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I don´t really know who is Cleo Laine, I can´t read all the answers since the thread is 15 (!) years old, but it seems that nothing has changed. I know so many jazz vocalists I don´t want to list them here, but many names that I can´t associate directly with jazz, I wouldn´t even know...., jazz is the only music I listen to....

Yeah, those 1981 concerts were a highlight of all European festivals. In the summer of 1981 Art Pepper played in Austria (Velden) with a different rhythm section (with Lou Levy on piano), actually Stan Getz´ rhythm section who was also scheduled. Since we don´t have recorded documents of that event, those Stuttgart and Croydon releases are very very welcome. I´m glad I have them and have listened to them many many times. I think my personal highlights are the extended versions of "Make a List, make a wish" (or something like that), and above all "Your´s my heart only".

Socks and sandals......a no go..... well at least Chet Baker wore sandals but no socks. Great remark "'Geography teacher socks"..... never heard that, but it fit´s . Reminds me of the way teachers dressed when I went to high school.....

I think the list is not so bad. In general I hate rating but here I saw really some albums that might be representative for our music. About compilations, that Bird compilation is quite ok, since during that time the LP format was not invented. And Savoy-Dial Master Takes is the most durable Bird . And of course the Blue Note albums. I think there couldn´t be a "best" list without Blue Trane, Cool Struttin, Sidewinder, Song for my Father, etc...., As for the bass I was quite astonished to see "Bass on Top" in the list. It took me years to get that rare album, but more than 1 or 2 listenings I didnt give it, though its fantastic bass, but not as exiting as "Whims of Chambers". Same with Griffin, I wouldn´t have chosen his first BN album , but the second "Blowin Session". But as I said, that list is quite representative, good work

in my earlier posting I wrote I don´t really know who is Al Hirt. Now I´ve googled him. Well maybe I know better now why I wasn´t really aware of him, he sure must have been a good player and in the way he did what he did and made his money, but maybe because it was not like the way I feel and hear the trumpet and think I can tell from their sounds who´s playin, let´s say Diz, Fats, Kenny, Miles, Brownie, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, Chet Baker, Freddie Hubbard, Don Cherry, Woody Shaw and all of those I admire..... About fashion that´s the topic here , I think all of those whom I mentioned looked sharp and dressed well. Maybe Chet Baker in later years not so, maybe that was this european pseudo hippie look , I never understood why he wore those ugly sandals, ...... but if he wasn´t lost somewhere, he played wonderful stuff until the end.....

I don´t really know who is Al Hirt , but even if I hate to say dumb things like that, nevertheless I look at the picture and think he doesn´t look like a jazz musician. About musician´s fashion, well I think it started in the late 60´s early 70´s that musicians didn´t want to wear ties anymore. No problem, but when aged musicians tried to wear "hippy look" I think it looked funny. But most american musicians have and had taste and dressed well. You can look sharp with casual wear, but also with tuxedo, if you know how to feel the way the thing you wear. The worst thing in my youth was that guys in Europe thought they must look sloppy and shabbily dressed. It was almost a no go in Europe to wear a suit and a tie when playing in a jazz club. Now I think it is different. The few left who dig jazz, think that a great music like jazz need´s "style" so that you take care what you wear.

Adams Apple is a really nice and easy to listen Wayne Shorter album. Like the first tune on the next album "Schizophrenia", that´s some easy to listen Shorter. I love all his BN albums, but I like very much "All Seeing Eye", harder to listen but really exiting.

Well the Prestige years I think were rough years for those who recorded for them. Same with Coltrane, with Jackie McLean. They made so many albums for that label, mostly standard ballad and blues based material. I have all those records, but it seems that after years, if I don´t want to spin "a Prestige chronological order" of them, I just spin "Good Bait" and "Stardust" as two albums that I already had "then" in the 70´s. Among more certain groups of youngsters there was a Coltrane-hype then. Well, Trane was dead for 10 years, but many many people you met adored Coltrane, but mostly the 60´s phase, the Impulse years, but would have one ore two older Coltrane albums also, that´s how I got acquainted to "Good Bait".....

Though I´m sure that most of my favourite musicians - and Mobley sure is one of them - have died (most of them still lived when I got my DB magazines monthly) , I think those halls of fame made sens when the musician who was voted was still alive and active. Like when Dexter Gordon made it into the hall of fame right after he had returned to the states. I remember that. Dexter was on the cover photo.

Bebop at it´s beginning was a hard music to play for beginners. I wouldn´t say Albany sounded very amateurish, but there is some truth about pianists who tried to follow the movement of Bird, Diz, Bud etc. I think the problem was they heard the music in their head but when trying to finger it, it started to sound more like some edgy western avantgard type music, with chromatic lines and difficulties to interakt with the left hand. I had the same difficulties 40 years ago when I wanted to play "be bop" and when I listened to my own playing on tape, it sounded stiff and edgy and abstract. Listen to the first Al Haig recordings with Diz and Bird at Town Hall, same thing. But Haig was learning very fast and in 1949 he was a master and had it all. Same with Duke Jordan, his playing on the early Savoy recordings with Bird sounds stiff, but listen how he flows and sounds wonderful on later recordings. Same with Joe Albany. So I would say it is not the pianist, it´s the music that was a challenge. Now bop is old stuff but I still think it´s hard to play it beautiful if you dont feel it completely. If you can make it comin out of your heart it will sound right. Like in my yough when I played sometimes with a very good LA born and Europe base alto saxophonist, who later teached in Austria, who told me one thing I´ll never forget: "Bouncing with Bud".... you know what "bouncin´" means, so make it bounce, not hammerin´it out on that piano.... Or the late world famous austrian classical pianist, who also got into jazz and recorded jazz, but at the beginning he got an advice from Art Farmer after playing some bars "Get that edge off...."

Me too, that happens very often. Someone was one of "the young guys" and that stucks even after decades, usually the sidemen of the then middle-aged established masters where the young guys, the boy wonders, like George Cables, Rufus Reid with Dex, like Don Pullen and George Adams with Mingus. I saw the name Bill Watrous, but it seems I never saw him live or heard him on record.....

Quite interesting. Maybe I already knew most of the infos, having read Francis Paudras´, Peter Pullman´s and Guthrie L. Ramsey´s books, and another one I think written by one Alan Grove, with is more negative. The best for my personal use has been the Carl Smith book about Bud´s records. About Diz and Bud, well I can imagine how Diz said those things about Bud. I´m sure Diz appreciated what Bud played, but couldn´t work with a super erratic Bud or Monk for a long time. But nevertheless, Diz recorded again with Bud, one track from 1960 in Paris (some sources say 1957), and the great "With the Double Six of Paris" from 1963. That´s the only occasion where Bud played and soloed on "Tin Tin Deo". Once I saw a photo of Bud with Diz during Bud´s last year of life. I don´t know why this photo doesn´t appear somewhere. It might have been in the studio, where Bud made his last album with Scotty Holt and Rashied Ali. I never knew what had determined Diz to be there as a guest in the studio, maybe to see him for the last time......., I love both Diz and Bud, Bud played a lot of Dizzy´s tunes, so sure he admired him.

I love the Ornette Coleman albums "Love Call" and "New York is Now" I have thought "Empty Foxhole" was done in 1966, so it might have been still Alfred Lion ? I love Jackie Mc Lean´s "Demons Dance", but have some difficulties listening to another album "´ Bout Soul" I think, but it should get more listening, because in general I´m not deaf to free stuff, and "Bout Soul" I think doesn´t have hard bop forms and is even much more advanced than Coleman´s stuff , since it seems that Coleman even if he went far out, had swing sections in it, changing tempos but more in the manner Mingus with Dolphy would have done it.... I love the later McCoy albums for BN, especially one little album I have the cardboard cover version, can´t read what´s written on it, it´s so minuscule.... but it is a quartet with Bobby Hutcherson , I love that one, it´s one of my favourites. I like it even more than "Time for Tyner". I have some difficulties with all those late Hank Mobley albums. It´s fantastic music, solid, everything, but maybe because Mobley recorded so many many albums, I just keep spinnin certain albums like "Soul Station" and some of that , one or two albums from the 50´s, and from after 1965 I think "Dippin´" is a beautiful album. Somehow later I lost the trace, "Thinking of Home" might be a stuff, but somehow it doesn´t make me happy, it makes me sad, I don´t know why, I think something with Hanks tone had changed, it sounds like he sometimes has difficulties with breathing, maybe his respiratory problems had just started. Anyway it was published much later, in the 80´s I think.

Well but I think Rouse was full time employed by Monk, and that meant a lot of touring and last not least Monk though he could be erratic at some times, he always payed his sidemen very well. Many of the full time BN artists had a harder time to find full time jobs. Anyway that one little latin album is very nice and the most fascinating thing for me is that Rouse could hold his own. It must have been a challenge for him to do a bossa album withouth imitating others who made their bossa albums....

usually I ask the last minute replace what he would like to play and than it might work out just fine. If I have to use another drummer, I might worry if he´s really good, because I love drummers and the lift up the musical happenings. Though I´m a piano player, I´m a drummer´s fan. If it´s a great drummer with some stuff that inspires me, a last minute replace can be a beautiful experience.

I always loved his latin album for Blue Note "Bossa Nova Bachanal" or some title like that. Really fine. And other Non-Monk stuff , well you might start with his playing for Tadd. The 1947 Band (I think they called it the "Onyx-Band") had Rouse, you hear him on the Savoy and BN sides. Good Rouse also on some Donald Byrd from 1959 , also for BN.

A very interesting Bird recording at Cafe Society is the one, where he plays a lot of the "Bird with Strings" repertoire just with his regular quintet. With much solo space for the other great members of his group too: Kenny Dorham, Al Haig, and even the rare but great bass feature of Tommy Potter on "Talk of the Town"......

Thanks for mentioning the "Baby Grand" live date. I´ve almost forgotten about it and spinned it yesterday. Jimmy Smith always brings a big smile to my face. What a wealth of music, that incredible latin section of "Caravan", that heavy sound on the ballads, the fingerbusting uptempos and that cute medium-tempo tunes with a bit of Errol Garner-fealing.....

I remember I saw Arnett Cobb once, it might have been in the 80´s and he was still playing very very strong. On that ocasion there it was a group with two other horns, one of them was Jimmy Ford, a quite obscure player who once played with the Tadd Dameron-Fats Navarro band in 1948 (no recordings, but a foto exists). Both Cobb and Ford were great, but another really obscure trumpet player was quite weak. But I´m glad I saw Cobb life. Anyway he was still traveling very much in his late years....

Very interesting issue about Garner´s talent as a composer . I have a video of Garner which was done probably in Paris in 1970 maybe 1971 where he plays one tune that might be his own, and it´s called something like "Errol´s tune". That tune is a medium tempo B-flat minor stuff, and from the melody and the chords it´s very similar to a strange Bud Powell tune called "Ups ´n Downs" from his last recording date for ESP a few months before he died, and which was reissued on Mainstream Records in the early 70´s (another take of it is titled "Caravan Riffs") . Since there is also some Garner on Mainstream, it´s possible Garner "borrowed" some ingredients of that strange and forgotten Bud Powell tune. While Bud plays the theme in an attempt to do it "latin", Errol plays it with his trademark "Garner beat".

Yes, this one is great, it´s even better than the live date from Small´s Paradise, just incredible. Those early Jimmy Smith albums from the historical 1500 Series is the greatest. I only have the japanes cardboard reissue of this album, and as I noticed then, it seemed that they didn´t release alternate tracks or unissued material , they kept strictly to keep it as a CD version of the historical original LP....

Oh yeah ! I love this great little record. It has a very very special and personal meaning to me, because I purchased it in september 1978 after I have heard the great Max Roach Quartet (with Bridgewater, Harper, Workman) at "Kongresshaus" (that ugly hall on Margarethengurtel, I think now there´s a BILLA ....) and I went to the then famous record dealer "Radio Kratz" in Delka Hof Mariahilferstrasse and asked Mr Kratz if he has some Max Roach and this it was. But it was a different cover, a colour foto of Roach in profil , well this was the period of the french "America" Label, they had many Debut and Fantasy records in their cataloque. I even played that record at school as a listening example when our music professor asked if someone has a recorded drum solo.

A title "Life at Birdland" always sounds great , all those great records that were made there. But I never could have imagined that a label like ECM would make records titled "Life at Birdland". I always thought they focussed on such very western sounding chamber-music like kind of stuff.....

Sonny Stitt is always a pleasure to hear. Recently I listend to his album "Nightwork", where he plays with Howard McGhee, Walter Bishop, Tommy Potter and Kenny Clarke.....

must admit I never heard the name. Only know about a Clarence "C" Sharp, and (not from my musical tastes..... a Pete Fountain......)