Gheorghe

Great, I must get that. Didn´t know about "Wounded Bird" until I purchased Dexter´s Great Encounters as CD re-issue. The lable was Wounded Bird.

about playing Mingus´compositions: When I was young and a part time musician, we did "Cumbia & Jazz Fusion" for a while. Was quite an interesting experience with all those different mood´s in it, the first part with that call and response figure and the ostinato bass, the straight ahead part, the earthy two beat section in D flat with the vocals "who says Mama´s lil Baby likes Shortnin´Bread ? " and the fade out. Still remember it very well, even if this was a long time ago. We did it at clubs and people liked it.

Finally some answers that refer more to the music. I got the Spotlite LP as well as a CD that´s more a sampler and got some of the stuff with Maggie and Brew. I really like all of the stuff. And Bird on those 3 tracks on side 2. The arrangement of How High the Moon is also very interesting, very boppish. Well, about the European part of our education......, I heard about people downplaying the importance of rhythm, but I suppose that´s not a jazz audience. I don´t listen to anything else than jazz or afro-american music, so I don´t know how a non-jazz listener feels about it.

I don´t know what you call "vulgar latin" or " f....great". In my answer 2 days ago I tried to describe the music I heard on it. In my opion it´s a great album, like Kenny Dorhams Afro Cuban on BlueNote some years later.

Pharoah Sanders: "Life at the East"

I also love that Afro Cuban recordings of Maggie. My first encounter with it was the Spotlite LP "Afro Cubop". Those are really groovy live recordings with the Machito Band starring Howard McGhee and Brew Moore. "Maggies Blues" is great, dig all the high notes Maggie plays, and how he quotes "Move". The longest track is about 8 minutes and has some exchanges of ideas between Maggie and Machito´s trumpet player Mario Bauza. And dig Brew Moore: He was a guy who was deeply influenced by Lester Young, but could play anything, that afro cuban stuff and all that ultra fast bop stuff with the fastest company (Bird, Miles, Fats), without loosing his Lestorian sound and phrasing. On the second side of that album I mentioned, there´s some rare Bird with afro cuban surroundings. The sound quality is not so great, but it´s really a fun listenig to it. Much better than the better known "South of the Border" things Bird did for Verve......

Can no one recommend an album? I also like the album "Miles Davis at Stadthalle 1973", recorded in my hometown Vienna. Even if the sound quality is not the best , it´s very good music from a very interesting period. It got live versions of the tunes he had recorded recently (Calypso Frelimo and Ife). I was only a kid then, but I loved the music, so I got that album just as a memory of the "good days" when we could see all those living legends "live". I remember, that even my mother liked Liebman´s flute playing on "Ife". And, dont forget "Dark Magus" from 1974.

Too bad Joe Henderson died too early. He was one of my favourites. I saw him live on several occasions in the late 70´s. Mostly with Joanne Brackeen on piano, dont remember the bassist and the drummer, but he was fantastic. I still listen to his records almost every week. Didn´t know it would have been his 75th Birthday, but on the same evening I listened to his "Inner Urge". I´d say that´s telepathy

In my opinion, Dave Liebman was the best reed player that Miles had during his electric period from 1970-1975. I love what he did during those 1973/74 dates. And dig his flute on "Ife", which Miles played almost at every concert. Later I heard him in mainstream setting in the late seventies in my hometown Vienna at Jazzland. One of the greatest club experiences of my life. And I must say, his "Drum Ode" and "Lookout Farm" are the only ECM recordings that I like. I bought "Drum Ode" the next day after I saw Dave life. He signed it for me.

I must admit, that my first larger knowledge about Hampton Hawes also came from reading his autobio "Raise Up Above Me". I don´t have very much recordings from him. I like especially his playing on some Wardell Gray live stuff from about 1952. Really nice and long solos.

[quote name='MarkR' I remember Dave Holland talking about his time with Miles. He was getting over-elaborate and virtuosic with lots of high register playing one night, and in between sets Miles simply said: "Hey, Dave, you play the bass". Oh, that´s a really interesting aspect. I got a record of the Miles Band from 1969 at Blue Coronet and realized that Dave plays very much in the high register, about the whole set. Until now I had thought it was Miles´ idea to leave the bottom out of the whole stuff. That was Miles, telling his musicians things like "leave the chords out, don´t play so many notes, etc.". So I thought that was just Miles´ advice to try something new, to leave the low register out so it might be an open thing.... So, maybe I was wrong and it was Dave´s kind of aproach and Miles tried to talk him out of it...

I remember after it came out it was available as VHS video. Too bad I didn´t buy it then. Couldn´t find a DVD. The only Ornette Coleman "Movie" I have is a DVD with the Trio from 1966 (with David Izenzon and Charles Moffett) That would be great, but the film is quite silly, very few music, just hipsters dancing around and scenes of the musician carrying their instruments to the airport or so....I had hoped they taped a performance. But I remember well the recordings from Caravan of Dreams. The string thing "Time design Prime design" and "Opening at Caravan of Dreams". I love every aspect of Ornette´s music, from the beginning to the really exiting performances of "Prime Time". And I love the way he composes and writes for strings.

Well, a question of taste. I couldn´t imagine music without the bass. The bass is the bottom of the whole thing. I started listenig to jazz because I fell in love with that sound Paul Chambers had on the records I´d buy then (Davis etc.). No bass, no jazz....at least to me. About Jimmy Garrison: You will be astonished but I like most what he did on those two records he made with Ornette in 1968. About his solo work: I agree with some of you, that at a certain point there is not very much variation in it, but that´s what it was supposed to be, a more meditative kind of music. Anyway, some bassists they great as long as they walk on or stay at the bottom, but when they start soloing, they start to practice. Take as an example the last Mingus Date "Me Myself an Eye" and "Something like a Bird". Eddie Gomez and Jiri Mraz just get lost, only high notes, each of them sounding the same way, sounds like exercises. I heard Mingus was very unpleasant about it. But not only because he was not able to play any more, but because of the way it came out. You can tell a story on the bass, not just pickin only the high notes and faster and faster..... they both sound great in the ensemble, but forget them when they start soloing on that record.....

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.