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I think I have it somewhere in the shelves and listened to it once. I think I remember one remark in the liner notes: They put down the better selling CBS releases like "Homecoming" and so on, and stated that THIS is the real comeback of Dex to the states. I really did disagree because the Dexter of the late 70´s until his death was more modern and did more than just straight ahead mainstream, there was much more tension and suspans in it, especially the contrast between Dexter´s relaxed laid back phrasing and the modern, pushing rhythm sections. Sure there are topnotch musician on it, Barry Harris was as near to Bud as anyone could be, and to Monk, not only musically, but also in real live. I never have heard about Sam Noto. Is it possible, that he didn´t become famous as far away as we are in Europe ? We all know who Blue Mitchell was, but Sam Noto ? Never heard....

must be fine. I always loved Sun Ra, from the very first time I heard him on record (it must have been among my first records in teenage years, and finally until I saw him live. Well, my first start was the ESP album "Nothin´ Is" from I think 1966, it left a live long impression, and it is interesting when I finally heard him live, I was more prepared to free stuff like that, which sure was present, then to the bop standards and swing standards he also played. But for those who always thought that Free Jazz Musicians can play straight, it was a serious lection, Ra doin stride was first hand stride, he had it in the blood as well as Space Age Free Jazz. IMHO he was one of the greatest of them all, a pure Genius. I did not really understand all that stuff with Sun, Moon and Stars but since I am not a one God believer, more so I belief that there is a lotta "Gods", one God for the Sunrise, one for the Moonlight, one for harvest, one for nature or so, I dig Sun, Moon and Stars.... just as nature we see, and if I´m honest when I see a star or the moon I think about Sun Ra. Let people laugh about me, they must have somethin to laugh at, but I admire Sun Ra !

I must admit I have not heard much of Don Menza but when I saw him once in Viena he was tops, played tenor, really tough tenor with all them runs and almost like Griffin.....really a surprises....I was sick and inactive then, but now I regret I didn´t play with someone like him.....

We share exactly the same impressions ! You can read mine also earlier here on this thread. Exactly my impressions, one of the great jazz composers, but I don´t really like his tenor playing. And like you I love Bud Powell´s interpretations of it, live or in the studio at "Return of Bud Powell". I can´t say which one I prefer, because Bud recorded it on almost each album in the 60´s , in all European Countries like France, Italia, Suedia, Danemarca, Belgia , Germania , everywhere...... Well, there is no end, there is so much good players around, if people would stop listen to so called "modern jazz" just because those who first played it in the 40´s, 50´s we might not be able to pay our rents........

Thanks for the infos. And since I never was a fan of films, especially Westerns, since I don´t like to see all them rough men shootin´ around, I didn´t know anything about "Rio Bravo". And not being a chess player I only did read the Chess Nuvel. So the main thing I had observed was the nice girl on that Rio Bravo photo. Had not known about the actress as not goin´to movies and only look at a real woman, but she had taste about dressin´ that´s for sure....

I think I have them double: On Thelonious Monk Vol. 2 (BN) and on Milt Jackson also by BN. I remember I had the Monk tunes also on the old double album with the hidous colour of the cover. (LA Sessions). The 4 Monk tunes sound very strange. Thinking that this is BN, one of the best recording disc houses, it sounds very very rudimentary like those old tapes we made in the beginnings on casetofon for "Demo tapes". You don´t hear the drums properly and THIS IS SHADOW WILSON. John Simmons was a very good bassist but his bass sounds very uneven recorded. Monk and Bags sound good. The two vocals with Kenny Hagood also sound very fine. To bad that they did not whole albums with him like they did with the Billy Eckstine band. Hagood was the second great bop singer. There are always one or two features of him with top boppers, but only in the late 40´s mostly in the Roost. And on Dizzy´s "I waited for you" on video !

Yes, I had the old Double Album "Fats Navarro" on that double albums with that hidous brown covers. There is also a tune that doesn´t seem to be on the original BN´s . The wonderful Kenny Hagood "I think I´ll go away". I had not known the Capitol tracks until I bought this double CD. Capitol was not available in record stores in Viena. I only had read about "Stealin´Apples" with Benny Goodman. It´s a cute tune with some very fine Fats and I think Benny Goodman did like Fats´ sound ! There was a strange remark Fats told and I read it in an Ira Gitler Book . Fats about Goodman "Benny was´nt too cool. He seemed outright corny to me". I didn´t understand the meaning of that then, but as a musican I know what´s cool and what´s corny... This is about one of the very very few organ I listen to: I listen to "A Date with Jimmy Smith Vol. 1 and 2", Grant Green "I wanna talk about you" (with Larry and Mobley), the two Larry Young albums one with Rivers, one with Henderson and Woody Shaw.... and sometimes very rarely for easy listening I listen to this "Let em roll" because the strange front line of miscellanous instruments : Guitar, Vibes.....no horns.....

Oh I remember that you posted that because someone bumped the thread I had forgotten. What kind of story about Jimmy Ford ? As I say, I saw him perform with Arnett Cobb, maybe his alto sounded a bit rusty, and he wore a quite out of fashion grey suit, which usually would have been for clerks in the 1950´s , 1960´s where it possibly came from.... If he was so good to play with some of the greatest boppers of all times (Tadd, Fats, Klook), why didn´t he continue ?

So anyway you have more musical education than me since I just write the line for C-Melody Instruments and let others transcribe it into other keys, or clefs or what it is.... It´s quite a hard job for me to write notes on paper, I feel exactly the rhythmical particularities, but don´t know how to write them exactly. So sometimes I even tell the guys who make something useful out of it, that I was "too busy" or "too tired" or "I dreamed it and scribbeled it on paper after waking up and having coffee..." .....It´s like analphabets who are very inventive when asked to read or write something..., but anyway, the older guys know I never did learn to read or write music, and the youngsters let them believe my "stories"......😉 Congratulations. That the most important thing. I also can compose making long walks, but when do I do long walks. In nature I usually go fishing, but fishing for me is like if my cat goes hunting. It´s pure hunting instinkt and sixth sense for the fish I want to get on the line, so if I don´t cast lures or flies but choose that this time it wil lbe "waiting game" with natural bait for peaceful fish like Carp, Tench or Barbel, I don´t have music in my head but concentrate 100% on the fish. But I get musical sources they just come. But I don´t have the tehnical talent for record myself on cell phone: I gave up buying modern and performant cell phones many years ago and went all the way back to days when you just called or were called. I have the most simple handy and no one would steal it, and I have no headaches if some App doesn´t work since I don´t have any.... how comes ? The key is the musical colour. I must feel the key in the whole body, and know exactly in what key is the still in planning progress composition, because I hear the key. No keys, now music, of any kind..... at least for me.... Seems quite unorthodox for me. You don´t hear the instruments that will play your compositions, or with whom you gonna play them ???? You say you don´t hear music in your head ???? Especially when it comes time to compose. How could I compose if I don´t hear the music in my head ???? Or, is this other kind of music or more experimental. I´m "only" 100% jazz musican, never played any else music, never thought or heard in my head other music than jazz, and my compositions are here to enlarge the band book and to hear them beeing played, sometimes havin the luck they get radio play and I get some royalities...., but mostly because they are the best way I can express my feelings, and I feel very very honoured that the guys who play with me love my compositons and though they have more musical education, a longer list of star musicians they worked with or countries they traveled and three of them teach on top music institutes for jazz.... but those great and wonderful gentlemen like the way I compose and like to play it, what can I wish more.....? You.....are a serious composer, I mean music that´s harder to understand than jazz. I see on the thread of what music you listen very much other musical things, much of it autentical music from Eastern Europe !

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.....