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I have it saved on USB to listen in the car and so I did 2 days ago when I drove to go fishing. I still remember how enthusiastic we young jazz buddies were when it came out. Those Spotlite LPs were treasures for people who wanted to hear Bop and Bird and so on. This and the Billy Eckstine record were favourites. Howard McGhee proves that he is just a fantastic trumpet player. He is in top form here and I think he was underrated, in comparation to Diz and Fats and Miles. For me he is one of the best bop trumpet players. And I love Brew Moore. You see how he plays his Prez thing, he could keep it weather he played with bop stars like Bird or Miles or Howard or Bud, and in that afro cubop surroundings. The Tracks "Cubop City" and "Tanga" are really fun. Just fine that chants and that rhythm, and it´s fun to hear how strange them their trumpet players and alto players sound completly different to what we jazzers are used to. And that bad tuned piano.... And Bird is on three tunes, maybe not the best Bird, but fine that he did it. "Reminiscing at Twilight" is just wonderful. WHO ROTE IT ? And are there other band that played it, does it also have lyrics ? How much would I like to play that live on an occasion, just between faster numbers......

Peter Herbholzheimer´s Big Band was one of the first Big Bands I heard. They were tops. I think I remember that Art Farmer once played with them. They had that mixture of straight ahead big band stuff at it´s best, and some jazz-rock numbers also, where the bass player switched from acoustic to fender. I think this was my favourite European Big Band. I was quite astonished when I read decades later, that Peter Herbholzheimer was born in București, the beautiful "Paris of the East"🙂. For me he seemed to be 100 la 100 German. Time flies, those 70´s was wonderful, this band was also on TV, on Radio.... I bought one LD album of the 70´s by mistake , just not my music. I mean I´m not deaf on jazz of the 70´s but not that way BN did it. And I think, other than electric Miles, Weather Report, Head Hunters, RTF, this was very very short lived music. The one of LD that I had, that also was from the 70´s sounded like background music in a Mall or something like that. Anyway I didn´t keep it, it landed in the garbage can. I love it. I don´t think it is one of the best known Prestige albums (not as much as the Monk´s , the Miles, the Rollins and Trane), but it´s really a beauty. And I love not only Milt´s fast boppish styled playing, but also his ballads.

That´s sad news. His father Don Cherry, one of my all time favourites from my very very early days of jazz, also died much too early.

Thank you Larry ! So, if I understand it right: Let´s say: Many folks say that Tadd Dameron was not really a piano player, he just played an "arranger´s style" , but me and a buddy of mine, when we were teenagers and eager studying jazz, we just loved his little miniature solos that you can hear occasionally on those Royal Roost live recordings. It´s mostly chords with maybe a few lines too, and many folks might say that let´s say Bud or Al Haig or Hank Jones would be better pianists, but we had....if that´s the right expression for it "a soft spot for his soloing". Our first attempts to form a still amateur band with sax, p, b, dr and later a guitar player to, that guitar player was a strange guy, he was ok and he comped nice but didn´t want to solo. "I cannot solo, why should I solo, I don´t need to solo....", but finally he played a sparse little solo for a half chorus, so we nicked him the "Tadd Dameron of Vienna" 😄

I doubt I have 10 records of any musician. Maybe more than 10 of Mingus, of Miles, but I don´t think of any other musician. I might like Helocentric Worlds as I Iike "Nothing Is" which I had purchased in the early 70´s. And when I saw Sun Ra live for the first time, I think it was 1977/78, it was a mixture of Free what I was used to, and of some really old stuff like "King Porter Stomp". But one thing I must say: I didn´t or don´t have big ears for traditional jazz, but my buddy and me, when we heard the way the Sun Ra boys do it, we just flipped out. It was fantastic. So the next records was the then brandnew 2 HOROs "Unity" and "New Steps", and that´s all I have actually. I don´t say I shouldn´t have more, but I doubt that time would let me permit to listen regularly to each of it. Unity has all the old Fletcher Henderson stuff, the free and still swinging space music and the space chants of June Tyson. And New Steps has an incredible version of My Favourite Things (I think Gilmore was quite close to Trane).

20 years ! Wow, congratulations. I´m very very glad to be here, great guys from all over the world. My English is not the best, I learned it mostly from reading liner notes when I was a boy, and from musician´s talk when it´s up to play, so sometimes it´s a bit harder for me, but really a challenge. So interesting, and like a family.

I think I saw Cedar Walton in trio in the earlier 2000´s in Viena, but I´m sure it was not Billy Higgins on drums. I don´t remember who were on bass and drums. It was great, really great, though I would have liked to hear it with a great tenor player too, like all those records with Cliff Jordan or later tenorists who followed....

I never saw this cover and as much as I remember I had it as "Hawk in Germany" , I think it´s a Black Lion thing or so. As I have mentioned so often, I like Bud´s recording mostly when it was with hornplayers, like this one with Hawk, like the BN Vol 1 with Fats and Sonny, the one with Sonny Stitt, the Birdland Live Recordings with Bird and Diz and Fats, the Massey Hall and the Curtis Fuller side 2 on BN Vol. 3. Much more than studio trio recordings. So, Bud is in top form here, his solos on "Stuffy" and "Spotlite" are incredible, and it might be the most exiting versions of Shaw Nuff, Salt Peanuts and so on.... But on this cover it shows a very young Bud, probably at WOR Studio in NY in the 40´s. That´s really strange......, as there are no photos of Bud with Hawk...... I think Bud played a second time in Essen, exactly one year later. The great bassist from Switzerland told once that he had seen the Bud-Pettiford-Clark union in Basel , but obviously there were no recordings of it. I think it was Barney Wilen on tenor on those.

Thank´s for explaining, Steve. So it´s something else. Didn´t know that expression. Anyway my first phrase was, what "soft spots" really means.

I don´t know who is Al Jaffé , but I had heard about a pianist whose name is Nat Jaffé. One of my grandfathas´name was "Jaffé" and he had emigrated to NY in the early 1920, but was not a musician, he had to do with art printing...... I have heard that this is quite a common name in the States.

What does "Soft Spots" really mean ? Is this an earlier expression for what they later called "smooth jazz" ? I mean you can play soft on certain points and use it as a contrast, but not a whole album or concert..... When I heard my first jazz on record more than 5 decades ago it was Miles´ "Steamin", and I loved that muted trumpet of Miles, but what really had fascinated me was that nevertheless there was a tension in it, with the rhythm section of Paul´s bass and Philly´s drums. And, listen on "Surrey with the Fringe on Top", or on "Diane" how it sounds when Trane starts his solo, and the block chords of Garland on the ballads, and Philly´s solo on "Salt Peanuts". So this was my true entrance to jazz and it has "soft spots" if you want to call it like that (I won´t) , but it´s not sleepin tunes.

I had heard very much about him, but must admit that the only stuff I heard was on one of Don Cherry´s BN albums. I think , he played piano AND vibes.

This is the Marshall Allan band I also saw a few years ago. In the late 70´s I saw the Arkestra with Sun Ra in person. Then, Marshall Allan, John Gilmore and June Tyson were in the band. My favourite album from the good old Free Jazz days is "Nothing Is" which was my first Sun Ra album when I was a kid. I had purchased it together with Pharoah Sandes´"Live at the East". And "brandnew" albums during the years I saw Sun Ra live, were the "HORO" label albums: The above mentioned rare quartet album"New Steps" was one, and the whole Arkestra album "Unity" was another.

Actually I don´t know nothing about Leo Parker´s live but I heard all his stuff on the good old Savoy albums, with Tadd, Fats, Dexter and so on. It seems that he was not very active in the 50´s. I also like his other album for BN "Rollin´ with Leo". Obscure musicians yeah. This is quite unusual for BN. I would have preferred some from the house musicians of BN. Yeah, they swing, but it could be more, better sounding bass and better drummer.....

I think in his last years he lived in Munich (Germany) and was married to a german woman. Shortly after Bobby Jones´death she was here in Vienna when I played with Allan Praskin at an open air jazz festival and he introduced me to her.

Oh, brings back memories. All those great musicians then. Jimmy Woode played a lot with my mentor Fritz Pauer, and with Johnny Griffin and the Clark/Boland Big Band, Bobby Jones was the surprise of the early 70´s when he was with Mingus. Nobody had heard about him before, and there he was. He is one of the best musicians on the two Mingus LP´s made in Paris in the early 70´s . Once I was presented to his widow and was introduced as one "who know´s Mingus´ Music very well". As I said earlier, when I was a kid, Dusko was to me in Europe, what Miles was in America. As much as I loved Miles´ trumpet, I loved Dusko´s trumpet and if I heard a big band I could say it is him who plays that trumpet solo....... Poor Bobby Jones, he died too early. I think he was just 50 when he died and it was rumored that it was something with his lungs....anyway he looked much older than he was.....

I missed a lot of what happened in the 90´s .

Bud, if he was right, was still great in the 60´s , but especially in Stockholm , maybe due to a rhythm section who didn´t know very much of Bud´s repertory, he tended to play super long blues tracks, Blues in the Closet, Straight No Chaser, Swedish Pastry, over and over again. His best performances until the end were when he could play with fellows who knew his music. But traveling as a single with local rhythm sections must be a drag....

I think I saw some video material of Dex at Copenhaga in 1983 and it sounds much better than the Village Vanguard from Dexters 60th Birthday Party, and much much better than the really weak performance I saw in Viena also early in 1983.

Very fine thing. I have it on video. If I remember right, they start with Tin Tin Deo.

Oh, he was a very early idol of mine. I loved his sound. "After Hours" and "Balkan Swing" where my first entries. And I heard him with several Big Bands also. He was really a master !

When I bought it in the 70´s, it had another cover with a foto of Miles where you see a big ring on his finger. The music was played in a "film polițist”, where a young girl had it in her record collection and the police wondered why a 17 year old girl listens to this kind of music. She had bought it because she was in love with a much older man (one of hear hi school teachers) and the music, at least parts of it was played in the film. Some days later in the newspaper was an article, where they explained what it was, since a lotta viewers had asked what it was. In my case, of course I bought it but for a young teenager then it was "too quiet", I was used to Miles with Tony Williams or to electric Miles.....

I love that Max Roach Quartet and it was my first Max Roach LP. But it had another cover with a big colour photo of Max Roach. It´s interesting, that two musicians in the setting were Mingus-involved (Mal Waldron in the 50´s and Clifford Jordan in the 60´. I think I bought it together with "Right Now" (Mingus from about the same time also at the Workshop in Frisco)

Of course, then I bought each new Miles Davis album. I think I was a bit disappointed by "Big Fun" which was just a collection of stuff, that was remainders from earlier sessions, like part of "Get Up with It". But I like the long "He Loved Him Madly" , it was the band with Dave Liebman that I saw, as well as "Calypso Frelimo" which was part of the tour programm. Other stuff from that double album was much older. One tune I think was called "Red China Blues". It never was played live and is just an old fashioned blues in G if I remember right. Isn´t "Rated X" that thing with organ only, very minimalistic, but dense chords the way Miles played chords on organ......, and wasn´t there a tune called "Billy Preston" , which seemed quite old, like the stuff that had been on the 1972 recordings ? I didn´t really know who Billy Preston is, I had thought there was a more obscure trumpet player who is on Mingus´ recordings from 1970, who has this or a similar name.... Is it possible that this was Miles´ last studio album until 1981 ? His other records of that time all was live recordings like "Agharta" and "Pangheea " . My favourite is "Dark Magus".

Most of my knowledge of ballads comes from what Billy Eckstine sang with his Band in the 40´s . This one, together with "Mr. B. and the Band" (also from Savoy") are my favourites of vocal jazz. I listen much more to male singers like Mf. B., Kenny Hagood, Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, than to female singers and I would like to do a gig with a male singer who knows that stuff, but you can find female singers very easily, but not male singers in that genre......