Gheorghe

Strange thing, just a few days ago I heard my only stuff I have with Harry Belafonte, it is "Lean on Me" with the Machito Orchestra on the Spotlite LP "Afro Cubop" where it is the last piece. Very very fine number. I had not heard that vocal number in other context.

Red Clay was on of the MUST HAVE albums in our teenage jazz "gang" . Such a wonderful album ! This one, some VSOP Quintet, some Milestone album like new Rollins albums, McCoy Tyner albums, and of course the electric jazz albums like all of Miles in the 70´s, Herbie´s Headhunters and RTF. We especially liked the live version of Red Clay on one of the VSOP albums. I would have been sure that this is something very very similar like "Aghartha". Almost same cover art. I´m not famililar with Keith Tippett´s work, but always was a freak of electric Miles. Wasn´t Ligeti a modern classic composer from Hungary ? I´m not so familiar with classical music, but I think I heard some once and dug it and thought it might fit to Miles Davis (I think on "Get Up with it" is something similar to Ligeti, that has Miles on organ). What is that "In Concert" up there ? From the musicians, is it something similar to VSOP ? I never had heard about that record

The best George Cables work I heard on a tape that a guy made at Vanguard during that period. That solo on "Moment´s Notice" great, with shouts of enthusiasm from the audience. And Cable´s original "I told you so" , which is bossa all thru on the record, is swing in solos on the live tape. And Rufus Reid plays a great bowed solo. Sorry to say I didn´t know that I had to reel back the cassette after hearing, and after decades, when I wanted to listen to it again, especially the ballads have terrible wovers in the middle. That´s the thing, got the cassette when I was 18,19, placed it somewhere and then in the 2000´s it´s not good anymore . Same with some Mingus cassettes I had......

This was around the time after I had finished hi school, there were two "brandnew" Dexter records in the record shops, this one and "Great Encounters" (similar covers). I is so long from that time, but it still sounds "modern" and is almost my idea of a perfect acoustic jazz quartet album. Usually I am 100/100 into the music only, but in this case I also must admit, that the cover photo, the design and the liner notes is perfect. I music colleage of mine was in NY during the time this was recorded and heard them play that material live at Vanguard !!! I think, Dexter still had a few very good years in the late 70´s until maybe the early 80´s, when I still heard some very very fine concerts. It was only the last occasion that was a disappointment for me and others and was painfully reminding of of the infamous "Lover Man Session" of Bird in the 40´s .

It´s possible that it is lesser known than "Black Saint" but also a wonderful album. I think that beautiful ballad on it, it´s titled somehow like "Love X" or so, I first heard it on the "Town Hall Concert" where it is also one of my favourites. Though my favourite Mingus period is the time with Dolphy, Cliff Jordan and Jakie Byard with all those live recordings from the States and from Europe, I like those earlier albums starting with "Blues and Roots" very very much. I heard them before I saw Mingus live (but this was after his famous "second group" with Adams-Pullen). So I might say his most exiting groups were the one with Dolphy and 10 years later the one with Adams-Pullen. (Tough I liked the one with Ricky Ford and Jack Walrath also very very much).

I´m almost an addict of the alto sound of Jackie McLean. On all kinds of music, whether he plays stuff with one step into avantgarde, modal, or on more traditional material like here. "What´s New" was a favourite of him, I saw him play it live with a dream formation: He, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Lewis and Billy Higgins, that was one of my favourite live performances. "Stable Mates": This is my most preferred version of that great tune.

I had those two versions of "Wedding March" when I bought the CD version of "Cumbia" since my LP was so much spinned when it came out (Me and my friends had listened to it so much as it was played live by the Mingus band. We loved it so much that we played it in the group I was in then . But when I heard those "Wedding March" tracks I had or still have doubts that it´s Mingus who plays that. It sounds too "pianistic" for what I had heard Mingus checkin´ out on piano. It sounds like a pianist with a very delicate light touch. It´s nothing else than the short "caucasian" piano interlude on "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" which is played by Jimmy Rowles. See, that studio version of "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" is grossly overproduced. I heard it live from the quintet with Jack Walrath and Ricky Ford and with Bob Neloms on piano. I mean nothing wrong with Jimmy Rowles, but to get him in the studio ONLY to play a short piano passage ? Any pianist could play that simple maybe one minute gimmick which starts with Wedding March and that little waltz that seems to be an English Waltz. And it was recorded at Atlantic Studio AFTER the "Three or Four Shades" recording session. So maybe it was done afterwards just as one of the versions suggested for dubbin in the piano solo waltz section. I think that "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" is not Mingus´ best composition, I was much more impressed with "Cumbia" and with "Sue´s Changes" from what I heard them play on stage. Until I didn´t hear it on record I had thought it was just a gimmick to makin fun of a "square audience" or so. They had some "gimmicks" in the stage routine then, like in the fade out of "Cumbia" Mingus would continue to play straight ahead walking while the others already had stopped, he plucked the strings and tapped his foot to it, and it went higher and higher up until you couldn´t here more than just his foot tappin ´. I a Brian Priestley discography I think I saw another studio session described as "late 1977" with a track titled "Way Down Blues". But I never heard that. It was between that strange Hampton session and "Me Myself and I"......

Well, in 1970 it is possible that Bud Powell was quite forgotten. The missing of Mingus is also quite strange, but Mingus in 1970 was coming back after many many years of semi retirement and his comeback in 1970 was much less glamourous than Miles´comeback in the early 80´s . I´m quite astonished that "Bitches Brew" is not present. Well he has listed "Silent Way" so maybe "Bitches" still was not in the record stores. The Wayne Shorter BN albums and the inclusion of "Real McCoy" proves good taste. George Russell I "know" only as composer of "Ezzthetics" (played by Lee Konitz-Miles Davis, and on a Grant Green record for BN), and from some more strange and abstract tunes in some Gillespie Big Band records from the 40´s, but they are the tracks I seldom listen to.

I think I remember he was very much active over here in Europe during my youth, but it seemed to be another kind of music than what I was listening to. It seemed to be more "world music" than what I understood as being "jazz". It could have been in that ECM groove. Eberhard Weber ? I think he was scheduled once on a festival summit, but I couldn´t understand much of it, it seemed to be very quiet music, it is possible that the leader was Jan Garbarek. I remember in my youth a lot of folks maybe a bit older than me, were into Jan Garbarek and ECM......

Is this the only one, that was released during his lifetime ? One of my favourites. I got into Pharoah Sanders at a quite early age, saw him live on several occasions.

I don´t have it exactly in my ears right in this moment, but oh..... doesn´t it have a similar way of chord solutions like "Cherokee" ? This one came out when I heard them with Johnny Griffin at Jazz Freddy. It must have been in spring 1978 and so it was shortly before Griff left Europe to start his comeback in the States, similar to Dexter. What a night. I remember they usually started the shows at 22:00 and I think it lasted almost to ora 03:00 or so. It´s possible that it was published later, but I heard them play the material from that record in late 1977, and sure they played stuff from it the following year also. Later there was also a trio record made in Munich, with Isla Eckinger on bass and I think Billy Hart on drums...

I have a batch of old Vinyls from my youth saved on USB sticks that I listen to while drivin´. Yesterday it was two obscure Charlie Parker things with Orchestra, which was unusual since I think I remember I read somewhere that after Billy Eckstine Bird didn´t want to work again with Big Bands. The "Bird with the Herd" seems to be a very very rare thing, it doesn´t have many cover text infos, but from the sound I have the feeling that this was after the "Four Brothers" period. They really cook behind Bird and also have good soloists. Bird is in top form. The other one I think I bought when this short lived label started, that was led by Bruce Lundvall, the former CBS boss. I had some of them, like this one, and a Bud Powell also from Washington (they seemed to have some access to Washington tapes ?), another one was a Clifford Brown live concert. This is also a fine Big Band, the drummer is very very good . There is also some tunes I didn´t know before. They say that on Bird´s last engagement at Birdland, with Kenny Dorham, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Art Blakey the "first night was perfect" and all that crap that´s written is about the second night where things didn´t happen. Maybe in future there will be discovered the good stuff they did when it was fine.

I always kept that as a key record. You see, after first hearing Blue Trane when I was in my teens, I was eager to find also recording dates from the musicians involved in that date, you know: Lee Morgan, Paul Chambers, Philly J.J., so I soon had this record, then Lee Morgan´s "The Cooker", "Whims of Chambers", which I still listen from time to time. I think I also had other Curtis Fuller albums, one with a quite unknown baritone saxophonist, but it is not as fine as "The Opener" .

I didn´t know about Tower Records. As much as I remember there was a huge boom of RVG-Editions from the late 90´s on, and they practically reissued all the classic BN stuff, I mean the stuff from the late 40´s bop sessions until late 60´s , and in Japan they had those reissues that had mini LP format. I have some of them, but there was so many that people would collect cronological from the cataloge numbers. There were also records that sure did not sell well during the time they were originally released. I mean there were so many Jimmy Smith things, Hank Mobley things, Lou Donaldson things. I have one with Milt Jackson that´s cool. But I never collected in the way to be guided by cronological order of releases, the way people did it to "have the 1500 Series complete". Sure I have records that I´ll allways keep like Mobley´s "Soul Station", Lou Donaldson´s "Blues Walk" and Jimmy Smith from that session with Donald Byrd, Lou Donaldson, Hank Mobley and Art Blakey. But it is strange that the RVG boom did not cover the BN recordings after the renaissance of BN, I mean when people like Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Jackie McLean, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw still were alive and burning. Fritz Pauer, fantastic ! And great to hear that a young guy from the States spins his records. I could write many pages about him. He was one of the very very best European pianists, like let´s say Tete Montoliu in Spain and he was my mentor. Not only the best musician I could imagine, but also such a wonderful person. He took me under his wings when I was still almost a kid and I´ll never forget at one concert with some really fast company he let me sit in after intermission. During the years I heard him live, if he played trio it was mostly still with Jimmy Woode on bass, and the drummer was Tony Inzalaco. I heard him with all the US stars who visited Viena, with Johnny Griffin, with Art Farmer, Dave Liebman, Kai Winding......all of them....

Lester Young is a very very important for-runner of the Jazz of the 40´s and 50´s and I have a Musidisc LP from the Roost that sounds astonishing "boppish". I saw or read about some of that Lester Young discoveries , but was a bit afraid to buy it, since I often had the bad luck that I bought a latterday performance of a living legend, when they traveled as a single with local rhythm sections, and I miss something. This happened when I bought some Bird in Boston from 1954 or so. As in Lester´s case a very very late recording, but I spinned it only one time. I didn´t get from the rhythm section what maybe would have done John Lewis, Percy Heath and Art Taylor or in that manner. I would have liked to hear a 50´s Lester Young record with let´s say the Red Garland Trio, or the Wynton Kelly Trio, or somehow like that.......

I think I have them all on record. This was the decade when I was really a big big fan of Mingus, maybe he was my favourite musician at all, and my guide to jazz styles from the past towards more free forms, and eventually also including some 70´s rock feel in his work. A giant, a reason why I play jazz. I must admit, I don´t like the "Mingus Moves" so much. For me things started really with "Changes One/Two". I saw that I can compare this in quality of music with the so beloved Eric Dolphy collaborations from the 60´s. That´s the first live Mingus I heard, tunes from that albums "For Harry Carney" "Sue´s Changes" ....

On the Trail.....that´s Fred Grofé ´s tune, isn´t it. I think it is a tune I always "heard" in a more modal way of playing. I don´t know this version, but my favourite is one where Jackie McLean plays it. I´m usually more a chord based player, but on "Trail" you can go farther out, open it more and get in a more modal thing..... I think I remember I saw this somewhere advertised then. "Double Talk" was the title of one LP. But the annoying thing with the 80´s BN albums was that they were extremly short lived. I have the "Jackie McLean-McCoy Tyner" somehow I got that, but so much else Mid 80´s stuff, it seemed to be OOP very shortly after it was released. No idea why....

I´ll have to give PC´s Bass on Top another try. My favourite PC album remains "Whims of Chambers". I remember that "Bass on Top" is without horns, so maybe I didn´t listen very few times or just one time to it. Red Garlands trio recordings, I don´t have very much, I like Red Garland very much but since he was the first pianist I ever heard (my first jazz album 50years ago was Miles DAvis "Steamin´) , it seems that I always was used to hear him with horns, let´s say with Trane, or his quintet albums. I think I have one trio album on Riverside, but maybe I have not listened to it in decades, I think it had a Neil Hefti tune on it and a very rare Bud Powell composition (So Sorry Please....it never entered Bud´s set lists . Dizzy´s Pablo stuff......, well I think I have listened mostly to "Montreux 81" with featured guests Milt Jackson and James Moody, that´s the Diz I used to hear when he was alive. Those late quartets with electric bass and electric guitar and mostly Mickie Roker on drums. The other ones...... hard to say. I have one Dizzy Jam 1977 also with Milt Jackson. And the more electric studio album with Lalo Schifrin. I got a nice album with Latin stuff with Dizzy, also on Pablo, my wife bought me to of them, one with guitars like Al Gafa, and one that I think is titled Dizzy´s Party or like that..... Sorry I don´t know who is Johnny Lytle......

I saw Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd in 1979 and he looked exactly like on this foto. White suit, a band of mostly young musicians, and he featured some Chick Corea compositions. Remarcable for an old man from the past. He didn´t use an acoustic bass, he had a Fender bass player in the band. Woody´s a bit old fashioned clarinet was somehow out of place in that surrounding, I think they did an oldtime stuff "Caledonia" too. It was the last act at an international festival, I was more into the more modern bands like Elvin Jones, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, but as a finale, it was quite a nice thing. The other time I saw Woody Herman was a more conservative combo with three tenor players (Al Cohn, Buddy Tate, Scott Hamilton) , this time with an acoustic bass and a bit more clarinet solos by Woody and a very fine vocal by Woody (I got the world on a string). I was never the biggest fan of Woody Herman, but sure I like his music. The stuff I spin mostly is a thing from Monterey with some big stars featured, favourites of mine like Diz, Woody Shaw, Stan Getz and Slide Hampton I think. In 1983 he did an interview with Gudrun Endress, it was a hard time for him, something with tax depths, he was quite bitter and frustrated. But he also made a quite dumb statement like "he can be a tough German, he can slap a bandmember in the face and then turn around and smile at the audience", He should not have said that, but ...... I always have a smile when I listen to him, though sometimes it sounds a bit too "white", especially in the 40´s, where I prefer the big bands of Diz and Billy Eckstine, they swing better and have a more hip sound for that time.....

I think a lot of help for non musicians is those quotes of other more popular songs in the solos. Yesterday my wife and me we listened back to some live video from a gig I played last week and she was delighted by the quotes of the soloists, the saxophonist gettin "Don´t be that way" and "Let´s Fall in Love" "Strangers in Paradise" , or playing a passage of "September in the Rain" on Tadd´s "On a Misty Night" (which anyway is based on that standard). So as she is not a musician, and not a typical jazz fan at all, those little interpolations help her a lot. That´s why she liked Dexter Gordon so much, his trademark quotes.

Very interesting story ! Well my high school times was some years earlier, but somehow there was no "place" for MF in the jazz circles I was in. About trumpet we spoke about Diz, Fats, Miles, Freddie Hubbard and started to talk about Woody Shaw. The better known Big Band then was the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, so somehow there was not really a place for MF. I don´t remember one of my mentors from that time would have told me that I must listen to MF to learn "my stuff". The only MF I heard on record was the then 4 LP set of Montreux All Stars, a bombastic mixture of some old masters like Dex and Stan Getz with fusion musicians like George Duke and Billy Cobham. And on some of the straight ahead things (they are very very long tracks) you have on trumpet Woody Shaw and MF. But I think I paid much more attention to Woody than to the high note outbursts of MF.

I remember I bought KOB after I had "Milestones", "Steaming" and "Miles at Antibes" or "My Funny Valentine in Concert" and maybe for my early musical "understanding" KOB was a bit to "quiet" for me. See, I had heard the faster live versions of "So What" and "All Blues" with Hancock and Tony Williams and they had exited me much more than the original recordings. About Bill Evans, it seems I was not so really aware of what he did , I liked to piano solo on "Freddie Freeloader" only to find out later, that on this one track Wynton Kelly was on piano.

I still couldn´t find it on Amazon.

I don´t have solo piano albums but when I heard him with his Arkestra live , they started with Lady Bird, which Sun Ra played solo as an intro , very very fine piano, and than the band came in with Half Nelson, I think on the LP I bought the next day they also had Lady Bird/Half Nelson on it, since it was a then recent recording.

Sincerly I can´t say what pressings from what country was. I´m sure this is important for collectors, but I can only speak for the music. So I´m quite sure a lot of pressings I have is not an original source but made otherwhere, but I was not really aware of this. If the music was ok, everything was ok. "Americans in Europe" was quite a strange output for me when I first saw it. But I couldn´t have my enjoyment of jazz without the Impulse! label, that´s almost a whole decade of jazz, of essential records of 60´s jazz. All them Coltrane albums (I don´t have all), the other formost musicians of then avantgarde jazz, like a lot of Trane followers like Pharoah Sanders, Shepp, NY Contemporary Five, Albert Ayler , the Ornette Coleman stuff on Impulse is also wonderful, and last not least "Black Saint and Sinner Lady" by Mingus. And if I´m really exhausted I might spin "Trane with Johnny Hartman".....oh boy when it starts with "They say it´s wonderful ..." beautiful ! You are right, they have covers with whatdoyoucallit "gatefold cover".....oh yeah, I remember when I bought my first, which most possibly was a Trane album, I thought it´s a double LP and tried to scratch the cover since I thought there might be the second LP hidden in it, and was pissed off that it´s just one LP, since it´s natural i wanted much music for less money.... I also remember that since my first Trane LP was "At Village Vanguard Again" I had thought that this is the name of the club "Village Vanguard Again", and when I mentioned that if I was not underage I would fly to NY right the the "Village Vanguard Again". And the guy said "why, you allready was there ?" 😀