Gheorghe

Same on Don Cherry about Sonny Rollins. I remember a DB interview with Don Cherry and at the end of the interview Don was told that Sonny Rollins is playing that night. Don Cherry answered "I think I´m a wanted man" and hurried away, probably to jam with Sonny. This must have been around 1980...., much later than the recorded collaboration from ´62-63

My personal "Prestige Festival" is going on: This one was my first Sonny Rollins as a leader , purchased 40 years ago. It´s interesting that my next Rollins album would be the much heavier "Stuttgart 1963" with Don Cherry, no piano, Henry Grimes and Billy Higgins. I still remember I was even more impressed by the Rollins-Cherry connection.

Perhaps my favourite Joe Henderson BN album. The combination with Andrew Hill is great. Such a lot energy on that album.

Those are really classics. The two volums of J.J. are quite different. The best is the first session with Clifford Brown etc.. The second is quite strange, and I think it´s the only time Charles Mingus appears as bassist on the BN label. The last session from 1955 with Hank Mobley is quite good. Jazz Giant would have been my first Bud Album, but then it was a 2-LP Verve set which had the 1949-1951 Verve Session. Sonny Stitt.... I think it was the first time he recorded tenor. But if I have to choose between alto and tenor I like Stitt mostly on alto. I like this one very much "Sonny Stitt-Bud Powell-J.J.Johnson. IMHO Bud was always best when combined with other great bop players, like the sessions he did with Dexter, with J.J, with Bird and Fats Navarro, the half BN-Side with Curtis Fuller, the encounter with Art Blakey Jazzmessengers (Blakey in Paris) and the Essen Festival with Hawk, and the stuff with Johnny Griffin. The J.J.Johnson tracks are much more relaxed, it might be the influence of John Lewis. And it´s strange for Prestige Recordings, that there are so many alternative tracks on the J.J. Session. At least on the japanes edition.

Same here ! @BillF, never saw those 10" LPs. Very interesting.

A Classic, but as many pre-quintet Prestige recordings it´s strange you have one tune (2 takes) from the legendary session with Bags and Monk, and the great 1954 tracks with Sonny Rollins. It´s remarkable that the Rollins tunes became jazz classics, Doxy, Airegin, Oleo: All the kids at music schools learn that and all guys play it on jam sessions. The next will be Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants. More stuff from the session with Monk, and really strange one Round Midnight from 2 years later done by the classic first quintet, which would have suited more to the four 1956 albums. Strange, it seems that this autumn I´m a bit on a "Prestige-Groove". Maybe for historical reasons, since during my youth when a lot of classic albums went OOP, the legendary two LP Prestige sets were easy to purchase and not expensive. It was only later that I re-bought them for the original covers.......

Yes, I can imagine that. I can´t say about me that I´m "a musician" since I don´t earn a living out of music, but I´ve been playing for 40 years and was glad to find a book that´s also interesting from the musician´s point of view. It´s very interesting to read which songs and melodies Fats quotes in his soloes, since some of them are very significant and you think you might know what it is, but don´t. So the authors really made a good job doing such a complete analysis of Fat´s solos.

Of course I´m a big fan of Fats Navarro. But I like this book not only because it´s a great biography. It´s a very good style analises and almost everything Fats recorded is well documented. It´s really a great book.

That´s a good one !

I remember those Atlantic covers with the "window type" image. This was in the 70´s , right. Great music, one of my first Mingus albums.

Sometimes "best known" albums get lesser spin. But yesterday I was in the mood to listen once again to this classic. Before I got the CD with the original cover, I had a 2 LP set with some much more interesting liner notes, some first hand informations about the date and how Miles had to borrow a horn. The second side is not so interesting like the first side. The cup mute doesn´t allow very much variations on sound.

Thelonious Monk Trio. I like those early Prestige Sessions and like to play myself a lot of that stuff: Bye-Ya, Bemsha Swing, Sweet and Lovely. Check out the coda of Sweet and Lovely, that´s really great !

Great for historical reasons. Bud is in great form here, and I love the drummer J.C. Moses. The Speech at the beginnig is quite strange. Sonny Rollins "Movin´ Out". Sonny sounds fantastic, Kenny Dorham too, really a great combination, and a good occasion to hear Elmo Hope. And maybe the most interesting track is the long version of "More than you know" with Thelonious Monk

Yes, "Biting the Apple" is really a great album, much better sounding and much better organized than "Homecoming" . And I love the rhythm section Barry Harris, Sam Jones Al Foster very much, and the choice of tunes.... Sophisticated Giant didn´t really become my favourite, maybe I thought it´s a bit too arranged. But I might listen again to it. Great Encounters has good music on it, especially the Gordon-Griffin encounter, and the Eddie Jefferson encounter is fun, but the whole album isn´t really a unity, more a compilation.

Yeah, on the Mythic Sounds there is the Zoot Sims material. About the IMHO much better album of Bud in Paris playing a lot of Monk : This here is the first edition of LP I bought in Germany in 1979. But Francis was a master in making errors about recording dates. I´m sure it was done in 1961 and not 1962. On the other hand, he pre-dated a lot of home made recordings to make people believe that his friendship with Bud lasted much longer.

For further material from about the same period, also in Paris and also featuring a lot of Monk´s compositions I´d recommand the live album from "At Blue Note Cafe 1961". This has the same personnel Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke (Clarke not with brushes, but with sticks, even on the ballads !!) , and the Monk tunes on that album are: Thelonious (a faster version), Round Midnight (fantastic !!!!), Monks Mood (fantastic !!!) and 52´nd Street Theme. There have been several issues of that stuff. In the late 70´s I had an LP and it was titled "Inedits 1962" and had a neatly dressed and slim Bud sittin in a sports car and french album lines written by Francis Paudras, and later the CD on ESP which also adds a set of the trio together with Zoot Sims ! Highly recommended, and I like it much more than the CBS album.

Bill Cole: Miles Davis, a musical biography. Actually this was my first book about Miles. I was a youngster and my only other book about jazz was the german "Jazzbuch". But this one really gave more informations about the recordings I allready knew, especially the 50´s and 60´s stuff. Some of it reads funny if I think about it. About his appearance in 1949 at the Paris Festival, Bill Cole writes that Miles was "bored". For sure: Miles doesn´t sound like a bored man on that, and he himself stated that he was fascinated by Paris and fell in love with Juiliette Greco. And about the now old, then "new" stuff from the early 70´s. Bill Cole dares to say that the stuff is "an insult on the intelect of people" ...... But I always like to read a few passages from it just for historical points.....

Same here ! I really agree to you, always had the same impression. I think I purchased it about 2 years after it came out in 1976. Dexter is at his best on "Manhattan Symphony" from 1978 which included most of the material he played live then. Don´t misunderstand me: I love Woody Shaw and his groups, but as you said it, it was not the right choice to add Dexter to the Woody Shaw Group and make a Dexter-album out of it. On the other hand, Dexter and Woody COULD play very fine music together, but with another rhythm section, like on "Great Encounters", and I think on "Gotham City", and on the 1977 Montreux Summit .......

Thelonious Monk : The Prestige sessions from Friday 13th 1953 and from 1954, featuring Julius Watkins, Frank Copeland, Sonny Rollins, Frank Foster etc. Great music ! I´ve always loved it, together with the trio recordings 1952 .

Purchased it in the 70´s . Never forgot the interview with Miles, he seems to like Leonard but is difficult and contradictory as ever. Leonard asking those personal questions whether if Miles would help out his familiy , if he has family ties and all that , and Miles first saying "I live for myself" "bull....sh like sittin down at tea..." and then telling Leonard that if he would need money he would give it to him if he can afford it......very funny...... There´s two Dameron books , one was published in more recent years, and another one is older and I think it´s a british author. I have both of them

With all kinds of editions and reissues, the Spotlite was the best one. Spotlite was THE Label for Bird- and Bop-fans. Great ! Brings memories back, all the Dial´s with the alternate tracks and bonus tracks from private recordings, the other rare stuff "Appartment Sessions" "The Band That Never was" "Bird in Paris" "Bird in Sweden", "Early Bird" , and the incredible "Afro Cuban" and above all the Billy Eckstine Bigband with Fats on it, "Together"...... , those guys from Spotlite were the best !

Fantastic those live sessions from the Royal Roost. I love that Roost Band Fats, Allen Eager, Tadd, Curley Russel and Kenny Clarke. My first encounter with this music was on one of those "Musidisc" LPs from the 70s with some of it , and two vocals with Kenny Hagood included "Pennies from Heaven" and "The Kitchenette across the Hall". Everybody plays great on this, Fats at his best, Allen Eager with his softer Lester Young influenced approach, very relaxed, some fine Dameron piano in his unique style. Also great Milt Jackson sittin in, and Kai Winding on the tracks where Fats doesn´t play

Both Tony Williams albums for BN are great. It´s astonishing how this young boy, he was 18 or 19 managed to make an album so perfectly organized. It´s not a showcase for drum artistics as you would expect, it´s a thing you have to listen to as a whole art work. And the second album "Spring" is also great, and has Sam River AND Wayne Shorter on it.

Same here. The Latin Session is incredible, but the second side is some really relaxed hardbop type stuff and shows the more tentative lyric side of Dorham. And Hank Mobley is also great on it.

Great that you like Philly J.J so much. He is also one of my favourite drummers. And since my first jazzalbum was Miles´"Steamin´" , his solo on Salt Peanuts also was about the first drum solo I heard .