with my old man´s voice at 65 😄 I love that record because it is a reunion of 3 of the front leaders of the 1940´s bop scene. Each of those three (Dex, Bud, Klook) had "invented" bop on his respective instrument. Who else could play such first hand bop stuff like "Scrapple from the Apple" or "Night in Tunisia" like those men ??? It´s a vintage bop record. And it shows another important thing: You know how Bud had become uneven, Paris and Europe must have bored him, since those "At Home" recordings ar just painful things, but with congenial partners like on this occasion, or with Don Byas, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Griffin or even Dizzy Gillespie on some European albums was the occasion when Bud was Bud again. He is like in his prime here and on the Dizzy with the Double Six and others....

I remember the French America Label very well, because it was our chance to get for little money some of the greatest music. Actually we called it "the Charles Mingus label" because most issues where Mingus records, as well from the Debut Years as well from the many occasions of the group with Dolphy, and even the then brand new 1970 recordings. On the back cover there always stood: "Other Mingus LPs of interest:......." But they had also Bird, Fats Navarro with Roy Eldrige, Max Roach "Speak Brother Speak" and so, that´s why we thought that Mingus being close to all those geniusses also brought their records out. It was a beautiful time, a wealth of music for cheap money and on the European Market, where US Imports or even Japonia-Imports were almost impossible to find or to purchase.....

I might give it a try. As much as I like 60´s avantgarde I fear that both names "Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons" where lesser known over here in Europe or in my countries. We heard late Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor but I fear those were only the most popular artists. I think I have Prince Lasha or even Sonny Simmons on a very strange Dolphy LP from a totally obscure label "Trip Records" which has an ultra strange tune "Music Matador" which sounds outright melodically for 60´s free jazz..... And I think I read sometimes the name Sonny Simmons on ESP records, but imagine how hard it was to get that semi obscure label (at least in Europe then, where only a part of the American market was brought in). We all had "Town Hall Concert by Ornette Coleman", but very little else.....

It´s interesting how many different styles had Miles in only 5 Years, that always have been called the "electric phase" which is quite superficial. I mean, first in 1970 it was still almost acoustic with the exception of Chick Corea on piano. In 1971 it was a bit more electric with Keith Jarrett on yamaha organ AND Fender Rhodes, and for the first time Mike Henderson on electric bass, and the first attempts of Miles to play wah wah pedal. In 1972 it had a lot of indian elements like electric sitar, tablas and so on, like this "On the Corner" and "Miles in Concert". From 1973 on, when I saw him live, until 1975 it was in general the band with Dave Liebman or Sonny Fortune, Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Mike Henderson, Al Foster and James M´tume. IMHO the greatest of them all..... Sure I had ON THE CORNER as soon as it came out, but I didn´t buy the complete sessions.....

A nice way to treat the big band charts that way: You hear them done by vocals, and as I hear, also the original solos of the tenor are vocalized. The only thing is, the text is outright dumb nonsens, maybe that was a la mode then in Europe and considered as "Art". But only about the music......this is great and a great chance to hear Diz with a Bud in great form with his long years trio with Clark and Michelot. Last week I listened to those two. Dexter is so great on the vintage bop "Second Balcony Jump", with all them quotes that are so hip and quick thought. I think everybody hear will recognize that he quotes "Dinah"... The second was that Allstar Quartet Hutch-Cables-Herbie Lewis-Philly J.J. Great music, I saw Hutch, Cables, Lewis on several occasions in several settings, but never got the chance to see my first hero on drums Philly Joe Joe live. His solo on Salt Peanuts from my first LP "Steamin" (Miles) I think I spinned very very very often, it´s my personal highpoint of the record....

There is one I think one with an obscure drummer and I intentioned to not mention it since I don´t like it at all, with the exception of some Tina Brook, some of the compositions and Freddie Redd´s piano, but the rest is a mess.....

I never had heard something of Freddie Redd after his two BN records or so. I love his compositions, all of them, they are fantastic and on piano he is much better and much more interesting than many from his generation or later generations, they way he plays the piano, wow ! Beautiful and strong. But I never knew that he still lived and made music. Maybe I might purchase this eventually.... I never had seen this record. Did Wayne Shorter come back later to re-join the messengers ? Like his 70´s Birthday CD with all them stars from the old days?

Yes, Miles Davis in Europe was about my second or third Miles Davis LP and I LOVED it and soon was much more interested in the 1960´s Miles than the 50´s Prestige record I had first. That sound of the cymbals by Tony Williams, I think I spun that fast "Walkin´" hundreds of times. Okay, with Sam Rivers......since I was a young modern boy then, Sam Rivers was on my top list of favourites, but then I still didn´t know about a record of Miles using Rivers, it would have been heaven on earth for me as a young guy......

The strange thing is I never ever heard him. I had read his name often in the 80´s or 90´s but not more infos.... Maybe I had a premonition (if wright or wrong Ill never know) that its very quiet a bit ECM like music what he plays....

No commentary who it is ? Okay, tell me if I´m wrong: Is it possible that the hippie is Eden Ahbez, the composer of "Nature Boy". And is the black guy Nat King Cole. Because first I thought: That elegant and clean like a mutha...... must be Miles Davis , but I don´t see the face really.....,

Oh yeah, I have not listened it for a long time, since I had focussed on other things than all the BN records of so called Hard Bop of the fifties, but this one really stands out. If I am right, it has a wonderful "Sophisticated Lady" and some first hand bop on "Anthropology". Clifford Jordan was a supa be-bopper and makes a lot of quotes of bop standards in his solos, like "Cheryl" in "St. Thomas" from "On Stage Vol. III" or "Hot House" in the bridge of the rhythm changes opus "Parkeriana" by Mingus some 10 years earlier...... I like also very much the tenor tandem Jordan-Gilmore on "Blowing Sessions". There is also a rare BN with a larger ensemble, I think it has also an alto player, a trombone maybe Fuller, and sure Lee Morgan, but I think I have it somewhere in a box of those cardboard size mini LPs or CDs from Japonia, but don´t know where right now, they are sealed and got one listening each I think....... an exception may be "One Step Beyond" by McLean..... which reaches a bit more my listening habits...... I don´t know much about Cliff´s BN years, but he was on the second to first jazz LP I had (the 3 LP set "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus", and on "Speak Brother Speak". I think, one of the tunes of that supa obscure BN album with large ensemble is titled "Not Guilty" and "St. John". I don´t remember them, but strange enough I remember the names of those two otherwise unknown tunes....it´s strange how memory has holes and some fix points you remember....

Please tell me if I´m right: John Gilmore with Cliff Jordan, Horace Silver and Curley Russell ? From "Blowin In from Chicago". Don´t know what it means but I like the pantyhose