Gheorghe

Well I reach a 10th but I still think that my hands are small if I look at this photo with me on stage

Hello Friends ! You all know the famous photo "A Great Day in Harlem". In one of our 3 important jazz clubs in Vienna, the "ZWE" which is run by the wonderful Mr. Christoph Klein, there is a large copy of that legendary photo near the bandstand. But let me start my story : This spring in April I got a message from N.Y. from the author of the famous book about Bud Powell "Wail", Mr. Peter Pullman. He wrote me that he will come to Vienna for vacation, together with his wife and will bring a signed copy of his book for me. I suggested that we spend an evening at ZWE, were my favourite Austrian pianist and composer Oliver Kent was scheduled with his wonderful quintet "Worry Later" featuring the creme de la creme of Austrian Jazzmusicians. It´s the Wendesday Jam Session "Let´s Groove" so I was sure that Mr. Pullman will here some great music. I had told Oliver and the Clubmanager about our visiting guest and asked Mr. Pullman to bring also a book for Oliver Kent. Mr. Pullman arrived at the club with his wonderful wife, was greated by Christopher Klein, the club boss, and imediatly told us that he likes the club, it reminds him of "Small´s " in N.Y. and he was very pleased to see the "Great Day in Harlem" picture on the wall. He told us some insider anecdotes about the making of that famous picture. Finally the music started and was great as ever. I knew that I had not promised Mr. Pullman too much, he really was fascinated by the playing of Oliver Kent p, Daniel Nösig tp, Thomas Kugi ts, Uli Langthaler b, and Dusan Novakov dr (the name of the group is "Worry Later" ). During intermission (the core band plays the first set, after intermission the second set is jam session) Mr. Pullman was asked on stage to give me and Oliver the signed copies of the book, and Christoph Klein made a photo of us three (from left to right: Oliver, me and Peter Pullmann). At the beginning of second set I got on stage to sit in on two numbers( in honour of Mr. Pullman it was Bud-related numbers like Ornothology and April if I remember right). Some days later I got a mail from Mr. Pullman who announced me that he is back in N.Y. and how much had enjoyed that evening. He wrote that he had traveled much all around the world but never before had seen such a fine club so far away from NY. I also got a hell of a compliment as Mr. Pullman wrote about my own playing that "be bop flows so easily from my veins into my fingers". I´ll never forget that fine spontanous event.

I don´t remember, yeah it must have been around 1977, so I was a bit older, 18. It had a colour photo of Miles, but obviously from much later, from the Bitches Brew time, and I liked the first LP, ok on the 2´nd LP I liked what Mobley and Trane do on "Someday...", and maybe there was a standard blues in F, but in general I liked the groups with Philly J.J and then with Tony Williams much more than the more polished Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb thing. Somehow for me something was missing . I had bought before the Miles at Antibes 1963 and it was the greatest for me.

Thank you so much, @david weiss: Great performance, I hope I´ll see you at some time if you do Vienna (I missed the 2018 gig at Porgy@Bess) but I still hope it will happen some day. Thank you also very much for the rhythmic advice of the tune. Yes, that´s also what I thought: not a typically 9, but more a 4-5. When I heard it the first time in 1978 I couldn´t figure it out. But knew it is something great, special.

Interesting story about your wife 😄 Well, I am a maniac only when playing with damn good musicians. My "collection" habits are very very loose. I listen only for the music and the sources come from anywhere they come from, old LPs, CD´s bought in the early 2000´s and some new ones, but without "washing" them, I never heard about it, but I´m very very loose about things like that and don´t care very much. I usually listen to one certain record at some point, maybe each late afternoon in the cold anotimp after coffee, and the only thing is she askes me to not spin it too loud. But somehow I learned to hear quite well even if it is not as loud as on stage, I only have to close my eyes and don´t let anything disturb my concentration.... My wife sometimes gets dissappointed if I play too much, and then still want to go out to listen to other boys or jam with them....., she often comes with me but if it´s freezing or raining and makes it hard time for the cigarette in front of the club door during intermission..... That Art Pepper thing of Vanguard: Well fantastic trio with some of the best musicians in NY during that time. But I wasn´t really happy with the sound of Art Pepper. It´s too piercing, I mean I LOVE let´s say Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Arthur Blythe , but this somehow causes pain in my ear and sometimes sounds orientationless. I think there was also an original titled "My Friend Stan". But sometimes Art Pepper´s compositions are just too long, too many bars. You get a hard time to improvise on a tune if it has "felt 320 bars" . I get easy along even with longer tunes like the changes of "cheek to cheek" which has 72 bars and don´t have to look at the music , but this is just too long and I don´t think Art Pepper was the very best composer. It sounds more "written on paper just to be written"....sorry....

I think I bought this almost 50 years ago, but it was a Doublealbum with actually 2 Records: "Round Midnite" from 1956 or so, and "Someday My Prince will come" as the second record. In any case. Then I didn´t really like the "Someday My Prince will come" album, didn´t like the tune, that I found to "kitschy" and the general lack of energy. See, I was more that kind of "angry kid" and dug the hard stuff, the pushing the music forward and get more further "out". So, for a boy of 14-16 years this was not really the stuff I dug. The music of my youth. Boy, how much did we dig this, all them players were our heroes, it was what happened then. And since I was somehow in the middle of the position of still acoustic jazz and the beginning of electric jazz. We all hummed that "Red Clay" , hummed the tricky bass line..... And later, all of us great VSOP fans hearing the live version of "Clay" on the "Colloseum" album....with Wayne, Freddie, Herbie, Ron and our hero Tony !

I love that album so much. All those great tunes. And that fantastic line up, really an allstar thing. This is really a good afro-cuban - bop ("cu-bop") record, much better than the half hearted attempt they made with Charlie Parker on the LP "Siesta". But I like also the remaining straight ahead tunes. "La Villa" is a thing I love to play live. So fine to play, really fast. Very interesting remarks: I was lucky I really tried to buy every new Sonny Rollins record in my youth, when I heard him live. All those great Milestone albums "Cuttin´ Edge", "Easy Living" "Don´t Stop the Carnaval", "No Question" or how the 1979 album was titled, but somewhere in the 80´s I lost the trace. Just when I got the "Road Trips" from my wife I learned more about the late styled Rollins.

I can only say that this album was a key element of the jazz movements when I became interested in that music. It´s interesting that it´s still not all electric, it´s like an extension of "Filles de Kilimanjaro" . The long tracks each of them a treasure. But I think on the reissue CD I have (I had spun the LP to death) there is a bonus track composed by Wayne Shorter , something like "Feia" or "Feio" and with all due respect for Wayne, that one tune doesn´t say anything to me and bored me from the first bar on. I also can´t do very much with the "John McLaughlin" titled tune where Miles doesn´t play. Those two tunes I cut out, but the title tune, Spanish Key, Miles Runs the Voodoo down, and even Sanctuary thrills me. But it was still 2 years until I heard Miles live and than it was the all electric band with Miles on wah wah all thru. But still great. I lost my interest in Miles after 1983, his first two years 81,82 was very good and "jazzy" , but then it turned out to almost "smooth jazz"......

Kenny Burrell ! But I´m unable to recognize the following birthday people. Some seem to be not from the jazz music business so I can´t know them, but who is the bearded man on the art picture ? A classical composer ? Looks like that.....

My only social media is THIS FORUM , and on an austrian Forum about my hobby when not playing jazz: fishing. I never knew or tried something else. I don´t have no FB, no Insta, no WhatsApp, no TikTok or what you call ´em. I don´t let such things bug me.

I´m not a collector just a listener when I´m not playing , so I´m not really conscious about the provenience of the stuff I own. I have BN-LP´s that I bought while I was a youngster, so I have both Ornette Coleman "Golden Circle Vol 1 and 2", I have Coltrane´s "Blue Train" and I have the Bud Powell´s Vol. 1,2, 4 and 5 all as old BN LP´s but never thought about it as something special. They just there. But BN was slowly disappearing then. I had heard that at some point Horace Silver remained the only active recording musician for BN and each year dozens of classic albums went OOP. There were sometimes those hidous big instrumentation crap that BN made after 1972 or so, but it didn´t sell well and who wanted to hear electric jazz had better artists and labels for that style. I love a lot of classic BN albums but one thing I might say is that there were too many records of certain styles that are quite similar , I mean hundreds of typical hard bop albums in the 50´s and early 60´s , and of the typical 60´s trademark with Boogaloo and Organ, too many Grant Green albums, but in any case really important albums of the modernists of the 60´s , young Freddie, Wayne, Herbie, Tony, McCoy and so, and all the "Free Jazz" albums of Ornette, Don Cherry, Cecil Taylor..... and Sam Rivers of course....., that´s what I want to hear from BN. Yeah, those first two are BN albums I can enjoy (no Alligator Boogaloo type stuff 😉 ) , and I´m also angry I could not see the Cookers. Teddy Charles was really fascinating for me from a very early age on. I thought he is black like the players he played with (the Wardell Gray album, the Miles Davis/Lee Konitz album, and above all a stuff I had on a strange Davis Sampler when I was a kid, which had the Collector´s Items session and the Debut Session "Blue Moods". I loved that Blue Moods allthough it is more a dark, brooding sound record, but with three of my SUPER-HEROES of my early youth: MILES, MINGUS, ELVIN,,, Is Word from Bird something dedicated to Bird, is it Charles´ compositions or is it Bird tunes. Teddy Charles I think had a very very short active recording career, I think all I know from his was in the first half of the fifties. His vibe solos in the double time part of "The Man I Love" and his solo on "Tunisia" on Side B of the "Miles Davis/Lee Konitz" are genial........incredible !

Well, about audio I can´t say much, for me it is important to hear the drums, especially if it is a topnotch-drummer like Ben Riley. I never had an MP3 and don´t know about sonic/musical details. 50 years of playing music take their toll but I´m glad I still can hear a record without turning up the volume to the highest volume and still can enojy what I hear without causing noise pain for my wife. I´m only pissed of if a studio record is done in a way where you don´t hear the full range of the sound of the ride cymbal etc. Stellar musicians here. Though I must admit I´m a bit surprised about Milt Hinton. I don´t know much about him, he seems to be from a much older generation than Byard, who played with Mingus, and Riley who played with Monk. I have not seen or heard Ricky Ford since the time he was in Mingus´ Band, where he followed George Adams. I didn´t catch the Adams-Pullen-Band, but caught the band with Ricky Ford twice, it was the greatest. Jack Walrath and Ricky Ford the frontline......

Sorry I never saw "The Cookers". Must be a gas to see them. My best memory of Billy Harper is is composition "Pieceful Heart". What rhythm, what time is that ? Must be hard to play.....

I haven´t heard it but I remember well that I picked up a similar album also with Cedar Walton, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins with Clifford Jordan added, I remember some really fine versions of "Old Devil Moon" and "St. Thomas" and a medium tempo version of "I Should Care". It was very fine. I heard some Bob Berg somewhere, he was fine, I think he was somehow the post Trane generation like Dave Liebman. But otherwise than "Lieb" , he somehow didn´t find his place in the Miles Davis Group, but maybe this was not his fault, it was just, that otherwise than the Miles from 73 to 75 was exiting, the late 80´s band just sucked, no good tunes, too much synthies and drum machines.....

I´m no completist of any musician but saw Billy Harper with Max Roach and also have an LP "Live in Amsterdam" . This group which had Billy Harper and Reggie Workman was the best . I didn´t like Odean Pope so much at first hearing for his almost bassoon like sound, and found Calvin Hill´s too amplified plastic sounding bass sound not so fine. The music had more "heart" with Billy Harper and Reggie Workman.

Well I think the Sound of Shorter is a bit strange compared to other great tenorists, but I think I was made for the sounds that didn´t appeal to everybody, I mean Jackie McLean......as soon as I heard him I was "hooked" . It must have to do with the times I lived in and the jazz community I was surrounded by ......and my own personality which can be a bit difficult at sometimes. I practically started with Mingus-Dolphy collaboration, Dolphy was my first hero on alto and I think this has much to do with my preference of saxophone sound and approach of the notes......

The early Griffin album is very fine with Max Roach. But who is the other LP, is this Albert Ayler ?

It´s a very good album but the best stuff was still to come. My favourite albums of him are from 1965-1967, his most creative period. If I should choose only two of them it might be "All Seeing Eye" and "Schizophrenia". The next Shorter I have is only from my favourite group "VSOP" . I saw him live in 2005 but it was a more subtile music, it didn´t have that power that I love.

For me the rhythm thing in piano playing is very important. Monk would have been a natural drummer so good he sounds on piano. I try to keep at least something of that spirit and feeling in my own playing. But I can´t do it on a percussion instrument. Everybody who don´t know me things I´m a drummer so much do I love the drums or drums together with percussion, may it be bongo or conga. But what´s happening here ? So few musicians online the last 2 months ?

This is a nice little record and done about the time I heard Chet live for the first time (1979). Though I was already an active player and had been a jazz fan since my early teens, the name Chet Baker was completly unknown to me until there was a title story about him in Jazz Podium around 1978. Though this was too much about his former drug affairs, I couldn´t believe it. The man on the cover photo looks like a happy middle aged guy in casual look, enjoying a beautiful late afternoon in the park. I had thought than that drug users are more hippie style and lookin´ weird. The music is great, and I think trio settings like this one were ideal for him. Though first I was pissed of that there is no drummer, I soon understood that this music can be enjoyed even without drums. Later, Baker used a flute player but I somehow don´t have much affection for flute sound, especially when that guy Nicola Stilo got too much in the high register which hearts my ears. I have seen Chet Baker so many times in my live. The last time it was only a half year before he died and he played wonderful. I don´t have this but Lous Hayes is such a great drummer. I once saw him with Dizzy Gillespie and it was magic.....

John Coltrane was a fantastic ballad player all the time. It was only with Miles Davis that Trane usually laid out on them. When Trane died, Pharoah Sanders kept on with the great ballad tradition. "Welcome to Love" is an album that proves it. One of my favourite ballads played by Trane always was "I wanna talk about you". I´ve never bought an album more than just one time. I wouldn´t know what to do with them. Those I had on LP I didn´t re-buy on CD only with the exeption if the original album was destroyed or lost somewhere which seldom happens. I have heard those expressions "SACD" but don´t really know what it is.

I saw him many times live, mostly as a single with local players, or once with Curtis Fuller.

In my own context, Benny Golson is one of the best composers. All my live long I played at least some of his compositions in various settings or they were called in jam sessions. At least "I Remember Clifford" and "Stablemates" I think were played 1000´s of times. As a tenor player he is okay but not among those I listen to very often. I think I can learn more from other tenorists. He somehow capured the sound of Don Byas but is not as flexible as Don. And live I often heard him do "Stablemates" as a feature for the drummer and a fix gimmick in his shows was somewhere in the course of the tune a tenor-drums duet, but I had the impression that Benny Golson just doesn´t get it on that point. Stuff where the bass and piano lay out and the saxophonist does a duet with the drummer is something great, a highlight, but not with Benny. Gimme Dave Liebman for that and it is the greatest.

I bought the Jimmy Smith album sometimes but I´m not sure if it got a lot of spinning. As much as I remember, I had liked his earlier albums more. Especially the 1956-57 period, something like "The Incredible Jimmy Smith" and "Date with Jimmy Smith" which has much more fire. My impression was, that Jimmy Smith somehow sounds more smooth as the years went on. His early records had that "cutting edge" and in some of his early up tempo things, where the guitar player get´s in with some interesting parallel lines has almost the same energy as my beloved " Prime Time" .

I saw the cover many times when it came out but I was reluctant to buy it. I didn´t know that Max Roach is on drums, so if I had knewn that Max is on drums it would have been easier for me to decide to buy it. Typical west coast jazz somehow didn´t get into my heart even after 50 years of listening and playing. I tried to listen to some, but missed the tension that I´m looking for. Especially from the rhythm sections. I think I had heard the thing where Chet Baker played with Bird, but I wouldn´t say it was exceptional, it was good playing for a shy kid in aw of the encounter with Bird, and he manages to get thru, which is quite a good job... Rolf Ericson was a very very good trumpet player.