Gheorghe

Yeah it´s really a moving story that Jackie McLean tells in his liner notes about how he met Tony and brought him to N.Y. Tony really had a great start in early 1963 there with the legendary McLean-Graham Moncur III -Bobby Hutcherson - line up, besides recording they performed at the Living Theatre I think. And the "Una Mas" with K.D......, until he got the call from Miles..... Tony Williams is one of my all time favourites.

That´s really some fantastic musicians, Peter Friedman !

Thank you very much. The music I heard on my birthday was the stuff "Clifford Jordan and the Magic Triangle" live, got the albums from my wife. Great music, brings memories back....

yes, Barry got a lighter touch, your are right !

I remember it was many years ago I took my youngest son , a teenager at that time to hear Don Menza. Especially I remember how he run through the chords of a Rhythm Changes tune exactly the way Monk did sometimes: G flat - B natural - E – A – D – G – C – F – B flat..... if you know what I´m talkin´ about. Really strong. During intermission we met him at the bar. My boy looking deadly serious, maybe he was kind of awed by the meeting, and Don Menza „hey you lookin so serious ! Smile a bit, can´t you smile ?“ I told him my boy is a bit timid at the moment but likes very much what you play, and I told him how I liked the way he treated the rhythm tune and Mr. Menza seemed to like what I told him. Later he talked to a swiss couple and I was astonished to hear that he spoke fluently german...., I knew he had lived in Germany for some time, but I didn´t know he speaks so fluently german...

Very interesting article, and it confirms some of my impressions about Harris´ style. He admits that if he plays a Monk composition it sounds more like the way Bud would interprete Monk. I always had the impression, that Harris sounds very very much like latterday Powell, the Powell from the 60´s after he lived in Paris for some years. I don´t know if the two men were close, but at least they met on several occasions and exchanged musical ideas. One of those occasions is recorded, where Harris plays some of Bud´s compositions and Bud seems to enjoy it very much. It must have been at the Baroness´ place..... Then, years later I heard a little record Dexter made in N.Y. in late 1976 "Bitin´ the Apple". I was astonished to hear Harris ´solo on the title tune. It really sounds like Bud in his very last years. The more Monkish touch, the more laidback manner, it sounds so close to 1963, 1964 Bud you might think it´s him if you didn´t know that Bud at that time was dead for 12 years.....

anybody who knows more about the forthcoming release "Roadshows Vol. 4" ?

does somebody remember the late Siegfried Kesser, born in Germany, but he lived and worked in Paris. Some might know about him, since he worked frequently with Archie Shepp (and recorded with him ! ) . He could play everything from bop to avantgarde, could play the blues really strong , I heard him live not only with Archie Shepp, also with Jimmy Witherspoon and Dee Dee Bridgewater......, great pianist.

It seems it wasn´t recorded that much. A really good performance of a set of the acoustic sextet from the mentioned period was done in 1976 on the first VSOP album. It´s the first set the classic VSOP quintet representing the mid 60´s period, than the set from the "middle period" and the last set the electric group.

interesting point ! thank you !

with Azar Lawrence, that might be a kind of Alumni from Davis´ ´74, ´75 bands Dark Magus , Aghartha, Pangeea....

should I start to write reviews about albums I didn´t know about *lol*

Really ? Wait a minute, I just checked it out. Really ! Thank you, you made my day. I didn´t know that album (my fault), but I´m glad I could imagine something, that really exists, not only in my dreams. Must purchase that.

Well those are leaders themself, like if you take Ray Brown, Ron Carter etc. on acoustic bass. But I doubt a leader-musician on tour, even if it´s a big name like Sonny Rollins or Diz would have used Jaco, Stanley Clarke for a touring group. They might use "musician´s musicians", who maybe are recommended by fellow bandmembers. Only if it´s a special event or maybe a promoting tour, like the legendary "Milestone All-Stars" (Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, - three "leaders" , plus Al Foster). As the topic is "Rollins and electric bass", how about an electric dream-band if it ever happened " as opposite to the mentioned "Milestone Allstars": Rollins, George Duke electric piano, Stanley Clarke electric bass, and you can keep Al on drums, or take Billy Cobham or Alphonse Mouzon.......

thanks for your replies ! I can imagine that George Duvivier wasn´t happy with an electric bass, IMHO he is one of the acoustic players who was kind of a musician´s musician, very much in demand, like Bob Cranshaw too. If artists decided to change the more traditional settings in favour of electric basses, I think the best is to use guys who really are associated more with electric bass than with acoustic. When I saw Sonny Rollins for the first time, he had Jerome Harris on Bass. Diz had Benjamin Franklin Brown, later Mike Howell I think. I must say when I was very young I was more an acoustic purist and wanted to hear boppish stuff in boppish surroundings, and always was a little disappointed when one of my "heros" didn´t have a bass fiddle on stage, but a fender bass. I think, after so many many years, I got another attitude to it and even if I still believe, that the best music can be made with a sax, a trumpet, a piano, a bassfiddle and a set of drums, I see the electric bass as something more historical , something that reminds me of the time when I was young, even if this sounds strange to you. "Jazz" didn´t have so much historical meaning then, ´73, ´74, ´75, ´76...... If an album was OOP, it was OOP ! Using too many acoustic instruments was considered something "oldfashioned" .... I remember one of the few contemporanous labels based on straight ahead jazz was "Pablo" , and usually the Pablo artists played acoustic, but I think I remember, that the guys I knew and the scene I was involved with, didn´t regard it very highly.

well my remark about the older masters like Buddy Rich and Woody Herman, who used electric in the 70´s was more or less an afterthought and I didn´t expect it would lead to so much focus on Hamp. I´d love to get back to Rollins: I also think, the reasons must have been in the first place musical ones, like "gettin a stronger bounce from the rhythm section". Expenses or traveling stress? Well I don´t now how much they paid, but Rollins sure was one of the better paid artists. And others kept travelling with acoustic bass. I don´t mention the bassists-bandleaders during that time - late 70´s , Mingus (it was his last tour), and Ron Carter, but Griffin always traveled with a strictly acoustic group, and since I saw his bass player Ray Drummond on several ocasions using the same bass-violin), I´m sure he traveled with it. Maybe Rollins and Diz just had gotten tired of hearing a bass sound they had heard all their live, from childhood on until the late sixties ?

After reading the thread about the great Bob Cranshaw, some memories came back to me, great moments with Sonny Rollins „live“ in the late 70´s early 80´ , when he usually used the electric bass. I remember an interview with Mr. Rollins, I think it was a Down-Beat interview, where he was asked „if he would ever use an acoustic bass-player again“ ? Mr. Rollins kind of „fluffed the question off“ with a strange answer: „Yeah, but it is much easier to carry an electric-bass around“. He further mentioned a Japan-Tour where he used Stanley Clarke playing up-right. I always wondered about Mr. Rollins concerning about if it is „more easy“ to carry an electric bass around.“ It´s hard to imagine that this was the point, or could you imagine somebody telling him „Hey there, hustle that bass-fiddle up on the stage, and after that, give the drummer a hand with them tubs......“ (smile)... I´m sure, Mr. Rollins had first class treatment and if he would have wanted it, they would have managed to carry five bass-fiddles for him if he would have liked to play with a „contrabass-choir“ behind him (smile). Maybe he just didn´t want that somebody questioned his musical ideas about instrumental settings, or he was getting tired telling non-musicians, why the electric sound fits better to his recent music ? Anyway, it seems that quite a lot of the great masters from the so called „acoustic“ era, like Dizzy Gillespie stopped to use acoustic bass. Even the older masters like Woody Herman and Buddy Rich used a fender-bass during that time, at least when I saw them „live“.

wow, Bob Cranshaw really hasn´t changed much during the years. Great bassist. I also heard him live only with Sonny Rollins, but I never saw Rollins with an uprite bass. It seems to me he had been through with that from the 70´s on. Like Dizzy, who seldom used an uprite bass from the 70´s on. With post-modernism the double bass was seen more often, but during my youth it seems it had become out of fashion. Also sorry bout Louis Hayes. I love his drumming and saw him life on several occasions, even with Diz and Harold Land one time. But Al Foster is one of my favourite drummers too ! Maybe one the 3 or 4 drummers I like most......

Got the book last week, right now I´m reading it. Great book !

@Mark Stryker: Thank you so much ! That´s it ! That´s the concert I saw on Austrian TV in 1978. Great memories come back. That´s when I became a fan of Joe Henderson. That was the beginning. Wonderful. Thank you so much musically : Gheorghe

Yeah, I´m sure it was Mark Soskin, he was the piano player who usually would tour with Sonny during that time.

Thank you very much, Niko. Thats really a lot of Infos. Now I´m sure that was the personnel from the late 78 gig. About 1979, the strange Thing is that I might have noticed if it would have been Mal Waldron. The only Thing I remember is that I was late. Festival started Friday afternoon, and I had to drive a very old Citroen with 3 other freaks , hundreds of km down south to Velden, and in 79 there was no Highway, and most part of the streets was "Baustelle", and it was friday when everybody drives to Weekend....., so , I was late and caught only the last 2 or 3 tunes of Henderson, and couldnt concentrate so much since I was exhausted, especially when you consider that I was just 19 years old, had my car license only since 78 and had three drunken guys with me, the trip was Long, they had their bottles, that´s how things went if you didn´t have to drive yourself...... thank you too, fasstrack. Since I don´t know if it was actually Mal Waldron in 79, it is not impossible it could have been also Fred Hersch. I remember only to piano Players: JoAnne, and Tete Montoliu, and nothing about 79, tough I remember every Detail of the other Groups, too bad I was to exhausted to really dig into the Henderson Group.......

Thanks, Soulpope ! Anyway, I´m glad for any Kind of Infos about musicians that toured with Joe Henderson. The most representative Album he recorded during that time, could be "Relaxin at Camerillo" with Chick Corea and Tony Dumas/Eddie Gomez on bass and "Tony Williams/Peter Erskine on drums, but that´s an All Star Thing, a touring band of that caliber would have costed a fortune........

oh yes, thats quite possible. I remember the group was a gas. And years later I saw JoBrackeen again and on that occasion I´m sure Clint Houston was on bass, I even remember it was scheduled as "Chet Baker-Joe Farrell" with the Rhythm-Section JoAnne Brackeen, Clint Houston and ........ah.......a Drummer.... Chet missed the gig, and so it was the Joe Farrell Quartet. Back to Joe Henderson: Is it possible, that it was at the at the Audimax WU, in the 18th district ? I was there, and few weeks later was George Coleman with Hilton Ruiz, Ray Drummond and Billy Higgins. I remember that, because being some Kind of Ornette Coleman Freak I was eager to see Billy Higgins . The next time I saw Henderson, it was in summer 1979 at Velden, but I don´t have any memories who was on p., b. and dm........, sure it was not JoAnne on piano

well I agree with you: Someday My Prince Will Come is great, the Carnegie Hall stuff is great, but I´m not so fond about most of the live stuff from the early 60s. IMHO, of course besides really important stuff like the example you gave, it was more a period of transition, when Miles maybe became bored with what he was doing and trying to find something new, which finally happened when he got Tony Williams etc. ......