Gheorghe

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.

I´ve stayed in the same place for a very long time so can´t even imagine how difficult and painful it must be for an 85 years old to move to another place. I love changes in jazz movement, but hate any changes in personal live, places to live, so I really feel sorry for that man whom I don´t know, which is my fault cause I really don´t know much about other music than so called jazz. The only "Prestons" I got acquainted with where one Eddie Preston on trumpet, on some Mingus stuff from early 1970, but not very profilic, and .....indirectly as the title of a tune "Billy Preston" on some Miles Davis album from the early 70´s. This latter one I think did other stuff than jazz, so I know about his name mainly from the title on the Miles album (Get Up with It maybe?).

Well applause is what the artist wants to get, even if he doesn´t admit it. I never really dug into Keith Jarrett when he became that huge solo star ,............ I really liked his playing with Miles on those two keyboards, the cellar door sessions, and I like one trio album dedicated to Miles, but never was really aware of the whole solo stuff, that´s not really my alley. But I heard he is a difficult person and curses the audience out, even Miles was nicer I heard. Well that´s the way former Miles sidemen want to out-miles the master. On the other hand their are even studio records where they brought fake applause in, saw it on a lot of albums. I don´t feel disturbed if their is applause on a record, even if it´s not at the end, but after the solos, with shouts of encorage for the soloist, coming from fellow musicians and the audience. That´s jazz.

I also love his music and fell in love with it after hearing my first album I had purchased "Live at the East". Saw him live in his prime in the 80´s and 3 years ago when he still had a lot of energy at least on the horn, but even then he seemed to have difficulties walking. I´m glad to hear that he still plays. But we all know how it is when we used to see our heroes during their prime and it would be unkind to compare what they used to do with what remained. It happened with Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin, it´s the same with Pharoah Sanders. You just try not to compare how strong they were years ago, you just try to be happy you had the change to get glimpses of what they used to do and know he still has the essential part of it.

It was yesterday, september 27th. Sometimes we post "happy birthday" even if the artist had died log ago. I wanted to honour his birthday by spinnig some of his music. Due to lack of time I thought I might choose one album, but which one ? Bud was one of the unhappiest of so many unhappy artists of his time, so I decided to listen to a life recording that was done during a few days, when Bud really was happy. It was in summer 1964 in Edenville France, where he spent some holyday with some friends and played in an inofficial manner on a bad tuned piano with an amateur bassist and drummer, but with the great Johnny Griffin joining the group on some extended tunes. Even if the sound quality is not perfect , Bud sounds very very inspired. It was only a few weeks before his 40th birthday. At that time he had entered in his finale and most unhappy period and it sounds strange how he speaks a few words during the celebration of his birthday, telling in a stiff collared manner "I apreciate your efforts to make my birthday a glad one".

Sounds interesting. I always pay very very much attention to the drummer´s work. There is nothing better for the inspiration of the other musicians than a good drummer. Mel sure was a topnotch drummer, what I heard sounded good. But I must admit I heard him mostly with the big band with Thad Jones but the few things I heard him do on small group recordings are also fine.

Same here: I also thought it´s about the Concord label. They had some beautiful stuff and I think some of it is OOP. I´m quite disappointed it´s not what I expected.

I remember Eddie Harris played in Vienna once in the Mid 80´s for almost 2 weeks at a very very nice and very small defunct jazzclub "Jazz Spelunke". Fantastic and I was there almost every evening , anyway I was a regular at the club . It was about the most extended tenure of a US star in a club where normally performed locals. It was our great pleasure to hear and see him every night , but now if I think about it I ask myself wether he was stranded in Viena or just needed a rest. Touring is a hard and unpleasant and tedious thing....

I don´t know exactly about so called music videos. The only 80´s videos I know are some concerts . In the 80´s you still could meet a lot of jazz legends on stage so I might have quite a lot of DVD´s and videos of jazz concerts filmed in the 80´s .

I don´t know I think he was more a teacher or a keeper of the flame than an important pianist, but maybe I´m wrong. First saw his name on a strange double LP "Echos of an Era" with Art Tatum on Side A, Erroll Garner on Side B, Bud Powell on Side C and Billy Taylor on Side D. Though maybe i confounded his name with Cecil Taylor because I thought the last one might be the most far out. But his playing on those tracks (with Mingus !) didn´t sound more advanced than Art Tatum or Bud. Since than I heard some of his solos, but it seems to me more like happy easy listening jazz, very very diatonic. And there is one album Charlie Parker Memorial 1965 with various artists and the way Billy Taylor playes more like some fugue or counterpoint or something in the classic manner got on my nerves. It sounded like someone who normally plays Bach or other classic and tries to give the blues a chance..... I saw Billy Taylor on many video comments , really interesting to listen what he says and what he knows about the music, but I think he was more a speaking voice about jazz than a soloist that would thrill me......

When I was a youngster and living in Europe the records easy to achieve were those "Musidisc" albums, most of them with (at least then) rare live material, and they were "famous" for wrong years and wrong personnel. It was so bad it took me years to learn jazz history properly, because I was wrong informed: Some examples: Tadd Dameron/Fats Navarro was titled "Birdland 1949" but really it might have been "Roost 1948", incredible isn´t it ? And even worse: There was one album of Bud and it was called "Live from Birdland 1956" and the listed personnel was "Paul Chambers and Art Taylor ". Actually it was februrary 1953 with Oscar Pettiford and Roy Haynes. But I was smart enough to not believe that the more old fashioned bass sound couldn´t be Paul Chambers strong and fat sound and steady lines. And after some time I purchased a Victor record of Bud from 56 and it sounds so poor it couldnt be the same Bud. And there was an Italian Label with the strange titles "....at his rare of all rarest performances", and there was a Miles Davis album from Birdland 51 and if you know Miles composition "Down", well it´s on that album but it was titled "Mike´s Blues" so there was some confusion when someone else titled a tune "Mike´s Blues" and I thought he might have stolen the title from Davis......

Anyway it should be rare live material, like let´s say the stuff with the "lost band" 1969 was fantastic, because that group and that style really was underrecorded. Of course I love the stuff around Dark Magus, Aghartha and Panghea and it would be interesting, or let´s say the live stuff after his comeback from 1981-mid 1983. Especially the 81 band was super cool and their might be enough stuff that´s worth listening to. Though Miles still didn´t have his chops completely back, the music was more advanced and daring, but also with a view to jazz history, fantastic !

Always glad on such occasions to spin a lot of Bird´s records.

I forgot to mention, he also wrote the book about Johnny Griffin "The Little Giant".

I wasn´t aware that he passed away 20 years ago, but it seems to mean something, that I was listening intensly to some of his great piano solos yesterday. Those Steeplechase "Dexter in Radioland" are wonderful and Tete Montoliu really stretches out on them. A fantastic pianist. Later I think I saw him with Joe Henderson and it was Tete who rescued that gig, while the rest of the rhythm section was not good. Tete just waved to the lousy bass player to lay out and did the bass line himself.

Mike Hennessey indeed was a great journalist and I associate him with all those great Americans in Europe, since he wrote about them. That was the great times, when all those heros visited Europe or even settled there for some time. The book about Klook is the best one, but I think I read a lot of other things, festival revues I think..... What exactly was his role at MPS ?

Thank you Rooster_Ties for sharing this wonderful memories. Yes of course John Gilmour and Marshall Allen. I just didn´t mention them in my previous posting cause I think they were the best known Arkestra members. Sure I saw and admired them, but then when I first heard the Arkestra, the biggest surprise for me was Ray and Tyson.

Thanks for the anecdote about the Chattanooga Concert. I think, Michael Ray and June Tyson where some of the most brilliant members of the Arkestra. I loved them both. Michael Ray was really a virtuose trumpetplayer and had it all, from swing to bop to free, he had it all. And June Tyson had such a beautiful voice. There are some of Sun Ra´s songs that have that strange otherworldly quality, they are simple, they are somehow happy and sad at the same time, you can snap your fingers to em, and those was the songs where I started to pay very much attention to June Tyson. One of my favourite Sun Ra records is "Unity" , but sad to say June Tyson is quite off the mike. And sometimes on records you hear her only in ensemble singing which is also good, but not enough. I really loved her voice and her approach to the Arkestra.

Thank you Niko for posting that article. That she refused to record/play Leonard Feather´s compositions, made me smile. I liked Leonards Liner Notes when I was a kid, because liner notes was the most information we in Europe could get about musicians. And his book "From Satchmo to Miles" with that famous Miles Davis interview.... But Leonard as a composer ? Had to think about that. And just two weeks ago when I listened to the whole Dizzy RCA recordings, all that hot big band stuff, Manteca and so on, there was one tune that didn´t really appeal to me andit is titled "Ole Man Re-Bop" or something like that . I thought why, all the other stuff is great, Good Bait, Ool ya koo, Woody´n You, everything, and this one I dont like and that I saw it was composed by Leonard Feather (smile). Well I don´t know his other compositions and I´m not really curious, but this tune sounds like if somebody has listend to bop and liked it and thinks he must try to write something "boppish" without really having the roots and the feelings for that music. And then I remembered this thread and thought "yeah Jutta, can understand you, same here, I wouldn´t like to perform that tune (smile). But about the Jazz Podium, I still think there was another article too, because I remember she told some things in her own words, she even told about the incident with Art Blakey and confessed that she had drunk to much, when Art finally asked her on stage to sit in on an ultra rapid tune. She confessed that she just sat there on the piano stool and smiled and wasn´t able to play. I´m sure Jutta could have made it if she wasn´t loaded. If I drink only beer my fingers slow down.

Helle Big Beat Steve ! The strange thing is I remember which year which was about until the early 80´s and remember things concerts I saw, articles I read in years like 1975,76,77,78 but if you ask me if it was in 88 or 91 or 98, I´m lost ....... But I remember that article very well and maybe it was in the late 80´s maybe .....or really maybe it was in the early 90´s . I had Jazz Podium subscribed but chancelled it somewhere in the 90´s maybe even in the late 90´s I don´t remember. The reason was their was too little interesting stuff for me. During the earlier years I´d seek festival reviews, articles about artists I knew and saw live, and later I didn´t know anymore who´s playing cause most of my heros were dead or retired. But I remember the article about Jutta Hipp was without a foto. And it seemed it was a younger woman who asked the questions. I also remember one statement of Jutta. She didn´t have a CD player and said she hates buttons and electronics. It reminded me of my late aunt, about the same generation....born 1924.... who had also lived in NY since the mid fifties in a small apartment only with two cats and didn´t like modern equipments and until herdeath it was just old fashioned letters, no mail, no nothing..... ;_)

Hello Big Beat Steve ! As you mentioned Hans Koller on another thread (Lucky Thompson), I remember I read a rare interview with Jutta Hipp in the late 80´s at Jazz Podium, where she was asked about her time with Hans Koller and she said she didn´t like to play with him, that she didn´t like his approach to jazz. Well her comments on Hans Koller were quite harsh and she described it a "cold music". As I told in my answer, I don´t want to make statements about a type of music that´s too hard to understand for me as being something that sound´s to me as western avantgarde music, I nevertheless can understand why Jutta Hipp didn´t like it. She was just a swinger and wanted to play bop, hard bop orientated stuff which she really did good and sounded good. Listening to the stuff I know from her (three BN albums, the one with Zoot and those two at Hickory House) I can understand very well, that she just wanted "to play" and not to figure out difficult written music......

Hello Big Beat STeve: even if it´s OT, but about Hans Koller I can´t say much. I´m sure and convinced that he was an exceptional artist, I wasn´t able to get into his music, which seemed to be very much written out stuff, serios western type music. He didn´t go much to those clubs where you´d drink and talk to the musicians and jam and the way how I was used to it. Heard him once in 1983 at a festival it was called "Master Quarted", two saxophones and two pianos, a quite unusual combination. Maybe I´m too dumb for that stuff, I like it with sax, piano, bass and drums , and that kind of music seemed to be very very hard listening, much more like 20th century experimental music. Once I met someone who had to audition for Hans Koller and had to show he can read the most complicate sheet music. So I think if someone played with Hans Koller he had to be a certain kind of classical trained musician. The "difficult" musicians I talk about , Lucky Thompson with Stan Tracey, in my case in Vienna Joe Newman with some locals, that´s somethin else, they´d play regular jazz tunes and if Joe Newman might call "Bye Bye Blackbird" which you can play without thinkin about chords or sheet and he starts lecturing the band, that´s uncomfortable. And maybe Lucky Thompson was the same.....

On a Misty Night is really one of Tadd´s most pretty tunes. Sonny Stitt seemed to like Tadd´s tunes, he also played "Our Delight" and played with Tadd at Birdland I think. Pharoah Sanders also recorded "On a Misty Night".

Yes, I remember once someone gave me that book Ronnie Scott wrote, a very very good book and I remember, if I remember right, that Lucky Thompson said to Stan Tracey "if you must play crap, play it low" or something like that. With all due respect to Lucky Thompson and I like his playing, one thing is significant: Very often those artists who where not necessarly in the forefront of the movement were the most difficult ones. In my hometown Vienna they had sometimes the Basie-trumpetist Joe Newman, a good swinging musician, but maybe not the most famous, but ......how he always lectured and teached his local sideman. It seems that after some gigs no local musician from Vienna wanted to play again with him......

How much time did Lucky Thompson spend in Paris ? I did know about his late fifties things in Paris. One LP that was on sale when I was young was that "Oscar Pettiford" Memorial Concert from Paris, october 1960 with Lucky Thompson Trio some tracks and Bud Powell Trio some tracks. On a club date they played a few tunes together. I´ve read once , I think Ronnie Scott wrote it, that Lucky Thompson was not an easy guy to work with. British pianists had difficulties working with some "difficult" tenorplayers. Lucky was one of them, the others was Brew Moore and Don Byas if I remember right.