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I would have been to small to attend that concert, I just had entered my first year of primary school, but one of my earlier mentors, the late great Fritz Novotny from Reform Art Unit ("RAU") was there and told me, that especially the first part of the Concert (the Max Roach Quintet) was a dissaster due to unprofessional behaviour by Freddie Hubbard and James Spaulding . Anyway you hear Freddie cursing the audience after some high notes from his solo cadenza on trumpet. The Sonny Rollins part was wonderful, especially such an all star occasion with Roach and Merritt. I only had the LP which he spinned for me and I taped it on cassette. Now, reading the Eytan Levy Rollins bio, there are even some pages about that event and it´s described, what a desaster it was with Hubbard stone drunk and later arrested. I don´t understand why he was arrested only for saying some mutha.....words on stage, he hadn´t hurt nobody physically . And as much as I heard from the record, his playing still was strong. It was not like those "Bird at the Loverman Session" kind of music...... About speed on records: Anyway, having perfect pitch, such things are annyoing for me, but when I was still a kid and didn´t know about recorded at to high speed if I heard somethin in an "unusual key" I took it mot a mot and started to play it myself in that key. Because I didn´t read music and played things how I heard ´ em , and if the blues meant in Bb appears as B natural on the record, I would have thought okay, that´s what it is meant to be, so I must play it also in that unusual key. At least, that less of knowledge lead me to be more open for playing the same tune in different keys....

Which one ? Anyway, hopefully someone who will concentrate not only on early or middle period of Mingus, but later concert or festival appearances......

This together with "The Real McCoy" are my favourite albums of him before the Milestone Years. I have those two and some of the Milestone albums. I think the coby of Time for Tyner that I have is also a japanese reissue. I´m not interested in anything but the music itself, but I think those mini-LP-Cover reissues where quite typical for Japan reissues then. They are ok for me but if I would have liked to read the liner notes it is impossible, it´s too small, but anyway, the music speaks for itself. Great drumming on this one. Isn´t that Freddie Waits ? Lesser known than other drummers from that era, but he has it all and as Elvin Jones on "The Real McCoy" that´s what matters to me. And since I am not too wild about classic piano trios, those two each have a congenial partner , here Bobby Hutcherson, there Joe Henderson.....

Goin to see "Sweet Emma and Band" on Friday at Porgy´s especially because my old friend Paul Zauner (tb and bookings) plays with them and I wanna see him again .

I saw him with Dave Liebman, maybe in the late 70´s, it was also Adam Nussbaum on drums, Terumaso Hino on a Don Cherry like pocket trumpet, and young John Scofield. It was Scofield who helped me to get through to Liebman to get may copy of "Drum Ode" signed by the master..... Great band then, but there was two drunken japanese girls in the front row who wanted to flirt with Terumaso, he was not amused....., but fantastic music... Though I am not a real fan of Oscar Peterson, I can find him okay when he is not too overwhelming. I have...also from Montreux one of Jaws with OP which is nice, so this one might be nice too. Eldridge is my favourite pre-Diz trumpet player and he was so much ahead his time. Recently I heard some astonishing Roy in a pure bop setting (Giants of Jazz minus Diz who missed it, where Roy and Clark Terry do the trumpet part, and Roy is so great ! Of course Terry tooo !

I must admit that ......as is the case with almost all historic jazz albums....I´m more a kind of "selecting fan", and never had the urge to buy all what is out from a certain musician. Mingus had an enormous influence on me becoming a musician. When I was in my early teens, the 3-LP set of Mingus with Dolphy and Byard etc. in Paris 1964 was my second to first listening experience of jazz and it has remained one of the most important records to me. And then the times I saw the Mingus Band live from 1975-77 or 78 or what it was, with Walrath, Ricky Ford and so. I have heard one from the earlier 60´s on which Mingus often leaves the bass and plays piano and don´t like it as much as the records where he leads the band from the bass. That´s what Mingus always has been for me: One of the greatest composers of the 20th Century, and one of the most exiting artists on his instrument, the bass, if not the most exiting. There is so much energy in re-issuing or redischovering of very old stuff, but very little effort to issue more concert recordings from the bands with Adams/Pullen and Ford/Neloms.. The studio albums of Cumbia and Three Four Shades of Blues are too overproduced, the quintet versions I witnessed live sounded much better.....more energy, more emotion, more of Richmond....

Sometimes late at night I like sounds like this one. Hipsippy Blues, Close Your Eyes, and all that stuff. The Blakey Sound for me is the sound when I just want to get some of that pure energy, when I am to tired or to lazy to figure things out..... And Blakey was one of my first musical heroes......

I don´t remember right, but didn´t they work together when Dexter´s Film "Round Midnite" was made ???

Very interesting to read ! I saw the Arkestra with Marshall Allen just maybe 3 years ago, with Knoel Scott and Tara Middleton, just wonderful. My Marshall Allen live 1000 years ! Of course I also had seen the original Sun Ra Arkestra. I was a fan of Sun Ra and his band from outer space almost as long as I have fallen in love with that music called jazz. One of my very first LPs was "Nothing Is".

Very interesting how you describe the music. I always welcome writers who not only post an album cover but make their own statements about it. My impression about Duke Jordan is the same as yours. You have to have patience and calmness to apreciate his work. He does not have the flow and swing that Bud Powell had, and was badly dissed by Miles Davis, but his intros to Bird-Standards got legendary. He doesn´t have as much emotion in his playing like Bud had, and his disciples Walter Bishop or Kenny Drew and Horace Silve had, but if you listen closely, it´s a very fine miniature art. I don´t have trio albums by him, but have solo´s of him on a 1976 Cecil Payne album and on a late 80´s "Birdology" with McLean, Griffin, Cecil Payne or so. On that "Birdology" is also a trio number "Don´t Blame Me" I think......

Yeah, that´s it. Groovy album !

I have a double CD with the same personnel and it´s also "Just Coolin´" on it. As much as I remember it is a live recording. I think from Birdland, but I am not sure since I have two others from Birdland, the one with Clifford Brown, and one with Wayne Shorter......

Must be a gas, all of them I heard live under different surroundings. Well, this was the 70´s.

Always great to go out. Much better than listening at home. Have slipped on icy sidewalk last week and fell very bad on my left hand, had to go to urgent spital, but with all that bad luck I still was lucky it happened after the studio sessions for our CD. Having my left hand in a cast and unable to play with my left hand, I went out to see some of my colleages yesterday at zwe, among them the great Roman Schwaller with some of my very favourite fellow musicians. They did a fast version of "If I were a Bell" at a brisk tempo, "Fire Waltz" one of my favourite waltzes on my own gigs, a Kenny Barron tune which title I don´t remember, a very very fast version of "The Man I love" (I play it usually as a ballad, sometimes switching into double time in the solos), and "Have You Met Miss Jones" an alltime favourite of mine. Got a lot of wellwishes from the guys, the staff and the audience and will be back soon...... Next week I´ll listen to some fine vocal jazz by "Sweet Emma Band" featuring my old friend Paul Zauner, who runs the famous jazz festival "Inntöne" each year, near the German border line......, lookin forward to that.

That track Tai-Chi & Lyricon, I somehow remember it but I think I didn´t pay much attention to it, it sounded a little like pentatonic Chinese music or how you call it, not my groove, honestly. Minus that track I remember I liked the album very much, I think there was also a beautiful version of "My Ideal" on it, a ballad I really love.....

Ike Quebec ? I also have heard that he brought many artists to that wonderful label, though his own recordings are not so well known. I have all that Monk on BN on my old double LP with the paper bag coloured cover. Never heard something as great from Monk as that version of "Round Midnight" where he plays the theme and the horns have that mourning sound in the background. That´s a MASTERPIECE !!!! And the sides with Milt Jackson !!! I don´t play ALL of Monk´s composition , but "Round Midnight", "Thelonious" "Monk´s Mood", "Epistrophy" "Off Minor", "I Mean You" come to my mind, since we include at least one of them in many set lists..... Yes this one. I had only seen the profil photo of Bud on "Amazing Bud Powell Vol I and II" with that slim young man and was s h o c k e d when I saw this one, it seems that he doesnt have a neck. That´s what the enormous input of alcool seems to do to people who drink.......

I think I have that with another cover art. Mine has a colour photo of an extremly bloated Bud. I remember one track from it "There will Never be another You". The way he plays the chords on the theme is what impressed me most. There are so many cats who play that tune on jams, but in a very superficial manner as if they don´t know the essence of that song. If I have to play it, I try to get some inspiration from that very very emotional version how Bud plays it.

I was only 5 years old in 1964 but if I could move time back, because I remember we spent the summer at the French Riviera, if I had urged my parents to drive up north to Normandie , I could have heard Bud at Edenville !!!!! From recordings of that time I can say it must have been a very fruitful period: Mingus had that great band with Eric Dolphy !!!! Miles had Wayne !!!! Some of the best BN records were made, I think Dolphy, Wayne, Hubbard, Jackie McLean. Then all those Impulse LPs, Trane at the peak of his power..... But it must also have been a time where many jazz venues closed: Birdland was slowly disappearing, one of the last hopes to keep it alive was the Return of Bud. In general, I must say I always had listened to what was new then, what took music further and further , that power which established figures like Mingus, Miles, Trane, Rollins had, and the then "young cats" Herbie Hancock, Hubbard, Shorter.....it was an extreme great year for Wayne Shorter......., Joe Henderson, Tony Williams and so on. Somehow I have not shared that fondness for those dozens of bossa nova albums, some sound nice, but in general it is not what really exites me.

Recently I had listened to some Roy Eldridge where he replaces Diz on a concert of the Giants of Jazz. Great to combine Roy Eldrige with Monk, Stitt, and Blakey !!! And one of my favourite tracks from the past is a broadcast of How High The Moon made in the best days of bebop. And Roy was so much ahead of his time, he ends the tune with the Ornithology line , showing that he can do bop as well as swing !!!!

I´m a fan of any great Bud Powell, as well as early as well as late, with more preference for sessions with horns and of course sessions where you hear the drummer..... My step into Bud´s music was the CBS Double Album "One Night at Birdland" from 1950 with Bird, Fats, Curley Russell and Art Blakey.

This would be very very interesting. You mention Down Beat articles from the 60´s , that means after his comeback and return to Birdland ? Now, reading Levy´s bio about Sonny Rollins, Sonny met Bud after his return to the States, but I didn´t even know that his stay at Birdland was almost 6 weeks delated due to birocratie (carbaret card, old tax depts or something like that), and was cut short after not even 2 weeks ?! About your Bud collection: I have 2 sampler LPs of Bud´s stuff for Verve, but miss more variation, I like the Blue Note with Sonny Rollins and Fats, and above all the 2 LP set from Birdland with Bird, Fats and Blakey. And the album "Return of Bud Powell" usually is written off, but it is much better than the mid fifties recorded by Verve, I think. Better drumming, or let´s say audible drumming which I miss on some older studio records...... From all of Hank´s recordings after "Soul Station", I like this most ! I have never heard that and didn´t know about it. Cumbia and Jazz Fusion would be very interesting, I saw it live with Mingus in 77 or 78 before the album with the same title came out. I am quite astonished that it´s Kenny Garrett on alto, and not Ricky Ford on tenor.

Oh yeah, I know you are a big fan of Bud, we share that and I hope it will not last long that I can show you what I have learned from Bud. Allan loves to play Bud´s compositions, last year he did "Wail", "Dance of the Infidels" if I remember well. He was quite a few Bud tunes in his set lists. On this special record, there is some superb Bud on it, but it also has it´s faults at least for me as a musician: Some typical Bird numbers that didn´t enter in Bud´s own set lists, sound like the are played from sheet, and even more, the sheet they gave him was written for Bb instruments (tenor, trumpet) so it´s a whole tone up (typical B-flat numbers like "Big Foot" are not played in Bb but in C) . And.....I can´t hear the drummer !!!! Though I don´t know much about labels, I only knew that Bud recorded for Verve and BN, but the only Roulette Album he is on is "Return of Bud Powell" much later. So the two Roulettes that was published much later (this here, and another live from Birdland with Donald Byrd and Phil Woods) never were released during his life..... Poor Bud, so much music here, and I doubt he got a penny for it....

Great line up , though I don´t have that. But one of the greatest live performances I ever saw was a typical BN line up, which was just incredible: It was Jackie McLean, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Lewis and Billy Higgins !!!! The only Galaxy I have is Johnny Griffin´s "Return of the Griffin", which was made in 1978. Imagine: I saw Griffin in April 1978, that means just a few months before he returned to the States, in a small but famous jazz club in Viena (Jazz Freddy). A whole evening with Griff ! From 22:00 to almost 04:00 .....incredible. I had seen the "Equinox" but maybe due to lack of enough pocket money I hadn´t bought it. As my first jazz LP was one of Miles´ first quintet Prestige date, Garland was the first jazz pianist I ever had heard !!!!! I still didn´t even know who Bud, Monk, McCoy, was..... ). But I had never heard how he played after he had left Miles, I mean I have him on Coltrane-Prestige albums too, but strange enough nothing from the time I was already listening to jazz and he still was alive. It seems he had not toured Austria.... And those Galaxy LPs, as much Garland as much Griffin, they were in all record shops then, but did disappear soon.

I have my all time favourites of J.J. I think what had impressed me most during my youth was the "Yokohama Concert" and I was the first who had bought it and some of my high school colleages, even those 2,3 years younger than me taped it and hummed it, mostly the first title. I also like very much "Pincaccle " with a lot of stars on it. And needless to say his vintage bop sessions with Bud for Savoy. I have heard that in the 60´s he mostly wrote for movies.

The track list sounds very similar to what I had heard the same year. I think, his quartet with Soskin, Harris and Foster was his very best group in the late 70´s early 80´s. Each of them so great. This here must have been recorded around the time he made that great album "Don´t Ask" one of my favourites. On the setlist from the show I have seen it was also "Isn´t She Lovely" on schedule, and they also played the brand new "Disco Monk" , which - surprising enough for that kind of number - had a superb piano solo by Soskin.