Gheorghe

I love it, especially those quartet sides with Al Haig who is incredible strong on the two ballads. The only annoying thing on my copy is that there are numerous alternate takes of the tunes. But the best Wardell Gray I ever heard is on a Xanadu album I think with Hampton Hawes live in a club, and maybe the very very first choice if I want to hear fantastic Wardell Gray is that Charlie Parker live album "The Happy Bird" . It´s so good that sometimes I must say confidentially that there are times I listen more to Gray´s solos especially on "Scrapple" and on "Lullaby in Rhythm" if I remember well....... There was an incredible memory I had with it in the early 90´s when I still had to make "naveta" (Pendeln ?) between AT and RO and would drive all night long (no highway then after the last town in Eastern Austria !!!!) and around 2 o clock in the night I was really tired when I reached the last town in Hungary before the Borderline and it was still those cassete decks in the car and coincidally it was that "Happy Bird" record with Wardell Gray on it and immdediatly I was "hell wach" Una Mas is one of my favourite KD´s and sure my favourite on his 60´s BN. There was a time when I always did Una Mas live if it was a joint that otherwise was not strictly jazz, and catchy as this tune is, the audience , among them very much youngsters loved it.

I never saw him, and my only record evidences is in the first half of the seventies, like you say with MCoy and than he is added to Miles´ working group in 1974 on "Dark Magus", Imho the best Miles recorded in the 70´s.

I also think it´s normal. But I´m often forced to play a tune and think oh shit I never played that and I´m not sure I know the changes, especially in the bridge but recover quickly by listening very intense to what´s happening and pick it up. Sometimes you hear the melody and anyway can imagine how the chords go. But sometimes I´ll sit down at home and try to play let´s say a ballad and start and I´m pleased what I hear in the A sections and the first four bars of the bridge and then.......don´t remember the following 4 bars . It just happens. It´s much easier on stage, you pick it up and that´s it. Strange.....but sometimes I get the best out of a tune I never had played before. It´s much harder if I have to play trio in a jam session on a day like Wendsday this week when the bass player suggests a tune I never had played and remember only the first bars. But it´s the same vice versa. To my astonishment he didn´t know the changes of Round Midnight, and suggested "Beautiful Love" ..... uh uh. If it would have been a hornplayer leading the stuff, I could have to follow and pick it up, but trio, nope. But shit like this happens...... About writing myself......If I compose a thing I have to asked somebody else to write it down, writing is not my strongest point. I read chords and can read a lead sheet if I somehow know how the song goes, but I can´t read completly written piano scores with all the chords written out and with bass clef and stuff. Even when I played bass fiddle in my youth I couldn´t read a bass clef, but playing piano anyway helped me to have the changes in my mind just to walk or to play solo......

Oh, that means it was the same thing when I first saw a picture of Pepper Adams. From the way of playing and the surroundings on gigs and recording sessions I had thought both must be black. Anyway, that´s not the point and both played their ass off. Teddy Charles was very advanced for his time I think. He could play regular mainstream but also got a bit beyond. That strange version of Night in Tunisia from that Lee Konitz-Miles Davis album ! It´s almost atonal and really has some daring voicings.

Is this Max Roach´s composition "Nommo" ?

He also had a nephew, his name is Julius Farmer and he is also a bassist. I heard him on some ocasion here in Austria. Who of them is Teddy Charles. I never saw a picture of him but liked his passionate vibe playing on many of the fifties albums, like on that "Blue Moods" from Miles, with Mingus and Elvin Jones and no piano, or "Miles Davis-Lee Konitz" where he plays on side B, and I think there was also a Wardell Gray album on Prestige, where he plays. I think I heard his vibe just in my beginnings, when those Prestige albums where easy to buy. But I never saw him pictured.

Yeah, not all of the "Onkel Poe´s Carnegie Hall" dates are perfectly recorded. The worst is the tinny sound of Tete Montoliu´s piano on "Griffin/Davis" from 1975. But it´s such a wealth of music on them. I have a lot of them, That Diz, the Griffin/Davis, The Junior Cook-Louis Hays feat. Woody Shaw, the Woody Shaw 1982 and the Elvin Jones. I like that Dizzy Gillespie Quartet and heard that unit quite often, with Rodney Jones on guitar, Mickey Roker on drums and the legendary Benjamin Franklin Brown on bass. Later they wore replaced by Ed Cherry on guitar and Mike Howell on bass. I think I heard this quartet formations from 1978-1983. In 1978 they played more backbeat-based tunes like "Dizzy´s Party" and so on, but from 1980 on there was more old stuff like "Manteca" and so on in the repertory. And that new form of Night in Tunisia with 6/8 beat in the A section....

@jazzcorner: That´s really some good personnel with the early Quincy Jones, J.J. Johnson, Hank Mobley AND Lucky Thompson, Candido Camero. But I fear it was only for studio date. My discography of Diz in the 50´s is very very limited, when I listened to learn it was mostly his 40´s stuff, to learn his compositions and how to phrase. After all the RCA´s and Savoy or what it was, my only entries of Diz from the next decade was the 1951 Birdland Allstars with Bird and Bud, and the Massey Hall Concert. People told me that those "DeeGee Years" was more fun music, and the Verve was under the firm guide of Norman Granz, who mostly did jams with different other stars from earlier generations. So, from the point of view of a record collector my knowledge of what and when he recorded, is quite poor and only comes to light from the 70´s when I saw him life so often until shortly before his death....

Manteca as a title sounds good to me. I love the RCA version with Chano Pozo, I think I also have it on a Pasadena Concert from the late 40´s . I used to play it and love how you can build it up from starting with the drums, then the ostinato bass figure, the riffs and at last the line with it´s wonderful bridge. I have some gigs in good places settled for next year and it should include Manteca, Con Alma, Tin Tin Deo as so called "Latin tunes" . A few years ago I was a bit annoyd by a bass player who kinda "slept" and instead of shuttin´ up when the drum solo starts, he kept sticking to the ostinato bass figure while the drum solo started. I had told ´em to fade out and let start the drummer very soft and then building up his solo to a climax , a thing that doesn´t work if you cover it all with that bass figure....., but I got really good musicians for the future. Is this Dizzy Orchestra something later than his original orchestra ? I know that after he had to disband since it became too expensive, he only occasionally re-formed a big band. I saw one in 1987 (70´s Birthday) which was quite an allstar thing with Arthuro Sandoval, Sam Rivers and others,

he said he´d love comments, critiques etc and I thought he might be pleased to read mine, anyway the only comment he got. I thought at least to get a "thank you" for taking the time to comment it.

Must be interesting, in my case especially the 1982 thing when Miles still played a more jazz-based music without all those synthies, drum machines, pop tunes and much "schtick" . I loved the 1981 stuff on "We Want Miles", like the Blues on "Star People" from 1983 but don´t have music from Miles 1982 and suppose that they still played more in the 81 style that I liked most. My wife bought me this for last X-Mas, she had looked at my Trane CDs and noticed that I don´t have it and since she had heard the name "Ellington" she bought it. I like it very much, mostly for Trane and for Dukes compositions. Duke as a piano player I noticed sounds somehow a little "dry and laconic" and has a kind of "arranger´s style on piano". I like most the sections with Garrison and Elvin Jones. Only on one faster tune they had changed the drummer with someone who kinda exagerates them rim-shots on the 2nd and 4th beat , which sounds outright unflexible compared with what Trane plays. About CDs I read so often those "secret codes" like MQA/UHQCD, or something like SACD and never knew what that means. I only know if it is round with a whole in the middle and if it has good music on it

Yes, I remember I read that somewhere, but I heard Milt Buckner only on organ on a Black Lion Thing with Illinois Jaquet (The King) with the incredible good british drummer Tony Crombie. A record I really like. On piano think I only saw him on a short footage with Hamp, he was very very small, wasn´t he ? Actually, when I feel like it, I insert short sections of so called Block chords in a solo, but never exagerate it. I don´t remember which guy it was on record, but I heard one relativly unknown pianist, who quite overdid it and played his whole solos only block chords. But I´m not sure what is block chords. I can do two different things, the one is the kind that sounds more like the voicings of a reed section in a band, and the other is the kind of chords Garland would do. I had thought that the Garland style is chords, but not the traditional block chords until I heard Miles telling Garland to play block chords in the intro of a ballad.

why do you think this reccord is the furture of jazz ? I doubt I´d get a gig here in town if I´d play that kind of music

who is on it ? Quartet sounds good, I have some quartet things of him from late 40´s early 50´s , I think that stuff like Long Island Sound or so, very fine, early Prestige I think. With whom Getz would play for the Verve label (I have only few Verve albums at all, I think I have "Musicians Only" feat. Getz with Stitt and Diz), but the rhythm section is not really doin much. I don´t know for what they needed Herb Ellis, and I can´t hear the drums....

I don´t have it, but is this the album on which is the first version of "Con Alma". The strange thing is, that I always heard Dizzy playing it live and play it myself very often with the best trumpet players over here, but never really new when it was composed. It´s usually in bop sets along with other Dizzy originals, but I didn´t find it on my original 1940´s collections like the RCA Years or the Guild and Spotlite sessions.....

Interesting that your mother listened to some jazz. Since my father was a classic fan (and mostly them long operas written by Wagner) and she had to live with it though this was not her kind of music, she came in my room sometimes when I listened to jazz - also in the mid seventies like in your case - and I don´t think it was my influence because she told from her own initiative that she thought Mingus´ "Meditations on Integration" is some fantastic music that really moves her. Same with some of Pharoah Sanders´ work like "Healing Song" from Live at the East that I already had, it really moved her, and in later years above all Ornette Coleman´s "Lonly Woman". She was born in 1921. When I had borrowed from a friend some of the supposed to be more pppular stuff like a Peterson Trio, a Brubeck album and yes...... I forgot to mention "Play Bach" which was also in the otherwise non-jazz collections , she would not like it and say this is "kitsch" (she never was a diplomatic person and it came very easy from her lips to express things in a bit negative manner). Oh yeah, and she loved the sound of Miles Davis, I think that "My Funny Valentine" from 1964 was one of here favourits, or Kind of Blue, but especially the 60´s stuff with Wayne and Herbie.....,and I never forget what she said about Miles Davis as a man: "He is a little devil, quite mean but......he is honest and says it in a very direct manner and I like that". (well that´s natural, since this was her own personality, not always to my pleasure....). I must admit I never heard Shearing, but love to play one of his compositions "Conception", which has some challenging chords and in the past it was quite hard for me to find fellow musicians who can blow it, but it´s better now, a lot of good musicians coming out...., and "Lullaby at Birdland" I love to improvise on it. I heard that he kind of invented them block chords but can´t confirm it since I didn´t hear it. I heard a lot of block chords mostly on later Bud Powell recordings of medium tempo tunes like "Star Eyes" "There will Never be another You", "Like Someone in Love" etc, and another kind of block chords of course by Red Garland. Red Garland is really worth to study, he has a very very special kind of voicings, it´s his own, and I memorized all Garland solos on those Miles albums....

I have it under the title "Night and Day" as Volume 1 of 8 LPs. It has somehow a bit kitsch orchestras, it sounds too bombastic and quite away from good Bird-fitting bands like the Eckstine band or Dizzy´s Orchestra would have been. It sounds like those film scores for typical early fifties films like "Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht" with little Romy Schneider. Well but it´s Bird. Period. Those Verve 8 LP collection is not chronological, the first is that "Big Band" from the early 50´s , the second is Bird with Strings (Midnight at Carnegie Hall), then I think Vol. 5 "Plays Cole Porter" is his last album from late 1954, while the following "Fiesta" is from the early fifties and Vol. 7 "Perennial is from late forties to early fifties...). I like most "Swedish Schnapps" since it is not so much "Norman Granz - like", it´s vintage bop quintet and basta. Oh that is the famous 70´s birthday gathering with former Messengers sittin in, like Hubbard, McLean, etc. There was a long review of it in german Jazz Podium and it was mentioned that during the end Blakey even played piano and sung "For All we Know" (we may never meet again) but this is not on the CD. I think Blakey knew it was near the end.....he even is replaced or supported by Roy Haynes on some pieces.

In my country, and maybe in other European countries, Oscar Peterson was the most popular among mid-class to upper-class surroundings where usually classical music was spinned (or played at the piano). Oscar Peterson swung, so it gave them a bit of that "jazz-drive" feeling, he had an astonishing technique and seemed to be symphatic, disciplined. And in some magazin or newspaper there was a long story about Oscar Peterson, how much he practiced in his youth, how his father took care if every kid did his lessons, and it was Canada, not the Bronx or Sugar Hill. And always very articulate on stage, with that grinning, that big appearance and dressed for concert music I think, those middle-upperclass white people categorized him as a "well educated n.....ger". They all said he is "the best jazz pianist in the World" (and I doubt they would have heard about Bud, McCoy, Herbie, Cecil Taylor). Sure I had heard those Peterson "We Get Requests" (a nice album by the way) but when I heard Red Garland on my first Miles Davis LP I thought why I like him much more, and when I heard Jakie Byard on my first Mingus LP (I had those two LPs as my first jazz LPs) it was the same. I asked myself, why all those big heads talk about Oscar Peterson and don´t even know who those "Red Garland and Jakie Byard" are. And to my big astonishment when I - still not knowing other artists than Miles and Mingus with their pianists - bought J.E.Behrends "Jazzbook", Peterson hardly was mentioned. So I think he was a very very good thing in first place for music lovers who liked him if the wanted to hear a "Jazz LP". This is not bad, because some of them would open up and listen to more of that jazz and become part of the desired paying audience for us.....

I must have seen this setting in 1978 , I think one high school mate took me to it since he was a big Peterson fan, which I definitly not was in 1978, where at the tame age of 19 years I found it hopless "square". Well, it swung and at the insistent looks of the boy who had took me to that event maybe I said with a forced smile "okay yeah, he is so good, he can play" but I thought if it must be Peterson, than at least a regular trio with drums. Well it was a good successful combination but I can hear to the original, to the Art Tatum Group Masterpieces with Slam Steward and Tiny Grimes or whatever.....

Very nice to read !

I think I have spinned it twice then in the mid80´s when it came out after the first soundtrack of the legendary film. But if it was done for BN and he was under contract, it´s too pity that they didn´t put out some live material from the after-film tour of the Round Midnight Allstars, Dexter would have deserved it, even if due to the terrible state of health he had slowed down, but maybe some of it could have been considered for release on BN . I don´t have this, but "Groovin High" is a fantastic tune and not very often played, and the group is fantastic. I love it that the first soloist usually switches from Eb the original key to Db and than back to Eb ......, and that beautiful outing in half time with an ending similar to Tadd´s "If you could see me now"....

Yes, Herbie on this, and I remember on another album with Western Tunes like "I´m an old Cowhand" Herbie is also very interresting. I think there were some of those featuring different not really jazz linked repertoires, covering Gospel, Country and one with Latin. I think it was to sell them to a larger audience..... but I doubt Grant Green was enough apreciated during his life time.

I loved his trombone since I was a kid, listening over and over again to "Blue Train", one of my all time favourite 50´s albums. The last time I saw him live was a few years ago, it was a group around Jim Rotondi. Well, Curtis was quite old then but still played some fine stuff, mostly on medium tempo tunes like "Bag´s Groove". Before the concert started, I stood there with a "Bone and Bary" in my hands and Mr. Fuller smiled at me, shook my hand and asked me for my name and signed it "For Gh. Peace Curtis Fuller". Jim Rotondi was delighted to see that extremly rare "Bone&Bary". It´s not my favourite C.F. album, but it has a white cover for signing.

Oh, that´s interesting since it is similar to what I can say: First of all, R.I.P. of course. He must have had a lucky live and a wonderful family and really achieved something. But I literally hadn´t even heard about him until 1989 when he appeared on a Jazz Festival here in Austria (where I was to hear Dizzy All Stars with Phil Woods and Steve Turré, and a Mingus Dynasty conducted by Jimmy Knepper feat. George Adams and John Handy). And there was Ramsey Lewis quartet scheduled. At that point I had listened to jazz for more than 15 years and played for more than 10 years, but his name was never mentioned, not by my mentors (Fritz Pauer etc. ), nor by fellow musicians or audience/record listeners. Maybe he was not so familiar in the austrian jazz scene. I remember since I had not heard about him I mis-pronounced his name like "Rumm-saai Leh-viss" and than .....oh a very nice and articulate lookin man, he might have been in his mid 50´s but didn´t look older than 40. He played acoustic piano but had an electric bassist. This was a bass with two necks , never saw something like that and the player was a short and muscular guy with a very martialic look and shaved on the temples which always looked scary to me, and he was very much featured and hit the hell out of his instrument. Otherwise, the music was a bit chamber music - like.

Ah thank you ! As I said, I must have somewhere the individual LPs, I "studied" them during that time I was starting to play. As I remember the most spinning here got the quintet sides with Fats and Sonny since those things "Bouncing with Bud" "Dance of the Infidels" "Wail" and of course "52´nd Street Theme" as set closer still are played and I think at least one of the tunes will be included in one of our next concerts. I remember the less spinning got Vol. 2, somehow it never really reached me. Glass Enclosure might be interesting as a link to classical music, and one tune sounds like a fugue or how you call that. Somehow it´s "in the Mood for a Classic"..... the whole LP..... On Vol. 3 I remember only the Curtis Fuller side, I think we did "Idaho" once with Allan Praskin. Nice blowing vehicle and great stride by Bud. The "Time Waits" was a favourite of Allan. He´d listen to it on headphones travelling to Viena and we´d play "Monopoly" and "John´s Abbey" at the gig. And I think it is the best trio album because it has Philly Joe Jones. The last one I think was not so great, somehow monotony with most tunes in minor and medium swing, and I think they never appeared elsewhere. And very dull brushwork by A.T. he could do much better than that.