Gheorghe

Oh he was a wonderful drummer. I know him from record only from the Steeplecheese sessions of Dex in Denmark, there are many of them but I think I have "Cheesecake" and "I Want More" or so, and it´s a very good drumming and you can HEAR it. I like Dexter´s announcements, when he says "our trommelschlager: Alex.......Reeeeeeeeeeel ! REALLY !" 😃

Wonderful collection !

This was a key element in my earliest musical impressions. One of the best Miles albums from the acoustic era. I heard those versions of "Valentine" and "All Blues" first and only years later I heard KOB and was disappointed because it sounded to "polished" to me. And I think that this version of Funny Valentine is the only one that I like. Sure it might be a nice tune but I have avoided to play it since 50 years, cannot even say why

Fine photo, even if Bud is not shown on it. But such a personnel, Bud with Miles and Konitz and Blakey must have been a gas, anyway I like Bud most when he ist together with horn players and a strong drummer. As for example Bud with Miles at Carnegie Hall, or Bud with Konitz on a broadcast I think from Leonard Feather, which had also J.J. Johnson, Budd Johnson, Little Benny Harris and Max Roach.......

I see, but as much as I like so much stuff, I just can´t listen to it in the morning. I´m a night type of guy and when I get up I need a breath of fresh air, some motion , then a coffee, a slice of butter-cake , a cigarette and absolute silence. I get more active in the evening...... And at home I listen to music with headphones, since I need it loud and my wife would here it even if she goes into one of the rooms downstairs. Now I can spin it the way I need to hear it full and don´t disturb her with "my stuff". 😄

I don´t know about classical music, but I think me and my wife was some years ago at a place heard some stuff by Mahler, and in that place there was only classical music in the shelves and when it was spinned that kind of Mozard or Bach it sounded more boring for our ears, but that somebody spinned a stuff called Mahler and imediatly it attracted our attention as some music that is much more interesting for our ears. It sounded like if Mahler was the "Charles Mingus" of classical music, while the before mentioned composers where the "Oscar Peterson´s and Errol Garner´s" or worse still "Dave Brubeck´s" of classical music. I think there was another guy who was strong, I never heard him, but one of my youth fellows who played percussion told me that "he had heard Bruckner" and said that "Bruckner was the ultimate Rocker of his time, because he just did it, he didn´t give a shit for conventional things.,,,,," I had told that my fatha and he said, it sounds funny what your friend said, but there is some truth in it....

Glad to hear that. And I like your musical tastes, it is more demanding music. I like straight ahead as well and have to play some of it to make money, but I had heard the kind of "jazz" that I can´t play, before I started to perform ( I mean pianoless "new thing" stuff, let´s say 2 horns, bass and drums, or just a trio of horn, bass and drums) so I was not so much receptive for the typical 50´s mainstream many folks like to hear,,,,,

Is it possible that this is a posthum-re-issue, because as I noticed, the original BN-albums of Jackie McLean always had that typical BN cover art, mosty photos of the musicians as cover photo. I even think I don´t know the tunes on this here. Once in the late 80´s I bought a strange "BN" album of McLean titled "Tippin´the Scales" but it didn´t look like a classic BN album, and I was disappointed by the content, because though it was from the eary 60´s it sounded older. I love Jackie McLean mostly for what he did on BN on stuff like "Let Freedom Ring", "One Step Beyond", "Destination Out" and "Devil Dance", those was the albums I liked mostly.

Very interesting. I have also a double LP on which Sun Ra plays only organ (I think the title is Unity or so, it´s a Horo record). Sun Ra has some solo features on old standards like "Yesterdays", "Penthouse Serenade" and so on, and it´s fantastic, I like it more than Jimmy Smith.

This is a pure bebop session, the long title tune is based on "Idaho" and an ideal playing vehicle for all those great soloists. Mike Brecker in the best Coltrane tradition, Lee Konitz very very fine, Charles McPherson, and wonderful Jack Walrath on trumpet, very very much Fats Navarro influenced. Strange the combination of Mingus constant pianist Neloms on acoustic piano and Ken Werner on Fender Rhodes. never heard something like that. From the bassists, I think I like George Mraz better. Eddie Gomez was a wonderful bassist, but if it comes to solos, it sounds like exercises, sorry. One downer is that the ensemble parts are not very together and the mix is a mess. The solos are very fine recorded, but not the ensemble playing. The ballad Farwell Farwell is wonderful, a typical Mingus ballad which he also still recorded two months earlier on his last recording as a bassist. I like the tempo. Some players do ballads at too slow pace, this is a fine slow fox tempo. Ricky Ford and Lee Konitz and Larry Coryell are wonderful on it.

Yeah I have it since I was a teenager. The 2 BN´s . But as a drummer/percussionist you sure will agree with me, that the drum sound is sub zero on that. Can´t enjoy it very much that way.....

My LP cover is really old and looks like that, when it was purchased so 50 years ago, when I was a teenager. As late as in the second decade of the 2000 when Pharoah Sanders played for the last time in Vienna, I had the LP with me hoping to get to Mr. Sanders if he would like to sign it for me, but I was to shy and thought he doesn´t look like a man who will meet a fan. Too bad, later I heard he sure would have done it. But on the other hand, I´m a musician and signed albums does not mean so much to me, it´s the music that counts. Especially in my early days of listening to jazz I was very very much in the stuff of Dolphy, Coleman, Cherry, Sun Ra, late Coltrane and of course Pharoah Sanders. I heard that stuff before I heard Bird on records......

Wonderful ! I have loved Pharoah Sanders since I was still amost a kid. One of my first jazz LPs was Tranes "At Village Vanguard Again" (with Pharoah, Alice, Garrison, Rashied Ali) and then I got my first Sanders LP (Live at the East). I like all those great albums he made, those from the 60´s and 70´s as well as the later straight ahead dates with a typical ts.p.,b,dr - quartet...... everything !

okay yes, the period shortly before the birth of the 2nd Quinted was not his most fruitful period. Maybe this made him somehow bitter.

I don´t know the cover, but is this the original BN, the one with Milt Jackson, John Simmons, Shadow Wilson and on two tracks Kenny Hagood ? I mentioned it earlier as an example of terrible weak recording quality, where you almost don´t hear the drums, I mean it seemed to be very very rudimentary recorded, you don´t hear Shadow Wilson´s specific cymbal sound and snare sound, some very essential trademarks of his playing.

The strange thing is, that usually if you have played for a time with a big jazz legend, you made it, you got your own band, your own record contract and everything, like all of the Ex-Miles-Men, and the Ex Blakey Men, and of course dozens of ex Mingus-Men, but it was not the case for the men who played with Mingus when I saw Mingus: Neither Walrath, neither Ford, nor Bob Neloms became big names in jazz, well Muse was a hard to find label in most European contries I must admit..... but my impression was that it concentrated on lesser well paid acoustic jazz men in the 70´s, maybe I´m wrong but that´s how I thought about it back then...... what etnic background was Walrath ? He looks a bit like a south of the border kind of type..... they said he is white and that black militants got on Mingus´ case why he booked a white player in an all black band, but he looks like he might have had another etnic background....

That´s one side about Miles I don´t like. When I first saw him more than 50 years ago, I had thought and read, that this is a more angry, but very silent guy who just doesn´t like to talk, and it is expressed thru the sound of loneliness in his trumpet, which was very evident not only in the old days but also when I heard it, with all them electric echipments...., So later when I heard some things he said I was quite shocked, and since I know that he loved Dizzy all his live, he just should have SHUT UP instead of tellin stupid lies and untrue things. I mean it is a no go to talk bad things about fellow musicians.

Oh this is a nice cover foto of those little animals we called „ștrumfii” in our childhood. From the instruments I guess it is trumpet, piano, fender-bass and drums, is it ? As little as I understood Mr. Corea´s affinity to that kind of sectă where they take your money and so, as much I dug his music. During the first half of the 70´s of course there was RTF, but as early then I must admit that from the two Ex-Miles-Keaboardists electric groups I preferred the Herbie Hancock "Headhunters" which I found more "black" and more "funky" . But Chick Corea was a helluva musician, as much electric as acoustic.....

Of course I have this one. It was a must for me, I mean from the legendary collaboration between Monk and Trane there is not much recorded, I think I heard a tape once of Monk Quartet feat. Trane, but very very bad sound quality, but great music. So I was glad I found this record some years ago, actually during a time where I did not buy any more stuff from the past

I seldom know birth dates, but the Sun Ra birthday is interesting. It was in Alabama. It must have been great influences of early jazz that made him become such a great artist, one of my favourites in my early beginnings of loving jazz. I even might say that I "learned" about traditional jazz thru Sun Ra when they sometimes at the end of a set would play just for fun some late 20´s, 30´s stuff and it really sounded great....., he was an important figure for me, as was Mingus, both having come up in the old jazz tradition and become leading figures to talk jazz beyond the boundaries, exploring new areas. That meant jazz for me in my very beginnings with that music.....

I also think I never heard him, but is it possible that somewhere I read that he was deeply influenced by Thelonious Monk ? That might be great.....

oh, never saw that thread. Well for me it is only the music that counts, so the cover is less important for me. If I have an original LP and it still works and don´t have scratches I try to record them on an USB, or at least I started once, but I don´t have the time to spin stuff that I don´t need to listen to right now. Let´s say I have all the electric Miles double albums they made in the 70´s because I lived then and bought what came out, but if I´m not in the mood for that kind of music right now in the moment, I wouldn´t spin it, as much as I love it in general. So, if the LP still sounds ok, I spin it, and I don´t think I have bought CDs of the same album, if I already KNOW the music. For me it would be a waist of money and time. I buy CDs if I don´t have the original LP or if they were recorded when the LP era was over. I know that it´s other way round for other folks, for who the cover art or the different issues of recordings are a kind of hobby in their hobby of listening to music, and that´s mighty fine. It´s just that music is my passion and I just didn´t find the space for something else.......

Great music indeed. I saw the same group in 1983 in Austria. Electra Musician was Bruce Lundvalls try to record all the artists who where dropped by CBS after Lundvall left the company, It must have been terrible frustrating for men like Woody Shaw and Dexter Gordon to be dropt by a major label and forced to record for a small label and maybe this led to there abuses with harmful stuff in the following years, that´s my opinion. I saw both Woody and Dexter after the loss of the CBS contract each one on stage and from successful artists on the top of the field they turned to frustrated men, loaded with all kinds of harmful stuff and their was an air of death during their gigs, it was a tragedy back then, as the 80´s went on......

oh yeah, I have that CD with the complete RCA recordings. "Hey Pete let´s eat mo´meat" I already heard in my teens since there was a black cover RCA album "When Bebop met the Big Band" or so, but you know when you are a teenager you are so deadly serious, not much humour, so at first hearing I found it "silly", but I still listen to it 😄

Okay yeah, it´s possible that the early 50´s dates have better drum sound, but the late 40´s sessions have a terrible weak sound. The only one on which Shadow Wilson replaces Blakey, with Bags and even the great vocalist Kenny Hagood has such a weak and miserable sound that it´s barely enjoyable. The other one with Roach on drums is a bit better and the Prestige sessions have better drum sound, you are right !