Gheorghe

Few weeks ago I purchased the new Fats Navarro bio written by Leif Bo Petersen & Theo Rehak. I´d say this is a dream that came true. I always have admired Fats and never thought there would be a comprehensive book about his live, his times and above all his music. This book has great reviews of about everything Fats recorded, rare fotos, solo transcriptions and everything.

I was lucky I saw "Lock the Fox" quite often when he was alive. Always liked his phrasings, he had a special kind of humour in his playing. One of the most unusual encounters from Lockjaws discography is his set with Miles Davis from Birdland 1951

I know that photo from Francis Paudras´book about Bud. Well, Bud did at least two recordings with Paul Chambers. Not with Getz, but at least he recorded with two "Lestorian" tenorists: With Zoot Sims, and witz Brew Moore. The encounter with Zoot is better known. It´s from the BlueNote Café in Paris.

hi Valerie: Thanks for your answer. Well...off topic....sure Zawinul was an exceptional musician and did fantastic things, period. But to say that I´m a f a n of him would be to much. I´m a f a n of Bird, Diz, Fats, Bud, Monk, Mingus, Miles, Trane, Ornette, that´s it. Concerning Bud, I´d like to think of myself as being one of his most loyal fans. From the first note on, his approach to music, to the piano and everything......it was just that I fell in love with his music.

hi ValerieB! Bud died in the summer of 1966 /July 31th I think. So this might have been his very last 2 years when he was alive. Though this has nothing to do with "early Bud", I always said I really found all his work at any period of his short live really astonishing. It is true Bud lived in Brooklyn right after his return to Birdland in september/october 1964. He worked only sporadically (a Carnegie Hall performance in march 1965 at a Charlie Parker Memorial Concert, and on May 1th at Town Hall on bill with some Avant Garde musicians like Albert Ayler and Milford Graves). Maybe a few club performances. The only recorded document of that period is the strange album "Ups´N Downs" with some studio solo and trio work and one track "Round Midnight" from the Carnegie Hall performance. It´s too bad the tape of the Town Hall Concert was distroyed, since it is reported Bud had performed a new composition "Caket in the Sea". We´ll never know how it sounded. Anyway, the "Ups ´N Downs" album has a strange, moving quality. Some say it is better than his last official studio recording from october 1964 (The Return of Bud Powell). Can you remember how Bud sounded when he practiced? I always said Bud, during his very last year of playing music seemed to have discovered some other means to express his genius: Gone are the flashy runs and long improvised lines, and something else came into his music, especially on ballads he used darker voicings and a more ad lib tempo. I have many many hours of privatly recorded material from Birdland, september and october 1964 (2 of them from the Francis Paudras Mythic Sound records: "Return to Birdland" and "Award at Birdland", where he received the "Schaeffer Award", and 17 more CDs of unissued material). This together with "Ups ´N Downs" led me to some inside knowledge of how Bud played during this very last and very unhappy period. Video tapes of later Bud show a strange picture of him. He seems to be really involved physically in what he does on the piano.

Of course I have all the Francis Paudras CDs (Mythic Sound). The tracks with Cootie Williams are very interesting because Bud already got his style while improvising, but still got other influences too. On Vol. II (Burnin´in USA) I really like the track "Tiny´s Blues" with Bud at his best. Maybe the most exiting Bud from the earlier period is on the mentioned 1950 gig with Bird and Fats. I think it is much superior to the Verve trio session from about the same time (July 1950) with Buddy Rich. Those two tunes are just a bit too much. At a slightly slower pace it would have been more boppish. Though "Little Willie Leaps" and "Dizzy Athmosphere" on "One Night At Birdland" are ultra rapid, it´s not so hurried like those two trio tracks and leaves enough space to develope out all the phrases in a manner that it "blows" and produces quick and hip stuff. I always have kind of difficulties if a pianist becomes too pianistic. Maybe that´s why I prefer later Bud, where speed slows down a little. P.S.: I also got that Allen Eager CD with the rare Bud Powell feature. It´s a nice private session. The only downer is the guy who tries to play the drums on the slow blues.

time flies.....remember when I saw Diz and he was about 60, still in his prime and with good chops and all. And now he would be 92. anyway, I often think with love about him, such a genius musician.....

Sure! I agree you 100 %! Charlie Rouse was the best musical partner for Monk as a saxophonist. With all due respect to Trane, Rollins, Griffin who did fantastic things with Monk, Charlie Rouse was the man. His sound and his phrasing would fit perfectly to Monk´s musical conception and style. Nobody knew Monk´s music better than Rouse, period. It went so far that Rouse sounded like Monk´s music even if he played with other people or let´s say on his only BN album "Bossa Nova Baccanal". That sound´s like if Monk went "latin". Griffin, who also loved Monk and had played a lot with him, once said it´s hard for most saxophone players to work with Monk, because of his way of comping. It´s apt to throw a horn player, so they were glad when at some point he laid out when they stretched out on their solos, which he would do anyway. But with Charlie Rouse, it was just "hands in gloves".

I didn´t have the occasion to see him life, but saw quite a lot of video-material with him. that kind of little dance was just part of his music. If you watch him rite, it´s like the way he plays. I love everything he did.

Count me in as one of Bud´s most loyal fans. I love everything he did. and, that´s why I chose one of Bud´s pictures as my avatar.

Well, Lou´s saying exactly what the critic, jazz author and a part of the audience want´s to hear. It seems to thrill them if musicians fight each other, Miles saying unkind words about fellow musicians, Mingus throwing a drum at some musician or hitting them in the mouth, Miles and Monk fighting at the studio (which never took place)....but see, it´s heaven for a lot of people, so it´s natural if Lou developed his own brand of puttin´on the audience. He sure can afford to do so. I remember well the way Lou announces the next tune ("....rite now we gonna play a tune, not recommended for fusion and con-fusion players, it´s called "Wee", pretty nice tune....here we go...."). I really enjoy everything he did, but I can enjoy a lot of so called "free jazz" and fusion, without being bothered by Lou´s statements. So it´s just part of the scene, I think.

I heard him live several times. Once, the famous quartet with Kenny Barron, Ben Riley and Buster Williams. I must admit I liked more, what Buster Williams did on his few solos, that the piccolo solos of the leader himself. But I like most of his work very much. One album as a leader I always liked much is "Parade" from about 1979.

I also like the way how Brew Moore managed to keep his own style when playing with some of the fastest players of the bop-movement, like he did with Miles Davis at Birdland 1950 (with J.J.Johnson, Fats Navarro, Tadd Dameron, Art Blakey), with Howard McGhee for BlueNote, and his partnership with Howard McGhee on some Machito recordings (also live dates). From his time in Denmark, I got a rare example of Brew Moore playing with Bud Powell. It reminds me of the Bud Powell/Zoot Sims collaboration, another example of a Lestorian tenorist doing a fine set with the Master of Bebop-Piano.

I especially like everything that Duke Jordan did from about 1960 on, the BlueNote recordings as a leader and as a sideman, the Steeplechase stuff etc etc, his fine compositions, his thoughtful pianowork. He may not be my first choice if listening to piano, but he really had much beauty in his work. Maybe, concerning his work with Parker, the piano lines don´t make me really happy. I can´t say exactly why, but somehow it sounds stiff, not the way Bud Powell would do it. Same about the comping, Tadd Dameron or John Lewis did better jobs on that. Well don´t misunderstand me, I´m referring only the the time of the 40´s . I was astonished when I heard some 60´s BlueNote Work and all the stuff that came later, since it seems Duke Jordan had improved very much. About Miles: Well of course I also read what he said, but Miles is Miles, and who would expect kind words from him? Anyway, even during the time when they worked as a unit (Bird, Miles, Duke Jordan, Max, Tommy Potter), if Miles was successful in telling Bird to use another piano player, they did replace Jordan with other piano players I mentioned.

Well, with Mingus of course, and shortly after Mingus´death I saw the quartet (with Cameron Brown) in Vienna. Great musicians, and I was glad to see how those young guys (with the exception of Richmond they all were in their 30s) are contributing to the music. Their music was a reason for me to believe jazz goes further, since it was quite a blue period in my life when I heard that Mingus had died.

Well, with Mingus of course, and shortly after Mingus´death I saw the quartet (with Cameron Brown) in Vienna. Great musicians, and I was glad to see how those young guys (with the exception of Richmond they all were in their 30s) are contributing to the music. Their music was a reason for me to believe jazz goes further, since it was quite a blue period in my life when I heard that Mingus had died.

Now that the UCLA stuff is availablie on CD, and the 1970 sessions from Paris also, wouldn´t it be a great idea to re-issue the LP from 1965 titled "My Favourite Quintet" also? Since I´m a great fan of Mingus (for almost 35 years), only this LP was already OOP and I read that it was never re-issued on CD. That particular album might be interesting with "So Long Eric" on side A and a ballad medley on side B. I mean, on the 1964 Monterey stuff we have that great Ellington-Medley, so the set recorded at Minneapolis one year later would be quite important. Why this never was re-issued, remains a secret....

Somewhere in my archives I have a video of Miles with Gil Evans, where Miles plays fluegel on "The Duke". That video was done around 1960, so it´s 3 years later than "Miles Ahead". But I don´t think Miles had appearances on fluegel after that. The only thing is, I think I remember during the end of his live, Miles was planning to pick up the fluegelhorn again. I heard it´s easier to play if a trumpet player starts to have problems with his chops. On "Musings", Miles doesn´t play fluegel, on most of the tunes (especially those from the Ahmad Jamal repertoire) he plays harmon mute, but sometimes seems to be a bit out of tune. I like the album, though it´s not perfect. Somehow it´s not very good recorded, the piano sounds somewhat tinny, and even the great Oscar Pettiford sounds somehow unsteady. It´s interesting that Miles on his autobiography says he likes that album. I mean that´s interesting for a man who never looked back and said about his work with Bird and Gil Evans "shit I´ve already forgotten".....

I must admit the most Lucky Thompson I know is from the 40´s until 1954 and it sure as that Don Byas Thing. But I heard and saw Lucky Thompson on a Paris Jam with the Bud Powell Trio doing "Anthropology" and was quite astonished he sounded much more like Prez than on earlier stuff, so maybe that´s how he started to change his style a bit.

I had purchased that Stuttgart-LP during the 70s. It was in the record store and seemed interesting to me. The personnel is the same like on the now available Paris CD (Sonny Rollins, Don Cherry, Henry Grimes and Billy Higgins). There are two long tunes (each more than 20 minutes): On Green Dolphin Street , and Sonny Moon For Two, and a very short 52´nd Street Theme. I don´t know the name of the lable, but it´s not important. Anyway it looked cheap and was cheap. The sound quality is quite the same like on the Paris CD, maybe a little worse, but if you are a freak of historic live recordings, purchasing all the stuff somebody recorded from Bird etc., bad sound quality don´t bother you. I must admit, during that time I was still a youngster, I didn´t even k n o w there´s something like bootleg recordings, I didn´t even know the word or the meaning of it. My opinion was - if something round with a hole in the middle and jazz on it is in the stores, it´s for sale and I´d better get it, if it´s some musician I admire. That strange label was concentrating on live recordings done in Europe during the 60s. I haven´t seen many of them: A "Mingus at Stuttgart" (I think it was a double album), and a very interesting LP with "Max Roach Quintet" on side A , and "Sonny Rollins Trio" on side B, recorded at Graz (Austria!) in "1963" (with must be a mistake, since Rollins and Roach were in Graz in 1966. I can´t play the mentions Stuttgart LP. Since I remembered that music and at my age you like to listen to stuff you did when you were young, I purchased the Paris LP with about the same kind of music, even the same tunes.

@AllenLowe! Gee, you knew Curley Russell. To me, he´s one of the unsung heroes of bop. I´ve always been so impressed with the list of greats he played with, all those geniuses, my heroes, Diz, Bird, Fats, Bud, Tadd Dameron oh boy.... It was really hard then to cut through a band with an unamplified bass, especially if someone like Blakey was on traps (I´m thinking about that incredible Birdland Allstars from June 1950, on the same evening the Miles-Tadd Dameron Band, and the Charlie Parker All Stars, both groups with Curley Russel and Blakey on b and dm. I´d like to see some of them youngsters trying to play the bass fiddle that way, they might get blisters big as a house. And Curley Russell had a strong sound that recorded well. So he made very very important contributions to the music. He was not so well known for his solo work, but his short soloes (a very nice solo on a BlueNote record "Blowin´in from Chicago") are beautiful. I always wondered what happened to him in later years. Not much has been written about his activities after the late fifties. I read somewhere he worked with bands at hotels in New York. I have the greatest respect for musicians like him. Too bad I didn´t have the occasion to tell him that personally.

Sorry, but I don´t agree to that. In my opinion, jazz lost audience because the true personalities left us. Look, when I used to go out and see all those great musicians play, we all knew something about their stage behaviour. Some of them, well they had a reputation of being arrogant, like Miles (who anyway didn´t have to smile to the audience) or Freddie Hubbard (I remember his remark to the audience during a concert in Austria, after bursting out some of his trade mark high notes: "jive assed muthaf....."), others maybe were just shy people like Monk or Bud (they were not supposed to make speeches to the audience, even if Bud ....during a rare mood of humour once ...after a stunning set imitated Pee Wee Marquet´s voice saying in that high pitched voice " Now ladies and gentleman, how about a great big hand for the Amazing Bud Powell" ), Or Mingus, oh boy......! Others had that entertainer-qualities like Diz, Blakey or Johnny Griffin. Look, those where people they used to write books about and still do. When going out and hearing somebody of that caliber for the first time, we had done our lessons, let´s say we knew something about the artist and his live, his attitudes and we loved them for the way they behaved, for being themselves, and they gave it all to the audience thru the music. Now could you imagine go out to a show and expect the same thing (living legends) if it´s about all them Diana Kralls, Jamie Cullums etc.? By the way: The Woody Shaw I used to see was a very kind and good educated person with a beautiful deep speaking voice, all I can say is that he was not so kind to himself......

Well, that was Jackie McLean´s trademark, playing somewhat "sharp" (not "under"! as you mentioned). It was his gimmick to get a sound that isn´t too mellow, so even ballads get another quality. Maybe, almost half a tone over is a bit exagerated, maybe in later years Jackie kind of "overdid" his trademark. But in general, he´s got the sound I want to hear, such as Monk or a "Monkish Bud" got the sound I want to hear from the piano. But talking about Ernie Henry: I like his earlier recordings better, when he was on top of the bebop-movement. What I really admire at him is the fact, that he managed to hold his own, while everybody was trying to play like Bird. His playing with Fats and Tadd , or with the Dizzy Gillespie Bigband is just wonderful, he´s also very good on scatting together with Diz, on stuff like Ool-Ya-Koo, stuff like that. He´s really got that kind of humour that was part of the business.

With all due respect, I wish one wouldn't cite that bullshit book. It was a disgrace and the 'facts' are, in fact, suspect. Gavin did the literary equivilent of that other bullshitter, Bruce Weber: since any knowledgeable discussion of music or musicians is way over their heads---beyond their respective ken, they 'image pimped'. These 'works' are an insult to the memory of Chet, the jazz lover, the serious music lover, and---while I'm at it---my intelligence . This jackass, James Gavin, went on NPR when his rag came out and proved himself a moron in his insightless discussions of Chet Baker, comparing him unfavorably to, for example, Miles Davis----by saying Miles had a greater technique. Totally missed the point of both players, and then he arrogantly declaimed he 'nailed' Chet's death. Unless you were in the room, screw you Gavin. You didn't 'nail' shit other than how to embarrass oneself with clueless 'journalism'. Go to the Dutch bio of Chet (I forget the author's name). It's long on musical insight and respect----without glossing over the unpleasant facts. The Weber movie was homoerotic horseshit and it was embarrassing to see Chet sell himself so cheap in his role in it. Pitiful to see a great artist in that shape, and succumbing to whatever he succumbed to by allowing himself to be used by an ass that was pimping an 'outlaw' image or some such bullshit. IMO, Chet had a worse end than Woody in a way. I implore the reader and my Web friends here, please pass on this claptrap. BTW, I have at least a little personal insight into Woody, b/c I met and played with him at the nexus right before his unfortunate fall from grace. (ca: 1985). I also knew one of the guys that put him up (perhaps put up with him would be more like it) in Holland. I remain a fan of his music. I believe he was one of the last trumpet innovators and a harmonically very advanced and original musician. But what a mess.* I had the misfortune of getting in his line of fire when he was evidently looking for someone to verbally abuse---and verbally abuse he did. A total asshole, to be frank---at least with me that night. But, sadly, there are other citations, like one Branford Marsalis recounted on his old website. I did later learn the kind of changes he was going through and felt bad for him. But, I'm sorry to say, I've met, played with, dealt with all kinds of musicians and no one ever acted like he did, using a young cat to wipe one's capacious ego on. It's really a drag Woody went out the way he did----a tragedy when a brilliant mind and talent is taken so soon, as we need people---rare people like that----more than ever now. But it's even more of a drag when they act in a lousy way to themselves and others. Let's not sugar-coat Woody or Chet. They were junkies and wasted much of their lives and talents---and were not very nice to others, like most selfish and childish dope fiends. Romanticize them and others at your own peril..... I learned from my encounter with Woody---the hard way---a young musician trying to 'hang out' may well be playing with fire, and fire burns. Ever since that regrettable incident I've just concentrated on the music, and always will. *[i wish to make it clear that I only played with Woody Shaw in a one-off jam session context (at Barry Harris' Jazz Cuktural Theater, if anyone's interested) and it's not like the cat hired me or anything (likewise I never met Chet Baker, but his playing just has so much soul it makes me quiver sometimes----and he sounded phenomenal to the end to me). ] Hello fasstrack: thanks for that great insider info!

Thanks for returning to the topic. Nothing against Sun Ra, but if I feel like posting about him, there´s enough place for it on other topics. The brown Blue Note 2 LP set. Yeah, that was the LA-Series from the 70s. But are you sure when you say "without PJJ"? As much as I know, the quartet date has Trane, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. The whole double LP was made of parts of "Whims of Chambers" and the whole stuff from "Chamber´s Music". I got a japanese CD of "Chamber´s Music" that has the quartet tracks recorded in LA and an earlier date from march 1956 (3 tracks) , also with Trane, Chambers, Philly J.J., Curtis Fuller, Pepper Adams (it was originally recorded for the Transition label if my memorie´s rite, while the quartet date was on Jazz West). The remainder of the double LP (from "Whims of Chambers") has only the tunes with Trane on it. The rest of the album (tunes played only by the rhythm section "Dear Anne", and "Tales of the Fingers" ) are not on the double LP. When I decided to re-buy the whole stuff I picked up the two CD´s ("Whims of Chambers" and "Chamber´s Music"). All the material has Paul and Philly J.J. together!