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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 ?" 😀

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.