Gheorghe

@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. ......

Needless to say I´m a big fan of Joe Henderson. From the first moment I fell in love with his playing. I think it was around summer 1978. I still didn´t know about all the musicians, and during summer ´78 there was a live concert on Austrian TV ORF 2, that´s when I started really to pay attention to him. IMHO he was a link between hard bop and post bop..... Now my question: I saw him "live" on several occasions during that time, but can´t remember the others involved. I´m not sure if he had a regular touring band, or if he picked up musicians for tours. I remember in late ´78 a concert and I´m sure the great Joanne Brackeen was on piano, but who could have been on bass and drums ???? On that concert on TV, it might have been also ´77, 78......, he had a longhaired bespectacled bass player who was a gas...... The, it might have been in the early 80´s once he had Tete Montoliu. On that Occasion I remember most people in the audience where disappointed with the Bassist and the Drummer. At one moment, Tete waved the bass player off and nailed things down playing the bass line himself with the left hand and everybody went nuts...... I tried to check out discographies but couldn´t find enough informations about the musicians he toured with during that time, late 70´s ...... If somebody here has better memories than me ?

all I can say I´m glad this Genius musician has given us so much. And almost from the first seconds when I got involved with jazz, he was and of course still is, one of my favourites. I still remember those golden years of the late 70´s - early 80´, when you could meet guys on the street, discussing recent or forthcoming Sonny Rollins Albums.......yeah.... that was the great times. Rollins with Genius Drummers like Tony Williams, Al Foster, the golden Era of the Milestone Jazzlabel, all those great albums, and I´ll never forget the first time I saw him live, I don´t remember the piano player, but the great Jerome Harris was on bass, and the Master of drums himself, Al Foster. And just a few weeks before, he had recorded that album featuring Larry Coryell...... "Don´t Ask", that´s the title of it........

I have the original 2-LP set and it´s enough for me. Let´s say I enjoy it and spin it from time to time, but in General it´s the Kind of Miles I woudln´t prefer to other periods. Those early 60s , you almost can feel that Miles got bored with the stuff and the surroundings. If I want to hear 50´s Miles I listen to the Prestige and earlier CBS stuff (from Round Midnite to Sketches), and if I want to hear 60´s Miles I start with 1963 with Tony, Ron, Herbie.

one of my favourites. I think the first time I heard him is on the Dexter Montmatre stuff. I love the way the drums are well recorded, you hear everything Tootie does I almost forget listening to the rest. Really, I love everything he does on drums.......

I wouldn´t put down Miles´performances from the 80´s but I got a critical point about it. Well, Miles went through differnt styles and surroundings, and when he stuck for a style for some years, his live shows had similar tunes, like "Walkin´" and "Autumn Leaves" during the 60´s , the Bitches Brew stuff from 1969 on, and the dense electric stuff from ´73 - 75. Even if the tunes are the same, you can improvise on that stuff and can change it a bit, but it´s hard to make musical surprises when you have to play "Human Nature" and "Time after Time" each night for several years. That´s when Miles´ concerts became "Shows", you knew what you might expect.

That´s great news !

I love his Music and I´m lucky I caught him live on several occasions.

Must get thet. Henry Grimes is one of my favourite bass players and one of the true giants. I love everything he did and does. He can play anything from straight ahead to free, and he´s so strong he could play unplugged with a big band and you would still hear him.

"Dont Ask" is from 1979 about the time I saw Rollins live at the Velden Jazzfestival (Austria). It´s a nice album, maybe the track "Disco Monk" is not just my kind of stuff, but generally a good album. Larry Corryell was also on schedule at that Festival and played solo and trio (with Art Farmer´s Cousin Julius Farmer). But they (Rollins and Corryell) didn´t perform together.

Yes, that's right. He toured with Art Blakey to Japan, in 1969. The next year followed a failed comeback in New York, because he was tired, very tired. After about 2 years Byas passed away..... Yeah I always wondered how it might have sounded. Anyway it seems to be quite untypical for Blakey to get old masters for his Messengers. He always got Young Players and it was even hard to book band alumnies for Special Events. Like on his 70th birthday in Leverkusen, when they wanted to surprise him with Jackie McLean, Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard etc., and he said he would Play only with his Young band. So Don Byas might have been an unusual, but interesting choice. Anyway, Byas was one of the greatest Tenor saxophonists ever, period. He could Play with anyone....

I remember that Statement of Stan Tracey too. I think it was in the Ronnie Scott book. If I remember well, Lucky Thompson was even worse. He said to Mr. Tracey "if you must play crap, play it slow !". Don Byas, well on that Black Lion LP with a danish rhythm section he seems comfortable with Bent Axen, NHOP and William Schiopffe. The Don Byas - Lucky Thompson stories remind me of the trumpet Player Joe Newman. He played sometimes in my hometown Vienna and nobody wanted to play with him. He couldn´d be pleased. It was strange. There are greater stars, who really had a very kind attitude towards the local musicians.

I remember Xanadu LPs best for reissue of Minton´s stuff, like the trumpet battles with Joe Guy, Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldrige etc...., with early Monk, Charlie Christian, Klook etc., and some "Bebop Revisited" with Diz from 45, some early Dexter, the sides that Fats Navarro made with Earl Coleman and so on...... During my Teenager years it was a quite good possibility to get in touch with the sounds of early bop......

Byas really looks healthy and happy on that. I love it to see him relaxin with a fishing-rod. I don´t know how many jazz musicians/jazz Lovers like to go fishing, but it seems to be a good combination, since I also have done it that way since I remember........, listening/playing jazz, and catchin the trout, pike etc. etc. ....., I even think that certain music brings luck for certain species of fish. If I listen to Dexter, I´ll catch trout or grayling. If I listen to Mingus, I´ll catch carp or bream......., Max Roach......and it will always be a pike, that´s it. (I don´t listen to the music WHILE fishing, but in the car on the way to the rivers, so it depends on the musician I listen to, which mood I´m in and how that vibrations will lead me to the fish). I love Don Byas ! . I think the first stuff I heard was that Black Lion LP "Anthropology". I was astonished that he played all the bop stuff, Anthropology, Night In Tunisia, Billies Bounce and all that, since he seemed to be at least 10 years older than most of the "Bop Fathers". I love his Savoy sides from the mid forties. It´s strange he didn´t record much from the mid fifties to the early sixties. The only mid fifties stuff I found was "Byas and the Girls". He seemed to get more publicity in the 60´s. He seemed to love to perform with Bud, because on at least 3 occasions he recorded with him (Paris 1961, Denmark 1962 also featuring Brew Moore, and Koblenz 1963 Americans in Europe............ I also remember I read, that his "homecoming" was a disappointment for him. Gigs where scarce, since he had been to Long away from the Scene, and 1970,71 was not the best times for acoustic jazz in Clubs. I´m not sure but I read he also did a short tour with Blakey even to Japan, is that right. And he died shortly after his US-sojurn, right ?

yeah I had forgotten the Name of the author, but the book is quite interesting. But I remember the Name of the Manager, Wim Wigt, Wim and Rita organized very much for Americans in Europe or Americans touring Europe. He remembers the difficulties with Chet to make sure he will get from one town Country to another just to make the gig. Those "friendships" (Connection) were quite usual. The most famous Connection Chet Baker had was Jaques Pelzer, who sometimes played flute. And though the chapter "A Queer Night in Bruxelles" from Ross Russel´s book "Bird" is just Invention and fiction, I´m sure things like that happened..... By the way: the last time I saw Chet on stage was late in 1987, just a few month before his death. He wasn´t late, he played wonderful , was very articulate. After the first set he announced "we´ll be back in 15 minutes", and that´s exactly what it was, short break and a wonderful second set. I still remember some of the musicians from that gig: , Nico LaStila played flute and even some guitar, and on bass was the great Austrian Bassist Hannes Strasser. Another thing: they also did "Stella By Starlight" and Chet announced that it´s usually done in B flat, but "we´ll do it in G...." . Sound´s great in G. Since I got perfect pitch I think I can compare quite well the different moods of a tune if you play it in a different key.........., wonderful memories.......

yeah, I remember a Book on Chet Baker, written by a Dutch jazz expert with lot of Infos about the later part of Chet´s live. Chet never had his own place and used to stay in small Hotels and at friends, or better said "Connections". One of them, if I remember right, was a "Dr. Bob" or "Dr. Rob", a supposed MD who hosted and maybe provided with Methadone some of the junkey (or former junkey) jazzmen like Chet, Frank Morgan and Woody Shaw......

Such a great musician. I think this might have been before he came to Europe. I remember he once showed that album someboy in the club, he had another album then with some young musicians from Germany, "Just Friends" I think was the title, more in the bop groove. I love his sound, the way he improvises , the creativity, all of it. And he's a great composer I used to play some gigs with him when I was still very young.

well about the mistery about how the Newport audience "discovered" Miles in 1955, that´s just how Business went. Those Prestige records maybe didn´t sell to a broader audience. I don´t think all the crowds that went to Newport where hip to insider´s Labels, not collectors like most of us here are. They just heard Miles´ trumpet, it appealed to them, they thought about it as something "new", and that´s when Miles became a big name . About Bitches Brew. It was recorded in August 1969 I think, and Miles "did" Europe in July , all those big spots, and that´s where he played some of the later recorded Bitches Brew Stuff. Bitches Brew and other "new" stuff , I mean "new" to the record buyer wasn´t necessarly "new" to the Musicians. I´ve often heard Musicians tell "we go record what we now do live".

hi, I dont exactly know about the lenght of the tunes. I remember, I bought them in the midseventies or something like that, and maybe later Editions even on LP had more space. One thing about Steeplechase is clear. A lot of those live recordings where broadcasts, and sometimes not only lack of space is the reason, it maybe also just the end of the Radio program. Sometimes, the last track just fades out. On one Occasion (Brew Moore) you hear a danish Radio Speaker announcing the end of the program while the piano solo fades out. I love all those Steeplechase classics, it was the best time for going to a jazz Club and hear some of the giants.

I don´t know exactly which Album it might be. I got the 1972 album with the Long Version of Parkers Mood, and there´s a Bonus track on the CD which is not on the LP, and same with the "Ghetto Lullaby" from 1973. Also the to CD´s (The Meeting and The Source, feat. Dex) got Bonus tracks on the CD. I think it was the lack of space during the LP era. Many Steeplechase CDs from the "Classic Series" live have Bonus tracks. Same with Bud at the Golden Circle,