Gheorghe

What a great schedule ! Best luck for it. I love what you play !

Maybe I would have to take a taste of some of those Jaws with Organ tunes. I must admit that my disc "collection" of stuff with organ is outright meager. I think I have preferred almost all horn players on albums with p,b,dr etc. . But I remember the all time favourite horns-organ combination was the "Date with Jimmy Smith" with Byrd, Hank, Lou and Art Blakey.

It´s one of my favourite latin albums from BN, together with KD´s "Afro Cuban" for example. I spinned it a lot about 20 years ago and even non jazz listeners liked it and on other occasions asked me to spin it again. Of course they didn´t know who was Charlie Rouse, but it appealed to them . I love Charlie Rouse´s tenor sound and phrasing very very much. I think this was his only BN album under his own name.

They would have been scheduled here in Vienna at Porgy&Bess in early spring 2020 but due to the Pandemia that just had begun during that period, it was chancelled. What a pity since I had convinced my wife to go with me to that event, to introduce her to that fantastic musician who was one of my first live impressions back then in my teenage years. One of my key experiences then was "Lookout Farm" and "Drum Ode" just when Dave still was with Miles (great concert here in 1973 or 74). And the records got me acquainted to the piano- and keyboard work of Richie Beirach. I remember one of his main features was his fantastic piano work on the old standard "I´m a fool to want you". He has a special kind of voicings, very very individual.

I never had this album but heard it at someone´s place. If I remember right there was John Gilmore on ts, and Philly J.J. on drums, and there is a very funny vocal version of Groovin High on it, really cool. The sound quality is terrible, but is that stuff really recorded in jail ? I heard that Elmo Hope and Philly J.J. both were incarcerated in Riker´s Island in the early 60´s. Too sad that his wife Bertha who had a long live couldn´t keep Elmo a bit more under control so he would have lived longer.....

My wife always says she doesn´t like jazz, but she knows more than she admits and maybe she is just "overfed" with the stuff. If I hum or scat a tune while cookin´together with her , she might join and if I say "but you know my music" she would say "Do I have another chance ? I can´t escape from it. But she really knows if a player is good or not, she attended many concerts and above all, she told me a lot about stage appearance. Before I finally got back to play with really great professional jazz artists, and on my slight attempt to get back but playing with amateurs she would listen very closly and than after the gig tell me "what is this guy playing ? Get rid of him". "how does this guy dare puttin his beer bottle on the piano while YOU are playing, tell him to not do it ever again.....and so that helped me a lot.

I have all those tracks of two shows of Barry Ulanovs "friendly battle" Bands for Bonds. The first is on Spotlite and that´s where the bop men play them old tunes. Tiger Rag actually has the outing of "Dizzy Atmosphere" on it, since the solos are in A flat. On "Sunny Side of the street" in the out chorus they do the bridge of 52nd Street Theme and the outing of that theme. The second show where Ulanovs tells about "the great battle we won" has the personnel a bit changed. Diz is replaced by Fats, Allan Eager is added for "Groovin´ High" and Sarah sings "I I have is your´s " , and I think it´s Tommy Potter on bass instead of Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich on drums instead of Max Roach, if I´m right. The second show I don´t have on Spotlite, but on "Musidisc" where the first side is the Barry Ulanov stuff, and the side B is the Parker Set of the Carnegie 1949 I think.

Yes. But there were few people over here, who could understand that and just listening to it with that knowledge. And the worst were those who thought they can start from that without even knowing what it is. If I have to audition drummers, it´s natural they have the best time, but about the touch I´d say, I love those who play a bit louder (I want the HEAR them) and just have the ability to fascinate me, to amaze me. But I must not really do auditioning I know who are the hottest guys in town and if that one who fascinates me most of all of them and he is available, then I´m the happiest man .

I saw this band one year later at Kongresshaus, if you remember that place (now there is a Billa Market) on Mariahilfer Gurtel. It was a fantastic concert. I liked that formation with Bridgwater, Harper , Reggie Workman much more than the later replacements Odean Pope and Calvin Hill.

I don´t know this edition but the most common listening to Bird over here was that striped cover design series from UK. I don´t remember the name of the label, could it have been Saga ? And later there was one of the best bop labels in general also from UK "Spotlite". That was much unissued Bird on broadcast or live, and the Dial recordings. Not everything was apt for listening, like all those short excerpts on "The Band that Never Was" or too many alternate takes of the otherwise wonderful session with Earl Coleman and Erroll Garner..... but I remember the first "must" for a Bird-Lover then was those "striped" series. Who had it was "into it"......

That´s really fine ! So you got big ears. I´d love to play for you.

That´s really a good ability your wife has . Not many listeners have that . Well it also depends on what is the chord progressions. If it´s one of those hundreds of tunes based on rhythm changes in Bflat it is easier to check out, but if it´s a standard with another form and maybe more chords in it , it´s a little more difficult for beginning. Let´s say, tunes based on "Lover Come Back to Me" or on "Indiana" , or if it´s a combination of chords, let´s say one standard in the A section and another standard-section in the bridge. Eddie Lockjaw Davis´ "Hey Lock" is a good example for that: "Body and Soul" in the A section, and "Lover" in the B section..... But that´s the audience I like most, people who really know what you do. But I love to play for all who enjoy the music. For me as a musician it is also very important to figure out what it is, what not musically trained audiences thrills on jazz. Is it just the beat, is it the sound, I mean if they enjoy it without knowing who is doin what. Maybe it is more like if I look at a picture. I may enjoy it but don´t know how it was done. I also have invested much time in gettin the sound that might move people if it´s a ballad. So it reaches them, it must touch them...

With Ron McLure..... I remember Ron McLure was with a Dave Liebman Group in the late 70´s, a fantastic group. Was Ron McLure the replacement for Chambers after Chambers had died. I have somewhere a Kelly-George Coleman think with also McLure on bass, sorry to say it is a terrible recording sound. So, was this a late Kelly album ? I like his playing very much, but mostly together with other players like Wes, like Hank Mobley and so on. Is Tom Barney the same who played with Miles for a short period (between Marcus Miller and Darryl Jones ?).

I´m not really a Basie specialist, but I always liked that Basie Beat with Freddie Green on guitar. Only, sorry to say there are other guitarists even now who try to copy that style of 4 beat chords in combo playing and it doesn´t have that timbre Freddie Green had. With Freddie Green you more "felt" it than you "heard" it. But if you turn the volume up and do it, it´s too dominant and it covers other instruments or forces other players to go into a certain direction they otherwise wouldn´t go into. You can do it as a kinda gimmick but not keep doin it in a modern jazz combo.

I like his playing on Don Cherry´s "Complete Comunion". Before I heard that, I saw that there were many records under his name in the jazz sections of the record stores back then, but I didn´t know about his name. I mean for then avantgarde tenor I was looking for late Trane, Pharoah , Shepp and so on, but the name of Barbieri was not much mentioned among those circles. Then I heard the "Complete Communion" and it became one of my favourite jazz albums when I still was a beginner, and said "wow, so much good tenor" , but somehow I had the suspicion that those many records he made some years later was another music, maybe not really my music.....

I think Barry Harris was the next thing to Bud Powell. I don´t have records with him as a leader, but many where he is a sideman.

I must admit I didn´t even hear "arranged" Monk. For me, Monk always was quartet with Trane, Rollins, Griffin, Rouse. I think I heard that the last CBS album of Monk also was some big band stuff that sounded quite commercial......

I must admit I have no idea about what label later owned what former label. Verve owning Impulse ? Sounds strange to me, I always had associated Verve with more easier mainstream jazz like Oscar Peterson, I don´t have many Verve albums. Some of the Bird und Bud albums on Verve are a little disappointing. Impulse on the other hand, I saw so many reissues of Trane on CD, so it´s quite astonishing that they didn´t the same on the two important OC albums.

I have not heard him but I think I remember someone told me he even played Mingus´ composition "Good Bye Pork Pie Hat". Maybe this was around the time Mingus himself recorded it with electric guitars.

I think I read somewhere that those recordings were not made by Dean Benedetti. It seems like that others had copied his thing of recording only the Bird solos. I think Jimmy Knepper made the tapes of some of that material.

A wonderful thing and beautiful Walter Bishop here. And it´s beautiful how this album starts with a balld (Ghost of a Chance, I think I remember). I remember there is a Griffin-Original on it that is called "Fifty Six" or something like that. A beautiful stuff to play and improvise. I had bought the album as soon as it came out. It was in 1978 and in spring he was still in Europe where I saw him live.

I think I remember some guys of my generation had this, it was two discs and obviously an European edition. They all said "bad sound quality" and I asked to borrow it for casette making, and I thought if I got thru "Miles-Dameron in Paris" or "Bird-Fats-Bud" at Birdland, nothing can be more worse, but it was. So I didn´t make a cassete . If I´m right it is, or was those two records, which was also as separate records on another label (I think the french "Amerika" label. It was "Bird on 52nd Street, very poor recording sound, almost only the Parker solos, and the other I think was "Bird at San Nicks" also with only the Bird solos. So maybe they made the double album out of those two. I was a Bird fan after I got accquainted to him thru Mingus, and had those old live albums like "The Happy Bird" and "Bird is Free" etc. I still remember when I heard about "Bird is Free" that he plays "Free Jazz" on that😄

Interesting that I heard it much later than other albums. I was eager to learn the music of O.C. and my first album was the "Empty Foxhole" on BN and "Crisis" on Impulse. I think I heard THIS album much later and was astonished how conservative it is, it´s actually all through straight ahead swinging....., Even the key album "Free Jazz" is more a straight ahead thing...... Anyway all that was from the past when O.C. performed in my key years, the 70´s . Like Miles he had went electric, but Prime Time really was some fine stuff, and also a kind of "double quartet" with two guitars, two basses and two drummers.....

I don´t know this edition but Bitches Brew was still almost brand new when I was a kid and a fan of Miles. I remember there was only two tunes I didn´t like: It was the tune titled "John McLaughlin" that quite bored me a bit, and I thing there was another tune at the end called "Feia" or "Feira" or something like that, and though written by no one less than Wayne Shorter, it doesn´t mean anything to me. Not melodical, not rhytmical, but maybe those two tunes just isn´t my taste. I fell in love from first listening with "Voodoo", "Pharoah´s Dance" and the title tune and everything, even "Sanctuary". It was fresh music then, though at my listening time 1973 Miles had moved further with electrical jazz and the 1973 performance here in Viena really was something..... all that Al Foster, Michael Henderson and the wonderful Dave Liebman.....

I remember I saw a video of Lucky Thompson during that time around 1960 where he performs Anthropology or some such bop tune with Bud Powell, Michelot and Kenny Clarke, and I think there is also a fine guitarist Jimmy Gourley on it. That´s some first class tenor and piano and guitar there !