Gheorghe

I didn´t have that and don´t think I could be happy with it. I mean, as I did "sit in" for a tune because someone urged me to do it, but it would be unfair to to guy who has that hard job of having to be nice and quiet and just play in the background or taking requests. And it makes me unhappy to play if I don´t have interesting and fascinating guys I have the chance to play with. After some inactive years it was not easy for me to achieve this and have name jazzmusicians want to have me on piano. This was hard to get there, not from playing the instrument but from finding the courage to contact them , then sit in with them and then play a regular gig with them. I´m so busy to keep that thing goin´ on. But in the past, if some non jazz couples were visiting us at home and after dinner there was that inevitable "Gheo, play somethin´ for us".... and it was a torture, if you play a jazz standard, must figure out which one is simple enough that it might appeal to them, and after two of that kind they say: "Play a country tune", "Play a șlagăr", "Play a classical tune", and I don´t know no country tune , might know a shlager tune and might "finger" from ear that Bach tune that´s on "Bud on Bach" or one Chopin Prelude that I know from ear, And finanlly I learned to say "Look, I´m a jazz musician, I play jazz, that´s it". That´s like if you go to a șnițel -place or a sauerkraut place you don´t order chinese or italian or greek food.....

In my inactive years I went to a nice place, a bar on the second floor of an old little house called "L´Etage" where a piano player was trying to play simple jazz standards and nobody seemed to listen to him. During intermission I "praised his playing" (uh uh) and asked him innocently if I can play just one tune for my lady there and he aggreed and I did "When I Fall in Love" and that was the only time where the folks stopped talking, listened to the piano and applauded. Sure I never did that again, it´s not too kind to embarass a guy who got that job to play there. But I felt I´ll be ready again.

I also played that a few days on USB in the car. "April" is in a quite slow tempo for that tune. On live versions (with Bird at Birdland, with Mingus in France, and in trio at his comeback in NY) he plays it faster. I think the ballad interpretations on Side B are much stronger, very deep and with fantastic chord selections (especially "My Devotion" and I love "Burt Covers Bud" which actually is "Bean and the Boys" as well as "Woody´n You. "My Heart Stood Still" is also a very very interesting arrangement. A fine collection. I like most the live set. But on those sides at some private place there is one tune where someone sits at the drums who just can´t play. I think one short track has a very fine Buddy Rich on drums. I´m not necessarly a Buddy Rich fan, but that one is great.

oh, playing and nobody is paying attention, a nightmare. Once I really had to play a sax-piano duo - gig at some party for I don´t know what kind of business-people and not gettin´ applause, that´s the strangest thing, I never did such a thing again. Even in my "un-years" when we were forced to play weddings the people clapped hands ´cause we was good. But that was crazy. The money was cool, but the surroundings was terrible, that´s when I actually stopped it all and waited for better times......

It´s said that the "painting" on the cover of Ornette Coleman´s "Empty Foxhole" was done by Ornette Coleman himself.

Our live performance of "Cumbia" turned out very fine. I had got a percussion player added to the drummer. About the story: Mingus loved Italy and performed there often, in the same year he was involved in a discussion with a group of youngsters from the so called "Communist Party" where they said that concerts should be for free and Mingus snarled back "we play and you must pay". That´s what I remember what was written then. Anyway ....not to enter in politic matters, it´s easy to be a young communist in a democratic country where you didn´t have to live in a communist state, where the state controls who is allowed to perform and who not. Mingus was contacted by the italian filmmaker (I think his name was Daniel Senatore) . The "Todo Modo" never was performed live, but you can hear that the ideas of the a capella blowing (italian woodwinds added) stams from a short a capella "Love is a Dangerous Necessity" some years earlier. The different sections are swinging vehicles of a Blues in F with augmentit changes, and of "Peggy´s Blues Skylight", so there is nothing as special about it as on "Cumbia". The ending duet between Mingus on bowed bass and George Adams on alto flute was just something added after the session. Mingus was listening very very much to that record years later when he was paralized and praised George Adams for it, when Adams visited the ailing Mingus. Such a tragedy. Anyway, George Adams had left the band after that date and was replaced by Ricky Ford who is the saxophonist I saw in Mingus´ Band. Ricky Ford was very very good and could play everything from an old Hawk/Webster influenced swing tenor to avantgarde. But the records that were made with the core band + guests were quite overproduced and you rarley hear him. There is much more space for the guest players ("Three or Four Shades of the Blues" "Cumbia and Jazz Fusion", "Me myself and I" )........ Let me say that I might write much about Mingus, but he was my main source or guide to all that music, his death was a terrible blow for me and one of the rare occasions that made me cry.....

The second one is the one I have. Some tunes on it sound very strange, like one that is called "Night Sounds" or something like that. And that´s a very very strange and dissonant version of "Night in Tunisia". Thanks for your interesting remarks about "Cumbia". That suite-like composition has a special meaning to me since I heard it live before I heard it on record. I never thought about the thing you said that the different sections of it are not named or given movement titles. That whole list of movement titles is annoying on the other suite-like composition "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" where those section titles sometimes have dumb descriptions like the whole liner notes. Once I had to perform "Cumbia" on the request of the bass player I was playing with, shortly after the album had come out. I had to transcribe the parts (and I am the most lousy writer in the world), and had to give them sections "movement titles" so that we could rehearse the different movements. When there was the question who will sing that "Mama´s little baby" rap on that two beat feeling, they pointed at me because my voice would get closest to the voice on the record.

Thank you both ! About "original members" .....I came in later that´s why maybe I don´t know them.

Is it possible that Nat King Cole´s voice appeals more to women ? My wife like´s his voice, while I prefer Billy Eckstine (at least before he disbanded).

Strange, I don´t remember that nick. I think those whom I know from writing here all have been long time users who write almost every day. Well I remember one guy from Ex-Iugoslavia with the nick MMilorad or something like that, who had a Lester Young pic as avatar and I liked what he rote. But I haven´t read him for some years. Hope he´s doin well. It was no easy times for that neighbour country for many years, first some civil war when Miloșevici was their president, then some petrol embargou and things like that... But he was a real jazz expert and knew all the stuff.....

Great version of "You Stepped Out of a Dream" as I remember. I played that tune in a bossa rhythm on stage but like to cook on those changes also in a brisk straight ahead tempo like it is here. Many dudes here play the also on that chords based "Chick´s Tune".

Mingus in a local club around the time he recorded the "Moves" album ? Can´t remember that or was underage and could go only to concerts that started and ended earlier. About George Adams, well on the tour band from 1975 I thought it was very exiting, with Sue´s Changes as a wonderful new Mingus opus, with all those tensions between very soft and very powerful into dissonances. But I missed George Adams live, at least with the Mingus Band. When I heard them for the first time, Adams shortly before that concert had been replaced by Ricky Ford who might have appealed much more to you if you didn´t like George Adams. Nor I would buy the set because anyway I have the individual LPs which I bought every year when the next came out. I didn´t know that "Moves" was so important for many of the members here. In my opinion it was a half hearted and sometimes unsure try to organize a steady band. And I was quite shocked who unsure the colaboration between Danny and Mingus was here, a far cry from the dream team from years earlier or again a year later. I also got as a present once a strange 3 CD set I think live from Detroit 1973, which I think already has Don Pullen on it, but Roy Brooks on drums and somehow I didn´t enjoy it. Most Mingus stuff from the early 70´s to me was somehow half hearted and proves a lack of real interest of Mingus in what he was doing. My own impressions were coroborated by a statement of Arrigo Pollilo (a famous italian critic and writer from that time) who stated that Mingus reallly got back to his act when he had that steady band with Adams/Pullen and the later replacements for them. Interesting is the role of Jack Walrath. In the first years of the band he got less solo spot, and his importance increased in the following years. His playing in the last touring band 1977 was a highlight of all the shows. His latin influenced solos on the respective sections the suite-like compositions of those days were incredible.

oh, even the title of that topic was difficult for me to read/to understand 😄 What is a "Busy album". You mean records were you just can´t tap your feet, more the kind of albums or settings where you have to figure out things ? Well yes: In my case, even if it is more quiet or more stuff you must figure out, the most important thing always is the drums. I couldn´t "survive" without drums. So well, let me see: My first choice of something "quiet" where you have good and fitting drum patterns is the wonderful stuff Ornette Coleman recorded mostly in the late 60´s, like "Garden of Souls" which is IMHO one of the most beautiful things I ever heard (Elvin Jones on drums !!!) , and the first tune on the album "Ornette at 12". This tune also appears on a later Caravan of Dreams stuff with a string group together with Ornette Denardo Coleman on drums. That sounds great. Charles Mingus with Danny Richmond on the more rubato kind of sections, like the more open versions of "Orange was the Colour of her Dress". Hear what Danny does on that. Or "Sue´s Changes", same thing..... And there are many examples where Max Roach does it. Especially on "Scott Free" or "Free Scott" or how the title is.

I listened to this one for a certain purpose. I wanted to re-listen to the track "Klactoveedstene" because they want it on a set list for a following gig, so I had to re-check it only to find out that I had guessed the changes right. The intro is also nice, it has a bit the same "harmonic feeling" like the intro of "Shaw Nuff" and I´m sure it´s a gimmick from some non jazz original source that sounded hip to the bopsters. I had purchased that source record when I was a teenager, it was my second Parker LP. It was very cheap and covered quite a lot stuff for such a cheap record, since it has the Diz´n Bird at Carnegie Hall from 1947, most of the Dial Tracks from 1947 and a very very rare set from 1954 with 3 quarters of the Modern Jazz Quartet as rhythm section. "Jazz Tracks" in the way people in Austria pronounced it sounded much more like "Scheiss-Dreck"😀, and about the title of the tune "Klakto....rest unpronouncable" I thought in my still naive way that this is a foreign word for piano, which in German menas "Klavier", so I thought "Klacto......" is something that has to do with "Klavier" (piano) 😀. By the way, I never had heard the 1954 Carnegie Hall set from other sources and it must have been the only time Bird played "My funny Valentine". It´s strange, that not only Bird, but also Bud recorded that tune in 1954, while they didn´t play it usually. Reason ? The only other versions of it that I have is Miles once in the Midfifties and once in the Midsixties. I think I liked most the Midsixties Version with Herbie Hancock from the live Album "My Funny Valentine in Concert".

Yes, that´s it ! And the Konitz session with Miles I think from 1951 with those strange titles "Odjenar", "Hi Beck" "Ezzthetics" . So actually I think I have three from Prestige. I want to hear it. I have read much about it and I think if I remember right Impulse! in the late 60´s early 70´s made efforts to make "Free Jazz" more accesible for wider audiences, some kind of "Free Jazz light" . I think this one sold quite well. I saw it in the record stores when I was a teenie, but was a bit afraid to buy it for two reasons: I was hip to late Trane, to Ornette, to Pharoah and Sun Ra, but was a bit afraid that Albert Ayler would be too radical for me to enjoy, which he sure wasn´t . And I didn´t like the cover photo. For first sight it looked to me like an unshaved pelvis

Yes, and this was the second time I saw Mingus live, this band with Mingus playing. And on the tour, they played Cumbia very often. Before they came to Europe in July, they were doing South America, and I had a tape of a whole concert from Buenos Aires, which had the best version of "Cumbia" from the whole tour. Later I had a record with the Buenos Aires stuff, but it´s strange that Cumbia is missing and is replaced by a version of "Duke Ellington´s sound of Love", which he did not play in Europe ! I think the band toured very very much in that year. After Europe they did North Africa but I never found recordings from there, and after that he toured several cities in the southern States of USA. I think I remember he was scheduled for November here in Europe to perform with Larry Coryell and I was planning to go up to Germany to hear it (was it Dortmund or Koln ?), but it was chancelled. I never forget how disappointed I was.

I saw him in Velden in 1979 with Mark Soskin, Jerome Harris and Al Foster. It was shortly after he had recorded "Don´t Ask" so some of the material was on the set, as well as "Isn´t She Lovely" and "Carneval" from other recordings from 1977, 1978. And had seen and admired Al Foster some years before with Miles, so I was very happy to see him again with Rollins. I don´t know that album cover. I thing the same personnel is on "Miles at Newport". Everything live I like more than studio recordings, and in my kind my admirering stuff more than KOB might be a same "sacrileg" since when I bought it I already had heard "So What" and "All Blues" in much more exiting versions (to me) with Hancock and Williams than the slower pathes of the studio album. And I like Miles Davis other pianists more than Bill Evans, that´s my personal taste.

Moves ....I try to tell why I don´t like it so much: Somehow the bass articulation of Mingus or the interaction with Danny is not as good as on all other occasions. Some stuff sounds quite half hearted, that Opus which is just the changes of "Pyticantropus Erectus", that boring "Canon" , the vocals that I don´t really like. The Mingus I saw live had much more tension in it, I heard versions of "Fables" and of "Sue´s Changes" that really surprised me, and the live versions of "Three or Four Shades" as well as of "Cumbia". About Cumbia: From the sound with the augmented band that´s very interesting, but the live versions just the working quinted were somewhat faster and the drumming was fantastic. So I like both the studio Cumbia and the live Cumbia, and the live "Three or Four Shades" is not so overproduced, they didn´t have to record a Jimmy Rowles separatly for that little waltz in it, and the Afro Cuban parts were much sharper in the small combo.

I think I saw that at my record dealer back in the 70´s. I liked Tadd Dameron but was not prepared for Gil Evans in the same manner, so I only bought an individual Tadd Dameron LP with Trane (Mating Call), and a Musidisc LP of Tadd and Fats live at the Roost....

Yeah, the Electric Period was what was goin´on when I got acquainted to jazz. Though the first listening experience on record when I was a kid was acoustic Miles with Trane, Garland, Paul and Philly J.J., soon everybody was talking about the electric period. It became so popular that groopies at school would buy huge sunglasses and so on. It was just the times, it was to be a nasty kid in that period, interested in other stuff than disco. Nasty boys, raunchy girls.....that was our bunch of teenies😄. About how it was THEN, in the 60´s and not from point of today or from point of my youth or prime, I only know what older guys told me, those kind of "bigger brothas" who was let´s say 10-15 years older than me. Those who told me what the attended in the 60´s, many of them who went to Graz, then and now an important center of jazz in Austria, where they told me what they saw live, what I only heard later on record , like Rollins in Graz, the Max Roach Quintet with Hubbard and Spaulding and so on.....and of course Miles in bigger venues like Koncerthaus. My first Miles was 1973, and one friend who was 5 years older saw Miles in 1971 with that group with Steve Grossman and Keith Jarrett, he also saw the "Giants of Jazz" in 1972 in Viena. I was 14 only in 1973 so that´s were it started for me to go out and see concerts....

Yes, the i at the end, as "Goicovici" is the romanian phonetic way to spell slavonic names. Hungarian names usually were not romanianized as much, but for the majority the hungarian ö and ü was not easy to pronounce, and it is from case to case pronounced as "o" and "u" , or als "io" and "iu" for example in the case of German cities. So romanian people if they can´t pronounce the ö or the ü they say "Chioln" for "Köln", and "Niuremberg" for "Nürnberg", or "Düsseldorf" sounds like somewhat like "Diusedov"😄 In the 50´s there was a stronger nationalism when it comes to Hungarian surnames. My brother in law would have been "Jozsef" but this was not allowed in the Birth Certificate so in his passport it is "Iosif". And my mother in law´s name , born Ilona was changed into Ileana in her bulletin (romanian common word for "Personalausweis"). That would also explain the thing with Nadia Comaneci. About the phonetic spelling of "Jazz" in Eastern Europe.....in România even if it is written als "Jazz" it usually is pronounced with the european a, like in Russia. Jazz also had a big following, there were and still are international jazz festivals in Sibiu, concerts în Brașov and of course București, and there was the legendary festival at the Black Sea, in the holiday resort of Costinești but I fear on the litoral (Black Sea) there remained only things like șlagăr festival but I have not been at the Black Sea for decades, in the youth it was annual.

Yes, those days were wonderful. Though I´m strictly music and don´t care very much for the rest, let me remark one thing about the writing of his name. There was a phenomen down there in Eastern/South Eastern Europe, that each country writes certain names in different ways. I have heard that the original writing of his name in Yugoslavia was else than the way he had adopted it in the States and in Western Europe. Many of the slavonic names were written in kyrrilic letters and the countries that had roman letters like in my case wrote the name in a completly different manner. It was in this case „Dușco Goicovici” , but I think the common way to write it in all the world became Goykovich.

Nice to read a story about the first impressions of a certain record. My youth was similar to yours. And in my case I think it was Coltranes "Live at the Village Vanguard Again", the one with Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane , Rashied Ali. And I had similar feelings with all my first 60´s avantgarde albums: Sun Ra´s "Nothing Is", Pharoah Sanders "Live at the East", Ornette Coleman´s "Empty Foxhole). It is strange that my main preferences were 40´s bebop and 60´s free jazz. I think I have that, with those long tracks . It´s great horn playing, but somehow something from the rhythm section (bass and drums) is missing for me. It sounds incredible straight and metronomelike from the rhythm. Dex and Gray are extraordinary, Howard McGhee is one of my favourites, maybe I´m not a big fan of Sonny Criss in comparation to them.

I dont know what "biggest" in jazz terms should mean. I have heard that let´s say Stan Getz with his Bossa Nova stuff , and Dave Brubeck were more common names in the avarage households, but I doubt that they left such a legacy like Miles. There are some bossa things I like if they have tricky changes (the best bossa I ever heard was Hank Mobley´s "Boss Bossa" with Jackie McLean), but much of it is more background music, good for a late afternoon drink at the pool that´s how it sounds to me often..... fine and smooth, but nothing that might get me into extasis like some Miles Second Quintet, some Trane, some Mingus, Ornette Coleman from the same period. I don´t want to say that this is "better music" but God knows why those mentioned musicians appeals to me and makes me feel good, and other stuff doesn´t move me that much, they sound good and you can enjoy it with a fine lady and have a dance, but if it´s strictly about music, I´m more the lowner guy....

Must be nice. First I had thought this is the Dex-Griff Encounter from my old LP "Great Encounters" which also has Blues Up and Down", but it is not. The rhythm section must be really great. I have read so much about Hampton Hawes´ time in Europe in his autobio "Raise Up Off Me" and I think I have read that he had played with Griff in Italy, but didn´t read about an encounter with Dex and Griff together too. I only have one Dex-Hawes collaboration where it is also Kenny Clark on drums, but Hawes plays the Fender Rhodes, which also sounds nice. I saw Jimmy Woode very often during his stay in Europe, but to my shame I never saw "Klook" live. I had hoped he will be there with the "Paris Reunion Band" but he was not. I didn´t have the money to go to Paris during the time Klook worked there.