Gheorghe

I never could find the Concord CD, I´ve heard it might be interesting since it features more Monk compositions as usual. About Roy Eldridge and Clark Terry jumpin in for Diz I think there was a similar incident here in Viena. They had to play without Diz to the big disappointment of the Vienese audience, who was replaced by Cat Anderson and maybe Clark Terry. To bad I was 1 year too young to have seen it, my first goin´out to concerts was in 1973. Otherwise I could have said I have seen Monk. Since most of my friends were a bit elder (né 1955) they told me about the event which they saw. Too bad that the live recordings were not released officially I think a lot of people would have purchased it. About the London sessions, mostly the solo pieces it was kinda of a guide to me to play solo pieces. It´s just incredible , so good.

I have thought the last recordings were later. I think I have somewhere a maybe not really legit recording of two different live sessions. One from late 1972 at the Village Vanguard with Paul Jeffrey, Dave Holland and Tootie , which is very very fine . And one is from Newport 1975 I think, with Larry Ridley on bass I think. Both suffer a bit of bad sound quality, and maybe at least in my personal opinion Paul Jeffrey didn´t fit as well in the Monk context like others before. Too bad there is no recording evidence of the time when Pat Patrick (from Sun Ra) played with Monk. Anyway, even this 1975 performance was not Monk´s last. He performed their one year later again, and also did another concert with Lonny Hillyer on trumpet added, if I remember right.

This year I have heard several 2-tenor units here in Viena and some tunes were originally recorded by the Griffin-Davis-tandem. It´s strange but I didn´t have no record with that formation and was glad to find this 4 CD collection with all the sessions. I think the original label was "jazzland" . There is also the live at Minton´s included, and the "Lookin´ at Monk". Now I have listened to the first 3 CDs and the first 2 tracks of CD 4 and can share some of my impressions: I´ve always been fascinated by those two. Johnny Griffin, when he lived in Europe, was the first great American star musician I heard. And at the beautiful club "Jazzland" here in Viena I attended many many nights when Eddie Lockjaw Davis was playing. I even have "closed" circles somehow when I saw Johnny Griffin the last time shorthly before he died. This last time was also the first and only time, that my wife and my son saw and heard him. I love their collection of tunes and their unique sound and phrasing, even for not so experienced jazz listeners I think they are among those you might recognize most easily in a blindfold test. Personal favourites on those collections would be the wonderful "Hey Lock" based on Body and Soul in the A-sections and an 8 bar B section with descending chords similar to "Lover". And two versions of "In Walked Bud" ! The rhythm section is Junior Mance, Larry Gales and Ben Riley who later became long time members of Monk´s quartet. Maybe on some occasions the recording quality is not very good. The horns are captured very well, but the bass sounds weak in the mix, and from the drums you don´t hear the cymbals well. The piano sounds a bit tinny even on the studio records. Even if recording tehnologies in the 60´s were not up to now, but BN or Impulse had better recording sounds. One word about Junior Mance . I don´t think I have much from him, I think he is on an early Lester Young thing where he sounds almost like Bud. He has a lot of tehnique, almost like an Oscar Peterson, but at least for my taste he sometimes get´s too "funky" especially on Monk tunes like Epistrophy, were it´s a bit exagerated. But he is a helluva pianist, period.

Rainbow trouts from late autumn in the Austrian Mountains.

Though I´m not really into west coast jazz (maybe I was too young for it or it was not much discussed in Austrian and Eastern European jazz circles of my generation), this is really an allstar summit. As I said in another thread, it seems that they had great music there at Aurex, but it never appeared here, or I never saw it in record shops. Quite a surprise that west coast musicians play Bud´s "Un Poco Loco" if it is that tune, and I had to laugh reading the title "Popo" for the first track. We say "popo" for ass , with the accent on the last "o".

For ten years and kicked 5 years ago ? So you are very young or did you start smoking later than usual. In my case, I´ve smoked for 50 years (with 13 the first cigarette in the men´s room of the high school....all "bad" guys did that back in 1972,73). I was a heavier smoker in my late teens and early 20´s but reduced it considerably. I love to smoke a cigarette after hard negotiations, after a gig, after breakfast, lunch, dinner, and after makin love. Don´t see no reason to quit this, and no doctor told me I might. Having coffee without a cigarette might be like a gulasch without paprika for me.

Wonderful. I think I bought it then since it is one of the few occasions where Trane recorded for BN, I don´t remember well but besides "Blue Train" I think he was on "Blowin´Session" with Hank and Griff, on "Whims of Chambers" and on this one. I think there is a very long tune, maybe it is a Blues in Bb with an 8 bar bridge on which Trane is fantastic, and if I remember right there was also a ballad on it..... Somehow I think it was not as popular as "Cool Struttin´" but very very fine. There could be more from Aurex, I always had heard about that festival and the big names who all played there, mostly all star surroundings. But somehow I fear it never appeared here in Europe. The Blakey All Star Frontline with Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller, and if you want to include Wynton Marsalis (at least THEN we had great hopes that he will become the next generation, after Hub, after Woody) . In the same year 1983 I saw the Blakey Jazz Messengers (without the allstar frontline), but with Blanchard-Harrison-Toussaint as the front line, and the same John O´Neal and Lonnie Plaxico on p and b. It was a very good performance and they even played some "free" passages, and John O´Neal was a very good piano player, he was only for a short time and I never heard what he did after it. One highlight on that performance also happened. Dizzy Gillespie (who was scheduled for the next day) came on stage, looking like a "tourist" with a foto-aparat hanging from his neck, and he sat in for some topnotch scat on "Wee". It is possible that due to contractual reasons he was not allowed to play the trumpet also, but Dizzy scattin fast bop , backed by the Messengers also is something you´ll never forget.....

Yes, written in the original language is always the best. I´m really moved by the writing style of Mr. Lewien, but must admit I don´t know much about him. I googled him, and obviously he died a few years ago. Another book, somehow similar in the way it was written, was the original "Dance of the Infidels" in French, written by Francis Paudras. I never had the english translation, I had the french book as soon as it came out. Same like Lewien, Paudras had that sensible side and idolized Bud from a very early age on. The only thing that I observed is that Paudras obviously was very naive about the really purposes of Bud´s comback in NY. I think he really thought that Oscar Goodstein is just a "Gutmensch" who want´s to help Bud, but the truth was so obvious. How could a businessman think other than wanting to make money out of it. For him, sending a check to cover Bud´s hospital and sanatorium stay was just an invest thing, to get him healthy and than get the money back from the earns and make a profite. Francis was "lost" in N.Y. An thinking that he could change an erratic alcoolic but genius piano player to live a model citizen life without booze also was illusory. Francis somehow was a commercial artist with very bourgois background, he might have been a precedessor of what nowadays is called the "Bobos" we have here in Viena in the 7th and 8th district (called "Bobostan").

Very interesting link ! Thank you ! This is possible. I remember I have read in Lothar Lewien´s book about Chet Baker, that there was a scheduled concert pairing Teddy Edwards with Chet Baker, in Germany, but Chet didn´t appear so Teddy Edwards had to play as the only hornplayer. But sure I would have loved to hear him.

What a dream team. And when I think that Frank Morgan who has top billing here was completlly unknown to me during a time, when Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Mulgrew Miller, Ron Carter and Al Foster were some of my top favourites whom I had seen live in various surroundings. I´ll have to ask Allan more about Frank Morgan.....

I had purchased this some decades ago, I think it was shortly after Chet´s death. Mr. Lothar Lewien is a remarkable writer and his stories about the concerts he saw are great ! You almost can imagine those days in the best jazzclub of Berlin, with greats like Tete Montoliu, Peter Trunk and Joe Nay, Chet´s performances after his comeback in the late 70´s and 80´s . Mr. Lewien has a wonderful way to express his feelings as a young boy who just felt in love the the sound of Chet´s trumpet, and that this music was his best friend. He must have been a very very sensible guy too, with soft feelings. I recognized myself in the boy who fell in love with Jazz, in my case it was Miles, Mingus, Trane, Ornette Coleman and back to the bop stars. I also had an inner contemplative side, but outside I think I was not as soft as Mr. Lewien, more with a rauncious side of a hot blooded youngster. But this personality of Mr. Lewien is the stuff that makes good books. So, it´s a wonderful book and I enjoy reading it again.

Is it possible that Teddy Edwards was not playing in Europe, respectiv in Austria ? I don´t remember I would have seen him. But I heard him on some sides on Spotlite with Dexter I think, maybe it was original Dial sessions.....

This is one of my absolute top favourites. Billy Eckstine is my idea of a perfect singer. And this is the perfect band, never ever it happened again. Those incredible arrangements by Dameron and others, the approach of the songs, the ocasionally vintege bop like "Second Balcony Jump" or "Oo Bop Sh Bam" and all that . When I play a ballad, I THINK Billy Eckstine with Band, them great chord progressions, all that hip stuff. Maybe the last side doesn´t appeal to me as much as sides A-C , because it starts to get "Hollywood" with them strings and so on, but the songs still very fine, though the legendary band slowly disappears. All Stars you can give for that Double LP !

I have not seen him, maybe he had not toured Austria. I also was astonished when I read that thing that fellow musicians complained about him. Until then I also had thought he is articulate and grateful for the fact that he can play. So I also was quite astonished to read about him quite shitty on more than one occasion. Maybe it was like Sonny Stitt. Stitt could be ok on several performances but could be really shitty on other occasions. I saw him only once and it was almost a desaster...., the way he lectured the rhythm section on the bandstand.....

The only Frank Morgan I ever heard was on that Prestige Album Wardell Gray Vol. II on that session where he plays a very strong and emotional alto, and where you have the somehow strange but fascinating vibe sounds of Teddy Charles. I thing I wasn´t even familiar with the name of Frank Morgan then. It seems he got some publicity after having been released from jail, somewhere in the 80´s and he was feted in Jazz Podium as a Bird-like surviver, who playes first hand bop and there was a long story about him. But I also had heard statements from fellow musicians that he was very difficult to deal with, and though he claimed that he was clean after decades (which Chet Baker also said to Podium ) I think he was a bad junkey until the last moments of his live. I think I saw a you tube once where he let´s a young asiatic alto playin girl with the strange name "Grace Kelly" sit in and she was top, knewing the essence of bop from top to bottom, astonishing. But I heard that later she became more commercial and did singing also and so she lost me....

I had purchased this very early when about my first durable impression of so called "jazz" was the original Miles Davis Quintet. I didn´t know other musicians than Miles, Trane, Garland, Chambers and Phillly J.J. then, so all those five men were my "heroes" and I tried to find also records by the so called "sidemen". So my earliest discography had John Coltranes "Soultrane", Red Garlands "Rediscovered Masters", Paul Chambers´ "Whims of Chambers" and Philly J.J. "Blues for Dracula"........ And I discovered that it was almost "like a family": On "Soultrane" you also have Paul and Red, on "Rediscovered Masters you also have Paul, on "Whims" you have also Philly J.J, and so on....., (Dracula had Johnny Griffin) who was the first jazz musician I heard "live"......so it was "closing circles everywhere ......

I have heard only his 2 records for BN (and a rather sloppily played third one that was originally rejected). I love his unconventional style of piano playing. He didn´t seem to have much speed, but has a very original percussive and "two fisted" piano style, but above all I noticed his compositions which all are rare beauties. They have beautiful melodies and many of them were based on former bop standards with descending chords like Dizzy´s "Woody´n You" ( Gm7b5 C7 Fm7b5 Bb7....) or Bud´s "Oblivion" (Am7b5 D7 Gm7b5 C7...). Monk pretended that those chord changes were introduced by himself and that Dizzy learned it from him, or even Diz said that he had learned it from Monk..... . I don´t know classical music but once I heard some Rahmaninov and he used those chords ). I don´t have records of Redd from later years, but always wondered how he managed to survive, since his discography is quite scarce and even Jackie McLean stated that Freddie Redd is like some wonderful ghost that appears sometimes....., so I don´t know, did he teach to earn a living, or what else.....

Sounds interesting especially as Irving Berlin songs sounds good ! But I´m afraid it is with some nameless orchestra that might sound too much like "Hollywood" to me, like I had some disappointment when I got from my beloved wife one Ella CD with "Arlen Songbook" which has great songs on it, but it´s the kinda studio orchestra I don´t like. But for the same occasion she also bought me an Ella album with the Basie Orchestra, and that´s an album I like, and I´m sure you can understand why.

I also would have liked to read the essay. I always thought that the story of the "almost fight" in the studio was something that is invented and would be good for a movie. Maybe there was some discussion, why not. But never when I listened to those tracks, I had that story in mind, never ever ! And listen what Miles plays on "Bemsha Swing" . That solo is out of love for Monk, Miles has some typical Monk phrases in his trumpet solo and makes me wonder what would have been if Miles had recorded as a sideman for Monk, like Sonny Rollins did. Maybe at least for some time he would have been the ideal trumpet voice for Monk´s Music. And the story that Miles had asked Monk to lay out while he soloes, well that´s some good thing and Monk himself made a trademark out of it, layin out while the hornplayer was soloing, maybe having his typical "Monk Dance" and then hurry back to the piano exactly in the moment when his own solo starts......

Oh, then something must have been wrong with my LP-player or was it still a casetofon (during my high school days). Then maybe the speed of the casetofon was lower . Because the way I heard it it sounded like A natural. I´ll have to listen to the tune again, from a source that has it recorded with the normal speed. See, during that days I only had my pitch, but didn´t know nothing about different speeds on recordings. So: When some older guy spinned a Johnny Griffin-Bud Powell version of "Wee" which is in Bb, on that record the speed was up so it sounded a semitone up, as B natural. And I really thought they play it in B natural, a key that´s hard for me to play. I think there was also a fast Blues in what should be F, and it sounded like Gb, so I also wondered how fast they play that blues in such an unusual key.

Oh I see. Yes .... now as you said it, the pre - Haden bassist on record was Red Mitchell. Percy Heath, I think is on a Don Cherry - John Coltrane LP that has some Ornette Coleman compositions on it (maybe "The Blessing"). So what Miles Davis said really could have been from a live gig he heard, since he must have been in California in the fifties if Art Pepper recorded there with Miles´ Rhythm Section, and this maybe was in L.A. and yeah, maybe Miles had heard them. He was hip enough to dig some of this then "new music" , later he dissed Ornette mostly for his trying to play the trumpet, and called him "a selfish guy" ....

Thank you so much for sharing this review with us. It´s a quite critical review. But the description of "Klarinette als Flüsterrohr" may explain why I like his clarinet sound. I never could enjoy so called "old time jazz" with all them screaming clarinets and staccato trumpet and too stiff rhythm, but since I got posthum a chance to hear the original Giuffree trio with Bley and Swallow, I was surprised that I liked it. But I got to have time and "innere Ruhe" to enjoy it. I got to close my eyes and follow each aspect of the music otherwise you lost it.... "Loverman" I like much and like to play it, so I would have liked to hear that version. Well: "schwelgerisch wuchtige Phrase" can destroy much. Once I heard a jam of that too often played "All Blues", mostly preferred by amateurs who can´t play many chord changes, and the piano player "banged" on that goddamn piano like if he got paid for it . He did an heavy approach to it that is not meaned in the composition. Also, you have some amateur guitar players who turn it up loud and do their power "exercises" on let´s say a soft tune like "Footprints"..... Maybe the health problems of Giuffree started later. I remember I read a review .

Well I always had heard about Sonny Rollins movin a lot while playing, he would play while still not on the bandstand and come into the club and passing tables while he PLAYED. And sure he moved a lot around too when I finally saw him live. But Miles Davis did the same and they all had wireless mikes. The only time Miles was not walkin around was in the earlier electric days when he had the wah wah pedal, so then at Stadthalle 1973 he just stood there and did the trumpet with the wah wah. About the duo Sonny-Philly J.J. : "Surrey with the Fringe on top" seemed to be a tune wider used in the 50´s since it was the first tune I heard on my first own LP "Miles Davis Steamin´". Sonny plays it in Bb, but it seems that Miles played it in A natural. Can this be true or was the Miles version recorded with too low speed ? I was quite astonished because A natural is not really a typical key for tunes, maybe Miles liked it since his "Jean Pierre" also is in A natural. The Rollins - Jones duet is fantastic, since Philly J.J. is a whole orchestra himself. There are drummers like that, like the underrated Shadow Wilson: Hear Wilson and you hear the complete sound of the Basie Band.

It´s strange how little we knew about him here in Viena. When I started there was not much being talked about him. The first time I read his name was in an interview Miles Davis gave where he said about Ornette Coleman: "Everything was ok when he played with Don Cherrly, Billy Higgins and LEROY VINNEGAR". I thought "wait a minute......, who is Leroy Vinnegar". We had so many OC stuff with Cherry and Higgins, but it was Charlie Haden on bass or Scott LaFaro or David Izenzon. Later I saw that their must have been an earlier disc of OC where Vinnegar played bass. So, was he OC´s man before OC really became famous ?

I saw him only twice in the 80´s , one thing was the acoustic V.S.O.P. and one was something like "Headhunters II" with the original Wah Wah Watson on guitar, but with ex-Miles saxophonist Bill Evans on tenor, also very fine. It was tunes from the old days when we all bought them Headhunters, and at one point Herbie switched from the keyboards to the acoustic piano and played a long solo that was just incredible....the best Hancock I ever heard. I missed a thing "Herbie Hancock-Wayne Shorter" some years ago at the Viena Opera House. I think I half missed it half didn´t even intend to go since only p and sax without drums and bass is a bit thin for me, and the Opera is a quite strange surrounding for me. I thought, anyway I had seen Herbie and Wayne with other "full groups".