Gheorghe

Really very very interesting ! Thanks for posting.

I must say I´m not really familiar with that strange instrument. Don´t remind I would have seen somebody in action with it. I think there was a bassoon added on the studio version of "Cumbia" (Mingus) and.....yeah maybe it fits even if Jimmy Knepper was critic about it. But those are really strange otherworldly sounding instruments to my tastes, this and oboe , sounds a little bit like being played to make a snake get out of a basket on some oriental marketplace......, somehow the beautiful sounds of saxophones, trumpets, trombones made me feeling unconfortable on the more rarely played woodwinds.....

Oh my God, this was one of my favourite albums and still is. It was heaven on earth for me, after I had got acquainted to Clifford Jordan through the 3 LP Mingus at Paris , and another Debut thing of Mingus featuring Max Roach at the Bohemia, that album "Speak Brother Speak" was something like "closing circles" for me as a young boy. Mingus with Dolphy and Jordan, Mingus with Mal Waldron and Roach, and finally Roach with Mal Waldron and Cliff Jordan. I think I purchased "Speak Brother Speak" after I had heard Roach for the first time life. I remember I even took it to school and they played it for the students to let em hear what a drummer can do. Another great Cliff Jordan, maybe almost on the same emotional level like "Speak" is the Mingus album "Right Now!" at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. Only a quarted, the thinnest Mingus lineup I ever heard, but listen what this guys including the girl pianist Jane Getz can do. That´s the most far out Cliff Jordan I ever heard......

Sharel Cassity is tops, heard her playing with some Dizzy Gillespie Alumni feat. John Lee, Ed Cherry etc. Cindy Blackman before he went to Santana, one of the greatest drummers, fantastic what she played with Jackie McLean. Those are my favourite female jazz artists I heard more recently....

I´ve just listend to the last CD from the Cliff Jordon Strata East: The Glassbeads Game. Really great the two different quartets, the one with Stanley Cowell and the one with Cedar Walton. The Cliff-Walton-Sam Jones-Billy Higgins group became the working unit, that would record very much in the following years. In general, that Box has a lot of interesting material, but I liked most the Rhytm X, the Pharoah Sanders with Sonny Sharrock, and of course the Glass Beads Game.

I think I remember Chico Freeman played with that setting, or at least with Don Moye and some others at Velden 1979. But I must admit I was quite a newbie then and the main purpuse was to see Sonny Rollins etc. , I had dug a lot of Ornette and Don Cherry but somehow was not prepared for Chico Freeman.......

Thank you Brownie , so this must have been in the 70´s . Bill: no, I didn´t see Monk in 1961 because then I was 2 years old. Even in 1972 when the Giants of Jazz played in Vienna, I was too young to be interested in jazz. That came 2 years later, so I missed the only occasion to see Monk live.

But that cover photograh looks like from a later period than the time where he played with Rouse, Ore and Dunlop which might have been in the early 60´s , not ? Looks like Monk in the early 70´s . Who is the bass player in the background.

Yes I´m also listening to the vocal tracks and like them very much. Very rich in melody and arrangements, great thing. On the Spotlite they had omitted the vocals, with the exception of one rare vocal track by Harry Belafonte with (as is written on the cover) "probably the Machito Orchestra. Anyway I like this much more as the Verve Tracks No Noise and Mango or how they are titled.

I love that Machito with Graţiela so much . The tracks with Howard McGhee and Brew Moore are also on one of those legendary Spotlite LPs. My God, Spotlite was the best label for treasures like that. It could have gone on forever...... Howard McGhee is so fast on that "Indianola", he almost could beat Diz and Fats. Brew is classic. I´ve always been impressed by his playing a very Lestorian tenor, with a lot of Boppers like Bird, Bud, Miles, Fats, J.J., Machito, just everybody...... "Cubop City" is the longest track as I remember and at one point I think Maggie and Mario Bauza a sharing the solos..... And I love the vocal numbers, that´s classic Cuban Music , I´ve been to Cuba.

I think on the Hank Mobley BN album "Workout" there is a coca cola bottle on the floor of the studio.

thank you. So this might be worth to purchase. I remember, that all we kids were a bit confused by the track "April" , because on the album there was some wrong informations (something very usual during that time) . We had thought it´s the same date and Bird might have asked Mingus to sit in. I must admit we all were mostly interested in Mingus, who indeed does fantastic things on that track. Bird an Mingus. We had heard a trumped on the theme, but he sounded weak. Might be interesting also to hear Bird as late as 1954. The few things that remain from that unhappy year for Bird, "Bird plays Cole Porter" sounds a bit shaky, and some three tracks from september 1954 with the MJQ without Milt sound nice but it seem´s to be an exhausted and tired Bird. I think I have one else from early 54 on a BN with some good Bird but not with the best rhythm section.....

Is "I Remember April" on it ? Because it seems that LP "The Happy Bird" that I have from about the mid 70´s has 1 track with Twardzick and Mingus and I think a trumpet player with a thin sound playing only the theme. The other tracks are Bird with Wardell Gray , Roy Haynes, Teddy Kotick and Walter Bishop. I remember the track "April" has a very beautiful and relaxed sounding Bird, and a very very underrecorded piano. The record says "Boston 51" but as I said I have the impression the "April" track is from another date.

I know about a Bird in Boston recording featuring Dick Twardzik which was very much around in my youth, it was a Musidisc thing "The Happy Bird" and has 4 tracks, two of them with Dick Twardzik and Charles Mingus on bass among others, one track I remember is "April". The other tunes was a "Happy Bird Blues", a very fine "Scrapple from the Apple" and "Lullaby in Rhythm" mistitled "I may be wrong", both also featuring Wardell Gray in top form. I also have that Electra Musician Bird in Washington with orchestra, but it has nothing to do with the Bird in Boston.

Recently I listened to the two CD of an entire club date in Hamburg 1979 at Uncle Poe´s Carnegie Hall. That´s Chet in top form, with a great trio, Phil Markowitz is wonderful, the legendary Jean Louise Rassinfosse on bass, he played very much with Chet, and as a rare occasion also a drummer. I never had heard Chet with a drummer, the few times in Vienna and other Festival places in Austria it was always with piano bass, or piano guitar flute bass, anyway Chet has a great timing, he really has the time in his blood, he can play fast and slow tempos and never hurries up or drops time. As much as I love and need a drummer for my musical tastes, I never missed them on Chet´s music.

yes, that´s the box !

Johnny Griffin "Blues for Harvey" . That´s a Steeplechase album from 1973 live at Montmatre. Really a cooker. With Kenny Drew, Mads Vinding and Ed Thigpen.

A long time ago I think I purchased a strange Coltrane LP Box with 5 LPs, and I think they all were rare broadcasts, no studio recordings. And the first LP had the whole Johnny Hodges Material . I also remember "Mellow Tone" as the most successful track of it.

Yes the announcements are not well recorded, but anyway it´s nothing more than just shouting out the names of the musicians. No "hip talk" or something... Tommy Turk, I´m sure he might also be on other JATP recordings, but the worst thing was when Granz added him to Bird´s quintet on some 1949 studio recordings, I think those with those strange titles "Cardboard" "Passport" "Visa" etc. , this might have been almost around the same period like the JATP. About Sonny Criss it seems we have similar impressions. Never thought about the Willie Smith Sound but you might be right. If I consider it, there are shades of Smith in his playing. I´ve heard once, that Sonny Criss had heard Bird at JATP 1946, which anyway was in LA, and got his influences from Bird´s sound on those concerts. I never cared for Sonny Criss, I think he is on another Bird date, I´m not sure right now but is it possible he was on some "Inglewood Jam". HAWK and FATS, and Fats on "Things we did last summer"....

I´ve listened again to that really great album, the best of the Jazz at the Philharmonics, and I can´t find something really "far-out" in Bird´s playing. IMHO everything I´ve heard him play, has that unique balance and melody in it. On Indiana (Ice Freezes Red) he makes some outbursts into the highest range of his instrument, but even this is not new. He did it much earlier, as on the 1947 Broadcasts "Bands for Bonds" on "Donna Lee" ( based on Indiana as everybody might know) where he reaches a very high note, announced by Barry Ulanov in a very strange manner as "some very strange recording noises by Bird". I´ve heard things that Bird was difficult for those who had been used to oldtime jazz, but maybe I´m too young, I grew up with Bird´s sound in my ears, that´s the musical language I understand best, so Bird and Diz always have sounded to me so familiar I never traced something "far out". But the second alto player Sonny Criss, he sounds strange, he cannot really phrase a thing like Bird, he´s got fantastic chops but doesn´t have the imagination to really "sing" on the horn like Bird. Many bop followers were faced with that problem: They thought they must sound more abstract and then it might be the "bop thing"........ The other players are cool. Flip Philips is an older guy but play he does, he really had chops. That trombone player has great chops but sounds more like Dixieland to me. Hank Jones is fantastic. I think Hank Jones always was the real Gentleman of the piano.

This is an interesting record. But it´s quite unusual for the choice of "Sentimental Journey" as the first tune. And "When I fall in love" as a medium tempo and not ballad. There´s a whole bunch of McLean´s recordings for Prestige from that period. Later I heard Jackie McLean was not really happy with that deal. But now they are classics.

One special highlight on it is the ballad feature of Fats "Things we did last summer". Fantastic ! And a rare recorded document of Fats playing a ballad.

this was one of my first albums : The 2 LP CBS set with that painting of Bird. Fantastic. though until there I never had heard a worse sound quality (my item seemed to have only the treble and you had to turn the treble completle down and the bass up and still would have a very very metallic sound) I had the Savoy studio dates before (this actually was my first Bird), but studio recordings were to short and you couldn´t hear the drums. Besides Bird I was mostly impressed with Bud and Blakey. I loved that fierce drumming Blakey had on this and when I later bought a studio record of the Messengers I was disappointed the drums didn´t sound as loud as on Bird 1950. I love powerful drumming. And Bud: I was the lines, it was how he makes the piano sound, something I never had heard before that way .....

I have that record . The "far out" or more abstractly sounding Bird..... could it be Sonny Criss ? I had the same problem once I think it was an Inglewood Jam, where they are both. Sonny Criss had a sound very similar to Bird. I think he got his sound from the hard sound Bird had on his 1946 JATP recordings. But the difference is that Criss seems to exagerate a bit . On those early recordings 1949-52 he always sounds a little nervous, he doesn´t leave space and doesn´t have those little melodies in it that Bird would have had.

Well "White Chrismas" was a request on air. But I think Charlie Parker was hip enough he would play any tune with nice changes so you can blow on them. That was Bird, the tune was just a blowing vehicle. So if Bird was in a mellow mood and I´ve heard he had his mellow sides also, he just wanted to be kind and anyway he did his very personal version of that tune. And really: Both White Chrismas and Slow Boat have changes any bop freak can blow on them. I´m not a professional musician and do only some club dates, sometimes I´m lucky I have occasions to play or jam with good professional musicians also, but I´d say for myself if I´d get a request "White Chrismas" or "Slow Boat" I´d be happy to please the person who asked for it. As for "Feelings", yeah I´ve heard a lot of guys refuse it, but what can happen worse than do a short version, I think a slow bossa or something like that, on it just not to hurt the "feelings" of someone. If it´s a club gig and you can be flexible, and it´s the last set, why not. If we are on pressure of time and most folks came to hear other stuff, it might be impossible...... Anyway, at least in my case it´s a question of age: When I was young and more arrogant, maybe I declined a request in a more direct and harsh manner, but now, it´s more important for me to have happy faces in the audience and not to hurt anybody´s feeling if possible. if we can manage to include the request without completely destroying the general conception , there´s nothing wrong I think.....