Gheorghe

Yes, I was thinking of what you described as "3." But sure, John Lewis is not a bop pianist, though he was a key figure in the 40´s as pianist in Dizzy´s big band and composing key bop tunes like "2 Bass Hit" etc. I like also his playing with Bird on "Summit Meeting at Birdland". I didn´t know much about Lou Levy, he was not well known over here in Europe. But I saw him with Stan Getz and he also had to play for Art Pepper, since his then püinist Milcho Leviev as his whole rhythm section had not arrived. I had not known that Jimmy Rowles had played with Bird. As Lou Levy, Jimmy Rowles was not really well known over here in Europe. I first "saw" him on the cover of the Mingus album "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" where you see a quite worn out, grey guy with a cigarette stickin in his mouth. But he only played that white styled solo piano interlude that sounded like a children´s waltz. And later he played with Ella, but as Ella was, pianists almost never got a real solo spot. I think Jimmy Rowles is on the Dial sides Dexter made in the late 40´s but as much as I love Dexter, mostly his Savoy sides, those Dial sides somehow bored me.

That´s the album I have. America label. I have a lot from that label, mostly Mingus. This one was the only I had, on which there was no Mingus.

So if I understand this is not the Ralph Burns I heard on "Hoch auf einem offenem Michael" 😄, but arrangements. Well I think the only Peterson I heard voluntarly was maybe in a rhythm section like that with all star soloists, then I have a Pablo Album of Eddie Lockjaw Davis at Montreux with the Oscar Peterson trio, okay ! And under his own name I have only one that my wife bought me: "In Tune" with the Singers Unlimited". That´s good Peterson because he is not so much bangin them 88 keys, the vocals is so so, but was very much en voque on more civilezed people of "my 1970s" . Nice found from my lady, who sometimes picks things up you won´t expect them...... I think I once saw some Hampton in Paris on an album at someone´s place. Let me say I never was a fan of Hamp with all that "yeah yeah yeah" and jumpin around, but I think in Paris there was something with Parisian musicians too, like Paris settled drummer "Kansas" Fields, even with french șlagăr star Sașa Distel or so...... Saw Hamp once and let´s say, the vibe solo´s was nice enough, musical thoughts, very fine ballads, why not, but when he started to play the drums with making some jonglin´ with the sticks instead of playin some drum, and then jumpin to the piano and do those silly two fingered style boogie woogie....that´s not

Good entry ! That´s how it was. All we boys at hi school wanted to "play Miles Davis", buying huge sunglasses, bendin down and mimicking a wah wah trumpet, he was Mr. Super Cool. I was lucky I could manage both of it. The acoustic with Trane or with Wayne Shorte, as much as the early electric and the post 73 stuff. Saw him with "Lieb" at Stadthalle Vienna.

I woudn´t say so, since Ornette was alive and well and creating wonderful stuff with Prime Time ! For me Old and New Dreams just was a working unit of some of the best players from the 60´s (Don, Dewey, Haden and Blackwell right ? ) . And by the way, around that time even Ornette himself went back for an acoustic gig with them on one of the Caravan of Dream albums, combining the old quartet and Prime Time, sometimes playing the same pieces, very interesting. Well, I didn´t even consider Marshall Evans Arkestra a ghost band. First I doubt there is still another guy alive, who played with the original RA Arkestra. I saw a Mingus Ghost band conducted by Jimmy Knepper and it was the saddest and most stupied things I ever heard or saw. A bored and tired old man "conducting" easy charts that you could play without a "conductor" or more so a non-conductor. For someone who practically "grew up " with Mingus´ music, this was a shame !

Yeah, Agharta ! Miles sounded so good until 1981 or so and started to sound so boring as the 80´s went on........ (oh my God, that silly bridge on "Perfect Way" sounds like "Kaufhaus-Musik von den 80er Jahren" 🤑 I never had heard that name, but was astonished that this picture looks exactly like Mr. B when he became more commercially and had said good bye to bop......

I only read the name once, when I was very very young when I had that America LP "Saturday Night Jazz Session" which I had bought for Fats Navarro and Roy Eldridge (I had hoped that they play together), and this Ralph Burns plays a very very strange piano solo as first soloist on that tune "High on an Open Mike" . It is a strange "solo", doesn´t really swing and then there are such block chord burst outs where you won´t expect it. If you had heard only Bud, Horace, Garland, Herbie, McCoy, Cecil and so on that really sounded strange and as a kid I didn´t know if it is "hip" or "corny" or both of it. By the way for you german speakin guy: At that time I still tried to "understand" the meanings of the titels. With the help of the "Langenscheidt Englischwörterbuch" I translated "High on an Open Mike" as "Hoch auf einem offenen Michael".

Wasn´t that the idea of french jazz writer and occasional pianist Henry Renault ? He always was seekin "remaining bop pianists" after Bud had died, Monk had retired and so on. But it´s hard to imagine Jimmy Rowles as a be bop player. Wasn´t Lou Levy more a bop player ? And wasn´t Tommy Flanagan more from the 50´s Detroit scene. I mean one of the best, most technical pianists, period. But not really a bopper. I would have liked to hear how Sadik Hakim sounds. On the few Savoy sides he sounds very very stiff, like someone who tries to pick up something from Monk, but without the wit and rhythmical conception of Monk, and it´s such a stiff chromatical playing with so stiff syncopes it doesn´t "flow" . It sounds more like classical syncopes. Al Haig playing Diz must be great. Haig was a great piano player, but not in 45. On the old Diz records he also sounds very stiff, but from 48 on he was fantastic, he had learned all the stuff and his playing with Bird at the Roost, or with Wardell Gray and so on is first class.

That´s why I love pianist led bands with powerful horns so much, or pianists in general in powerful blowing settings. I´m not really a trio music freak, and that´s what I imediatly liked by McCoy Tyner: His first album or the first I had was the one with Joe Henderson and Elvin Jones, that´s music, that´s action ! That was also my time: VSOP was led by Herbie, wasn´t it ? I mean, Hubbard, Shorter, Ron, Tony.....BANG !!!!! Or the old stuff. Sonny Clark Cool Struttin, I mean: Farmer, McLean, Paul, Philly......BANG !!!! Or I would have liked to hear all Bud Powell in settings like the Fats-Rollins-Roy Haynes thing or with Bird, Fats or Diz. Not so many trios....... I know most listeners like more tender trio settings, where you can relax, drink a good glass of wine and so, but I like it when it burns and that´s what McCoy always did ! I only heard, that in his last years he was very very sick, very thin and played only trio. I didn´t hear that. I only wondered why you play trio and carry all the load, if you gettin frail ?

Milestones was THE Label of modern acoustic jazz during my forming years. You could be almost sure that the guys you admired most, who you saw live, were Milestone recording artists and Festival schedules read like a Milestone cataloge: Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Joe Henderson etc. My first Tyner album was "Super Trios" , then the "Milestone-Allstars" with Rollins-Tyner-Carter-Foster. Horizon came out when I saw the sextet with that violin player in it, but the tune I liked most (The Seeker) was not on it. Finally my favourite album remained "4 Quartets" , all with Al Foster on drums. There is "The Seeker" on the side with Bobby Hutcherson. The only side I don´t like that much is the Abercrombie side, it´s somehow another kind of music, not really mine......

last night I dreamed I had seen Joe Henderson live in a small club, which is quite impossible. I saw Henderson live quite often and he was one of my favourite tenor voices. But I have not spinned much music recently and didn´t have Joe Henderson on mind, quite a shame as great as he was, but see......last night I dreamed about him.

Fehring was more a composer and became famous for other kinds of music than directly jazz I think. But it is true that he had founded the ORF Big Band in the early 70´s . But see, personalities like this were not let´s say "the cat´s you met around the corner in all them clubs, were you met the musicians every night". It´s possible that even Kleinschuster was not really such a cat you got easy in touch with, like let´s say Fritz Pauer. I saw Kleinschuster not so often in the clubs, but Pauer always was somewhere.

The Clarke-Boland band was fantastic, but I fear I was a bit too young to have heard it live. One of our Austrian heroes in jazz was tenor saxophonist Karl Drewo, whom I knew of course and that´s where I got more info about the Clark-Boland Band. I fear most of that stuff of OOP in 72-75 Dizzy with Klook, that must have been a reunion from the bop era, I think Klook must have been Dizzy´s first drummer. I think there was a time in my youth when I listened chronologically to the transition Miles made from acoustic to electric. I mean, I think "Sky" was the first that used fender rhodes but if I remember right, ony on the first track "Stuff" . Was the next "Filles de Kilimanjaro" ? oh yeah, and than "Silent Way" and "Brew". I don´t listen so chronological any more, but I find that "Brew" , after you practically have "lived" with the Miles from 72-75 still sounds like a mostly acoustic record, like a larger instrumentation of stuff that came with "Silent Way".

Obviously a great trumpet player. Sure one I would have liked to meet and play with, from all you tell me about him. The situation with good good trumpet players over here in Europe was not so great when I was young, now we are blessed with many talents. If he chose to stay in his hometown, what was the reason, did he teach ? Without teaching I doubt many jazz musicians today could survive....

I´m glad I saw both "Spoon" and "McShann" live, but not together, but in different concerts. What´s new for me is, that those old 40´s recordings are on Black Lion. I always had considered Black Lion as a label of the sixties, which recorded American Expatriats in Europe, like Don Byas, Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins in Germany, Bud Powell, Philly J.J, and so on. Is this an unknown session ? The last Leo Parker I have is those two BN "Rollin with Leo" and so. I kike Leo Parker from the good old bop days, with Tadd, with Fats and so, and of course those two BN, though I would have wished to hear him with a better rhythm section. oh yes, this one, then the Spotlite live stuff , and all of Dizzy´s 40´s big band stuff. I love it all. For several purposes: First of all, if you are an instrumental player, just listen to the ballads like Billy Eckstine does them and you get a lot of feeling you can transpond in your one axe, And as small band player you can learn a lot about bop too, a lot of them heads, out chorusses, those typical Tadd Dameron voiced fill in´s , it´s really so lot stuff and learning potential, I love it.

just read that you ask for swing big bands of the post war era. Can´t contribute much, I mean I hear the Mr. B´s fantastic big band and Dizzy´s Bigband, and swing......well they swing like mad, can´t stay still on something like that, I start to move around in the whole room !

One of my favourite McLean records, oh yeah, Woody Shaw , "Sweet Love of Mine" , and that sound, that´s the quintessence of my estetic feelings. Only the Music. The cover is more like a Miles Davis 70´s ear cover. I like the face of the woman, that´s my kind of type, those faces that look a bit like a Raffael Madonna...... But back to the music ! One of the best things of the late 60´s . Oh boy I love this ! All love for Pharoah Sanders ! I´m so happy he was long enough around. Since I had "Live at the East" when I was in my early teens, Pharoah became a favourite of mine. I didn´t grow up with more polished mainstream, I grew up with music like that..... , and Jackie McLean and Dolphy etc.....

Is Fritz Pauer on piano ? He was my favourite pianist and my real mentor, no Pauer, no Gheorghe.....😀 Erich Kleinschuster was ok, I heard him do some really slippery trombone on a rapid version of "Move". He was mostly a teacher to. But if I ever would have wanted to get formal teaching I would have preferred to be taught by Fritz Pauer. I saw him almost every day to hang out and talk about music, he let me sit in when I was 18....dig that !

I still have the 2 LPs, it´s very fine and goes into further directions. Agitation I think is a very fine track. But I don´t think I re-buy another version of something I already have. Would be too much for me, but good idea, sometimes I´ll go back and listen to those two old LPs. Or was it a double album, whatever.....

I´m not a big connoisseur of 80/90´s fusion. I had to play in that period in a fusion band and maybe listened to some stuff, some sounds to enlarge my horizont. I think there was a Don Cherry record with more fusion instruments, and of course there was Ornette´s Prime Time", and I still liked very much the Miles of the early 80´s mostly 81 or so, when it still had more spontanious elements and was not such a "stage show" with a lotta syhthisizers how it was from the mid 80s on. I think I had a James Blood Ulmer thing also. But I was not really a listener then, I was too busy to handle my own stuff until it got worn out....

I remember I purchased it when it was brand new. First listening to it I was shocked because there was only some french voice and some terrible cracking and the most annoying thing for me then at 17 was that the band had already played the head of "Rifftide" and was into Miles´ solo and this Frenchman still was tellin some stupid stuff about gothic catedrales, fugues of Jean Sebastian Bach and Mozard . But the band is topnotch bop. Miles got almost as much dexterity as Diz or Fats and playes some top bop trumpet. James Moody is extraordinar here, it almost sounds like a forrunner of Trane in the 60´s or my then favourite of the 70´s Dave Liebman. And a fine occasion to hear the fine piano of Tadd Dameron, whom Miles always praised "a very fine piano player". The fast numbers are exactly the bop I love, and the ballads are really strong. Davis even announces the tunes which he never did again. But it must have been annyoing that if he is so kind to say "now Don´t Blame Me" and the french MC repeats the title with a french-accentuated English.... Another favourite of mine. Carter Jefferson was so strong ! Wonderful music.

I got this very very late, just a few years ago and was a bit disappointed. I don´t get the same feeling I would get with Miles and Trane with that fantastic rhythm section. And considering all that Pepper horror stories that are told about the days before this session, you just hear at any moment that the stuff is not well prepared. Jazz me Blues and Waltz me Blues just are not the stuff I want to hear. It does not fit together with that rhythm section and that "Waltz me Blues" or how it is titled is just a bit ridiculous, there are much better 3/4 time jazz pieces on records. I think when I was a teenager it had a white bird and some blue sky and so. Bird is great, maybe that much guitar solos is a bit too overwhelming. Then it was told it was from Birdland but later I learned it was at Rockland and I have the double CD. I love it, and so good british musicians on it.

As much as I remember Don Ellis had much followers in the 70´s but somehow I never heard it,

I have this on CD, I think the Conn reissues. It had not been reissued when it was recorded. The mood is quite similar to "Idle Moments" from the same period with the same musicians. Very nice music in my case more for back ground listening, since for my tastes the rhythm section Pearson-Cranshaw, Harewood" is a bit too mainstream-ish. I love Hutch´s following albums much more, especially one with Sam Rivers and Andrew Hill ....

Those were the days when you were waiting for the next album of Sonny Rollins and when you saw him live playing you would get live renditions of just recently recorded tunes. This is one of my favourite Milestone albums of Rollins. I heard him play the "Isn´t She Lovely" shortly after that recording, with Mark Soskin, Jerome Harris and the great Al Foster. Same was after the "No Question" album with Larry Corryell, just great times.