Gheorghe

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.

I must admit, that I became aware of him only after his comeback, around 1978. Sure I listened to some his earlier work, but his work from 78-88 was what I really liked. Somehow the West Coast perioad never was my biggest point. I would like to state, that it´s my fault, I wouldn´t dare to make statements what kind of style is better, it´s just some appeal more to me and others less.

I bought it in the late 70´s and still enjoy reading it. Really interesting inside the live of a musician in trouble. It has quite a happy end, Hampton Hawes back in action, enjoying a new family live also. Too sad he died in 1977, he would have deserved much more recognition......

Would have been a great encounter. Love Mulgrew Miller and heard him on several occasions, with Blakey, with Woody Shaw, with Curtis Fuller/Benny Golson, all of ´em ...... Remember one strange thing, once I heard and saw him playing some boppish stuff, maybe Stablemates something like that, very Powellish and Mulgrew looked very alike Bud, the same position of his head, the same look, and the movements of the lips like the eternal bubble gum......, great musician, I love everything Mulgrew did

Yeah, the 90´s and the Toshiba Mini-LP album covers. We still had two record shops in Viena, one of them was the Virgin and it seemed they were specialized in Japan-Import Blue Note. And I was kind of a BN Freak then. Sure, "Am I Blue" was not my first Grant Green album, but I liked it, tough the best thing is the title tune. Not every tune is of same interest. And sometimes I´m in the mood to listen to this. But my favourit on Grant Green with Organ is "I wanna hold your Hand" with Larry Young and Hank Mobley. That´s the best of all. And, my wife liked those two title tunes from those two albums. Sounds like musical love poems, she said when she heard it for the first time.....

I was a big Miles Freak and bought each album just when it came out. My favourite from the pre-"Time after Time" period was "We Want Miles" just because it is not perfect. Amandla was the best thing after "Siesta" , I like Siesta for the sound and the atmosphere, but somehow I had difficulties to get happy with "Tutu", maybe because I´m to much a Jazz listener. I liked the live versions of all those Amandla Tunes when he played them from 1989 on, I remember how they stretched out on Mr. Pastorius, Kai Akagi the keyboard player was great, at last a virtuoso on keyboard.....,

When I started to listen seriously to jazz, "free jazz" still was quite a lot en vogue and people who had more knowledge and more listening experience than me wouldn´t consider a new listener a "full member" if he would keep listening only to "straight ahead" stuff. The mentioned early Ornette Coleman albums "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and "Ornette!" were those albums that made it easy for me to get into that, since they still had the "easy thing" for me, straight ahead walking bass , though the impros were not based on traditional chord patterns. In my first encounters with so called "New Thing" or "Free Jazz" I didn´t mind how far they go out if they did "swing"... Maybe this was also Alfred Lion´s touch to the whole thing, he recorded Ornette, he recorded Don Cherry and you can listen to "Complete Communion" and don´t fall asleep, since it grooves, it bounces, you can follow it. It took more time and more close listening for me to get into Cecil Taylor´s albums. Coltrane´s "At Village Vanguard Again" (the stuff with Sanders, with Rashied Ali). If I would listen to that I might say I got to have time to really listen to every aspect of it just to know what it is about.... What I want to say, I got to get me that kind of "education", not to become lazy and say "I only listen to Blakey´s "Moanin" and "Blue March" or to Horace Silver´s "Song to My Father" and say I only listen to what "I like" and where I can keep tappin my foot. I first started to hear Bird and advanced Bird fans told me "if you dig the music, move on, open your ears, listen to the next steps, and then come back and then talk to us, maybe...."

I´m aware of that opinion...... many listeners hear influences of Trane in Pepper´s later work, but I would like to add something: Only the fact that Pepper´s sound and approach became more "aggresive" and there´s a bit more modal thing in his tunes doesn´t lead necessarly to the conclusion that he´s under the influence of Coltrane. It´s just how it went on. Pepper had been hurt so much, or better said he had hurt himself so much, so gone was the more mellow side of his playing, but his ballads like "Winter Moon" have a special, very moving quality. Sure he liked Trane, he stated he liked Freddie Hubbard very much too, but he didn´t mention too many other players. And it was the rhythm sections that pushed him in certain directions. If you play with George Cables, Billy Higgins, Al Foster, guys like that you can´t go on with the more mellow early 50´s west coast sound, you´d be lost. You better get into another direction and I think Mr. Art Pepper did it in a very individual manner. His tone on latterday performances is sharp, but not in the way Jackie McLean would do it, it´s something else. I like it.

Strange but Leapin and Lopin doesn´t get as much spinning from me like "Cool Struttin" "Dial S for Sonny" and "Sonny´s Crib". I know many people say the prefer his trio album, but if I want to get the "Sonny Clark-Groove" it´s those hard-boppish medium tempos. I don´t think so much about him as a piano player, I like his relaxed solos on the mentioned albums but don´t pay much attention to his version of "Be-bop" and other up tempo stuff. Too little stuff happening with the left hand. I don´t say everybody must be a "two fisted pianist", you can overdo this showing everybody that that goddamn piano has 88 keys, but some more "fill in´s", some rhythmic patterns like the snare shots or the bombs a drummer throws would be good. I know what it means not to do too much with the left hand after a 1 year battle with tendovaginitis de quervain combined with athrithis, but I try not to forget I got a left hand too under the condition I won´t hurt it to much anymore....

Must be good. I like most of Art Pepper´s later work, must admit I listen much more to his late 70´s early 80´s stuff, like Chet Baker, I listen much more to his later work. And really fast company, I love rhythm sections like this. And yeah, there could be more of that kind from other deceased musicians, more late Elvin Jones, Dexter, Mingus. Later versions of those bands were underrecorded, or they were overproduced with adding a lot of "guests", or you can´t find whole concerts (in this case, the "widow´s taste" is a great exception with double CDs from a lot of great nights)

James Moody! Saw him twice, the first time 1999 in Viena, and exactly a year later in Miami. We, my wife and me talked to him on both occasions, he even remembered us from the year before. Curtis Fuller, Dave Liebman...... Maybe I would have had more ocasions to talk to famous musicians when I was very young since there were much more musicians, but then I was to shy to talk to them.

After decades I gave "To Musicians Only" (Diz, Stitt, Getz) a spinning, forgot how good it is, Track ? My biggest surprise was "Dark Eyes", great the short latin section where Diz starts his solo....

After decades I gave "To Musicians Only" (Diz, Stitt, Getz) a spinning, forgot how good it is, Track ? My biggest surprise was "Dark Eyes", great the short latin section where Diz starts his solo....

After decades I gave "To Musicians Only" (Diz, Stitt, Getz) a spinning, forgot how good it is, Track ? My biggest surprise was "Dark Eyes", great the short latin section where Diz starts his solo....

Finally I had enough time to give "For Musicians Only" a spin. Have forgotten how good this record is. And indeed, I could hear John Lewis only in the background, he plays a few things on Side B, on "Dark Eyes" and "Lover Come Back to me", but isn´t audible on Bebop and Wee. With the exception of Herb Ellis, this is a vintage bop group (Getz wouldn´t be considered as a bop musician, but his first recordings from the late 40´s and 1950 are very boppish so he knew his stuff). Stan Levey is great on drums, the strangest thing is Herb Ellis´ more old fashioned comping on fast tunes like Bebop. Lewis indeed is really subdued and off the mike like on "Bird and Diz at Carnegie Hall", after "Musicians Only" I spinned "Diz and Bird", and after that, also for the "subdued" Lewis the maybe last Bird Live from september 1954 at (?) Carnegie Hall with Lewis, Heath and Clarke (The Song is You, My Funny Valentine, Cool Blues)......