Gheorghe

I had read somewhere that there was a 50 years aniversary of Massey Hall in 2003 with some of the hottest players who where active on the scene. Was that recorded ? I think, the last surviving member of the original Quintet, Max Roach also played some drum solo. Herbie Hancock was on piano, that´s what I remember. But why was that not out on CD, it would have made some top music. I never buy other versions of albums I already have and know each phrase of it. My most albums with Mingus as a leader or Mingus as a sideman were on the French "America" label, that´s from where I have "Massey Hall" "Bud Powell Trio" (from the same concert) , and all those other Mingus albums from Jazzworkshop 1955 to the then brandnew 2 LPs "Blue Bird" and "Piticantropus Erectus" from the early 70´s .... So to re-listen to those tunes I would prefer to hear them done by some hot young trumpetists and saxists, modern sounding piano, bass and a super hot drummer......, did they sleep on it, it would have sold well I think......

I love it. Those kind of albums from the BN 60´s period I love most.

oh, this I think I have on video, but the video is two parts, one of it is this one, and the other is from 1987 which I liked more. So, I had thought it is another album. I think it was an album from the early 60´s , maybe on RCA or such a label, it had a double cover I think, and this "Ballatta in Forma de Blues" . It had a colour foto of Chet....., I don´t remember the personnel.

The Green album "Carryin On" is not bad, though I have not listened to it for more than 20 years. I think after I had seen the BN documentary film with some sound tracks I heard that Kenny Burrell "Midnight Blue" but didn´t know what it is, and thought it might be a Grant Green thing maybe from the late 60´s so I purchased "Carryin on" just thru an error. But nevertheless, I liked it well enough, even if it is not really my kind of stuff......, a bit too smooth, I like more radical playing....., same with Midnight Blue, I think all this was in a period where I tried to have some more easy stuff to spin if somebody came to visit.......

I don´t have so many Chet Baker albums, the few I have is from the period I saw him live (1978-88), but in my youth a friend had an album which I think had Mussolini on piano, maybe it was titled "Chet is Back" ???? It was in the early 60´s and had a tune with the title "Balatta în forma de Blues", maybe this was Mussolini´s composition, who knows..... It was a nice album, indeed, but I´m not really a collector, so I just listened to it at my former friend´s place.....

I remember the one live concert in the 70´s I saw, where they played one of the tunes from that album: "Calypso Frelimo". Great album, though some of the tunes where not from the actual period 1974, but recorded earlier and more fitting to "On the Corner". Last night I listened to this one. I love Monk and Trane

Yeah, Herbie is the best example !!! But to repeat my question: How was the gig mentioned in the first posting ? Or didn´t it happen ?

I don´t know what is that "reddit" never heard that word, but yeah, I AM HAPPY, and jazz is part of me, a great part of my daily routine is jazz. I think there is no hour the day where there is not jazz in my head, and a large amount of playing and about the only time where I enjoy the presence of other people, if they are serious about music.....

Well I also think about Pharoah Sanders post Trane records from the late 60´s to the early 70´s . I must admit, that the "spiritual" or "religious" content is not really my own thing as being a descendent of Jews who had converted to different christian religions for economical purposes (not for believing) in the late 1800´s and later in the socialist era got rid of any religion, so I never had the entry to that stuff. But things like the healing song by Pharoah Sanders on "Live at the East", or that "Love is Us All" give me some other feeling, I just close my eyes and just listen, not like on other records where I think it must be a gas to play in that context etc. etc.

Oh yeah ! It´s fascinating what you write since it is about the same times when I got interested in Bird. In my case it was just that I had heard his name and got in an indirect manner to him, via Mingus. But some of my quite wild older friends saw Bird as a hero, though their main interest was free jazz. Bird was something like a "James Dean" to them, fascinating, genious, short live. My first impression was that it sounds really "modern" , often much more advanced than the one or other better recorded mainstream jazz record. Those records "Bird is Free" and I think "The Happy Bird" were fascinating, but for really studying the best were the Savoy and Dial. I think there was a series of Bird that my older friend had, and he always said "Die gestreifte Serie", it was a not very sharp pic of Bird and there were "stripes" on the cover, and he had all of them. But I think I remember they were not only Dial, the even had some tracks of the Birdland 1950 with Bud and Fats. For many Bird fans the "Spotlite" records were heaven on earth. But the Dials has too many alternate tracks which makes it boaring. I had more the live things on Spotlite, the "Bird in Paris", "Bird in Sveden" "Early Bird". Nowadays the only way I listen to those original tracks , all of Savoy and Dial is on a three CD set that is titled "The Savoy and Dial Mastertakes". That´s the best way to listen to the studio records of Bird in his most creative period. I can´t remember something compareable to it from the LP era.

To me, Monk and Trane are the masters. That´s some of the best acoustic jazz from the old period, that I heard. And both Monk and Trane are in top form. Both Monk, both Trane maybe are some of the most fascinating listening experiences of the last century. The only downer is that the drums is not so well recorded.

You can listen to jazz at morning time ? Well, we must be flexible, but for me, depending on where I am, I need breakfast completly quiet, or at home having easy morning conversation together with my woman. Jazz for me is strictly evening, late evening, the time I would play a gig. I purchased Miles in Person as a double LP, it was as I think a Japonese edition, I think they called it CBS Sony. But I was not only happy with it. The sound of the trumpet if I remember is very weak, and the tunes are too much over and over played with the exception of "Teo" I think. In general the early sixties are the stuff I have listened to less than what was before with the first quinted with Philly and Trane, and the second quinted with Herbie and Tony. It somehow had become routine. Jimmy Cobb just doesn´t exite me the way Philly J.J or Tony would. But I like mostly Mobley on this record, he does interesting things, even if Miles didn´t like him...... About George Arvanitas : I remember he and his trio accopanied a lot of visiting horn players in France at those big festivals but didn´t know he had such a a great trio with Doug Watkins and Art Taylor ???? ! From what I heard on those gigs where his trio plays with US stars , he is fine and can play though I bet even at that time there was even greater European pianists (Siegfried Kessler, Tete Montoliu, Fritz Pauer) whom I heard and saw play. From that second LP I don´t know no name. The guy with the Afro in the centre of the pic looks very much like Hancock.

Wonderful ! I mean what you write about it, how it happened. Yes, "Pannonica" seems to be a tune that guitar players like. Once I had to play with a guitar player and he also called "Pannonica". On the other hand, Monk himself I think did not include it in his regular set lists. Yes, Bud played on it and one evening, where first Barry Harris plays Bud tunes on it and then Bud plays a little was recorded on tape. Interesting thing about "composing from the piano". I have another "problem": I usually compose just when a good idea comes to my mind. Then I might write it out for the guys who might play it, and when I finally want to play the them myself, I have my sweet time to "learn" it, since mostly I don´t consider more than comp and solo on it, but if someone likes to hear it before it is done on the soundcheck, I would be ashame if I couldn´t play it.

I would like to have much more of Billy Eckstine Big Band than I have, but I fear there is not much more CDs or LPs. I think I have the Spotlite LP "Together"and the Savoy double album, since they also have a lot of good instrumental stuff goin´ on, I think there is one more on Savoy titled "Billy Eckstine Sings", which is also from that period, but with less action by the band, more featured the vocal. Does your album have other stuff that I don´t have ?

Thank you for that interesting statement. And because it has a large amount of context to what I just had written before you in my posting. Well, I never got formal training had had to "fly" by myself. Well I got help and encouragement from important musicians, that´s true. But Sun Ra somehow came to me as part of my times. I mentioned the context with Mingus only, since Mingus was the first music I heard, that was not only straight ahead acoustic (old Miles) or early electric (then "new" Miles), and Dolphy became one of those musicians who fascinated me most. So I see a lot of paralels with your favorites Mingus Dolphy. And as I said. Mingus ´views into the past or the future (lookin back to blues and gospel, old time jazz and bop, and lookin forward or better said into the presence then , just was an ideal thing for a modern jazz addict youngster. And Sun Ra had a lot of that too. I didn´t really understand those sun, moon and stars - stuff but dug it and if I looked up on a dark sky with the Moon and the Stars I had Sun Ra in my head 😄, and otherwise it was just the music that fascinated me.......

I just saw the Corner for the first time. I love Sun Ra and he was one of the first things I heard when I was in my early teens and loved avantgarde, and got one of Ra´s ESP recordings, but I also loved the mixture of free jazz, space chants and some older swing tunes, so the Sun Ra from the later 70´s on was like jazz history. As a starter I liked musicians who had made their names in the avantgarde scene but also could play a whole history of styles. Like Mingus with Dolphy and so on, when their concert sets included brandnew stuff like "Meditations" with some Fats Waller inputs from Jakie Byard, and vintage bop enforced with more avantgardistic stuff by Dolphy (Parkeriana). So Sun Ra was very very important for my jazz education. I can´t write more about him, because my listening experiences and diggin´ into his music was about from 1972-80 (with historic recordings from the 60´s only on record).

When was this recorded ? I remember I had the first encounter with Sonny Stitt in the midseventies, when he played a vintage set of bop with Diz (I don´t remember the others, it was a classic bop quintet, but maybe with guitar instead of piano). And my impression was, Dizzy great as ever, but the big surprise was also Sonny Stitt, whose name I hadn´t heard until then. Compared to Diz, he looked like a very very old man and I thought that must be someone who had known Bird, but must be much older (Bird would have been about 55 years at that time and Stitt looked much older than 55 though he was 7 years younger than Diz !) That´s what this foto tells me. I saw Stitt the last time in 1980 but though he still managed to play some good tenor and alto, he was dead drunk and after some good tunes it became tragic comic and we left the concert and the after hour jam session with a bitter taste. I´m not familiar with West Coast players though I have heard Pepper with the drummer Carl Burnett, who is great.

Interesting. This might have been during the years when he did not record. Because the only time he recorded again was later in the 70´s mostly live for Steeple Chase in Danemarca. I love that two records where is is paired with Dex, and his Parker´s Mood is the best slow blues I ever heard on record.

And....how was the gig ???

A wonderful record, is this the one that has Don Pullen´s "Double Arc Jane" ? And a blues with Adams´ vocal very similar to the "Devil Blues" on a Mingus album ? I heard the band shortly after Mingus´ death. I was still so shocked from the news of Mingus ´ death . But the band was fantastic. But it´s terrible that with the exception of Cameron Brown all three died early, just in their 50´s . Recently I listened to his last Steeplechase album "Bitin´ the Apple" which is the greatest, due to the fantastic rhythm section of Barry Harris, Sam Jones and Al Foster. And I think Dexter´s playing on it is the most enthusiastic. I think that decades ago I also bought two of his mid 70´s Steeplechase albums, one with Horace Parlan on piano, and one with Tete Montoliu on piano. What I remember about Tete is, that otherwise than his dozens of gigs with Dexter in the sixties (Dexter in Radioland) he has a very modal style here, completly different than 10 years earlier. I love modal style, but didn´t expect it from Tete. Bud´s playing on this one, together with the "Blakey in Paris" , "Hawk in Germany" and "Mingus at Antibes" is in my opinion the greatest Bud of the decade, and maybe also among the greatest Bud ever. It seems that if someone had forgotten to dope him with that psychopharmaca "Largathyl" , he felt free from the debilating effect of the medication and got back to his old great form. The only thing why I prefer the other mentioned top Bud performances is the better stuff from the drums. Bud with Blakey, Klook or Richmond just goes better for my ears. But he was such a genius and loner that he somehow went on his own and just burned at the piano. Like on "All God´s Chillun" which I think is the best version I ever heard played by him. Maybe "Evidence" would have needed more gettin inside the rhythmic aspect of the tune. I think, if Bud would have heard it more often on Monks record and would have had a drummer who KNOWS that tune would have done better. Though "Evidence" is based on "Just You Just Me", you just can´t use it as only a blowing vehicle on the "Just You Just Me" chords..... It´s interesting that there is less ballad playing on those two swiss recordings. I think I remember a great version of "Midnight" , and the eternal "I Remember Clifford" which seems to be on each of the later Bud Powell albums.....

Was the Jackie McLean album issued later than usual ? I mean it was somewhere in the late 60´s as I assume due to his permanent team of Lamont Johnson on piano and Scotty Holt on bass ? Like Miles´ "Water Babies" which was from the same time, but got a cover similar to "On the Corner" ?

the cover art reminds me of the Miles Davis double albums from the 70´s . But the music is fantastic. One of my favourite Jackie McLean albums and I am a big fan of him.

That´s a fine record. And together with Dave Liebman´s "Drum Ode" the only ECM I have. But I like Keith most when he was with Miles around the time of "Live Evil". This was just the times where this early kind of electric jazz with Fender Rhodes and Yamaha Organ was invented. I also liked those 2LPs albums of Miles and as being from that generation (from 1972-75 I was a teenager from 13 - 16 years and a Miles freak from the very first moment on (both acoustic and electric). So it´s natural I bought all of them as soon as they came out, Live Evil, Miles in Concert, Get Up with It, Dark Magus, Agharta, Pangheea it was). And those caricatures on the covers, like you have them on "On the Corner", "Big Fun", "Miles in Concert", they aren´t even exagerated. That´s how WE looked like, how we dressed..... On that album is also "Ife". The song I fell in love with when I heard it live : Miles with Dave Liebman, Lieb on flute.....wonderful moments......, very similar to the way it is on "Dark Magus"......

I have the same impressions like @Big Beat Steve . And if I remember right, Fats had a fantastic memory and often he plays a very similar solo on the alternate track of the "Prime Source". Starts with the same phrase, makes the same quotes. I even have read that some critics thought that he memorized his soloes. The worst example of alternate takes I have is on the late 40´s record of Wardell Gray. And yeah, on CD-player at least I can scip them, but that´s not good listening for me, since mostly if I listen to a record I just close my eyes and listen to it without having to worry about anything else but the music. And since I practically USE records to hear them like a live performance if I am too tired to go out and listen to live music , and for learning or more than that get inspiration to play myself . In my beginnings, it was more imitating, now it is completly else. After listening to a record it would happen that I get up and go to the piano and play some, it may be completly else tunes and else moods, but at least the listening to the record made me get up and play myself some good music. I can´t get that feeling from those records which have all alternate takes, including interruptions, studio talk, false starts and so on. If I read a book, I also don´t want pages that repeat the same idea, if I go to a concert or play myself, I also don´t have the same tune played twice.

I love it, Dexter with Woody Shaw´s group.