Gheorghe

Oh, alcool is a devil. When I was young I also drank my beers since this was the times, you did it because all other "bad boys" did it. Now I don´t touch it and never again hat had aches in the morning or blurred feeling. I have heard about Austrian vibes player Vera Auer, but it seems she was not much on the Austrian scene at least when I became involved with it. But Jimmy Raney at least looked fine until the end. An old man sure, but that´s normal. But I was shocked when I saw a later photo of Doug Raney, his son. He looked like Chet Baker in his last year, terrible. Was he also such a heavy drinker ?

Just perfect for me. On the rare occasions I can spend to listen to a record, mostly after midnight, this is the ideal stuff for me. Such great players, and such great compositions. "Sweet Love of Mine" and "Katrina Ballerina" are tunes I love so much. Some of the best players I ever heard, I had seen the group exactly on those days of early 1983. Then with Steve Turré who is not on this special date. It was THE group of the early 80´s. Some of the best things you could hear then and learn from....

Jimmy Raney is one of my favourite guitar players. But he must have had a hard time in his later years since I read that he was almost deaf. Such a terrible blow for a musician. I think I read about a later studio record he made for Timeless records at the famous Max Bolleman Studio in Netherlands. His son Doug was also a fantastic player but he didn´t live long enough.

Very interesting thoughts. Well I think the sound of Ron Carter was part of my early listening in the 70´s . It was the acoustic sound of that time when an acoustic bass was used anyway, which was more seldom since even older established masters like Diz and Sonny Rollins mostly used electric bass during that time. Ron Carter appealed to us boys, he was Mr. Supercool and it´s natural that we listened to all the VSOP recordings and many Milestone recordings where it was most possible that Ron Carter was playing the bass. But I think that Ron changed his sound somewhere in the early 2000´s . As someone said earlier they got a new tehnic to capture the bass sound, where the pickup is not attached directly to the PA sound system, but to a mike. So when I heard that strange album "4 Generations of Miles" (George Coleman, Mike Stern, Ron Carter, Jimmy Cobb) the sound was more subtile. Of course, if I´d listen to a typical "hard bop era" stuff from the 50´s and Doug Watkins would be on bass, it would be a safe thing. But my first , my very first listening experience of bass (when I was maybe 12 years old) was Paul Chambers, and since I wanted to get myself a bass it was his sound and his soloes that fascinated me most. What Chambers and Mingus did on solo bass just seemed incredible to me. Among about the next ten albums I purchased for little money was some Coltrane, and I had the comparation between "Blue Train" and some lesser known stuff of Trane with Wilbur Hardeen and so on, where Doug Watkins was on bass. While Chambers on "Moment´s Notice" just left me out of breeze, on those bootleg Coltrane-Hardeen session when it came to Doug Watkins´ turn to play a solo, he just walks on, same like in the ensemble playing, so at least then my thought was that it was a "lost occasion" to let me hear what this man can do on bass....., I heard a lot of Doug´s really solid playing on many sessions, but as a soloist I think Chambers at that time was no 1. Eventually when my Grandma died, I got some money and bought a bass fiddle I still have. At least then I thought to adopt the bass as a second instrument to play gigs where they already had a piano player. I practiced a lot and being a pianist I had the sense for playing changes and melodies on bass as soon as I mastered to pluck them strings. When it became clear that my really mission is playing the piano, bass gigs or bass practicing became more rare. Now this is 40 and more years ago and I still have the bass fiddle at home. Pickin it up again would me a lotta blisters on my fingers, which I can´t risc as a pianist..... But even now, 40 years after my last gigs on bass I still "feel" the strings and the grips and last week while standing at the bar during intermission and explaining the bass lines of a composition of mine to a bass player I just sung the bass figures and mimicked them with my left hand and right hand, so he said "you play bass too? You just mimicked the right left hand positions when you sang the bass line...."

You are right. And I think Bud really was in top form if he had the possibility to play with old comrades who came to visit Europe. Bud with Hawk is fantastic, but I would also include "Blakey in Paris" with Bud playing "Bouncin with Bud" and "Dance of the Infidels" on his highest level. They are among Bud´s very best performances.

I´m not sure. I think French audiences were hip enough to dig Dolphy , but that piece somehow "doesn´t have it" . I mean Mingus could bring the music out to be a liink between straight ahead and "avantgarde" but it had to cook more than "What Love". Listen to "Fable of Faubus" four years later in Paris, they love it. And it´s also "difficult" for more conservative ears with all those atonality in Dolphys solos and in the chords, and has all them changes of tempo, but "What Love" somehow sounds more like western 20th century classic chamber music than "Jazz".......

Yeah , JEB´s Jazzbock was the first jazz book I head, of course in German since at that time I didn´t know enough English to read a jazzbook (now I can read em , but my vocabulary is quite limited to jazz so I can´t read other books 😉). At first reading I noticed one thing: For JEB and of course for a lot of other hard core jazz fans and musicians of that time, the names (Brubeck, Peterson) that sounded great for people who otherwise didn´t listen to jazz , were mentioned only as sidelines in Behrends book. That´s how I still somehow think about Brubeck : Music for people who don´t really like "other jazz" . But it keeps my mind on that impression on the video footage: That blonde chick, mighty fine, that´s our "bad luck" as jazz musicians 😄 Those kind of chicks listened to let´s say "Brubeck" not so much to what I´d listen to or play 😄 Same with my lady: Stunning blonde, long legs, beautiful face, and......if she hears somewhere as background music in a bar or a shoppin´ mall some "Take Five" or "Mercy Mercy".... she say´s "that´s fantastic, why don´t YOU play stuff like that ? ". Well dude, that´s our fate. Took me quite a long time in my youth to combine somehow to get the right mixture. beeing "weird" but somehow managing to get straight enough to keep a fine girl.....😀

Very very interesting indeed. Fela Kuti: I only had read about him in JazzPodium where his music was described as uninteresting and that he had focussed more on his arrogant stage behaviour, having a kind of "servant" who handed him his saxophone and his cigarettes. I never had heard his music. I have one of her books, I think it is titled "Jazz People" and has some great interviews with musicians I really love , Jackie McLean, Cecil Taylor, Howard McGhee, and the best, the very very best interview about Monk, that I have ever read. His answers are so quick and hip and they are truth, I mean I understood his answers very much, as his music is among my favourites . I think she did a great job doing that interview, even if she tries to ask questions in certain directions Monk wouldn´t discuss: Races, Politics etc. He says something like "I´m a musician, I play and get paid for it, let the politicians worry about politics, its them their job they get paid for it...." , and where he says "I got a wife and two kids to cloth and feed". I understand that so well.......

My relation to Brubeck is a very difficult one, "we" didn´t have a good start. When I was very very young, in my earliest teens and just had discovered jazz and was crazy about Mingus, Dolphy, older and new Miles Davis, Ornette, Rollins and did not know other "names" , somewhere the name of Brubeck was written and someone told me that he is some of the very best. When I heard it, from track to track I was "waiting" for something that might bring emotions to me like the before mentioned but in my case it didn´t happen. I think later on the weekly jazz radio show for new records they spinned a live set from some University, where they play two standards and it sounded a bit rough but well enough. It is possible that it was from 1953 or 1954 and appeared on a Bellaphone LP from the "Jazz Tracks" series. First I thought it is much better than the studio LP I had heard, but later again a problem for me: The drums sounded to straight and metronome like, as the bass, and the piano was intented to be very powerfull, with block chords and so, but somehow a bit more stiff than a natural "jazz feel", at least that´s what I heard. What I like on that short video footage is the blonde chick in the audience, in general the mass of the chicks was much better dressed than in comparation to audiences of today 😉

Because you mentioned the Newport Rebels: I got it two years ago from my wife and I was astonished it´s such a thick cover, until I discovered it had all other Mingus dates of that period , I mean the cover photo in colour shows Mingus at Newport, and on the inner Sleeve is those other two records I had not known, one is the one that has Fables of Faubus on it, and I think Folk Forms and What Love. And the other has Mingus dressed in a more British style and I think it has that "All the Things ...... something with Sigmond Freud...." and "Hellview from Bellevue" , I had not heard those before. But Fables of Faubus is at such a slow pace. I heard it live in the late seventies and it was much more dramatic, and until then I had heard it on the Paris Live with Dolphy, which I also like much more than the version on that Candid Session. The "What Love" I heard on a live thing I think from Antibes France, but other than the hot stuff of "Wendesday Night Prayer Meeting" etc, , the Audience does not seem to like "What Love", they even booed the performance as it seems you can hear.

Is this the old Miles album from 1964, with Sam Rivers playing ? Miles surely was on many occasions in Tokyo. But I think in the 60´s were many live albums on CBS, I think I also have one in Berlin and so..... they are fine but have very similar set lists......, anyway, gimme Tony Williams on drums and it is great ! I love him.

I don´t really know the chronology of the Candid recordings, but the track "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" is very very interesting and a challenge to play. Beautiful changes, and great with the slow tempo section in it, which happens on more than one of Mingus´ compositions. I love them all and would like to re-perform the one or other...."Reincarnation" would be among the top of my "wishlist" but you got to have time and money to rehearse it, since I´m not sure if every musician just can check it kinda impromptu during a soundcheck, which usually is the case if you gotta play somewhere. Another point: Since "Candid" was quite unknown over here in the 70´s when I built up most of my historical records knowledge, the actual version I heard was on the 1970 session in Paris, for the "America" label. My impression is, that or it was played a semiton lower (not starting with G-minor, but with Gb minor, which might be quite a challenging key for many instrumentists) , or it was recorded on a speed a bit too low......

Thanks for this great input ! Szeged is a beautiful town yeah. Not far from the Romanian borderline. Billy Hart is a wonderful drummer and I always say I want to HEAR the drummer. And I want to hear them on studio records, where sometimes I have the feeling that I don´t hear each kit in the proper manner, especially the cymbals. I talked to Mr. Peter Pullman (the author of the book about Bud) when he was in Viena this year in springtime when I invited him to a jazzclub and he was quite astonished that a piano player loves more powerful drummers, which is the case. I think he mentioned that most pianists are supposed to prefer drummers that are not very loud, but in my case if I play and check out a drummer he must be a quite powerful guy. We have some very good drummers here. And of course Billy Hart is one of my favourites.

That "Strollin´" is one of my favourite Horace Silver compositions and a beautiful thing to open a set. So comfortable to play, ....... just "strollin´...." . On the other hand it´s always a bit hard for me to remember more tunes on an album since Horace made so many of them and mostly I remember important tunes which we work out on one or another occasion: "No Smokin´" is a favourite of mine since it is so brisc so quick, and often someone calls "Nica´s Dream" of course...

I love it. Milt Jackson is great on those ballads, and I share his love for so called "difficult keys" like Db for example. Good Idea. Have to play "Dig" again. Fine think to blow on it. But usually we believe, that it actually was not composed by Miles, but by Jackie McLean and was titled "Donna". It´s a fine bop into cool tune based on "Sweet Georgia Brown". I think there´s also "Out of the Blue" on that album, which we played, since it is a nice bop tune based on "Get Happy" so a very nice blowing vehicle you can cook on it. I think it is those two tunes that I remember best from that LP, which I think was Miles very first recording for Prestige.

Thank you all so much for your great inputs. This seems to become a wonderful thread and I´m glad I opened it. About CTI, I must admit that I have only 2 CTI albums as it seems: Hubbard´s "Red Clay" and the two "Mulligan-Baker at Carnegie Hall". The first mentioned has always been one of those albums that I think are just perfect, and the Mulligan-Baker I purchased only because I had heard the track "There will never be another you" in a club, spinned in the small hours and identified Ron, who was the greatest on it. The most post 1970 Ron I heard on CBS (all the VSOP albums) and on the Milestone label, which I liked much more than CTI. I have seen Ron both as a leader and as sideman. Yeah, and the first time I heard Buster Williams was with Ron Carter´s Quartet in the late 70´s. Carter on piccolo bass , Kenny Barron , Ben Riley and Buster Williams. As you said, I must not have Ron on piccolo bass, and on that special concert at one point Buster played a solo, and THAT was the highlight of the evening. The boys I was with at that concert all said "Buster did cut out Ron" and that´s why he played only one solo. I heard Buster on more occasions, once with Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller and Mulgrew Miller (I don´t remember who was the drummer), and Ron was on a rare occasion with Cecil Payne. Of course I had seen Ron with VSOP. Reggie Workman: I saw him only once, that was with the Max Roach Quartet. Paul Chambers, I was only 10 years old when he died so I didn´t have the chance to hear him live. But he was the first jazz bass I had heard on record (Miles Davis "Steamin´), and you know how boys are: You find your heroes, and each of those men, Miles,Trane,Garland, Paul, Philly became "my men". I´m not sure if Paul Chambers would have made a career like Ron Carter after 1970 since he was so worn out as early as from the mid 60´s on. Former the most recorded bass players in the 50´s , his appearances on BN sessions on decade later became fewer and he sounds quite strugglin on a late 60´s Lee Morgan date. I thing he was wandering around, someone said he looked poorish and always wore his "eternal black suit" which had seen better times. He was so desparate, that in his last year he was considering to buy an electric bass to get more gigs, but I cannot imagine he would have had a big comeback even if he lived longer......, it wasn´t his times anymore. Same thing like Chambers. Wilbur Ware was so much in demand in the 50´s, he recorded with Monk, and all, but seemed to be quite out of it as the 60´s went on. The only later appearances I heard on record is on the Mozaic set "Clifford Jordan Strata East" but on many of those late 60´s sessions there is an air of mortality on it. Some near forgotten players are on it, Kenny Dorham, who hadn´t made more records after his early 60´s BN, and like Wynton Kelly with only 1 or 2 more years to live, and I think there is a solo side of Wilbur Ware also, but it sounds rough, and there is a strange little interview with him. Practically I don´t know anything about his life. Was he also involved in harmful stuff like Paul Chambers ? Oh, that must have been great ! Hope he will visit Viena too some times...... I´d like to see him again. I heard a later record of him, something like "4 generations of Miles" and was quite astonished that he didn´t have his trademark sound anymore. I have heard that the sound he had in the 70´s was due to connecting the pickup to the PA-System, and now it is a mike. I´ll have to ask my bass player next time, if there would be time for chattin.....you know you play a gig, I get out during intermission to smoke a cigarrete and after the second set everybody is in hurry to catch the last Metro......

oh this is very interesting and might be for more discussion on the topic I have opened about Ron Carter in the Artists category.

This might be interesting, I never heard the sides with Dameron, those Three Bips and a Bop, and the other musicians involved also looks interesting. I have some of those Chronological: "Fats Navarro" "Roy Eldridge" and "Eddie Lockjaw Davis" , but I think they are hard to find.

very very interesting inside information. He must have been a quite difficult person. I´ll have to read animal farm too. "Ferma Animalelor" , I order my books by libris.ro or cărturești.ro to have much to read, I love reading good books........ I heard that "1984" was also a film made out of it, but films is not really my thing. I saw some films based on books, but it doesn´t get inside like if you read it.

I´m no real collector and have only stuff that was available then, like the Double Album of Savoy Mastertakes 1944-46, and the boppish "Anthropology" on Black Lion, but those 1947 things must be quite astonishing where Byas plays some vintage bop titles like he did on the Black Lion LP. I think I also have the "Don Byas and the Girls" somewhere under "forgotten or not spinned LPs" and I vaguly remember it didn´t really exite me, somehow a bit too tame, while "Anthropology" is really cookin´ . I was a bit disappointed that they just issued ballads, I mean Don plays "Clifford", Indrees plays "Can´t get STarted" and Bud plays "Round Midnite" and there is a quite half hearted and over played "All the Things You Are". So I would have preferred let´s say each of them play a bit more drivin stuff, and besides that of course a Ballad Medley would have been cool. I had not heard about Lou Bennett before that , well it sounds nice, like Jimmy Smith I would say,but nothin special. I didn´t know who Bill Smith and Bob Carter are and think it sounds a bit funny for my ears, maybe because it is more western sounding very white sounding kind of jazz....."

Oh, those Garland albums on Galaxy came out when I was playin already , so maybe I didn´t have the time anymore to buy many records or might have thought I already have one or two 50´s Garland LPs, whatever. But now I regret I didn´t buy them. Sounds like a dream team with that line up, all of them favourites of mine. In that year 1979 I had seen Ron Carter with Ben Riley and Kenny Barron !!!! The "lousy" bass recording sound you describe, may have been just Ron´s style, he was THE acoustic bass player of the 70´s and that bass sound was the sound a bass had . Acustic purists might have found it ugly and would prefer let´s say Ray Brown, but that was the times and I must admit I still like it on those 70´s records. There were many Galaxy albums that would have interested me. I think it was also some Sadao Watanabe with Hank Jones, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, and so on....., the only Galaxy I have is "Return of the Griffin".

Hello Friends. As early as in the very beginnings of my live long love for jazz , 50 years ago one of the early figures I heard on albums or saw live was Ron Carter. I don´t know if I saw Mingus first and Ron later or vice versa, but it was very interesting for me to compare Ron´s style with others. Let´s say, the post war bass masters like Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Paul Chambers and of course Mingus had horn like phrases when they did a solo. Paul could play lines that were deeply rooted in be bop and he excelled on Parker compositions like "Dexterity" or "Ah-Leu-Cha" or "Chasin´ the Bird" and played it like a horn, fantastic. Same with Mingus, no one before had played solo on such difficult ballads like "Sophisticated Lady" with such dramatic sense. And Ron Carter, well he had such a strong sound you could feel it in your belly so strong it was. Like all the stuff he played as a sideman or leader from a then contemporanous label "Milestone Records" . But his solos were more oriented on the bass notes, he didn´t use speed like the former mentioned bassists, he used space and brought some new sounds to the bass, like his trade mark glissandos, or the playing more notes with just pluggin the string only one time. And some of his solos were more diatonic than chromatic I think. And he did it with such ease ! A fascinating figure, long, tall. Another trademark of him seemed to be the use of the contra C . First I had thought he uses a 5 string bass which has the contra C string and it took me time to find out that he used an extension for the deepest string that´s the deep E. Another thing I observed all the years was his use of decimes. And a secret must have been his sound. Never found out what pick up he used to produce that specific sound you hear let´s say on the VSOP albums and which I also witnessed live. I hope I get some answers from you, from folks who also like Ron Carter. P.S.: I think I never was really a fan of the piccolo bass stuff, I refer exclusivly to his playing on the regular bass .

oh that´s quite an honour to get praise from an Englishman for English literature mostly since I didn´t know I can make interesting comments on non-musical topics 😄 Attack from the feminist-lobby ? What for ? For the description of the "anti sex ligue" where the female hero "Julia" is member. Right now I came to the point, where she breaks the rules and becomes a passionate lover and had arranged to play her role in the Inner Party with all them rules and restrictions, and with her personal sexual desires.....very fine and exiting, but I´m sure there will not be a good end of the story. That´s it, now I understand. Uniunea Sovietică exited long before other European States became part of that system. So it must have been Stalin. Anyway, the big moustache which Orwell describes as the face of "Big Brother" (in my book: "Fratele cel Mare" ), Stalin also had such a moustache. Stalinism was common also in other European states in the early 50´s . In the birth certificate of my fatha in law as place of birth is written "Stalin" because they had changed to original name of the city from „Brașov” into "Stalin" , and like I think in Hollywood they have the name of the City written on the mountain, it was the same with "Stalin" , to be seen by anyone who traveled there😄

Last night I dreamed I was lookin at a lake, standing there and suddenly I hear a piano which sounds almost as great as Bud, same touch, familiar bop phrases and saw a guy who was just very young guy whith still a bit of baby fat, eyeglasses and he was sittin in a boat that was passin´ by and he had a portable piano on it. I thought wow never heard someone else than Bud blowin on the keyboard on "Bouncin" with Bud", "Move" and all that stuff. I waited until he got off the boat and asked him questions where he plays and so, but he didn´n mention the great jazz venues I had supposed he might play , as much piano as he knew....., and I wanted to help him a bit, especially on playin ballads, cause I think you got to have some time to play and to live, to really feel a ballad ....., that´s when I woke up....

George Orwell´s "1984" , but since my beyond jazz-english is very modest, I bought it in romanian language. Not bad, and some things not just unknown to who ever lived in Eastern Europe. Them filterless cigarretes, where a lot of tobacco is runnin´ out before you lit the cigarrette, some brands still existed for one or two years after 89, organized stuff like Mai 1th parade, leaders whose photo was on all newspapers, corrected history, it seems that Orwell had a quite realistic imagination for someone who didn´t live in the East and wrote that stuff almost 80 years ago......