Gheorghe

The first tune (I have a Dream) is partially based on "Darn That Dream" isn´t it ? Joe Henderson plays his ass of on "Prisoner". I´m not sure but I think to remember it was told that the record companies missed the occasion to record the Monk-Trane collaboration. I think I have one that has Monk on a toy car or somethin and it has Trane AND Hawk ! And then I think there was a live recording from a tape that Coltranes wife Naima made. I must have that somewhere, or USB, I think I heard it in the car. And that Carnegie Hall stuff I think it has better sound quality. But I didn´t know of other Monk-Trane recordings.

That´s the album with "No Smokin´" on it, isn´t it ? Boy do I love to play that tune, you just get more and more inspired chorus after chorus and folks love it. I´m not so much a conoisseur of the Woody Herman history but I see there is "Keen and Peachy" on it. That´s based on "Fine and Dandy" and I love the changes, it´s a fine number for really up tempo. Yesterday somehow it came over me to take a run on that. I was sittin´ at the piano to run through the originals we´ll record this week and after 15 minutes I got tired of my own originals and just to let my fingers do some fast action I played "Fine and Dandy" with solos for maybe 10 minutes....really fast, would be nice to romp on that on our next gigs. Valse Hot !!!!! I don´t remember if someone brought that up during the last years (after me comin back on the scene ) , really a good idea for a set filler. I rote a pretty waltz myself, but this one is even more pretty, gotcha do that with the boys..... Scott Hamilton is okay, saw him with Woody Herman, they had three great tenorists: Al Cohn, Buddy Tate, and Scott ! And don´t forget: Nice lady here on the cover, that´s how I like them dressed up..... A strange little album indeed. Maybe the only combination of Bird and Sonny, and a rare occasion of Sonny with Miles after he had founded the First Quintet. Right now I´m readin the book about Sonny and see that he played on many occasions with Miles AFTER the first quintet, at Bohemia. Too bad there is no records of it, as much as I like Trane, Rollins with Miles might be an interesting contrast.

Red Clay was was a favourite of mine 50 years ago and has been since then. But is this another record, I have thought on Red Clay is Lennie White on drums and Herbie Hancock on piano, if I remember right. The Group Billy Childs, Joe Henderson and Hutch was later, right ? Just got "Keystone Bop" the two CDs this Chrismas and it´s fantastic. So, is this another album I don´t have ?

A wonderful live record and a great thing is the sittin in of Kenny Burrell on some tracks.

Great record. My copy is still from the French America Label, which had many Mingus albums. I remember at first hearing I was a bit disappointed because I had hoped that it´s two drummers, I mean Willie Jones plus Max Roach. But soon I liked it very much. Nevertheless, from my then point of view, where I had started my life long Mingus love affair with the 3 LP set also from America label, the "Great Concert" with Dolphy, which is much more daring, and hearing the band on stage which sounded much "wilder" to me than this album, this was much more tame, but solid straight ahead jazz....., I also have the twin album "Chazz", also from Bohemia.....

I have the Roost material on CD but I think it has another cover and more stuff, I think the first tracks still have Miles Davis on tp, and later it was Kenny Dorham. I like very much those live sessions where you hear all the soloists, not "only" the Bird solos. And those Symphony Sid announcements , when we few jazz fanatics at high school heard those records, each of us had wished to get into a time machine to be there "diggin´ the gonest sounds of those wonderful guys and have a lot of musical fun until four in the morning......." . Sure, what counted most was the music, but still "half kids" we just did our own little play imitating that radio voice and that "ladies and genullmen" . It wen´t that way : "Let´s play Symphony Sid".

Those albums are wonderful and with the exception of "Me Myself" and "Somethin like Bird" came out when Mingus was alive at playing. It was like all my idols who were performing and put out a record each year, like Miles, Rollins, McCoy, Dexter and so on. I had a special affinity for "Changes One and Two", "Three or Four Shades" and "Cumbia" since that´s the repertory that Mingus played live when I saw him. "Me myself an Eye" is interesting since it is a suite like "Three or Four Shades" or "Cumbia" was. How good would it have sounded if Mingus himself would have played on it. There was another record of Mingus between Cumbia and Me Myself an Eye, it was with Lionel Hampton but I don´t think it was as much successful, since the arrangements are somehow dull and though Hamp does his best, his vibe doesn´t really fit to tunes like "Fables of Faubus" or "Remember Rockefeller at Attica"....

hope you be in Viena one time when I have a gig .....

😀 The good old days with all them german infos. I still remember the stereo albums "wo drauf steht : Auch Mono abspielbar"

That´s where you livin´ now ? Great ! Looks like the "Berg-Doktor" film scenes, almost irreal for us big city cats. But Beautiful !

You are right. All those Savoy albums (I think others like the Charlie Parker album) had similar covers and I think I picked up some of them during my "learning years" as a teenie. They all are great and I think that they were the foundation for my understanding of bop. All of ´em, the Dexter sides, the J.J. Johnson, Fats Navarro, Mr. B and the Band, Lester Young. The only downer for me with those old studio records was or is, that you don´t hear the drummer recorded properly. I understood more of what Bird and Co are doing when I heard live albums like "One Night at Birdland" where you hear Art Blakey really loud, and it makes you to understand the music much better if you hear what the drummer does. I mean Savoy had them all, Max Roach, Kenny Clark, Shadow Wilson, Art Blakey and who was there, but you don´t HEAR them. I think someone recommended to me the Black Lion Byas Album "Anthropology" where you hear the band better.

I love Pharoah Sanders since I was in my early teens. I think the first Sanders I had heard was on a Coltrane album from Village Vanguard, and soon I had my first album "Live at the East" which is one of my oldest LPs. I heard Sanders live on many occasions. Is this one an ESP record ? I heard him on so many occasions, each time with Dexter when they did Europe and one thing I want to tell but didn´t tell him: With all due respect for George Cables and I never will say else than Cables is one of the top pianists in his field, it is Kirk Lightsey whose piano solos I liked most , especially on ballads when Dexter played a ballad. Kirk played those ballads really pretty. Last week I met him and told him about it, and when I started to see him as working as an own unit. It seems that in the later years, from 1983 on Dexter missed a few gigs or sets and that´s when they recorded as a trio. This must have been before I met Art Farmer. He stayed in Vienna when he didn´t tour other continents and we could hear him so many times with the great Fritz Pauer, who was my real mentor. I don´t really collect records but one I have and I have it signed by Art with a dedication for me: "To Duke with Love", with the dream rhythm section of Cedar Walton, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins.

I could read only excerpts from it, but had to laugh about "English Boys with long hair" . Maybe his father was referring to the album, where Grant Green plays the Beatles Song "I wanna hold your hand" (one of the tracks that Serena likes, and doesn´t slam the door 😄 Sure many fathers of famous jazz musicians were proud of their sons, but it must have meant suffering also when they learned, that their boys all were hooked. How must it have been for Woody Shaw´s father (I had heard he had such a wonderful family) to have his son dead so early, or Bud Powell´s father who refused to talk about anything else about his son than the old days when he was a wonderchild kid. Grant Green also died very early, and his records from the late 60´s on didn´t have the musical quality of his mid sixties records...... I must say, that I don´t know anything about Grant Green´s live. He recorded so much, but I don´t even think that as a jazz master of the 60´s he was as popular as other BN artists like Hubbard, Wayne , Hancock, Tony Williams etc. .

You are right, the cover photo is catastrofal. Mr. Werner could have sued them for this 😄. I saw him live in 1980 with Archie Shepp Quartet and he was a smart guy. Here he looks like an alcoolic in the last stage, which I´m sure he is not, as much piano as he plays. It´s interesting that he also recorded with Mingus on "Something like a Bird" and it´s strange that he plays Fender Rhodes on that, maybe to please the demands from the record company that wantet Mingus do do more fusion (after doin the album with Larry Coryell doin the next album with Stanley Clark etc. ). But in the context of the straight ahead blowin vehicle based on Idaho, the fender sounds a bit eery sometimes compared to Bob Neloms acoustic piano.

I love it and have it as an LP, but with another cover, big cover photo of Tadd . "On a Misty Night" is my favourite track. I heard Pharoah Sanders do it live. And I performed it last spring at Porgy´s . They all fine allthough I don´t know which is which. But I´m sure I have heard a lot of those tracks, and some very fine Trane also on albums where Garland is the leader, and some blowin session Tenor Conclave. But if I had to choose one album from Trane in the 50´s it might be Blue Trane because I love Philly Joe Jones.

I think he was very much en vogue in the late 70´s or early 80´s, since they spinned his record with Monk Tunes very often in the joint that was our "musicians´s homebase" during that time. I remember some stuff but as LPs usually where spinned there (the defunct "Jazz Spelunke"), I didn´t buy it. I have not heard much about him later but might look for some tracks of Monk Tunes he played.... I think I have this, or is it a Musidisc I have, or I have the musidisc and the Spotlite or they are two different records. Anyway I think on each of them there is the complete "Bands for Bonds" material, I mean Bird, Diz or Fats, Lennie Tristano and so on. I think on one is a complete live set with Bird´s band with Red Rodney and Al Haig on Side B, and the other has some private material. I think there was so many Prestige albums where Coltrane played, as well as a leader as well as a sideman. I must have this but for some uncertain reason if I spin a Prestige track of Trane it is always the "Stardust" and the "Good Bait", I don´t know why I have such a preference for those two, maybe because Stardust is one of the best ballads, and Good Bait is also a more extended track of that old bop tune.

I didn´t have the LP , but I´m still pissed of that I was not there when they played Viena in 1972. It´s a drag that I became interested in jazz only a few month later and had missed that. Two guys who were 4-5 years older saw it, saw Monk while I, one of Monk´s biggest fans, missed it. At Vienna Dizzy was missing, he was replaced by Cat Anderson and Clark Terry. I had to go to concerts from 1973 on and saw Miles that year, but it still took 2 or 3 years that I could sneak into a jazz club though underage.....

Somewhere after midnight I had heard Max Roach´s "In the Light" I had seen Max Roach live on several ocasions, he is one of my idols. This quartet must have been around the 80´s, since I had seen them once with Reggie Workman and Billy Harper, and the next time which was in the 80s they were replaced by Odean Pope and Calvin Hill. Here they play standards, but how they play ´em, that´s important. I love so much to hear the sound of Max´s drums, his cymbals, it´s great.

I got into Moody as early as I had heard the first Diz albums when I was a kid, one of the olders had the Savoy record from the 40´s and another had some from the mid sixties, on both was Moody, and then I heard him on "Miles-Dameron in Paris 1949) which I own. At that time I was astonished how modern he sounded, it almost got to a point where it sounded Coltrane like or post Coltrane like. The only saxophonists I knew then was Dave Liebman and Johnny Griffin whom I had seen live. I was astonished that someone sounded like what I heard doin Liebman almost 3 decades later. Then I saw Moody an many Diz concerts, small group or big band in the late 70´s and 80´s until before Diz died. So the first time I saw him not as a sideman but a leader was those two occasions in Vienna and in USA , FL. I´m not too aware of discographies since I hear what I just pick or catch live, beeing an active musician myself....

Oh my boy, what a great track, thank´s for posting it. That´s bop at it´s best. "Our Delight" is a very nice tune which I have played at least since I had heard it for the first time on Tadd Dameron-Fats Navarro from Birdland 1949. Like the original, James Moody also plays it in Ab. But I have also heard Big Band versions from Diz and one from Mr. B where they play it in Db, which we also did. Other key, other feeling, that´s it. We two (Serena and me) had heard Mr. Moody first in Viena at Jazzland, where Art Farmer was in the audience, he died shortly after that. One year later we heard Mr. Moody again at Van Dyke´s in Miami Beach, FL and believe me or not, he r e c o g n i z e d us, came to our table, greetet us and said "saw you last year in Vienna, Art Farmer was there" and we talked a bit. Such a wonderful musician and Gentleman.

Right ! That´s a very good example ! And because I am very very familiar with Monk´s work, but don´t know much about Benny Carter´s , I also tapped in that mistake and had played "Lights are Low" only in the Miles manner until my young trumpetplayer, who has all the necessary academic knowledge, told me that Miles bridge is wrong. I had known only about wrong changes of Monk tunes, maybe because that was more the repertory of the olders from the "jazz streets" where I learned my stuff 😉

Monday night at Porgy´s : Kirk Leightsey Quartet......with trombonist Paul Zauner: They played an Abbey Lincoln Song I think the title is "Don´t throw it away" or "keep it if it is your´s", that´s a wonderful slow bossa with wonderful chords. I had never heard it before and obviously it was not on "Captain Kirk´s" playlist, since he had to take out the sheet. It was the soft sound of the trombone, that played the melody. Such moments are the best in jazz. You hear musician colleages doin´a song that moves you and you wanna try out your own version of it for the next time......

A classic. I think it was the second Miles album I had when I was a kid. But one remarkable thing about it: Miles had altered some chords of "Midnight" and most of the dudes now or even since I had started to play did those "Miles Changes" which always sound a bit wrong to my ears as I had grown up with the original Monk changes. Same with "Well You Needn´t". The bridge Miles plays and millions of followers have copied, is wrong. Dear Bill, listen to the difference and I´m sure you will recognize it.

I had not known that it is so old. I had heard parts of it when Austrian Symphony Sid (Herwig Wurzer-"Jazzshop") had spinned it and somehow had forgotten about it, though I had taped it on casetofon as all the "Wurzer-Stuff". There was also another Dușco Goicovici record titled "After Hours". Eventually I will have to get them somehow......

Right now I start the chapter about his time in Chicago from 54´to 55´. A period that I didn´t know about. It´s great to read some inside info about his recording sessions with Miles, with Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet from the early fifties. But I had not known that his drug addiction was so severe, what I read seems even worse than what I had read about Bird. Terrible. But not my really interest. I enjoyed the musical part of the story and am lookin´ foward to read about his further 50´s albums, those like "Collossus" and the BN period...... Some of my older friends back then had the "Way Out West" but somehow that hadn´t touched me really.......