Gheorghe

I heard the story, that Sue Mingus gave one of Mingus´ basses to the great Hungarian bassist Aladar Pege, who died a few years ago.

It could be a small book just with your memories. There´s not so many people who witnessed all that, got in touch with all those greats. Francis Paudras did a great job with his "Le danse des infidèles", wich I purchased in it´s first edition in french in 1986, even if my french is bad and I read it only because of my knowledge of the romanian language, which helped me to read in french. Anyway, that was a book only about Bud, which is great since I´m a Bud-addict, but there were so many great musicians living or at least working in Paris.....

Yes, I also noticed that. And, Brownie really should write a book. I´d be glad to buy it. It must have been a dream to live in Paris during the 50´s , 60´s. So many great musicians.....

Yeah, good for bios. Got three of them: 1) As Though I Had Wings-The Lost Memoir 2) The mentioned Jerome de Valk, really great. 3) Lothar Lewien "Chet Baker Blue Notes". That´s in german only, but I love it. That´s the story of a young sensible jazz enthusiast, who actually met Chet Baker a few times. Maybe I should purchase that new bio too.

My first listening of Pharoah was the Impulse LP "Live at the East". I still love it. Well, I heard him before on Trane´s "At the Village Vanguard Again". Saw him on stage only one time, that was in 1985 with a great quartet. It was interesting, how he combined his stuff from the "New Thing" period with more traditional material like a very nice Parker influenced blues and some ballad. It was like Archie Shepp, who also during the end of the 70´s started to include some bop or pre bop material.

I like most the version from the Chrismas Concert 1949.

I also have that, great book. Well, I´ll buy that new book too, might be interesting. I really love everything Tadd Dameron composed, arranged and played. Yes, I dig the way he plays the piano. He was something else.

Well, though I´m more into bop, hardbop into new thing, I really like that album and there are times I go back to that mid seventies stuff, Herbie, and the electric Miles of course. It was just part of the time. Everybody listened to it, some people just got in touch with jazz from albums like that. It´s great music, great players, period. Even if my really love was Bird, Bud etc., I wanted to dig the 70s stuff also. It was just the style of that decade, like bop was in the 40´s and so on, and there were really great players.

I´m sure there are a lot of European musicians who got their own style and that´s great. But I must admit, that my personal tastes are quite limited to American jazz. Though I am European, it was the jazz played by Miles, Mingus, Trane, Rollins, Ornette that I dug. I was a kid when I heard Miles on radio and didn´t even know who he was, but I knew that´s "my music", the first time I really dug music, almost 24 hours a day. I can understand if Herbie said it that way, but maybe it should have been said else, but musicians are musicians and not lawyers or diplomates. When Mingus was asked what he thinks about British jazz, what do you think he said?

right now I´m "re-discovering" the stuff Miles did from 1963-1969. Though I might have listened to the several albums 1000 times in my life, it´s always a new experience to watch how that great quinted developed, how the explored the music, how they made the transition from still some elements of hardbop to other directions, especially in the late 60´s with the personnel change of Chick Corea and Dave Holland replacing Herbie and Ron. And maybe the musician I pay most attention to is Tony Williams. As older I get as much more I listen to the stuff the drummer does...

I´m a big fan of Dexter and saw him live quite often. But I must admit I´m not too familiar with youtube or something like that. I got my huge collection of LPs and CDs that I enjoy. I feel close to all who dig Dexter, but normally I reply to a thread only if it´s about written impressions about his music, some special albums etc., kind of reviews. Maybe I´m quite old fashioned.......

Well, to me it´s Paul Chamber´s date, may it be correct or no. It´s just how I grew up with that album. Certainly I had that BN 2-LP set "High Steps" when I was a teenager. But later it set me up that there is only a part of the whole "Whims of Chambers" session. So I got the CD "Whims of Chambers" and the CD "A Jazz Delegation from the East", to have the whole music. When I started to collect music, BN was in a rough state. Most part of the cataloge was OOP, that really set me up. The only way for a youngster like me to get into the word of BN was purchasing those not very attractive 2-LP samplers. They also had artists who never recorded for BN, like the 2-LP set of Wes Montgomery. Well, that´s how it was.

I saw him with Chet Baker in early spring 1980 in Vienna at "Wiener Jazzfrühling". That was a great 3 days festival with huge stars, besides Chet Baker we had Griffin, Dexter, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra and others. As much as I remember, Lackerschmied didn´t play the whole set. After a few numbers Chet introduced him on stage. Lackerschmied played some duos with Chet, and some stuff with the pianist and the bassist. Great music of course. On another occasion, there was a strange setting with Baker, Lackerschmied, Larry Coryell and Alphonse Mouzon. I heard Mouzon on other occasions with his electric band and wondered how he might fit together with Chet, who played almost all concerts, club dates without drums.

Well as much as I know it was Tony Williams who persuaded Miles to get Sam Rivers into the band. Tony was a big fan of Rivers and loved the more fare out players. I like the record. I think on the first tune there is a mike problem on the start, but nevertheless the band grooves and I enjoy Rivers´ playing very much. But it is possible, that Rivers wouldn´t have stayed longer in the band even if Miles would have asked him, since Rivers was more advanced, wanted to do his own music which he did so well. I admire Sam Rivers very much. I was lucky to hear him with his trio in 1980. Such a great musician !!!! Later in the 80´s he teamed up very often with Dizzy Gillespie. Well Rivers could play all styles, he was one of the most flexible musicians. But his main thing was his own stuff. I was quite astonished that he stayed so much with Dizzy.....

Yeah I remember that EGO LP, it´s with Isla Eckinger and Billy Hart, rite? Strange, just recently I listened to his album "Blues Inside Out" with the working trio with Jimmy Woode and Tony Inzalaco. As at the making of the tune "Spelunke", I somehow witnessed the "Blues Inside Out" also. Fritz played those tunes at "Jazz Freddy", later Johnny Griffin came in and jammed....wonderful times, never in live I´ll forget that.....

Yeah, I remember I was there, when he played "Spelunke" the first time, it was around 1980/81 I think. It´s very "monkish" and was dedicated to the nice little jazz club "Spelunke" in 1060 Viena, a club where he performed often. I remember the sheet music was there in a frame until the club had to close in 1993 I think. This was a small club, live music was only until 10 pm because of noise problems. Many great musicians played there: Eddie Harris, Pat Metheny and Chet Baker/Karl Ratzer. I miss those great days, we had so many clubs, especially in that small neighborhood. You just met musicians on every corner, to shake hands with them, talk to them, drink and jam with them.....

What a great loss. Such a great musician/composer/gentleman, Got the sad news yesterday from a friend, whose wife is Fritz Pauer´s niece. I knew Fritz Pauer quite well during the late 70´s early 80´s when I used to listen him playing many many nights. Just recently I heard some younger musicians perform his "Cherokee Sketches", a fast thing he also played very often with Art Farmer. Actually he was the first jazz pianost I heard life, it was his great trio with Jimmy Woode and Tony Inzalaco. Also in 1978 they performed with Johnny Griffin, great great memories. That trio was THE rhythm section then. Of course, he played very very much with Art Farmer, but I also heard him with giants like Dave Liebman (unforgettable evenings), with Eddie Lockjaw Davis/Harry Sweets Edison, with Kai Winding, Cecil Payne, and of course with hornplayers from Austria like Eric Kleinschuster and Carl Drewo. He had his own unique style, but he could play practically all styles from stride to avantgarde. Heard him play like Bud, like Monk if he felt like that. I´ll never forget him, and those wonderful nights.....

Chet Baker. I always thought that his recordings and live performances (if he did appear!) during the late 70´s and 80´s were much better than the stuff from 53 or 54 when he was so famous. Baker himself stated that he thought that his playing had become better during the later period, than during the early days when he was everybody´s favourite.....

I saw him live with the Ron Carter Quartet. My favourite solos of Kenny Barron I find on "Sphere" from 1982, the group with Charlie Rouse, Buster Williams and Ben Riley playing Monk´s tunes.

I also like the Xanadu live LP very much, the one with Art Farmer and Hampton Hawes. I also like his work as a sideman. Some really great solos of Wardell Gray are on the Charlie Parker album "The Happy Bird" with long and very good tenor solos on "Scrapple from the Apple" and "Lullaby in Rhythm", that´s some of the best Wardell Gray I think.

....... The drummer (Egil Johansen) on all of this is something of a liability - he just refuses to swing.

I´m aware that many people have been turned on to jazz by Dave Brubecks "Time Out". Well here´s my personal aproach to it: When I was a kid and just got a few names, I used to write them down and ask people what they think about those artists. Brubeck was on the list, though I didn´t even know what instrument he plays, just figured out it might be from the same generation like those I already admired: Miles, Mingus, Monk, Bird..... Someone saw my "list" and said "hey kid, get some Brubeck, he´s the greatest. Naive as I was I thought well if he´s the greatest, it might be hot stuff like Mingus, Miles, Bird all together, cookin´like mad. When I finally heard some of it, it didn´t work out for me. Pardon, I´m sure Brubeck was and still is an exceptional musician/composer and all you want, but somehow I couldn´t and still can´t connect...

When I was a kid, someone gave me a sampler "the story of jazz". Most of it was "oldtime" or "traditional" and I didn´t like it that much. Then it sounded to me like music from a comics strip. But the last two tracks on it where Miles Davis "Milestones" and a said "wow", the greatest music I ever heard. And some Mingus from 1959 from "Mingus Ah Um"....those two tracks changed my live forever. I spent my whole money to get as much Miles and Mingus as I could. From those two great musicians I was able to go back to bop and Bird etc. and to the New Thing Ornette etc. . But I´d say Miles and Mingus were the first musicians who made me think in a serious manner about jazz.....

Max Roach

A few days ago I purchased Dizzy "Showtime at Spotlite 1946" together with the Hank Mobley "Newark 1953". Needless to say it´s fantastic. On one track "Convulsions" there is another piano player (Monk is the pianist on all the other tracks). In the liner notes, the great Ira Gitler says he couldn´t identifie the piano player. It might be someone, who got recently into "bop" and plays heavily on the beat. Well I listened more closely to that piano player and think it could be Milt Jackson. He might have switched from the vibes to the piano. I remember Milt Jackson´s piano playing on that Fats Navarro-Howard McGhee album for BlueNote, where Milt plays both vibes and piano and takes a piano solo on "The Skunk". The piano on Dizzy´s "Convulsions" sounds exactly that way: He plays only single notes in a more "stiff" manner. It sounds like someone, who - though he knows exactly where the keys are - doesn´t have the aproach of a pianist. Even the lines he plays and the astute quote of "You´re a Sweetheart" sounds so much like Milt Jackson, that I´m quite sure it´s Milt who plays. Anybody shares my opion? Bop freaks?