Gheorghe

Yeah, I said to me some days ago that I might listen to it again. It was while I was listening to the newer RTF live stuff with Jean Luc Ponty where they do "Spain" and play "Aranjuez" in the intro, that made me want to spin "Sketches" again, but ya know that´s a thing I have to play when I am a certain mood into. Like ....listen to something that I don´t listen for "study", but only for a certain mood, which happens more in winter time. When I became a Miles Fan from the very start on and started to get a few Miles albums from pocket money, it was one or two Prestige, it was Miles Round Midnite, it was above all Miles in the 60´s with Herbie and Tony, and of course the than brand new "Bitches Brew". Sketches was always around, but I was not marture enough for it. For me then, it was too little action, I was not cultivated enough to enjoy something where I don´t hear them ringin cymbals and that strong traps work.... Now, as I said there are moments I spin stuff like that.....

I must admit I never worked with a vibe player. The most popular group featuring fantastic vibes here in Viena was "Together" with the great vibist and drummer Tom Henkes. They played pianoless, they had vibes, guitar, acoustic bass, drums, percussion. So this was pianoless. Otherwise I don´t have very much vibe stuff. I have Bags, Hutch a lot of. With Bags I think about Monk, John Lewis. Since Monk is nearer to my musical conception, I´d play more "Monkish" comping which I do anyway. Or, less chords, more "voicings", and stay more outta way...., well I think I couldn´t plan it. Since I mostly play "on call" I´d go up on stage and feel from what´s happenin´ what might be the best I can do to give support, inspiration and not get into their way. That´s hard to give a constructive answer, huh ? I might hear the stuff or hear what the boys tell me what kinda conception they want and try to fit in as good as I could. Anyway, if they chose me, they might have a plan what they want me to do and why they want exactly me......

I´m a big fan of Pharoah and saw him live on some occasions. About one of my first 10 own Jazz LPs back in my early teens was "Live at the East", which I still have ! That´s pretty 50 years ago ! Such a great musician ! One of my all time favourites.

For all jazz buffs in NY: Come by and listen to this great Austrian drummer. By the way: I´ve played some concerts together with him as "Allan Praskin Quintet" this year. If you can make it to Small´s please say hello from Gerhard from Vienna.

Such a great trombonist. I didn´t know much about him otherwise than from record, did not know that he stays in Seattle, which is quite far away from NY.

Ron Carter is one of my favourite bassists from the first moment on (I am a kid of the times of VSOP Quintet) and Ron´s unique bass sound on all those 70´s acoustic mostly when people became interested again in acoustic instruments.... I think he had a very unique bass style, not "hornlike phrasings" like Chambers and Co had, but more a bass-bound solo play. I must admit I have not the slightest idea who the sidemen are. The time when I heard Ron Carter frequently was mostly the CBS and Milestone "Family" of Artists....., mostly All Star contexts..... Even his own group was only stars: Ron with Kenny Barron, Ben Riley, Buster Williams......

Must be very interesting. Once I heard the movie score Miles recorded with the same personnel, also in Paris. But never heard live sets of this strange combination of Miles with Paris based musicians. I always had thought that Miles at that stage of his career would play only with his own quintet, until I had read somewhere that Miles also played with those musicians on something called "Birdland Tour" which toured all the world in the 50´s . I have heard about Marcel Romano. He is also on a photo in NY with Bud Powell and Paul Chambers. I think he was the one who brought Bud to Paris....

I love it. Vintage be bop. I loved to see Kai Winding live performing, he was great ! I also like his contributions to the Tadd Dameron band at Royal Roost, great bop trombone. A wonderful musician. I would like to work with a trombone player too, but have not seen good trombonists here on the scene.

I didn´t know about the existence of that album earlier. I love the sound of the Giants of Jazz. Here Dizzy is missing, and instead you have Clark Terry and Roy Eldrige , who play some very very fine stuff. Anyway, Roy was much ahead of his time and has some highlights, as well as Clark Terry and all of them. Monk is really in a playing mood here and does some fantastic solos. It´s interesting to hear Roy with Monk doing "The Man I Love", to be compared with the famous Miles-Monk session on "Modern Jazz Giants" where they play that tune. When the Giants of Jazz did Vienna, it was the same. Dizzy hadn´t made it, and was replaced again by Clark Terry, and Cat Anderson. During that time I didn´t even know who is Cat Anderson. I knew Clark Terry and all the others, but had not heard the name of Cat Anderson.

You retired from playing ?

The funny thing is, that when I started to try to play "our music", I mean when I was in my early teens, I sounded the same without knowing who Sadik Hakim is. That´s if you try to sound "hip" like a bopper but don´t have the means to express it. I just heard Bud and Thelonious and wanted to get into that direction, but without really being inside that musical language it sounds stiff and without melody in it. I thought I got it but when we recorded a repetition with the tape recorder, the tape recorder doesn´t have mercy, it plays back all the square stiff crap I played: Chromatic but not in the sense of using it to play "your story" , sycopated not like "bouncin´" or "flowing" in a natural manner, but in a stiff non musical manner. When I finally heard that Savoy sides of Bird from 1945 where Sadik plays piano even if he didn´t have a Union Card, I was astonished how similar it sounds to what I sounded then. I said to myself (knowing that I don´t like my own playing): "If this guy sounds that way AND is recorded with Bird, it can´t be that bad. But after some nights of good sleep again I was unhappy with what I did. I got help from a name US musician who told me "You play Bouncin with Bud but DO YOU REALLY KNOW what "Bouncin´" means ? So this one question meant tons of help. It has to have that natural feeling in it, that makes this tune so beautiful. You can´t play that with a "haba daba haba daba" aproach. Never..... The best example of one who played stiff and un-boppish when he started but became tops after a few years is Al Haig: Listen to his playing on the Town Hall 1945 with Bird´n Diz and it sounds stiff, it is some studied figures but now natural flow. And then listen to Al Haig in 1949 with Bird or Wardell Gray and you have a topnotch pianist.....

Yes, I got those to CDs of Monk with Griff some years ago by my wife , for X-Mas. She was amused about the cover art of that Misterioso album and said it looks somehow "Hamletean" (rumänisch für "Hamlet-mäßig").

That´s you ?

Very fine record like all Freddie Hubbard records of the mid sixties. Mine is a japanese pressing with mini LP cover and one strange thing is that they somehow doubled up the sound of the bass, so it sounds much more like a space age electric bass. This strange sound is also on my copy of Dizzy Reece´s "Sounding Off".

Yeah, that´s it. Based on All God´s Chillun, but in Eb. Most other bop lines based on that song is in F (Little Willie Leaps, Reets and I, and so on). On those early Monk albums on BN there is another tune where we are not sure, if it was actually written by Monk: "Eronel". It´s said that it was written by Sadik Hakim. Well, I once played it with a great tenor player in quartet, he had called the tune and announced it as Monk´s tune. Whatever, I have not heard other "Sadik Hakim" tunes. I hear him on several Savoy sessions as pianist, but he plays a quite edgy stiff syncopated style, strictly cromatic, which sounds more as if a classical player tries to "play" what he think´s is bop.....

Very fine as all of Horace Silver BN records. When I bought it I was a bit irritated by the title of the album, I mean the title tune, because "Blowin´ the Blues Away" is the title of one opener tune of the star filled Billy Eckstine Big Band of 1945.

I have only this one. Great guest artists. This was recorded shortly after I saw the same band (without the guest stars) at Velden Jazzfestival in July 1979. I have not heard so many big bands in my live. I think one year before I had heard Thad Jones-Mel Lewis and that was about all. Or a bit later a star studded Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, that´s sure. I remember the Woody Herman Herd of 1979 was the last band at the last evening of the festival. I was not so much into that older big band stuff then or now, but it did swing and they also included some Chick Corea tunes in their program which astonished me since this was a quite very old man on the band stand. He had great soloists, I think Nick Brignola was on bari. Well, I had to get a bit accomodated to the quite corny sounding clarinet of Woody himself. But yeah, it was a good festival finale anyway.

interesting, I didn´t notice this. But I can´t say that I would be an audiophil and maybe never was. I went thru the loud 70´s Miles Davis shows, and went thru them lousy sounding Boris Rose live broadcasts from Birdland as well. I´m glad I still CAN hear music and play it and dig it, and hear good enough with my right ear, if the person who talks to me is on my right side, and there are no other noises 😄

Oh boy, this was my first Wayne Shorter album , I bought it after I heard the VSOP Quintet and was eager to purchase individual records from each of those five "heroes" of mine: Hub, Wayne, Herbie, Ron, Tony... whatever I could find. From the BN-Wayne Shorter albums I like most this one and "The All Seeing Eye", really some hot stuff.

Mine too, Joe Henderson plays his ass off on that date. Wonderful record. I think, the first tune something with "I have a dream" is partially based on "Darn that Dream" .

I also love it. If I have to choose two of them early BN albums of McCoy I´d say this one, and that one with Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones.......

I didn´t know he made a record under his own name. I think I know him only as Monk´s bassist and can say, that all bassists who worked with Monk were fantastic. The swung hard and had more percussive sounds, more heavy pluckin´, not that long "doom doom doom doom" you hear when bassists have their strings really down. I like the percussive effect of the bass very much, but what do I say, I love everything that´s percussive, drums, Monk´s piano, strong bass players like Malik, like McKibbon, Larry Gales, Butch Warren and who they all was.....

I remember this one quite well. It was released after "Me Myself and I" with the fantastic "Three Worlds of Drums". This here is more a blowing session. Some very hot players, all the horns are great ! But I can´t stand that thin shit the two basses produce on their solos. It was outright painful for Mingus who couldn´t play bass anymore, to hear this. And I never understood why they had to add to the acoustic piano of Bob Neloms an electric piano by Ken Werner. I mean Ken Werner is a great pianist, but why on electric piano. that sounds terrible....

I have this. I always did like Allen Eager with Tadd Dameron and Fats Navarro, I think I have him on quite a lot of bop albums from the 40´s . I think I remember on this one is a whole set of a live club date from Boston or so. But some tracks from some photographic studio are not so fine, I think somebody does some terrible sounding crap on drums.

I never saw Harold Mabern live but heard him on the Freddie Hubbard "Night of the Cookers" and I think on some Wes Montgomery in Europe. Very very fine. But I never in live saw such a strange form of the front head.