Gheorghe

Beautiful ! Does anyone know what has happened to Johnny ? He must have lived many years in Paris with Bud and Buttercup and might have learned fluently French....... Heimat des Bergdoktors ? Der Siegl oder wie er heißt der Schauspieler?

I think I had heard about that label long ago. Is this with a lot of eastern european jazz ?

Usually I don´t wear jazz T-Shirts, I can dress nice for goin on stage very well with not wearing a jazz-shirt , but I have one that I wear sometimes, but not when I play. It is a Sun Ra T-Shirt in black (I mostly wear black) and has that kind of design that fit´s to those black trousers I like, them with a lot of bags on the legs , I usually buy my stuff at those hip stores like "Vagabond" or how you call ´em , and Serena also found some cool black stuff there that looks sexy.... So I like this Sun Ra T-Shirt for the kind of atmosphere it sends.....and I like black shades, so this with black trousers and boots really looks sharp

Nice album, but I think I have not listened to it for at least 20 years. Somewhere as time went by I found all the BN hard bop albums of the late 50´s sounding very similar and didn´t spin em after my comeback as a musician..... But I remember there was another, "Back to the Tracks" which had something like "The Streetsinger" which is a nice tune. I have read somewhere that Alfred Lion was not too enthusiastic about Brooks, not for his musicianship but for non-musical reasons. I think I remember Walter Bishop was still alive when I went to all them jazz events here in Europe as a youngster, but I don´t remember I would have ever seen him. I saw other former "Bird-Sidemen" like Art Taylor, Roy Haynes, but never "Bish". Is it possible that his career was more than one time interrupted ? He is really hot with Bird, only a few grooves beyond Bud, sometimes as a sideman even better, but than it seems he was in obscurity. He sounds great on a Dizzy Reece album "Soundin´ Off" where he is a highlight and has wonderful chords. But on some Bird Memorial Concerts in the Allstar Formations with McGhee, Stitt, Johnson, Tommy Potter, Kenny Clark he is very disappointing, on them he sounds like a nameless straight-ahead pianists...., in general I like him most with Bird and on that one and only occasion with Dizzy Reece....

Very nice. So this was your granddad ? My grandparents had also died when I was about that age.

I have not spinned it for decades but as I remember it is quite interesting. It does not have Bird Songs, it has standards that Bird played. I think all the players have played and recorded with Bird, like Rollins himself, Kenny Dorham, Max Roach, only the pianist, one who´s name I never had heard of, seems not to have to do with Bird.....

For me one of the most typical hard bop albums, but as people are different I couldn´t listen to this or any music in the morning, it´s in the small hours I would eventually spin stuff like this. Art Farmer was less known to me until the mid 70´s when he actually lived in Vienna and I attended as many shows as possible, to learn stuff from the experienced players. But my real great love is Jackie McLean here. And of course, it wouldn´t be me if I wouldn´t say that this the nicest cover photos of all of them old BN records. I think I remember this still have the first guitarist they had. Strange but I sometimes compare that dense stuff of the guitar here with some of the sounds of Prime Time. I am not necessarly an organ fan, but listen sometimes to one of the BN Jimmy Smith albums, but more those like this one or most of all the two volumes of "Date with Jimmy Smith". But I need to hear it only sometimes and the only other organ player I really listen to was of course Larry Young. There were dozens of post Smith organ players on the BN cataloge in the late 50´s 60´, but I don´t listen to it, since my urge to hear organ is pleased by those Jimmy Smith and Larry Young albums. Smith is organ in the Bird tradition, and Young is organ in the Trane tradition.....

Ife was one of the highlights of the very first Miles Davis show I saw when I was 14 or so. It was also featuring Dave Liebman´s wonderful flute solo. I remember that show very well and it was later also broadcasted on TV. On that concert schedule was also Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan if I remember right, but I saw or intended to see only Miles, that was the times then, that´s the music you heard, electric Miles and post Coltrane stuff.......

Thank you so much for that kind review. Glad you enjoyed it !

It´s a great record. I recently listened to Bitches Brew again after decades and don´t know anymore, why people then said that it was the total switch from acoustic hard bop to electric rock jazz, because as I hear it it was not. With the added electro piano, Dave Holland still on acoustic bass, all those are still very much in the old Miles tradition. I think the switch to one chord vamps and wah wah pedals was much later, I think it was when I heard Miles....

You also fishin´? I love that hobby since I was a kid. But never went else than alone.....

Glad you have some love for Agharta ! It was the cult disc of my youth and I´ll never have another copy than the one I bought then, shortly after I had seen Miles live with almost the same group, but here Dave Liebman is replaced by Sonny Fortune. The others are the same, but there are other tunes than what I had heard live. Glad there is folks who share my fascinacion for the electric Miles period.......

He really plays nice, but I fear that it´s somehow my fault that I don´t have a sole album of him. Heard about fans that are really crazy about him and have everything he recorded, but something does not "work" for me or "exite" me the way other artists inspire me. Strange for many, but I try to be honest....., It was my first under his own name. I was a big Don Cherry Fan almost as early as I started listening to jazz. And someone had that album and I taped it on casetofon, like we all did. I think that strange guy who really had those then called "avantgarde" or "free jazz" records, also had a super rare "Charles Brackeen" Rhythm X, which I also taped since there was "MY" Don Cherry on it. That guy...... you know, had a big magnetofon, big boxes and speakers, lot of equipment, and other stuff whas not in his one room appartment. He only had an ashtray, a "sac de dormit" (who you say ? Sleepin´sack????) , a caftan and a sombrero, and I was a shy little kid, but I loved to be in that room...... Another album that I love very much. Though I think I have listened more to his first album "Lifetime", but "Spring" is an easier album, it is more "swing" in it, or "schwing" how Alfred Lion said .....

Dușco Goicovici was kind of a hero of our youth back then, His trumpet sound, I mean you have the Miles-sound and love it, and over here you had the Goicovici -Sound, different, but nevertheless there was something familiar. We loved his hard to find albums "After Hours" and "Balcani Jazz" with "Saga Secorama" or how they said it in Iugoslavia. This one must be great too !

Allen Eager ? Don Lamphere ?

Thank you so much !

I don´t have this, but all records of pre bop tenorists with the then "modern" Red Garland Trio are fine. I saw Arnett Cobb once at Jazzland with a 3 horn frontline. The altoist was great and was the almost forgotten Jimmy Ford, who once played with Dameron and Fats at Royal Roost...., only the trumpet player was somehow weak.... I only regret that there is no record of Lester Young with the Red Garland Trio...... sure ! On the tours of the Giants of Jazz around late ´72 or when it was (I missed it I was only 13 and it took me another year to get to jazz concerts) and on videos or airshots you hear the full power of Blakey much better than on the 40´s/50´s records, which was more the way they recorded then..... Monk, so he had a somewhat vacant look and seemed quite passive, played piano better then ever and this together with Volcano Blakey......whoooey

Warm Valley Yeah !

It really is. I think I remember that I have bought it very shortly after Monk´s death. I have it on one of my USB sticks in the car.

That´s interesting because it was the same impression I had. I just grew up with the then so called "Modern Jazz" and in my case it was also only the Miles version that I knew or played. Yes, raising the bridge the 4th, Bemsha Swing is a good example. Another one would be Good Bait.

She has beautiful eyes !!!

A terribel lost ! He was so busy here in Austria most of all at Graz where he taught. He was very often working in my country. The first time I saw him was with Curtis Fuller at Jazzland.

Thank you so much, Jim !

Hello friends, after 2 weeks in my second homecountry România I´m back and in the meantime our album "Waltz for Serena" is on Spotify : Have a look at our website and enjoy the music ! https://bop-explosion.com/

https://bop-explosion.com/ you have the entire album on spotify !