Gheorghe

Interesting story ! I remember Jaws very well, he was almost a regular in my hometown Viena, every year he played a few days at a well known jazz club. Even if he never changed his style, he got his own, you must love his swing, his sometimes rough, sometimes softer sound, he odd way of phrasing, he´s one you can recognize imediatly . The highlite was in 1978 when he brought Harry Sweets Edison with him. One thing about him: Like Brew Moore, he always remained the same, and never had to change his style. Both played with Miles in the early 50´s and each of them stood his own. Jaws on that 1951 live session with Miles is just great. And how he manages to play the bop tune "Move" in his swing style with those shorter phrases, that sly humour......

Now that you say it, I agree to you. That´s it. I can play easily in d-minor but got headaches if I´d try in D major. Never new why, but now I can understand it. But I hate keys like B natural major. One time I h a d to play it, cause the guest artist a saxophonist told us "I´m tired playin the usual keys, let´s start with "Moose the Mooche" in B major. My luck was I heard so many Bird records where the speed is up so some tunes in B-flat sound like B, that´s how I managed to get thru, just having in my mind those that are too sharp because of incorrect speed. Miles´ Nature-Boy in G yeah I think that was the first version I ever heard, when I was a kid. Then I couldn´t do much with that tune, it was the abstract arrangement. Strange record anyway, that´s Mingus who somehow sounded more "western abstract/cool" in 1954/55. Complete different to the "angry Mingus" that we love so much, the Mingus with Dolphy/Byard or later with George Adams/Don Pullen. Got another version of Nature Boy by Jackie Mc Lean which I got from my wife , got to listen to it again, if I remember right, that was in f-minor, strange I don´t remember.

In my head I hear it in E minor. But I think I might play it in Eb-minor even easier. It´s strange. I´m a piano player and should not have too much problems with keys like E natural, D natural, A natural and so on, but I think since I don´t play anything else but jazz, those keys are quite strange to me, since they are unusual keys for horn players and I think much more like a horn player. It´s only if I feel that a certain tune is supposed to be heard in a certain key. Maybe if I hadn´t perfect pitch I might be more flexible. But that way, the way how I hear it, I got it in my head and it sticks.

Thats sad news. I´ll always remember him, since I was very impressed by his playing when I saw and heard him with Archie Shepp in about 1979 (78 or 79). That was a helluva band, Shepp, Kessler, Cunningham and Clifford Jarvis......, the best he ever had. I too wondered why I didn´t see him more, just that one gig with Shepp, but never forgot it. Really solid bass work.

Great musician and a key figure of the music of the ´70s, period. I don´t have too many records cause I don´t know whether the royalities go to him or to that............ One thing I always would have liked to state, maybe I´m wrong, if so, I just apologize, but...... , I always had the impression that on the live dates with Miles from 1969 he just goes too far out. I don´t have nothing against new thing and free music, but he just tries to "outfreak" the whole proceedings on that electric piano, and at some point it leaves me exhausted. Those Bitches Brew/Kilimanjaro/Miles in the Sky tunes were pretty tunes as Miles and Wayne do them, and what Chick does on the records is really okay, but the live stuff just get´s to a point where I loose it after some minutes of FenderRhodes solo from Chick. And, on video material, Miles is one thing, he don´t pay no attention to the audience, but it´s part of his game, you can "buy" that from him and say he´s into the music and that´s work, and no entertainment,...... but if you look at Chick (and Dave Holland) on those videos, it seems they try to "out-miles" Miles concerning their stage manners.....

medjuck: I have it on the Spotlite LP "Yardbird in Lotusland" It has some tracks Bird´n Diz from their LA trip late 45/46, then those AFRS with Ernie Bubbles Whitman als MC, with Bird, Willie Smith, Benny Carter, and the Nat King Cole Trio, and one number I think Cherokee just Bird with the NatKing Cole Trio, but I think it´s cut off before the piano solo starts. Then there´s some from spring 46 at the Finale Club with Miles (sounding verly much like Diz), and Joe Albany. Try to find "Yardbird in Lotusland", I think it was also on CD, but maybe this was not quite a legit, anyway the Spotlite was the best source for rare ´40´s stuff when I was young.

oh I love those Steeplechase classics. They was the music we heard in our youth, Dex, Jackie Mc Lean, Griff, Bud, we were on vacation and had rented a small house near some Mountainlakes and rivers and during the day we might go troutfishing, and the nights was with some beer some booze, and "live jazz" from the Montmatre, the Golden Circle. Man, we brought those giants in our living room.

Always loved him, especially when he set in with Bird an Bud, mostly in 1953 at Birdland. What he does on the tune " Broadway" is just fantastic, like on that date of Bud with Bird and Candido. The 4´s between Art Taylor and Candido is really something...... Saw him on a video of Dizzy´s Dreamband around the early 80´s, it seems he never aged, he looked just the same and did fantastic things on Manteca

I always wondered how Bird and Art Tatum might have sounded together, since I had read "Beneath the Underdog" when I was a boy. Mingus describes a session where Bird plays with Tatum, and I want to belive, that at least the musical parts of that bio was not fiction. I remember I heard one date Bird with NatKingCole and it was supposed to be nearer to what might have sounded a Bird/Tatum collaboration. About the "Bird" from that Verve Recording (together with Repetition) . I think I have it on that album called "Jazz Perennial". As much as I love Bird, this is one of the more forgetable albums, "The Bird" and "Celebrity", and the unhappy stuff where they added this Tommy Turk to the classical quintet, terrible. The only things I like on that album is "Repetition" and the stuff with that vocal group "In the Still of the Night" etc......

Same here. And yes I remember the liner notes on homecoming. Dexter had that thing, the way he announced to tunes, the musicians, and I think a part of it was a mild manner of puttin on the audience, just in that nice and funny way. Like when he announced Benny Green´s simple blowing vehicle "I want to blow now". Now we all know that this is nothin more than a blues riff....., but Dexter announced it as "the very very IMPORTANT COMPOSITON, written by the very very .........slippery...... trombonist.....Benny Green, and this one is called " I ..... want...... To BLOW........ NOW"- When we were kids we used to try to imitate the way he talks considering it "super cool".....

Thanks mikeweil, that really answers my question. That´it. Blakey would have talked Alfred Lion into giving Sabu a record date of his own. Many BN records happened that way. And thank you for reminding me of the Blakey-Sabu Duo from 1953. Should listen to that again. I think I have it with the original cover titled "Horace Silver Trio + Spotlite on the Drums". That always amused me, as the using of the same cover foto on that album and on the album "H.S. and the Jazz Messengers". One is red, one is blue I think....

Anyway a good choice, especially if someone is not a collector and doesn´t feel the need to have all his BN recordings. They are all fine albums . About the Prestige albums: I really like "Tangerine" and "Ca Purange" with the very young Stanley Clark, its a nice idea to add a new face to the older stuff.

I also wondered about how "Palo Congo" came out, since it´s not a typical BN album, it´s more strictly latin roots without jazz connection, so it´s different even to the Blakey "Orgy in Rhythm" or "Holidays on Skin"

R.I.P. He was really a great stylist on the piano. Was really aware of how he sounds even before I knew he had a semi paralised right hand. Always wondered how he got that sound and bluesy touch. I think he was the natural pianist for Mingus. Even after he had left the states, he would play some Mingus. Like "Duke Ellington´s Sound of Love". This was written in 1974, right ? And Parlan played it in Europe on several occasions. And his version is the deepest, the best. If I listen to "Duke Ellington´s Sound of Love", I have Horace Parlan in my mind. And he was such a nice person. One of the albums I like most is one little thing he did for Steeplechase around the time I saw him live, with the really really great Jesper Lundgaard on bass and my favourite Dannie Richmond on drums. Oh, I love that album. Strange, though I´m really a BN-man, I can´t find the same inspiration in his BN stuff, that I find in the earlier Mingus stuff and the later work. I think it´s cause Harewood might not be my very first choice as a drummer......

Same here ! Herbie, Chick, Gary, Tony Williams was youngsters, Sonny Rollins was in his late forties, so really in his prime, McCoy was just 40, Tony Williams in his early 30´s was a baby, that´s how I felt it even if I was a teenager. I must admit I wasn´t so much aware of Gary Burton, thought that´s more kinda ECM music, maybe that´s how I didn´t get so much involved with it as I would have with Sonny Rollins, McCoy, Dex, Diz, Freddie Hubbard etc etc etc.......

Great story ! I think, the group with Cecil Bridgewater, Billy Harper and Reggie Workman was really a steady unit for a long time. I also saw them in the late 70´s maybe 1978. Fantastic and IMHO the best band he had. It was at a concert hall, but the day before the concert Art Farmer played in a small club and in walked Max ! We coudn´t believe it. Too bad I was to shy than (18 years old), see those people were living legends, my heroes and I would have been scared to death to try to greet them. Heard the next edition with Bridgewater still on trumpet, and Odean Pope and Calvin Hill replacing Harper and Workman. Also a great group, but I didn´t like Pope´s sound so much, he sometimes sounded more like a bassoon than a tenor, at least that´s how I felt it. And Calvin Hill though he played an acoustic bass, it was maybe the way how it was amplified, the acoustic bass and a more ugly plastic sound than the warm sound Reggie Workman had......

Time flies. Dexter was some kind of hero of our youth, me and a fried of me we would make long trips just to catch him live, and played his records and even tried to imitate his stage annoncements, which we considered super cool. The last time I saw him on stage was round about his 60th birthday, that was in february 83......

The funny thing is, Oscar was one of the first jazz musicians I heard, cause it seems a lot of people who usually didn´t listen to jazz, would eventually buy the one or the other OP album. OP or Garner, so maybe that´s how I got to know him, when I was a kid. I think the two albums I heard then was the above mentioned "Night Train" and "We Get Requests". Those albums are not so "overplayed" like later stuff would be. I like some OP if he doesn´t exagerate the pianistic thing. I like the more subdued stuff, a nice thing if the often critized "In Tune" with the Singers Unlimited, that was in fashion then , and I recently got the CD as a Chrismas present from my wife. That´s nice stuff, not so overplayed. And lesser known, there´s a nice Pablo album Eddy Lockjaw Davis with the Oscar Peterson Trio at Montreux......

I remember I heard both Sonny and Larry in the summer of 1979, just 2 months after they had recorded together. The Album wasn´t out yet, so I was not aware of it, but thought much about it afterwards. On that festival they didn´t perform together, maybe they were not scheduled on the same day or it was for contractual reasons, but it was a beautiful period, when all those masters were in action and you were eager awaiting the next time they´d record.....

Really depressing, and as Hardbopjazz said, all these musicians who died in the last 10 years are the musicians of our youth. We had all those greats still alive and active on scene, the established masters , and people like Larry Coryell were the "young lions", the musicians who were in their early 30´s and played more "wild". Like Larry Corryell , Alphonse Mouzon. And I think besides their fans they got a lot of young people to listen to the older masters, like the big selling Mingus had when he decided to get Larry Corryell involved. And I loved it, the way he does it on "Three or Four Shades of the Blues". Because Larry didn´t have to make commitments to adapt his style to the older master. He really could play the way he felt and what he was famous for. I liked his solos much more than the somehow half hearted efforts of Phillipe Caterine or John Scofield on that record. Anyway it seemed that Corryell was the man who would have stayed of Mingus had lived more. A tour with him was allready announced in Europe in late 77, and he was on the last sessions in 1978 (Me myself an Eye etc.).

yeah I have this book but I was a bit disappointed. Same about the book about Jackie McLean. Somehow I think another author would have gathered much more informations about the artists and their music.....

well it´s the music that counts, but IMHO it´s strange to see classic BN recordings, Hank and Dex with Bud with non BN album covers. Though I´m first interested in the music, listening to BN-records in my case is a philosophy of it´s own, it´s the whole thing, the original liner notes, the Frank Wolff fotografies , the cover art......, I listen to BN record when I´m in that special mood to sit down, have time and "study" the whole thing, each record an artistic workout....

RIP. Imagine my first listening experience, to hear her playin piano was a track on that late 1948 all star session (Benny Harris, J.J Johnson, Budd Johnson, Lee Konitz, Chuck Wayne, Bud, Max. And I think Barbara did some All the Things You are with the rhythm section, really nice. And if I remember right, it was some session organized by Leonard Feather...... I´d would have liked to hear that 1977 stuff she did with Ron Carter and Steve Gadd I think, must be something worth listening to.

It´s okay Dan. The problem is, I think it´s not well received if somebody starts a new thread while there exists an old thread about the same topic. So it happens that you don´t notice it was just updated, as in may case cause it came to my mind that to book still hasn´t been published. I´d also prefer new threads so the answers might be "fresh" , but that´s it, you got to check out wether there´s some old stuff about it..... Okay, from the point of view of a musician it´s a natural thing. When you tell your fellow guys on stage "let´s play some "All the Things You Are", you don´t have to compose it again, it´s old stuff and you just jam on it......

Thank you Niko, really very interesting to read. Seems to be much more than just a bio. I´ve seen Dexter live on many occasions, once I had to make a long trip with a really shabby old car and was glad I could catch the last 2 tunes of his set, just to have to drive back home all night long.....oh boy what memories....