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The Miles Davis 1951 at Birdland is fantastic ! I also have that CD with the complete material. In my youth there as a red LP with most of the material, on an italian Label it was titled "Miles Davis at his rare of all rarest performances" . Red cover. Everybody loved it. They just would ask you "Did you get the "red Miles Davis album" .......?

Great album. This and the second one "Rollin´with Leo", also very good baritone stuff. I think a further album co-starring Dexter Gordon was planned, but never could be realised because of the sudden death of Leo Parker. That would have been a great reprise of the famous Dexter-Leo Parker stuff from the forties for Savoy. But at least they could re-record Dexter with Bud (also former Savoy collaboration) on " Our Man in Paris".

Fine the radio shows with Barry Ulanov commenting the "Battle of the Bands". Originally I had this material on 2 different LP labels. The tracks with Dizzy and Roach were on a Spotlite LP, and the tracks with Fats and Buddy Rich were on a Musidisc Charlie Parker Broadcasts 1947 LP. Lennie Tristano is really great on the broadcasts, but very weak on the 1951 Parker-Tristano duo tracks.

I listened to it last week . Great the two groups, the Swedish All Stars and Art Farmer, and the legendary Atlantic City Band of Tadd Dameron. It´s interesting there´s also a BN album with the same title "Memorial" also featuring two different recording sessions .

This one ! This album has a special meaning to me. It was around 1977 and I was a new born jazz fan. Until then I only had two LP´s (Miles Davis "Steamin´" and Charles Mingus "Mingus Ah Um") A good source of information during that days was a radio programm on Saturday Night called "Jazz Shop". The DC Herwig Wurzer spinned and commented records that were new ore newly reissued on the jazz market and he was a voice in the night like Symphony Sid would have been for those a generation before me. He played the first 2 tunes "Winterset" and the fantastic slow blues "Gotcha Goin and Comin". I think I haven´t spinned that for 4 decades. Almost have forgotten how good it is, everybody, Byrd´s trumpet is fantastic, Frank Foster, Hank Jones, Paul Chambers (my "hero" from the classic Miles Davis quinted, see..... those men Miles Trane, Red, Paul, Philly J.J. was heroes to me like let´s say for the teenie girls would be John Travolta then...). Highly recommended if you find it or have it. Play it !

@paul secor Great ! Really exiting music. I heard the Arkestra only on one occasion in spring 1980, and then it was much more into a mix of some free passages, some Fletcher Henderson arrangements, and some bebop. But I like both directions : The free forms from the 60´s and the more traditional from the late 70´s on.

Great ! But my personal favourit Sun Ra of that time and also on ESP is this one:

Same here: My wife ordered it for me as a birthday present. I also got the message that the shipping will be in mid dezember, that´s about around my birthday, well if not, I hope I´ll have it for Chrismas. Anyway, during the winter holidays you can´t do so much outdoor, good occasion to read some new jazz bio. And Dexter always has been one of my favourites, life and on records.

Must be great !

I´ve almost forgotten how good this is: It´s interesting, there´s also a BN album of Clifford Brown titled "Clifford Brown Memorial". This one is a Prestige output. Two sessions, both from 1953. The Swedish musicians are superb ! It´s the creme de la creme of the then active swedish musicians, Lars Gullin, Arne Domnerus, Bengt Hallberg (it seems that he influenced Ray Bryant), and the combination with Art Farmer, both then in Lionel Hamptons gang I think. And the Dameron session with Philly J.J., one of the best Dameron sessions. The Atlantic City band. And Benny Golson is great on his "Don Byas" styled tenor.

This one. A classic ! But the first Dameron album under his name that I purchased was the other one, the one with John Coltrane "Mating Call". Both are great.

I remember well that record with the trio with Jimmy Rowser and Tootie Heath. My father, who didn´t like jazz, got it from somewhere and actually it was the first "jazz" I heard, when I was only 6 years old. I remember it fascinated me. Much later, already a jazz buff and playing myself I listened to it again and it´s like Art Farmer told Mr. Gulda once: "Get that edge off!" Mr. Gulda sure was one of the greatest classical pianists, but at least at that stage of his jazz playing, it doesn´t swing even if it´s straight ahead. It sounds like a great classical piano player who WANTS to play jazz.

I have the DVD with the whole concert. From about 1969 it became quite hard for Monk to keep a steady rhythm section. Me too I´m unfamiliar with them, but the bass player is very strong, but Paris Wright (the son of the bass player Herman Wright) just hurries up, on some tunes he gets faster and faster, and he has a strange way to hold the sticks. The best tracks are those two where Philly J.J. sits in, that´s were you really hear how drums have to sound, and Monk starts to get much more involved. Charlie Rouse is good as always, but I think it was his last tour with Monk.

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 !