Gheorghe

It´s a must for bop lovers. Diz and Bird in top form and during the time they really worked together. The later Bird´n Diz reunion on Verve was a slight disappointment, it didn´t have the fire of this live date, even with Monk on piano. But I also observed, that Al Haig on this date still was a beginner, he became an excellent bop pianist from 1948 on, as the "Bird at Roost" sessions and the recording sessions with Wardell Gray and Fats Navarro proove, but in 1945 he still sounded very "stiff". But this is a natural developement. When I started, it sounded similar, it took some years to get the feeling to make things "flow in a natural manner" like it does when Diz and Bird play or Bud did play..... I once saw that cover, it might be possible I have that session since my wife once bought me a Mingus CD called "Newport Rebels" and I was astonished that besides some tracks featuring old masters like Eldrige and Jo Jones, it also had more stuff like a pianoless quintet with Dolphy and so on. I must listen to it again when the quiet winter days will come and I can find time to listen to records else then just checking out things.....

I don´t remember if I have this. From the BN albums that have Hutch, McCoy, Herbie Lewis together the one I have is "Time for Tyner" but it has Freddie Waits on drums and not Billy , and the one of McCoy with Joe Henderson I think is "The Real McCoy. Is this an originally rejected session. The only previously unreleased Hutch I have is one that was recorded with the same personnel like "Idle Moments" , but it does not really surprise me. Good for easy listening, but with a too tame rhytm section. Oh yeah, I think nowadays it is hard to find. Actually this was my first Jazz Messengers album when I was a teenager. Then it was on a RCA black&white series LP, same photo but a black cover. When I met Bill Hardman in person, I told him that this album was the first time I heard his trumpet and Mr. Hardman said yes he remembers that session very well. I think this was a lesser known edition of the Messengers, if I remember right they also did an album with Monk replacing the piano player.

@Pim and @clifford_thornton: I don´t exactly know how it´s called , I think my later father once said he is an "agnostic". I never heard my parents talk about God or religion so I didn´t grow up with anything like that, but my father who only listened to classical music also was very moved if he heard some Bach or Handel or Bruckner, who wrote compositions dedicated to Got or Jesus Christ whatever.... So maybe we fell the same if we listen to some of the later Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders or Alice Coltrane works, it moves me. I once spinned Pharoahs "Healing Song" for my then 90+ years old mother who also did not have that church thing and she loved it. She loved Coleman´s "Loneley Woman", Mingus´ "Meditations on Integration" and Pharoah´s Healing song.

I love what Gary Bartz does , maybe less those ethno jazz albums or what you call it, but maybe the latest Bartz I heard was on Heads of States, two albums. He sounds great on that. It´s quite astonishing how much his face reminds me of Sonny Rollins.

I have it on an USB Stick of about 30 LPs, that I have in my car. I always have it runnin from the beginning to the end and at one point I said it´s not really enjoyable, especially in the car. Kelly never disappointed me , you know what you will hear, it´s a lighter approach, like the way he plays "If you could see me now" on Smokin´ at the Half Note, a very fine album. Well I don´t think I have or had albums under his own name, the Smokin´ I bought because of Wes. But also the "Full House" also from the 60´s is very fine. On the other hand, though Paul Chambers was the ideal bassist for Kelly when Kelly left Miles and formed his own unit, but somehow Paul Chamber´s career got down a bit. I think he was the most recorded bassist in the late 50´s early 60´s but became less involved as a recording artist .

It took me more than 30 years to hear about the venue Rockland Palace. The music from that date was known over here as the album "Bird is Free", which had on the cover a blue sky and a white Bird. That was the early 70´s and there were many free jazz freaks around hear, but Bird kinda was their "James Dean". And many people bought "Bird is Free" because of the title with the word "Free". Maybe the bad recording quality, the somehow not always clear sound, the wowering piano, but most of all that incredible improvisations on the fast "Lester Leaps In" fascinated us. First shocked by the bad sound quality we all got back listening to that LP over and over again. I think it was two albums of that kind that we had , the "Free" and then "The Happy Bird" about the same time beginning of the 50´s , but better sound quality. Well time flies. When we listened to this stuff, that music was only 20 years old , and Bud had died only a few years earlier. Incredible. Sure I didn´t have the album any more, and my wife bought me the Rockland Stuff a few years ago as a CD with even more unissued material. I remember she liked "My Little Suede Shoes" . I remembered also "Sly Moongoose" from the original "Bird is Free". I had to laugh when I remembered that in the time I first heard it and saw the title, I still didn´t speak English other than from what I thought is English or from the old dictionary, slowly creepin´into the materie through reading liner notes. I had thought that "Moongoose" is the English word for Mogole, I mean for a man from Mongolia. So I thought it´s about a sly guy from Mongolia 😄

Sorry maybe a stupid question, but : Why are we all "newbies" ? We were groovers, veteran groovers, masters of the groove, groovissimi and so on ? Not that I need such a thing, but "newbie" for us guys who post almost every day ?

I love it, one of my favourite Joe Henderson albums. It was recorded in 1978 when I saw him here in Viena for the first time but don´t remember who was with him. I also saw him in 1979 and can´t recall who was with him. Here it is two top notch all star quartets featuring Chick Corea, Tony Williams, great !

I think Wynton Kelly was a model for generations of pianists. When I listen to the playing of a great austrian pianist and composer, I often hear some Wynton Kelly stuff or touch in it. And my late mentor Fritz Pauer also told me once "listening to Wynton Kelly, very "healthy" ". About the date with Paul Chambers as a leader, I think I had this on a double LP with two different sessions: One might have been with Cannonball and had "There is no greater love" on it, and the other is with Yusuf Lateef on it. It was on a strange obscure label named "Trip Records", and the Side 4 could not be listened to, it wowered . I also had an Eric Dolphy LP from the same label "Trip Records" with Jitterbug Waltz on it. I also have a Wynton Kelly - George Coleman from Baltimore, not with the usual Paul Chambers but with the also fine Ron McLure, but it is so bad recording quality, it´s too much treble, you don´t hear the bass strong enough and from the drums you only hear the cymbals.....

Well Coltrane was one of the most creative geniuses of the 20th Century. I have heard that his was fascinated in diferent religions. Like his follower Pharoah Sanders too, who got his own. I love to hear their works like "Love Supreme" and "The Creator has a Master Plan" and so on, and one thing that prooves their charisma is the fact that I´m a completley non-religious person, not an atheist, there can be something, but not bound to any church. And nevertheless I hear some religious message in those art works..... About math. and physics, I heard that quite a lot of musicians excelled in those materies in high school (Monk, Miles maybe, ).

Well Mobley said in 1973 that besides Trane and Rollins he was the only one who could play right for Monk and says "he is not braggin´". But.......as much as I love Mobley and he is one of my favourite, I never think about his sound and phrasing as fitting for Monk. Griffin was very fine with Monk, and my favourite tenor saxophonist for Monk will ever be Charlie Rouse. I would have liked to hear a recording where Pat Patrick played with Monk for a short period. I also heard some late Monk with Paul Jeffrey, but somehow I don´t like that so much, Jeffrey has a quite overwhelming sound and seems to repeat a lot of phrases but it doesn´t come off as well as it was with Rouse. Same with Dexter Gordon: I like a lot of his music, especially "Manhattan Symphony", but that only rendition of "Ruby My Dear" on "Great Encounters" (a leftover from the "Manhattan Symphony" date, I don´t like it. Ruby My Dear or Midnight , the two Monk things I heard played by Dexter are disappointing for me. Well he did "Rhythm a ning" but you must not feel Monk to play that. Any player who plays on rhythm changes at a faster tempo could do that, a super fast Griffin as well as a laid back Dexter......

I heard only the improvised chorusses. But anyway, there are so many "rhythm-tunes", most of them in Bflat. If players call "rhythm changes tune in B flat" , I´d play what they suggest. Many dudes want "Anthropology" since it seems it´s part of Jazz-School repertory, some or even more dudes want "Oleo", some want it with lesser notes like "Lester Leaps In" or "Second Balcony Jump". I like "Shaw Nuff" for the intro it has...., or Rhythm Changes in other keys like E-flat, A flat or D-flat, F or C, and some have the rhythm changes in the A parts and other chords in the brigde.

You sound so great, Michael ! And Lou back then. I like that stuff much more than the later organ featured quartets. I´m sure that rhythm-changes tune might be "Wee" though you don´t hear the theme that was standard program of Lou. That´s first rate be-bop, your piano, Lou´s alto..... Thank´s for sharing.

Yeah, this one. That´s what I heard. I love that album.

Yes, quality musicians . Well all the musicians he played with were great, but for a strictly jazz lover like me the period with saxophonist Bill Evan, with Mike Stern or John Scofield and above all Al Foster was much more interesting than later the musicians, who didn´t really have links to so called "jazz", and when the Miles Concerts became more kind of "shows" of a parody of himself. While others said, that Miles in 1981 didn´t have strong chops, I find that that whole stuff on "We Want Miles" sounds much stronger than later all those endless versions of "Time after Time" and "Human Nature". One exception was the show I saw in 1989. With a really virtuoso keyboardist Kei Akagi with deep jazz roots and the more "jazzy" repertory from "Amandla" it was much more interesting than what I had heard fom 1985-88, and I think I saw Miles each year until his death and had seen him shortly before his 6 years hiatus when I was only a teenager....

yeah, Big Beat Steve, I didn´t expect her sounding boppish, but don´t forget the Mr.B. album was the first time I heard her name. Sorry to say I didn´t see the movie. Ballad and bop as you mention, that´s very important, I love to play ballads and bop is much more than Bird´n Diz or so, besides the voice of Mr. B I always did like the voice of Johnny Hartman, and with some amusement the "slightly doggish" voice of Kenny "Pancho" Hagood. And no question , of course Sarah during that time.

I first heard about her when Ernie Bubbles Whitman announced her sittin´ in with the Billy Eckstine Big Band, I think the tune is "´Deed I do" . Well it is not as boppish as the rest of the recordings, but we always enjoyed it, when that Spotlite album "Together" came out.

I never heard Zoot live and might admit, that during the time, where most of the musicians discussed here still lived and were active on the scene, Zoot or Al would not have been my main interest or in general among players of any instruments over here in Austria. Trane was the thing even long after his death, and Rollins was a model for budding tenorplayers...., and I also fear that Zoot was only a smaller amount on Pablo, who had the "big heads" Oscar Peterson, Ella, Trumpet Battles and so on. On the other hand I saw Al Cohn live when he maybe was under contract by Concord. Well Concord was another kind of thing, also very much based on then contemporanous mainstream - swing. Xanadu was much better, but I think I only have one record where Dexter is combined with maybe Al Cohn or Zoot Sims and maybe a rhythm section around Barry Harris I suppose..... The Al Cohn I saw and heard sounded very much like he always sounded and as @Peter Friedman describes it as in the vein of a Jewish Cantor. But on that settling Al Cohn was combined with Scott Hamilton and Buddy Tate and I must say I listened more to Cohn and to Buddy Tate than to Hamilton for some reasons and still would do so. Actually that was a Woody Herman Allstar Gathering, the only time I saw Woddy Herman with a small format (well I think it was a septet). Nothing special or exiting musically speaking, but fun..... And as I said, the first Al Cohn - Zoot Sims I heard was that "Miles and Horns" Session which is more Al Cohn (who composed all tunes). They sound nice but remained a curiosity in my few Miles albums I had then .....,

I don´t care so much for all that stuff Lou Donaldson said on stage, and dissing Free Jazz and so, but as a player, he is really a teacher. You listen to his phrasings, and very much of the stuff is really right so you don´t have to let him say all his stuff, you better listen or listened when learning, and find the answer in his playing. He got it all, the sound, the rhythmic approach, the phrasings, the knowledge of harmony and all.

Really wonderful to have this 2 CD document of the earlier version of Dizzy´s Big Band. Well, Monk was replaced shortly afterwards by John Lewis, but I think that edition was the one which is also on "Jivin´ in Bebop", the fine film. This was shortly before Dizzy got Chano Pozo and included more afro-cuban material, like "Tin Tin Deo", Manteca" and so on.....

At first hearing and still an unexperienced listener it was hard for me to tell who actually plays a solo. I have Miles and Horns, which has both of them added, mostly Al Cohn compositions. And I have something like a Tenor Conclave on Prestige, with Trane, Mobley and them both. I think at some point it was easier to identify each of them by close listening. In my opinion Al Cohn has more the tendence to bend notes and play in a more "singing" mode, while Zoot Sims sounds a little more "boppish", it seems that he had some more Bird also in his playing. They all sound fine to me, As much as Brew Moore or Allen Eager, and Stan Getz maybe was the most individual, most constant and most flexible and most famous of them. I would have liked to hear some more Lester Young with so called "modern" rhythm sections like one on Musidisc I think from the Roost which has Roy Haynes on it. I wonder how he would have sounded in the 50´s with some rhythm section like Red Garland, Paul Chambers , Philly J.J. or Art Taylor. Lester might have sounded good also with a 40´s rhythm section like Al Haig or John Lewis, Tommy Potter and Max Roach I think.....

You welcome: In the case of Woody Shaw, he was THE trumpet voice of my late teens to the mid twens. He was on the cover photo of DB and featured with a long interview and I swear I didn´t know about his drug problems. From the music, his very very intellectual side and the cover photos of him with his father and his baby son he looked like a healthy, successful man at the peak of his power. I didn´t even now about his problems about loosing sight. So I was quite astonished, when in 1987 he was booked into a local club and not a concert hall, as single artist with a local picked up rhythm section. I was early and he sat at the bar and drunk numerous little bottles of "Jaegermeister", a digestive alcoolic drink. I couldn´t count them. When the set started, he was led on stage, where he threw his cigarette end on the stage which he did during the whole set. The playing was mediocre and quite uninspired compared with what I had heard live or on records a few years earlier. It was an embarrassing evening and hard to listen to or to look at Woody. I think he died shortly after that, and like in case of Chet Baker, it was under most tragic and misterious circumstances. Shortly before he left Europe and went back to the States, there was an announce in the german Jazzmagazine "Jazzpodium" that a bank account in Elvetia was opened for donations for the seriously sick Woody Shaw, who was unable to play......This was only a short time after that sad gig in 1987 in Viena.

I saw them live, it must have been early 1983. In Vienna it was the complete quintet with Steve Turree. That band with Turré , Miller, James, Reedus was one of the best steady working bands of the early 80s. I think it lasted quite long but I don´t know when it disbanded. In my case it was only one set, since it was a Summit Concert titled "Bebop Supernight" and the first set was Johnny Griffin, the second Woody Shaw and the third a very disappointing Dexter Gordon, who let the trio play some numbers and came in late, it was embarrassing, even more since it was advertised that Griffin-Woody-Dexter would continue as an All Star Bonus.....didn´t happen... @sidewinder : Yes it must have been the same schedule, Early 1983. Strange that in Bremen Steve Turré was not present....

great joke

Mulligan was a very flexible guy. I must admit I don´t really have the stuff that had made him famous, I mean those things from Westcoast Jazz, but to hear Mulligan with others was always fantastic, this one with Monk, the dates when he sat in with Mingus (it seems they were quite close in Mingus´ later years), and one special event with Dizzy (Dream Band in the early 80´s I think") where he plays the quintet numbers in an all star setting (Diz, Mulligan, John Lewis, Max Roach or so). On the Monk date I especially love "Midnight", "I Mean You" and that fantastic "Sweet and Lovely " . And LISTEN to Shadow Wilson !!! He was a master, underrated, but he swings like a whole Basie Orchestra !!!! I love it. I bought it among my first batch of LPs when I got some money from my father for good high school when I was a teenager. I was mostly lookin for the few musicians I knew (Miles, Trane, Mingus) and since it had also Philly J.J on drums, I bought it. I had heard some Dameron with Miles before. In my case it was a red album cover with a large black white photo of Dameron at the piano, and it was titled "Tadd Dameron with John Coltrane". "On a Misty Night" is a very nice tune, I heard Pharoah Sanders doing it live.