Gheorghe

A lot of big names from what was considered the young generation, when I was young myself. But strange the cover. It looks like those old abstract coverarts that were on a lot of late 40´s early 50´s albums from BN, Prestige, Verve...... It took me much time to fully appreciate the MJQ. When I was young, it sounded to quiet, to chamber music like for me. But some of my confusion when I started to listen to jazz was my complete lack of jazz history knowledge. "Modern Jazz" I thought is Freejazz, post Free and Rock/Funk-Jazz, so when I became curious and asked someone to spinn that "Modern Jazz Quarted" I was disappointed since it didn´t sound "modern" to me. Now I love some of their records, but not so much if it goes to much into Bach or Rokoko or how you call it..... I don´t know why but Miles sure is one of the musicians from whom I have more than 5 records, maybe 10 or even 15, but somehow I never wanted to buy this, maybe I was not sure, I had or have Miles Smiles, Filles de Kilijmanjaro, Silent Way from the 60´s , and maybe I thought that Sorcerer might be something "in between" , I mean not such a landmark like Filles or Silent, which make the transition to electric, or "Smiles" as the quintessence of the acoustic quintet from the 60´s.

This and "Drum Ode" are the only ECM albums I have. I was crazy about Lieb and tried to hear him as often as I could, since I had heard him with Miles. That flute solo on "Ife" in those years 73/74 was outstanding. I think I love "Drum Ode" even more than "Lookout Farm", but "Lookout Farm" was not only the album, it was the touring group that we heard in the mid 70´s after Lieb had left Miles.

Archie Shepp ?

Brings a lotta memories back. I was in the middle of it, combining my love for acoustic jazz with a growing interest in fusion, and as a musician......"doin´both".

@Dan Gould : Wonderful fotos, and I have the albums they did in the same year for Steeple Chase, also recorded live in Netherlands. @soulpope I don´t remember the incident, I think I remember it was Lou Levy on piano. I wouldn´t say I am Art Pepper´s biggest fan, I like some of those from late 70´s to early 80´s but not all , but at least he inspired me to include for a short period "Your´s My Heart Only" in setlists. I´m not Mr. Right and love Bird, Fats, Woody Shaw and almost all musicians that where drug victims, but for me they have at least something symphatic. I can hear Art Pepper, but I can´t look at him, he has .....I don´t know what, but that sly or silly grinnin´ I don´t like. One of the most hidous pictures is that where they all where those Art Pepper Quartet T-Shirts, and it looks like they all pissin´ and Art Pepper has that ugly face he had.....

I have heard it somewhere, I remember the title tune is something in the style of Silver´s "The Preacher", but I think this LP was lesser known. From the 50´s I only have "Blowing Sessions" two albums on one double LP, it is the thing with Trane and Mobley, and a Clifford Jordon record with Sun Ra´s saxophonist John Gilmore. I think I also remember or have read, that the "Congregation" is too short for an LP...... Strange thing with Blue Note and with Lou Donaldson .....after 1970. As you know I have been a fan since the 70´s but somehow I never got a real feeling for what BN did in that period. All those records (and it seems they were not so much sold or seeked after in Vienna) somehow were the same, a lot of instruments, and quite thin stuff at least for my ears. I love a lot of BN albums from the earlier decades and we knew LD from his recordings with Monk, Horace Silver and Art Blakey, and his own "Blues Walk" , but I think he was not very much touring in the 70´s , the first time I heard him live was in the 80´s and that was mighty fine..... My impression was, that other labels had more interesting 70´s years jazz, like CBS, Atlantic or what you call them. If BN wanted to sell us electric jazz, rock jazz, I think CBS with electric Miles was much better on that, and others like Headhunters or RTF were much better and more interesting than those many "one kind of style 70´s BN recordings". Once I did a mistake and bought a LD BN album from 1974 and after listening one side it landed in the garbage can, the only time I did something like that with a record.....

Ronnie Boykins was a helluva bass player. I didn´t know he had a record of his own, but ESP recorded a lot of artists , I have the Henry Grimes album. Ronnie Boykins I first heard with Sun Ra on record, it was one of my first 10 jazz albums (Nothin´ is). Like Henry Grimes, he was also great at bowing solos.....

Is this the one with Mal Waldron´s "Fire Waltz" on it ? A tune I have played often last year. I have the old LP which I purchased back in the 70´s after I had heard Miles in late 1973. I remember I liked parts of it but was a bit disappointed that it´s not one whole session , but more so sampled from different dates, like the very short takes like "Little Church" which I generally like. But I liked most the last tune, the one with Keith Jarrett on piano and organ. If I remember right, this one and "Jack Johnson" where not as well promoted as others of Miles´ albums from the 70´s.

Such a great record, and Eric Dolphy was the first alto saxophonist the really impressed me when I heard him on record in my early teens.

It´s interesting that those classic BN albums of some artists like Miles, Monk, Milt Jackson, and here Clifford Brown were done somewhat before those gentlemen became world famous. But they are very fine. Here the Clifford Brown album, I think I had or have the CD shortly after the invention of CDs, somewhat in the 80´s after BN had a revival and put out all the stuff that had been OOP for decades..... If I remember right, there was one side with John Lewis, Charlie Rouse, and one with Lou Donaldson like on the Blakey Birdland album....... If I remember right there was also a Prestige album of Clifford Brown with the same title "Memorial Album", but strange to say it was not a Cliff Brown led band, but Tadd Dameron´s "Atlantic City" band..... I also have this but didn´t spin it very much, since I was a bit disappointed. It sounds much too "smooth" for me. I love the early Jimmy Smith Dates for BN, like that two records with Lou Donaldson, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd and Art Blakey and the first trio sessions especially "At Baby Grand" Delaware......., it´s more rough but very very exiting. From the late 50´s on into the 60´s his music somehow smoothened out. Interesting, I remember his name and think I remember he was a Mingus-influenced bass player of the late 70´s of those who played after Mingus death on memorial albums. I think he and Dannie Richmond did that. For me: The best Henderson album I have, and one of the best acoustic albums of the 70´s , especially from the tenor led quartets of that time and there were so many: I think a great part of what I heard live in the 70´s was tenor led quartets: Sonny Rollins Quartet, Joe Henderson Quartet, Dexter Gordon Quartet, Johnny Griffin Quartet, George Coleman Quartet, Eddie Lockjaw Davis Quartet........there must have been dozens of quartets......

Me too, I got interested in Bird after I had heard "Parkeriana" , Mingus´ tribute to Bird , and after reading the liner notes of my first Miles Davis LP where they write that Miles had started with Bird. So I had to get to know how sounds that man , whom Mingus dedicated a composition, and a live long Bird-love started, though I seldem listen to his records now. I think there were some "striped series" from UK, and some of the Savoy or so , or on Bellaphone, but I never cared for labels, only for the music itself. I think the Verves were only available from Japonia import, very expensive, I never had it, but later the 2-fer albums. Somehow they never fascinated me the same way like the Savoys, Dials, and the live recordings (with Diz or Fats or Bud, at Carnegie, Birdland, Massey Hall and so on). I think the Verves are better sound quality and more listenable for many people, especially since it reaches more accessible stuff like "South of the Border", "Cole Porter" and "Strings" and so on.... As a musician, I listen more to the other stuff, where I can learn more from it.....

This was one of my favourite records when I was a teenie. I had it on tape, since the LP was so rare and a guy I knew had a lotta stuff from that style, I first heard this, and Don Cherry´s "Complete Communion", had them both on a 90 minutes cassette . Also the other LP you showed us: "Jackie McLean - One Step Beyond". The guy who let me listen to it and tape it on cassette was no one less than the great late Fritz Novotny, the founder and leader of the first Austrian Free Jazz/Avantgarde formation "Reform Art Unit" ("RAU") . It was so wonderful times, guys who just lived that music, and my strong connections to Free Jazz, a style that still was very fresh when I started to listen to jazz. Electric was brandnew, and still a lot of acoustic Free Jazz. Wonderful times and so much to learn . I couldn´t else than absorb all that stuff.....

oh I remember her, saw her with Lou Donaldson, great organ player !

Indeed, wonderful !!!!

Yeah I have known him as early as in the 80´s . After the Sweet Emma Band stuff last week we had some talking and woodsheddin´ about tunes we could play together, what tunes he might like to play with us, and I was astonished that he remembered a gig I had 40 years ago and Universitatea Veterinară which was somewhere in sector 3 of Viena, not far from a railway , I think that´s a neighbourhood where they have "rechte Bahngasse" and "linke Bahngasse" and I had totally forgotten about it. It was with a Bulgarian Saxophonist his name was Boșidar Sotirov (can´t write well ortografically) , anyway I was astonished that a guy who is mostly busy with booking and havin a label and so would remember a gig I had completly forgotten. It must have been in those years, when jazz was "in" at Universities, and kids who studied would hear jazz in those Audimax-es they had.

I heard that track now with the drums starting, what a wonderful way to start a morning (never thought I could be able to listen to music earlier than 20:00 or better in the small hours, but those drums..... oh boy !

As a jazz only player I have only side informations about pure Soul, but what I heard last Friday you Soul Fans should hear and purchase. My wife and me spent an evening off at Porgy and Bess to listen to my old friend Paul Zauner with his wonderful soul band "Sweet Emma Band" featuring the very strong singer Chanda Rule, former Harlem Gospel singer now having a solo carreer living in Viena . Have a look at some tracks and buy them their latest album on Paul Zauner´s label "PAO Records". And they have a long haird organ player from Cehoslovacia, who is really a gas. the whole band is tops and the singer too. It´s mostly Soul, some Blues, and a shot of jazz (the last tune unsually is an Ellington tune).

I don´t know what karmatateous delicacies means😄, but Billy Eckstine is my favourite singer, period. Only, as a jazz musician I prefer his work with the Band, when Tadd arranged all that wonderful stuff. I hear Billys wonderful voice in my head, but it is inseparabil connected with the fine band behind him, all those Dameron voicings and hip stuff you still can learn so much from it, let´s say if I have to comp a singer, or how I comp for a ballad..... One of my favourite songs right now is Eckstine´s version of "Love is the Thing"

Strange I have not seen that, at what venue was this ? I only heard the Cedar Walton TRIO at "REIGEN" in the 2000´s . But I think it was after Higgin´s death. So I don´t know who was on bass and drums. REIGEN was a good joint, I often went there with Serena, we could walk from our place to that venue. They had great musicians, she saw Archie Shepp , Johnny Griffin and so on with me. I also did perform there in the early 90´s. But I don´t know what has happend to the plays. When I asked Mario (Gonzi), he said better no, it ain´t what it used to be.....

Sometimes if I quote from another song in the improvised chorusses it just comes and maybe I don´t even know what song it is, but mostly if my fellow musicians quote from somewhere I know from what song it is. Contrafacts, that is the most easy thing. You hear the changes and know where it comes from. Yesterday I heard an Eddie Lockjaw Davis thing in the radio and it was one of his own compositions, and though it was a straight ahead stuff, it had the chords from "Girl Of Ipanema"......

Maybe I could afford it but I don´t want. Better go for two weeks to carribean islands to warm up my bones and have that feeling, just to escape the cold weather, and come back and be strong and relaxed for the next string of gigs. About wax removal. Good thing you told me about this. I think I am overdue. But in the years before , speaking about health asigurare I went to a medic of state who doesn´t cost since ensurance pays, I was not so pleased. He handles it quite rough and he also seems to think that he is not only ORL medic, but specialist ortoped too, since he always as soon as you come in, he tolds you that all you suffer from is from the cervical and prepares an injection. I didn´t feel too good after that injection. Now I better go to medic privat and have to pay and sometimes get some money back from ensurance.

Must be great ! Never heard about the venue "Ornithology" in Brooklyn, sounds hip.....

Really nice, that´s you and your dog ? oh, to Williue Dennis.....great ! Nice gal, somehow she looks similar to Audrey Hepburn, doesn´t she ?

Great to read that someone gives some love to Moses. Indeed a great drummer who had an unhappy live since I had heard that he had been stabbed which affected his kidneys and he was on dialysis and died very young of kidney failure. I love all stuff he played, I think the first stuff I heard was some Dolphy with Woody Shaw from the early 60´s, and some Blue Note recordings, maybe with Andrew Hill. And he was Bud Powell´s last drummer ! His drumming on the sets that survived recorded from Birdland is a highlight, he together with John Ore where a perfect rhtythm section. And I like drummers who really play and stretch out, not just doin´ brushes in a trio context. Play it LOUD !!!! YEAH !

About the Monk Prestige Album you posted : I don´t know different versions, as in so many cases, my copy is one of those 2 LP albums from Prestige, that you could purchase easily in the 70´s . I had one with Rollins, one with Monk, one with Davis or so..... Just let me say, that the record you posted was a MILESTONE in my musical developement as a pianist. This version of "Sweet and Lovely" is just INCREDIBLE, listen to Monk´s cadenza , or Bemsha Swing, Trinkle Tinkle and so on, I just love to play those songs. Even one of my own compositions that wil be out on record in the near future, though it´s a waltz, has some little glimpses of Monk´s style. I´m sure the individual CDs are as great as my old two-fer album, maybe they even have more tracks....