Gheorghe

Dear friends. It must have been around 1977, maybe 1978, when there was at the radio jazz program a tune from Weather Report that I liked but don´t know the title. It was a very diatonic little theme, an almost pastoral feeling with a quiet groove, and the theme was always repeated. I think it had a more "foggy" intro, and then came the gentle rhythm with that little motiv that was repeated. Can someone help me ? Any idea what tune it could have been ?

Yes that´s it ! It´s a wonderful tune to start a set at a club date.

Is this the one that features "Let´s Call This" ? I love that tune and play it.

oh yeah ! This was, after my first Mingus album (3-LP Set Paris 1964) the second Mingus album I had. I remember after hearing the complete Paris Concert and declaring that I´ll be a Mingus fan (I was so much impressed by that music), my mother made me a surprise and bought me that "Blues & Roots" which I still like very much. I could write so much about Mingus......who was a main inspiration for me to understand the music at an early age. He was practically "my point of departure" for a live long journey....

IMHO the very best VSOP until then. This one was a "must have" among the jazz freaks in my high school class (I think it was shortly before the "bac" in 1978 and one guy had it and we all came together to listen to it and make cassette tapes.... Just fantastic, and that incredible live version of "Red Clay", also a favourite album / composition among us youngsters...

Well yes, those are photos of the musicians, but before the gig was made. I have a very nice actual foto from the gig, but I don´t know how to attach, if I become the message that the file is to large. I don´t know about "Fotos verkleinern"..

Here a photo of Allan from the Thursday-gig. I also have a band photo but it´s too large to post it here and I don´t have a program or knowledge to make it smaller.

Oh yes, I had some of those "Electra Musician" albums . I think it was a very very short lived label and it was started by Bruce Lundvall after he left Columbia and took his main artists, Dexter and Woody with him. It has some of the best cover photo of Dexter, this and "Manhattan Symphony" , but the album itself is not as good as Manhattan Symphony. First, Manhatten Symphony is like a typical Dexter Gordon Set from a concert/club date (I have a live tape made from Village Vanguard from the same time). They splitted this, one side with Shirley Scott, the other with his regular working quartet....., and that´s not what I think is ideal. For me anyway since I´m not the biggest fan of organ, that´s an own category IMHO.... And that´s pity, since Dexters discography after his leaving CBS became quite scarce.

I love that double CD, and very much the tunes where Kenny Burrell sit´s in. Wonderful compositions by Dorham too!

Same here. Never listened to it closley. I have other KB recordings I prefer. All other BN studio recordings and the live recording "On View at Five Spot".

Well for the short live Chambers had (I think he was only 35 when he died), 355 sessions is very much. I never could compile a discopgraphy since I´m not a collector. Of course, in my youth I bought most albums since I was mostly learning the music and the musicians. Later it was more, like...if fellow musicians talked about it, or ....my wife saw something and guessed that I might like it and might not have it, or sometimes if some record was recommended here , I tried to bring both the LP´s and the CD´s in alphabetic order where they are stapled, but.....you know, you just pick out one album and don´t have the time to put it back where it was..... And I think in an other under-forum here I saw some examples of digitalized discopgraphys, but I never could do it tehnically or mentally,...

Well he may not read this, but I love him, I saw him live, sad to say only one time, but with Billy Higgins. His "Amsterdam After Dark" is one of my favourite acoustic jazz records. I have watched some of his recent live streams at Small´s . He was playing astonishing well, but I was a little scared about that completly vacant look of him. Like from another world. The way he is sittin there and his vacant look is astonishing similar to Bud Powell. Just look here, how similar !

oh oh ! This is some of my very favourite musicians here. I fell in love with Dave Liebman since the days of his playing with Miles, and hearing him live as a leader, he was my favourite tenor saxophonist when I was a kid and teenager. Somehow I lost the trace and I have heard about "Pendulum" but don´t have the rrecord. This might be something. Al Foster always was my favourite drummer. Also since Miles in those 70´s, ...... and of course for acoustic jazz as well. If I could choose a famous rhythm section I´d have Buster Williams and Al Foster....

This is quite a strange record. I got it as a birthday present from my wife since she saw that it doesn´t seem to be similar to what she saw from my Monk albums (BN, Prestige). I don´t know what it has to do with the film, the first CD is nice as ever played Monk repertory with Barney Wilen added to the usual Monk musicians. The strangest think is that idea to play "Light Blue" with an early attempt to play a "rock rhythm" which led me into some speculations.....Monk claimed that he hated rock, but maybe Rockers loved Monk. And maybe a fusion band around the time of my teens would have played it that way. But it seems that Art Taylor had hard difficulties to play that beat. On Disc 2 there are endless and exhausting tries to get that beat straight, I mean the GREAT ART TAYLOR, but here he sounds like if you get a 13 old kid to try for the first time to play a rock beat on a set of drums..... Very very strange the whole thing....

Jamil Nasser and Buster Smith were among the long list of Americans in Paris. If I remember right, they are on the Dolphy Berlin Concert, I love that album. I have to very fine Indrees Suliman stuff on "Americans in Europe" where he plays in quintet format with Byas and Bud, and in quartet format without Byas. And he is also very fine on the Byas-Bud album "A Tribute to Cannonball" (I never understood the title, since there is no Cannonball related tune on it, or maybe did Cannonball play "Jeannine" ?

he really was, but maybe less than Paul Chambers, Doug Watkins and Ron Carter, is that possible ?

ad 1) 100% agree ! ad 2) You will be surprised: He LOVED Art Tatum, and it was his mother who listened to Art Tatum for hours. So it is even possible that he became interested in jazz thru hearing that Art Tatum records. I also love Art Tatum and listen very very carefully to him. His renditions of songs, those incredible chord modulations, he intro´s , his gettin into the theme with that wonderful left hand stride with decimes in it. WONDERFUL ! Art Tatum is so important, a genius ! So it was not about if a pianist plays many notes and so on, it was "play something, but not just play, SAY something. The tragic part of the story was, that my buddies mother was alcoolic and died in her early 50´s when he was 16, and at 17 he was a father...., well we were a weird bunch of guys then..... Oscar Peterson somehow was considered a "Streber-Typ". My buddy ´n me we looked weird but were good students. I remember when it was for Abitur, that we had to do our clausur in Latin it was programmed for 5 hours (traducere of Tacitus) and we finished after an hour and drove with the motorcicly to a "Wirtshaus" to have some beers and schnitzel.....😄

I remember there was a time I was less playing my self and was listening to more easy listening jazz like this one. It was my music on hot summer nights, with the windows open and just that sound, those long long tunes.... That was the time when I didn´t want to figure out stuff like I did earlier and like I do now, it was just the time for spinning records with really long tunes, like this, like "Long Drink of the Blues" etc...... Really a great musician. I never saw him live, since sorry to say I saw Woody Shaw only after that period, I mean when he had Steve Turré on trombone instead of Carter Jefferson. So I know him from records only. Is it true that he died very early, like Woody Shaw ?

The error was MINE ! I had told that class mate that "Dameron played with Miles and with Trane" though from the album cover it was clear that it was Tadd´s date and Trane was playing with HIM. Definitly right, but it is possible that during that time the names I knew and the names that would impress my class-mate was Miles, Trane, so I just may have told him about an until then unknown musician Tadd Dameron in context with those two (Miles ´n Trane). Yes, I had a Prestige album with a red cover and a large picture of Tadd playing on piano. Later, when I didn´t have a pickup, I bought a CD with a cover with those birds on it . That classmate, after some nights of listening to records were we spinned also the "Blaue Dameron Platte" (the Musidisc),and after some beers my classmate said "Dieser Dameron da von Dir, der is eh cool, der scheißt sich nix mit irgendwelchem Herumw.....sen mit 100.000 Noten wie der Ur-Streber Oscar Peterson. Der Dameron setzt sich hin, spielt ein kleines Solo-chen und das ist cool!. ". That´s how we guys were then. Not much knowledge about who is the leader, naming records after the colour of the cover (die blaue Dameronplatte, die grüne Navarroplatte, die rote Miles Davis platte -- that was the italian "Kings of Jazz" )...... just the music and our learing the music was what counted.

This is only leader´s dates I saw. Is there also a discography of sessions/concerts he took part when he was not a leader ? Now I see that in early 1979 when I saw the George Coleman Quartet doing live versions of "Amsterdam at Dark" , where Sam Jones was replaced by Ray Drummond, the cause may have been that he made a record with Kenny Barron.....

John Hicks was a fantastic pianist, and I think I knew best his playing with Pharoah Sanders, since that´s the most times I saw him live and heard him on record, before . There must have been also other occasions , I don´t remember. But then I saw him with that weak Mingus-Ghostband I have described earlier, he was on piano, but I ´m not sure if he actually had played with Mingus. He is was a phantastic pianist, and his long solos on that fast swing tune "Dr. Pit" composed by Pharoah are great. I have heard he had died quite early, that´s terrible, I don´t know why.... Ron Carter was one of the first acoustic bassists I saw live (it must have been even before I saw Mingus !) and though Mingus was my favourite bassist, I really loved and love Ron´s powerful sound, and it was the times of VSOP, you know. "If you could see me now" is a wonderful tune composed by Tadd Dameron. I have not played it for ages, you only find it always as the last bars of the tune are permanently used as the famous coda for Dizzy´s "Groovin High". Besides my favourite version with Sarah, I heard it played very well by Wynton Kelly with Wes, and Joanne Brackeen once played it to please a request. I can´t imagine how Oscar Peterson plays it....well once I heard him play an astonishing fine "When I fall in love" (maybe because it was a good copy of Art Tatum). Why did Oscar Peterson during all those years never use bros to play with him ? The great Burton Greene. He has a very interesting background with roots from Eastern Europe, I even think I heard once that some were born in România. Yeah, I remember it must have been in the early 80´s when no one less than Austrian Freejazz Pioneer Fritz Novotny (Reform Art Unit) had him as a special guest in Vienna. I don´t remember which joint it was, but Fritz Novotny didn´t play the usual joints we others played (Jazzland, Jazz-Freddy, Jazz-Gitty, Opus One) , I think it was more museums or modern art places. Burton Green was one of the greatest admires of Monk and could play Monkish like no one else. There was a special memory about that encounter: Novotny wanted Green to play one of Novotny´s compositions (the wonderful "Pannonian Flower") and when it was Burton Green´s turn to choose a tune, it was "Crepuscule with Nelly"......fantastic !

My entry in the music of Tadd Dameron was when I bought the Miles-Tadd album Paris 1949. At that time I didn´t know about many musicians, my "main men" were Miles and Mingus. I just saw it in the record store and bought it. There are also nice examples of Tadd playing piano solos, his treatment of "Don´t Blame me" and "Embraceable You" is wonderful ballad piano, and he is also strong on his chorusses of Good Bait, Wahoo and I think "All the Things You Are" (a John Lewis arrangement for the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band then). Then ....also browsing thru records I saw "Tadd Dameron - John Coltrane", which I bought and also liked. Then I remember I told a class-mate who also was a budding jazz lover and artist, showed him my two albums and he stated "well I have not heard about him, but if he had played with Miles and with Trane, he must be a big chief". soon afterwards I bought "Tadd Dameron-Fats Navarro" on Musidisc, this also has some nice solos by Tadd. I think many said "he couldn´t play very well" and plays an "arranger´s style" , but on Eb-Pob (I think a Savoy record) with Fats , he plays a very fluid bop solo that has some Bud and Monk influences in it.... And one TD composition has a special meaning to me "Hot House". I was still almost a kid when Allan Praskin was in town with some fast company and I was invited to sit in and they called "Hot House" and "you know the tune, kid ? " .......so this was my first playing with some masters of jazz......

This must be very interesting. Seems to be a quite late recording of Albert Ayler. I might try to find some of her recordings. It seems that she was a living legend of German Jazz in the 60´s already. I´ve heard or read stories that she was not easy to handle and had some years of and started a comeback towards the end. There must have been a review in Jazz Podium, that something went wrong at such a comeback concert. But all I heard is that she was maybe the most talented voice of jazz in Germany or Europe in general.

I couldn´t read the articles, because there was a pop up window that I have to subscribe now. I would have liked to read the experts opinion. Bird Diz Bud, or Bird Fats Bud was my entry ticket to that music and it never seized to amaze me. The first time I heard Bud was when I bought that CBS Double Album "One Night at Birdland" and that´s the first time I really heard Bud. About Art Tatum, I think that was earlier. I think it was thru Jakie Byard when he played stride sections on Mingus live recordings. See , Jakie Byard was everything from history to new thing, like Dolphy on his instruments. So: I discovered Fats Waller and Art Tatum via Jakie Byard, and Bird via Eric Dolphy. And buying my first Bird LP (One Night at Birdland) I discovered Bud.

Yes, he´s doing well and I´m so glad about that. Other gigs in Vienna and Lower Austria will follow.....