Gheorghe

Oh yes, the album covers of the 70´s , I remember once I purchased a twofer Miles Davis with Prestige Dates before the first quintet (1953-54) mostly stuff from Blue Haze, Modern Jazz Giants and Walkin´, with Miles from around 1971/72 in a boxing outfit. First thought it might be some after Bitches Brew music and then found out it was older Miles. Another fine label, easy to purchase in Europe and low price was the french "America", they had a lot of Mingus and some Bop (Bird on 52´nd Street, Saturday Night Jazz Session with Fats Navarro and Roy Eldridge). Also remember the legendary "Bird is Free" with that white Bird on a blue sky. We all bought that. Bird was the man, even for those who really dug free jazz. So it was the title of the album maybe...... Once I found "The Happy Bird" and "Bird at St. Nicks" at some record store. I think this was the Bellaphone label.....

yeah that´s how I felt it.

Yeah I remember those strange LPs , got the 002, it´s a mixture of different live dates. The Waldorf Astoria track and the Cool Blues was reissued on one of the Bird CDs some years ago, and the Stuff with Bud and Candido is on "Summer Sessions" from the ESP discs under Bud´s Name. The strangest stuff is the Bandbox from March 53, because Bird sounds weak or tired. Usually he played great on all 1953 stuff. Here he even seems to have difficulties to speak as he explains the history of "Diggin´ Diz". But Walter Bishop is the star on that set, he plays great. The track with Milt Buckner Trio was on the CBS "Summit Meeting at Birdland" . Even if those were the old times I was astonished or amused by the typewritten page on the back cover, the whole thing looked really unprofessional, like a private made record.I had another LP titled "Hooray for the Bud Powell Trio" , also from 1953 with stuff from the ESP disk, the "Spring Sessions". Those strange Italian LPs of "rare" Bop material were something quite important for me when I was a bebop-mad youngster. There was another, I don´t remember the label, but it was called "Here is (Name of the Artist) at his rare of all rarest performances" that was Miles Davis 1951 at Birdland (later reissued on BN) and the "Miles Davis-Stan Getz" from Birdland 1950..... Those cheap European pressings were easy to purchase and cheap, there were bunchs of them in the record stores. Musidisc was another, mostly with wrong personnel, wrong record dates (I remember "Bud Powell "From Birdland 1956 with Paul Chambers and Art Taylor, while this was 1953 and Oscar Pettiford and Roy Haynes). They couldn´t or wouldn´t write the correct dates and personnel and first of all, Bud NEVER performed with Chambers in 1956 !!!

Shame on me, but somehow the stuff with the Mel Lewis BB after Thad had left didn´t reach me. Had heard the original ThadJones/Mel Lewis and was disappointed with the 1980 edition with much of Bob Brookmeyer´s originals.....

Great, JSngry !

Oh yeah, remember that overalls. Well I think that was the late 70´s. The Messengers became a main attraction again, because there was a renewed interest in acoustic jazz. But as much as I remember you were supposed to look casually. It was said that young audiences wouldn´t "buy" artists that wear tuxedos (smile). So that was the fashion. About Valery: I remember him well, saw him with the late 70´s until 1980 edition of the Messengers, great group, and some great little records like the japanese Philips "Night in Tunisia", and the Cocord "In this Korner", and some on the Timeless label, but I think the "hit" of us youngsters was "Moanin" and Blues March" from the Philips LP. Everybody was into that. And Valery contributed a nice blues original to the "In the Korner" album "Blues for Two". Boy, what we spinned those records. Still spin them if I want to remember that beautiful days....

oh yeah, as a bop lover I´ve played all those rhythm changes tunes so many times. But I also like tunes with the rhythm changes only in the A section with a different bridge, or in other keys than the usual B-flat. Love to play them in D-flat, A-flat, E-flat, but have difficulties to play them in strange keys like A natural, B-natural, D-natural.

Thank you Fasstrack and JSngry ! As for a break tune I really thought about "Don´t stop the Carneval". That´s a catchy thing, and you can go down with the volume while making the announcements. And it can fit to the speech, anyway I think there´s no need to "hurry". You can let some space like first you thank the audience and start to present the musicians, leaving space for the applause for each one and for some bars for a short "showcase", lets say a drum pattern, a bass riff, some piano runs, and a closing announce (we´ll be back after intermission) and than give some heat with that simple tune for some moments and stop.... Or maybe the A section of Night in Tunisia in the manner Diz played it in the later periods from the late 70´s on, I think he did the A section in 6/8 time that gives space for some catchy bass vamps and for the last 2 bars of the A section he switches to a swift 4/4 ....., you can keept that groove while making the announcements. maybe that, or maybe better "Dont Stop the Carneval".

Yeah, Wiesen 1983, still remember the tunes they played: Blue´n Boogie, Salt Peanuts, What´s New, Star Eyes. They came on stage, cooked and that it was. One of the best live performances I ever heard.

Got all the Prestige records on individual CDs or LPs with one exception "Blues a la Suisse". It´s hard to decide to buy a box only for the one missing link.....

Love everything he played, he was a genius. And I was lucky to see him once with Jackie McLean, Billy Higgins and his long time friend Herbie Lewis. That was a hell of a group and to bad they didn´t make a record. Only saw parts of it on Italian RAI.

Was also scared now. Never heard about another John McLaughlin or a McLaughlin-Group ????

thanks fasstrack. Yeah that helps much. I don´t have the intention to talk and talk and talk, but just want to let people feel I´m glad they came to hear us and we are glad to play some music for them. What I really want to do on the next occasions is to have a "theme" song, something you can play at the end of each set, something that grooves where you can make short announcments , presenting the musicians, sayin thanks for the kind applause and something "we´ll be back after a short intermission". I like that on live records. But it must not be 52´nd street theme that´s too fast to talk over it, though I love to play it but as a tune of it´s own....

Wow, didn´t know he played in 68. Somehow I had thought that was one of the periods when he was off the scene, took a break and studied something, some philosophy some religion something like that. Late 60´s anyway was a rough period for jazz and I think many clubs had closed (even Europe wasn´t easy then). But Sonny was the greatest all time. But it seemes the period after the Don Cherry Collaboration (63 tour) until the first Milestone stuff (Next Album) was unknown to me. Somehow like Mingus. Not much after the Dolphy collaboration until 1971 (Let my children hear music).......

oh my God how young they was then, Herbie and Chick. Sure I saw them, it might have been around 1978 or so, right ? the recommended album was a classic, see: There was some albums that you were supposed to have when I was a youngster: Bitches Brew, Aghartha (Miles) Red Clay (Hubbard), Super Trios (McCoy), "Tempest at the Colloseum" (VSOP), "Romantic Warrior" (Return to Forever), and "Herbie and Chick". If you had those albums....at least on tape (since many of us couldn´t afford to buy albums, they borrowed em to have it on tape, then someone borrowed the tape and made another tape from it....... that was my school-time......

thx got to get to listen to that !

Didn´t hear about that and didn´t know he appeared with Lee Konitz. Must admit I´m not very very familiar with the music of Lee Konitz, my fault. Got to pay attention to Art Pepper mostly because the time I heard him he really sounded tough like all the other topnotch musicians that usually were on festival schedules (Dex, Rollins, Joe Henderson, Archie Shepp etc etc) , mostly associated his later work with George Cables , changing bassists and usually really powerful top drummers, hard driving music and that kind of sound of Art, sharp like a knife, somehow a bit like Jackie McLean that was my first impression, but completly different I discovered later. The greatest stuff I heard in the last few years was the widow´s taste stuff, I like to hear whole concerts with all the stuff, the announcements, the applause, brings memories back , beautiful memories. And it seems it was a good time for musicians who had had their troubles in the past but managed to survive, like Chet Baker, like Art Pepper, like other "difficult artists"......, they had their comebacks and played stronger and greater than ever before.....

yeah, more Galaxy reissue would be good in general. IMHO this was a very important level during the time when people got interested again in acoustic jazz. Late 70´s early 80´s that was Art Pepper´s time, he and Sonny, and Griffin, and the new interest in recording Red Garland (who once recorded with Pepper). Too bad most of that stuff is OOP.

Bud Powell "A Tribute to Thelonious" from around 1961 is nice, though some compositions are not Monk. Another rare album with about the same title was from 1964 (solo in Paris and trio in NY) with only Monk Tunes. The only time Bud played "Bemsha Swing".

Thank you so much for your advices, that´s it ! to give my audience what I would like to feel if I were in the audience. I´ll be aware of that ! And yes, telling them about the songs is a very good idea, and not to exagerate it. The next gigs will be something like some tribute to Ella and Diz, since we also work with a singer who sings much of stuff Ella sang and I play much of Dizzy´s stuff. That kind of music really offers some occasions to tell people something. About the "Miles thing".....I remember how it was then, people mostly "musicians" or "want to be musicians" really tried to imitate that behaviour even if they where not badasses, they tried to be badasses just to be like "Miles". I didn´t think about it much, because I was too young. I thought that´s how you are supposed to act if you want to be cool "smile"...... Anyway it seemed that even Miles´ bandmembers tried to "out- miles" the boss himself. If you look at the Berlin 1969, Chick and Dave Holland don´t even smile when they are announced. they just look angry. Even Miles seemed to be more mellow on that occasion.

Hello all ! Though I´m not a professional musician, I sometimes play a club date or an opening set into leading a jam session, and I´d like to get some advices concerning stage manners, how to make a set look more similar to a "show". I grew up in the 70´s when stage manners (at least in my home country) were lousy. It seemed like if everybody wanted to borrow a bit from Miles, and attending a club performance, even if the music was great and usually it was great, the standard stage behaviour was grim faces, casual look, sloppy movements and it seemed to be a question of honour not to pay attention to the audience. But I also saw live performances with the bop survivors who were still very much in action (Dexter, Diz, Max, J.J. Johnson, etc. ) and they all had their little show routine. Maybe the more radical audiences of that time (who dug electric Miles, free jazz and western avantgarde jazz or ECM-style) might have thought that this is old fashioned , but I´d like to get a bit more of that stage gimmicks into our playing sets. Anyway we started to do it that way and it sells. My first and best critic is and was always my wife. After the first time seeing me on stage she said to me "you play great and people love it, but it seems like you got horse blenders ! You are supposed to smile more, look at your audience, make more announcements, make people feel good...." and so on. And that´s how it started . We get a gig and begin to see familiar faces, new faces, people who come to hear us, even if we are not "famous", and even if they are used to other kind of music and hadn´t heard about Monk or Bud or Diz or Bird..... We started to make little stage announcements, presenting the group, making humoristic remarks, not lecturing the audience but entertaining them...., even if they wouldn´t listen to "Salt Peanuts, Tin Tin Deo, Evidence and stuff like that the other day...... Now I´m looking forward playing much more with a female singer, she will sing some vocals on each set, and it will be even more important to make a good stage show. How do you musicians handle it on stage ? And do you have some advices for me, maybe how to close a set, how to make announcements along playing a theme song (somehow like Dexter did it, from the last fast tune into the "Theme Song" (Long Tall Dexter) with Dex presenting the musicians.... Thank you !

yeah, I´m looking forward playing again with her, and we can do our stuff and split the program, playin let´s say 2 bebop tunes, then 4 vocals with her, one bop/latin tune, again a vocal and the closer might be a simple theme song where she can rap with the audience , presenting the musicians and announcing intermission. Thought about "Don´t Stop the Carnival" , might be good for a closer, you can play along with a lower volume while she makes the announcments. We did something similar on the gig, just not to play only the music, but also doing it like a little show, stuff like that sells well and doesn´t interfere with the quality of the music....... Though there where many "hard core jazz fans" in the audience, some were not but still dug what we did, maybe because we did it in a natural lively manner......, we even could bring an ultra rapid version of "Salt Peanuts" without people leaving the scene *smile*

Hello again ! The gig was really a dream gig, and I wanna thank you all for the great advices you gave me. She´s really a very very good singer, great voice and beautiful delivering of the lyrics, and it was very very easy to work with her, I mean to support and not to clutter, as you told me. It was a real pleasure to work with her. Beautiful voice, and really easy to follow because she´s good and experienced and you can check out very easily what she want´s and how she want´s it. We did 3 sets, each set 8 tunes (2 instrumentals, 4 vocals, and again 2 instrumentals), and people really liked what we were doing. In general, I don´t like to play non-jazz events like weddings but this was really a "bebop-wedding" with a hip audience that dug what we were doing. And the most important thing: She (the singer) liked what we did and felt comfortable with us and will use us on further gigs. Really makes me happy and needless to say I´m lookin´ forward working again with her.

also interesting to read: The interview Art Taylor made with Hampton Hawes. Art Taylor´s book "Notes and Tones"

I also like to De Valk Book, especially the interviews with Chet and other musicians involved.