Gheorghe

Andi Steirer . And sure I keep you updated

That pic of the girl reminds me of something from my youth. I was partying somewhere and an Austrian girl, who though she was original Austrian, looked very much like that girl on the pic, and she wanted to date me. But somehow, then and now, such strong eyebrows never was my thing. I don´t like pencil eybrows either, but more that classic feminine styling. But what I observe on beauty&fashion nowadays, this type of eyebrows and hair styling has been en vogue since a few years. You even see blondes but what irritates me is too dark and too thick eyebrows, and long trousers as standard look. On that special occasion some 46 years ago, a middle aged American guy was sittin´at the bar and observed the scene and told me "you don´t know how lucky you are. She looks like an Indian girls and in the States the most beautiful girls are them indian type lookin´ girls" But I was more than reluctant and maybe just silly grinnin´ and sure must have had a few, since aged 18 I didn´t say no when alcoolic beer was around. About the bass fiddle. Yeah there are gals who play it, but when I was a kid and still to small, my aims was to play bass fiddle since I considered it the most masculine instrument. I really played bass for some years.

Thanks for that great analysis. I appreciate writings like that very very much. Not just posting album covers, but really THINK about the music itself. Best regards. Gh.

I´m not really a conoisseur if it´s about recorded documents, I think the first version of Round Midnight I had heard on record besides the Blue Note recording in the 40´s was recently a discovered document of the first Dizzy Gillespie big band at Spotlite, that means before Diz added conga players, most of all Chano Pozo whom I love. And it is Monk playin on piano on it, before he was replaced by John Lewis. But what is more important for me than when it was recorded is the tune itself. If I might be forced to hear only one tune, this one would be it. If I knew it will be the last time I play myself, Round Midnight would be it. I can say it all thru Round Midnight. And if there is something true about what religions tell about souls that exist after death, or if I get into believing that before I die, I ´d tell my folks to spin "Round Midnight" when my body get´s into the crematory, or if they get together after doin what they think with my ashes.....

Strange enough but I never ever had heard the Akyoshi-Tabackin band and it seams the only Akyoshi I ever heard is that piano solo on "I can´t get started" on the Mingus-Town Hall Concert, which sounds very similar to Lennie Tristano. It seems that Lew Tabackin as travelled much as a single with local rhythm sections in the last years, I somehow missed it. And I see so many postings about Eddie Palmieri, mostly from members who in general have very similar favourites like me, but before you posted that name, I haven´t even heard the name of him.....

I love it, though I had all the BN stuff on the 1970´s double album "Fats Navarro". The strange thing is, that in this case BN made the mistake of sellin´ two individual albums with the same session, since the 1949 which is the best, appears on the Fats Navarro LP as well as on the "Amazing Bud Powell" LP. Usually I´m not a discographer and don´t know anythin but the music and the musicians, but I remember I was pissed of by it, when I was a youngster and spent a lot of my pocket money just to buy the music to study it..... Well, on this CD is also somethin I never had heard before, I think a few tunes, that sound a bit too "polished" for my tastes, and one of them has a soprano singer that doesn´t sound like jazz at all. I remember my wife when she heard that she bursted out with laughter and said something about "who is that crazy hen ?" Wonderful thing you wrote about friendship and loneliness. Well, I also had at least three good friends and all of them died prematurely due to heavy drinkin´. In each of the cases the drinkin´ led to liver failing ore heart failure, even cancer. That´s the bad side of the jazz live. Glad I don´t drink alcool. I don´t know the musician you posted here, but it looks so much like a "Sun Ra thing" !

Glad that the gig went well ! Indeed, comping for a more unusual instruments combination would mean some brainstorming for most musicians who usually are compin´ horn´s or other instruments that is not horns but play hornlike-solos. I think, combinations like that in most cases are individual groups that perform and record in that manner, so they are booked as a unit, not like in most cases in jazz clubs where there is a star atraction (mostly a horn player) and you are freelancer and get the job. But about percussion players. I heard one and he is just fantastic, which is not hard to imagine since he is probably the best in my country. I loved so much what I heard that I knew I must have him for the record we gonna make in january, where he´ll be on some originals I rote, plus on the standard "Tin Tin Deo"....., I´m really lookin´ forward doing that proiect, addin´ a percussion player to the core formation.....

Oh, I love that ballad, I know it from the famous Billy Eckstine recording from "Mr.B and the Band" and always wanted to perform it. Such a wonderful ballad, but not many horn players have it "ad hoc" in their repertory and since I usually have to play what is told to me just before the gig starts, there won´t be so many occasions for performing it. And that "rhythm section" might be the best you can imagine. Would be nice to hear it. What album is it ?

was my first Wayne Shorter LP, and remains one of my favourites. But it has no vibes, as the threadstarter had said he want´s to know how to comp vibes. And it really seems that the gig didn´t happen. Well if the group is good there´s enough other gigs.....

I got this from my wife for my birthday on december 14th, 2 days ago. Again, she picked up somethin ´ from names she heard thru me. Dizzy of course, ableit Diz is not so dominant on this album. The first tune is wrong titled as "Birk´s Works" but actually it is Bird´s "Quasimodo" and Diz is not playin. It´s a battle between Jackie McLean and Phil Woods, but also very fine Stan Getz. The ballads "Warm Valley" and "Old Folks" are wonderful. Max drum features of course, Cherokee again with those great saxophonists. Maybe I would have expected more from "Con Alma", it´s only trumpet with piano in a rubato style. How much I love to play that tune with a fine quintet, I just can´t think about that tune without drums. Percy Heath has a wonderful feature on "Yardbird Suite". I like his sound also on the fast tunes. It´s very boppish, not them long notes, it´s more percussive style like Curley Russell would have done it, really fitting to the fast bop numbers......

https://www.qartetoulilangthaler.at/uli-langthler/ I mostly go and listen to what fellow musicians are doin´ . My favourite bassist with his quartet featuring Austrian Star Percussionist Andi Steirer at Jazzforum Modling in octombrie 2023 Such a great group, and some highlights were a composition written by the leader´s daughter : "Ama´s Blues", and an absolutly outstanding version of Charlie Parker´s "Ah-Leu-Cha". And them there actual CD is great !

From your description it´s no wonder I didn´t have no idea who it is. Never got in touch with "smooth jazz" .

ahm, wait a minute.....Eddie Gale about whom I was talkin´ is the free jazz trumpetist. But who is Eric Gale ?

I have it on the Mosaic Strata East Recordings. But I bought that Mosaic almost exclusily for the Rhythm X which was a very rare record I liked when I was in my teens (since I was crazy about Ornette, Cherry and so on), but had it only on tape. The Zodiac with Cecil Payne is solid, but like other sessions from that set it´s somehow outwordly since it has musicians who sure had bitter years then, playing straight ahead or more in tradition based music when even Free Jazz slowly came to it´s end. The Brackeen-Don Cherry thing is nice and very similar to Ornette Coleman, but other sessions somehow have an air of death , it seems to be the last Kenny Dorham recordings, even 4 years after his splendid album series for BN had ended, same with Wyton Kelly who was in demand anymore like he was in the late 50´s and early sixties. Somehow those recordings depressed me. But I have heard Cecil Payne play that composition "Flyin Fish " maybe 35 years later, if I remember right it is a cross between latin and swing......

That´s a great album, I love it ! I´d also wonder about the date 1972. Dave Schnitter was part of the comeback of Blakey in the late 70´s , ´77, ´78 and as much as I remember, in the early 70´s the Messengers practically didn´t exist since Blakey was constantly touring all over the world with the Giant´s of Jazz. And also the next years were absolutly lean years for the Messengers. Only the renewed interest in acoustic jazz in the late 70´s brought them all back for top billing. It was the band with Schnitter, Ponomarev, Bobby Watson, James Williams, Robert Irving that brought them back into full action and full houses...... Very interesting trumpet player. I first had heard him on the two Cecil Taylor albums for BN. I think, not many people know that he was about the last musician to receive some advices and encouragement from Bud Powell, who lived round the corner.

Hope you will not kill me, but me here in the "outbacks" don´t really know about Bill Barron, and I have never heard the name of the cornet player. But as a musician I say the set list would be a dream job for me, all them tunes I´ve played so often, and it is really "drummer´s tunes" which I like most anyway, and Philly Joe Jones ´famous solo on "Salt Peanuts" from the Miles Davis LP was one of my first musical impressions as a kid. Philly Joe Jones was my hero. To bad somehow I never could see him live. To have Walter Davis, Paul or Spankey on bass, is also great. Spanky DeBrest was a very good bass player, kinda bebop type bass player .....

who is the two ? Is that Sarah Vaughan, who is the other, is this Allen Eager ?

I have a few Grant Green albums, do not exactly remember which one, but "live" would be interesting, as all of the very few live albums that BN made. I think I have a Kenny Burrell live on which is Art Blakey..... Though I don´t know what is or was club mozambic. if Grant Green played there it must have been some gas to go there. But strange enough for BN records, with the exception of Idris Muhammad I don´t know any of the sidemen....

Oh I loved them, those strange ESP LP´s , they had cult status over here. With that modest back cover with tipe written personnell . In this special case of course I don´t know who was Lowell Davidson, but Gary Peacock and Milford Graves proove that it must be something great. ESP has done so much for me, I mean it was an important guide for me to listen to the more free forms, but it´s never completly out of rhythm. Like on BN records of free jazz artists there is always somewhere a point where it "must schwing" . Since I never was really a collector of records, my ESP discography as other stuff is quite scarce: I think I have or I know I have the Ornette Coleman Townhall Concert, I have the Sun Ra , I have the only Henry Grimes trio during that time, and though I never had heard about a "James Zitro" I have his album since it´s my mentor Allan Praskin playin on it, and I love that album, Zitro´s a helluva drummer, and the group is great, and Allan is superb. But all those stories around ESP. I never heard a musician talk positive about them, even if they offered them the first recordings. Money was zero, and it´s easy to put a logo of "The Artist decides what´s on this disc", if he was not paid. Or did near to death Bud Powell, who "recorded" for ESP just a few month before his death, "decide" what´s on the record ???? I doubt he even knew about it after a few hours since he got 50 bucks and was let out into the cold winter streets...... That´s the ugly side of it, but what remains is tons of non commercial music of huge value, all of ´em , Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman...... I have heard it and enjoyed it. I think I was very impressed by the unorthodox lines Wilbur Ware plays on his bass. And very very nice hard bop, with top hard bop players, but I didn´t listen to it again, there were so many many albums in that style and conception, sure they all is great but I didn´t have the patience to study them all.....

I never heard about it. I think that label Charlie Parker records had ended before I began to buy records. But it always happens that here or there pieces ar atributed to masters who have died long before. The only traces of Cecil Payne playing Bird tunes I have is on a record from the 70´s which I bought since it has my favourites Buster Williams and Al Foster, can´t be wrong anything with them two on a record. And I think he is on a Bird celebration gathering led by Jackie McLean, I don´t know what year it was, but it´s something my wife found for me as a surprise, when she read that it´s something with musicians she had heard of thru me ...... The last time I saw Cecil Payne on stage was quite a sad thing, he was blind and very very frail looking. But the young red haired saxophonist (I think it was Eric Alexander) who led him on stage was a great help, and what can go wrong if Ron Carter is on bass, he was on bass on that date I think in the early 2000´s .....but they didn´t play Bird tunes, more Cecil Payne compositions like "Flyin´ Fish" and so , very fine indeed, the only Bird related thing was a version of "Lover Man", but it was hard to listen to Mr. Cecil Payne on this, since the lack of breath was more evident at the ballad....., but they did all they could to cover it and help him, very very sympathetic guys on stage......

Hank Jones has also a big follower in Austria, who tells about himself that he is the "Hank Jones Administrator" in Austria.

It had another cover, but this was the very very first jazz I had. I started my live long love and affection for jazz with this album. I knew all the solos, loved Philly J.J.´s drum solo on Salt Peanuts so much, and each of those men was my "personal hero". Until I bought my second album, Mingus with Dolphy 1964, and from that point, those two became my main heroes....

oh yeah, the CD with the upper cover I have, since my wife once bought it for me for Chrismas. That´s the typical feminine touch, she saw "Miles Davis" on the cover and of course that´s the only name she "knew", but it was such a nice surprise and I enjoy listening to it just for that little story. The music of course is a bit strange for me, it sounds very much like abstract modern western music, but yeah, I listen to it, I close my eyes and listen to those strange little sounds like that one "Night sounds" or how it is titled, or that bizarre "Nite in Tunisia" with them dissonant sounds of the vibes of Teddy Charles, and the more than strange rhythm approach.

Interesting, I didn´t know that, but it´s hard anyway for me to identify guitarists, I don´t have so many guitar albums or have not played so many gigs with guitar added, mostly the rhythm sections is just piano bass drums plus the horns, that´s unsually the formats I play in. And as you say it. How is it with the Mingus album ? Do they play together or sometimes only two of them ? I never had the chance to hear that group, strange enough I heard Mingus live in Summer 1977, but when an autumn concert at the end of 1977 was allready advertised and it was booked to promote the album with the 3 guitarists (I think it was Corryell, Scofield and a belgish guy Catherine) but that concert was chancelled. My luck was that it was chancelled before I got a train or plan ticket to Dortmund, Germania, where it should have been.

Didn´t Mingus use three fusion guitarists on "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" ? And I think Miles on "Dark Magus" in addition to Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas used a guy Dominique Gaumont..... also on the studio album "Get Up with it".