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Keystone Korner must have been great. Many fantastic musicians played there. I remember when I was still a teenager,one of the first Blakey LP I had purchased was "In this Korner".

Really a moving story about the fatally ill Mingus trying to keep in touch with the music. It always almost makes me cry because he must have suffered so much having that terrible desease, not being able to play music, not even piano. I have heard that Mingus was a regular at Bradley, I think even is short collaboration with Jimmy Rowles just for a few bars on "Three or Four" shades comes from that place. And I think Bradley Cunningham himself plays some percussion on Cumbia. So in the last years of his life, Bradleys was quite an important place for him.

Yeah good idea, give the drummer some, give the good drummers all the stars you have. I love Tony William he was fantastic. And a composer on a high level also .

I´m quite astonished why some have named classical composers here. I thought it´s about jazz. It´s hard to say who is a genius. Many like Lester, Bird and Bud and even Monk had a relative short period of creativity and then started to repeat themselves. Anyway they are geniusses for what they did and for what they left for the past. And you might add Lennie ! All say Bird, but don´t take Diz for granted only because he wasn´t just such an enfant terrible like Bird. Diz had it all, his contribution to modern jazz is at least as much as Bird´s . And Diz´ compositions, I love them most. Mingus, Miles, Trane, Ornette.

Thank you Soulpope ! That´s the covers, they are really fine, and the music speaks for itself.

I haven´t heard him in the past years, but I remember his group with his brother Branford, with the young giants Kirkland, Watts etc. and the band was a gas, it was the hope of the early 80´s. And very good with VSOP II, so I think he is a blessed trumpet player. Maybe people expected from him more, that he will become the next logic step in trumpet styles after Roy, Diz, Brownie, Miles, Don Cherry etc. I think it was his right to choose a pace that´s safer , to keep the tradition, to lecture people about what´s jazz and what´s not (in his opinion), and I don´t think that´s negative. He choose this, others who were pioneers on trumpet or on any other instrument died early or had to struggle for gigs......

I was thinking about the album covers from the two CDs Head of State.......

The best stuff I´ve heard in years. Gary Bartz is one of the most fascinating musicians from 1970 on and just can play all kinds of styles. He became famous with Miles but as early as 1973, when he recorded "Ode to Super" with Jackie McLean he showed his bop roots and his solo on Bird´s "Red Cross" is one of the highlights of that album. Larry Willis also became famous when he recorded with Jackie McLean for BN and he is a brilliant pianist and composer. Buster Williams, who appears on the first CD "Searce for Peace" has been my alltime favourite on the bass. Al Foster always has been my first choice when I listen to drummers. He´s fantastic. Give him all the stars you have. The first CD "Search for Peace", as the title says is more McCoy Tyner and Trane oriented, even if there are some older standard ballads two. And 2 Bartz originals, among them the famous "Uncle Bubba". The second CD "Four in One" is more bop oriented with Monk´s , Bird´s and early Miles´ tunes and originals written by all the four musicians. The wonderful David Williams replaces Buster. His own compositon "Keep the Master in Mind", a jazz waltz , is sheer beauty. Highly recommended. I don´t know how to attach or to download a pic of the album covers. I´m strictly the listener and the one who goes inside the music, but I´d be glad if someone would post the album covers too.

But one thing should not be forgotten: Even if they had some opinions I can´t agree with, men like Leonard Feather were inside the music. And compare his liner-notes to some silly obscure liner notes on some older Verve albums. They are short and not really informative and sometimes there is a longer essay but it seems that it was not written by someone who really heard the music, a lot of bla bla . The worst was the Bird album Jazz Perennial, there someone writes about different "schools in jazz" and invents a "purist school" and something about "young turks"...... Those Verves with their odd liner notes really are strange.....and the music is well recorded, but it doesn´t seem to be "with heart and soul"....

I was blessed I saw him live on several occasions, that fantastic quartet he had with Ed Cherry, and some all star groups. And as a composer..... well I think one of his fellow musicians once said he is "the Beethoven of Bop'"

So even if I didn´t get a direct answer to my question, this seems to proove that a lot of people from that church were in the audience and the fan community. I wouldn´t be astonished if that boy I knew who was CC and RTF fan, became a member . There´s only one Hubbard for me: Freddie , and only one Ron: Carter

Stan Getz returning to acoustic jazz and the acoustics vs electric reminds me of that 3 or 4 CDs from Montreux 1977 (CBS All Stars or like that), with Stan and other´s from the acoustic era, together with some of the foremost electric players like Bob James, Billy Cobham etc. I also can say that I reallly enjoyed Feathers and Ira Gitlers liner notes, but it was mainly on older albums, many of them BN.

That´s really some very interesting and important things you said.

Thank you Big Beat Steve . So, his books cannot be compared with something like Joachim Ernst Behrend "Jazz-Buch", who really was interested in writing about the current styles. My 1977 edition had it all in it, the Free Jazz from the last decade, and the electric jazz of the 70´s .

I try to think about CC strict musically, he´s a most important voice in jazz from the late 60´s until now, period. I was sure I will avoid the other things , that ideology , church how you call it because I hate to get into that having no knowlegde and no interest in the non-musical aspects. But since there is so much discussion about it, may I ask you: During the boom of Return to Forever was it a known fact to the public his association to all that ? Now, after almost 40 years I seem to remember the guy from my school class who was crazy about "Return to Forever" was a strange type who always had that peaceful look and kept asking questions about the purpose of life, about how to become a more perfect human being and stuff like that, which seemed unusual to my conception of an average dude of 17 years..... Due to his recommandations and to the all present interest in "Return to Forever" I got to listen to some of it and yeah there´s a lot of good music even if it didn´t "knock me out" the same way Hancocks Headhunters would have done or Miles´ stuff between 1970-1975, referring to 1970´s jazz or jazz-linked stuff. That strange an peaceful and philosofic young dude , knowing that I also play modern jazz and start to get some gigs, asked me if I would try to "make my music the way it would make a better world and phrases like that". Now, this never was my stuff, gettin into something like that, but now while I remember that strange kid I ask myself if he was from that movement and got to Chick Corea through all that, and not like me who said well he´s the guy who played with Miles, let´s see what he plays now.....

Tell me more about it, please. I cannot say too much about LF, only knew his liner notes on the first records I had when I was almost a kid. But I always thought LF was more a fan of swing into bebop and hard bop and not further. Did he dig Ornette, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, etc so much that he could write an encyclopedia of jazz of the 60´s ????? And a LF book about the 70´s ??? Was he into funk and fusion and all that good stuff we had ? It must have happened a miracle with LF that suddenly he might have dug what happened in jazz in the 70´s , because in LF´s book "From Satchmo to Miles" he seems not to understand what Miles does (and that book is so old it was written in the early 70´s, so Miles was just at the very early beginning of electric (On the Corner ) .

Before I´d ask him a question I´d tell him that I love everything he has done, all his musical projects. I´d avoid to ask him about Miles because this might be questions asked too many times. Though I´m most interested in so called acoustic jazz, it´s natural I also listened much to stuff like "Headhunters". That was the times when I grew up, and I was aware of both Hancock´s : The nice, and neatly dressed kid from 1963 that played so beautiful piano with Miles, and the still very young afro-look styled Hancock from 1973, 74. And he reinvented acoustic jazz in 1976 with the first edition of VSOP. So, what might I ask him ? He´s a genius, he has it all and I just might say I want to thank him for everything.

It doesn´t sound like Monk if you hold the fingers in the more classical position how he does it. The secret of Monk´s sound is you must imagine a bit to be him to slip in his physical manners of playing the piano. If he´d hold the fingers in the flat positions and would make a bit more body movement he would hit the Monk-sound better. And to give an example of how Monk would play a tune you don´t need sheet. Monk´s way of harmonizing an otherwise simple piece are quite logic, it´s his "language" and if you get inside that language you can get nearer to what he might have done. My wife said once, after looking at some video: "He plays the piano as if he had invented that instrument just for himself". She´s not a musician but I think that´s the point.

Thank you, Hardbopjazz for your kind answer. I really thought I did a sacrilege when I wrote about my impressions from only one tune that I hear on record. But indeed it sounds like Sonny was somehow far from his peak. The surroundings really must have been annoying .

At least one tune from that evening is on Roadshows Vol. 1. "Some Enchanting Evening". But it´s not really representative, it sounds very reluctant. But as I said that´s the only item I know from that date. There is much more music on Vol. 2 , again with McBride and Roy Haynes from 2010. It may sound strange for jazz purists, but I´m much more used to Rollins with the settings with electric bass. Maybe as I get older I can hear the electric bass better, it cuts better through the band.......

Ask him about the tour he did with Dave Liebman in the late 70´s. It´s a shame this collaboration wasn´t recorded.

Anyway, Monk did his last solo and trio recordings in London . There are some fantastic things and it´s just inbelievable how he does tunes like "Trinkle Tinkle", a really hard tune anyway with stride piano in the left hand. Same with "Rootie Tootie". He still had it all on piano. There is a bad recorded example of Monk from 1975 where he really fumbles with the left hand . But this can be due to illness or some ailment. The Giants were in Viena in 1972 but it was a year before I got mature enough to dig jazz. Two older friends of mine reported later that on this special occasion Diz had not arrived and was replaced by Cat Anderson and Clark Terry. The Sonet "Bop Session" doesnt have Blakey and Monk, it´s 1975 and has Max Roach on drums and John Lewis and Hank Jones on piano, Sonny STitt on sax and Percy Heath on bass, so that´s something else than the Giants mentioned in this topic. But there is one (bootleg?) record of the Giants called "Bop Fathers".

I got quite a few records from that tour, the most famous is the Atlantic double album from London. I must say that Monk plays fantastiallyc, and he does really interesting stuff on tunes that was written by Diz, like Tour de Force, Woodyn You etc. It´s Diz´ compositions that seemed to appeal to Monks piano style. The chord progressions , you know..... I don´t know if Monk was happy with that surroundings, he was really subdued during that time and had worn out like Bud had worn out a few years before. Anyway it was too long a time with quartet surroundings with always the same tunes. So maybe it would have been a break , a new inspiration but Monk was really ill and eventually would retire. But just from the musical point of view it´s great what he does behind the soloists, behind Diz, Kai, Sonny, and Blakey was his alltime favourite on drums.

Really a sad loss. Drummers are most important to me, I think first of all I listen to what a drummer does and if the drummer on a record or a live date is not what I want to hear, it´s hard for me to enjoy the thing completely. I think I remember I became really aware of Grady Tate on some Dizzy Gillespie Dream Band, I think it was a big concert and Grady Tate was on the Big Band selections, together with Candido, and Max was on the small band selections. Anyway, fantastic, and besides good traps work I like drummers where you see he´s happy with the thing he does, smiling like Billy Higgins, Al Foster, and Grady Tate really had it as a good drummer and a good showman. He will be missed.