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Yes I remember that he had played with that orchestra.

I also have those two on a CD, but I think there is not the Fats-McGhee Encounter on it, The Navarro-McGhee if I remember is on the Fats Navarro album under his own name. But that Allstar bop session led by Maggie is vintage bebop at it´s best. There was also a McGhee Vol. II, but it sounds else, it doesn´t have that power though Horace Silver is on it. And I think on the side B is a guitar duo, that plays super fast, but doesn´t really move me in the same manner like let´s say a Kenny Burrell or a Grant Green......

It´s a wonderful album. I think I love Jackie McLean´s sound most, from all alto saxophonists, maybe there are other listeners who like other altoists more, those who have a more mellow sound, but for me McLean is the ultimative sound for my tastes. Sure I´m listening more to things like "Let Freedom Ring" or "One Step Beyond" , but this little standard record is so fine and has such a good rhythm section. And I think there are not many musicians who play "Let´s Face the Music and Dance". If I remember right, it has Walter Bishop on piano. I think I listened to it mostly together with Dizzy Reece´s "Sounding Off" which is another very fine record of standards also with Walter Bishop. I must look where I have them, maybe when the evenings will be longer or I got some time off, I´d spin it again, but I fear the list of records I´d like to re-listen is dozens of times longer than what really will materialize.....

The Dexter box must be good, I heard the CBS-All-Stars in Montreux and it was great to hear Dexter or other acoustic aera giants combined with first hand masters of electric jazz like Bob James and George Duke, Billy Cobham and so on and it was nice to hear fusion-associated musicians playing straight ahead and on the other hand hear a Stan Getz doing Night Crawler with Bob James.... I remember those times very well, the slow resurection of acoustic jazz just at that beginning opended space for such "marriages of acoustic and electric", you also can hear it on stuff of J.J. Johnson-Nat Adderly combined with people like Billy Childs......just wonderful, and quite overlooked now.....

I have a Turntable for the some LPs I still have and it has USB so I save them on an USP stick and play it while driving longer distances. My Turntabele is a DENON like all my stuff, my CD-Player and Tuner. I saw that my Yamaha pianola also as an USP, but never tried it, maybe I could record something I play.....

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. I think this was my first album under his name, but after having heard him for the first time on the "Night At Birdland" with Blakey, Fats, Bird etc. I was a bit disappointed since the solos on the live sides with Bird and Co seemed to be more exiting to me. When I saw the cover and that Ray Brown and Max Roach are on it, I was a bit disappointed that you almost can´t hear them. But Norman Granz seemed to have his own ideas how a trio setting must sound.....

The Coltrane with Milt Jackson.

A very nice record. I got it from my wife last year for birthday or chrismas as she had picked it up from the Saturn store where maybe she bought something else but was a place where CDs were offered, and so she guessed that´s my taste and she was right. It´s a nice easy to listen album.

I´m not such a fan of the many organists that came after Jimmy Smith, or those quite similar BN albums from the 60´s with focus on "boogaloo", but THIS one I like, mostly for the strange frontline of guitar and vibes, and the tunes. Especially "Turnaround" is very very catchy.....

In my case the first "jazz" I ever had heard was the "Steamin´" LP It had another cover than the original Prestige, and was available in the early 70´s. Before that I had heard an Oscar Peterson at some other peoples place but when I heard Red Garland soloing especially on those medium tunes "Surrey with the Fring on top" and "Diane" or the ballad "When I Fall in Love", my impression was that this is real music, so for me as a starter he was the perfect pianist and I could hum all his soloes along with the LP. On the other hand, I didn´t have the same feeling when it was only a trio album. My favourite Garlands always have been the sideman recordings or those recordings, where he is the leader but has other hornplayers too like let´s say Trane and Donald Byrd or so on.....

I don´t know the lists and the numbers of the volumes, but in a form discussion many years ago I remembered that I had heard Art in 1981 at Wiesen and that he played "Your´s my Heart Only" . @soulpope pulled my coat to those two albums "Croydon" and "Stuttgart" since they have that tune on it. Austrian Press and Radio/TV and audience didn´t know then, that this was in Pepper´s playlist of the 1981 European Tour and had thought that it was his reference especially for the Austrian audience, since the tune was composed by Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehar. So even in the german Jazz Magazine, the review of the festival stated that Pepper played that Lehar Tune "for Austria".

Stormy Weather ! It´s not exactly my repertory on gigs but once I thought if there would be a request in that direction I might at least try to play it at home and I did. I didn´t even know that Red Garland recorded it and on the other hand I love to LISTEN to Red Garland, but only to enjoy it, not to try to copy him. But the really STRANGE thing is that without even knowing that Garland played or recorded it, when I played it (no sheet, just knowing the tune as common knowledge) I found that automatically it got into a thing that reminds me of Garland, I mean with them chords and light touch in the higher register.....

Yes , the "Blowin´ in from Chicago" is wonderful. I had it on the BN brown paperback double LP series under the name of Griffin "Blowing Sessions" and the second LP was the "Blowin´ in". Maybe in those days I paid more attention to the first LP because of Griff-Trane-Hank-Lee Morgan) but the "Jordan-Gilmore" is really a treasure. I think Gilmore also recorded later for BN, maybe with Andrew Hill. Sun Ra his major boss had a humour side on Gilmore´s playing outside the Arkestra and it´s reported that once he said to Gilmore "A little Bird told me that you did Birdland last night".....

It was two tunes with Griff: "Blues Up and Down" and "Cheesecake". But I have it on the CBS album "Great Encounters" . The "Our Man in Paris" is one of my favourite regathering of Bop Veterans, with first generation boppers Dex, Bud and Klook. The really cook, I like the louder drumming of Klook and Bud has one of his greatest moments from his time in Paris (always if he could play with fellow Americans , the others could be "Hawk in Germany" , "Blakey in Paris".....)

The first Red Garland I had in the 70´s was a Prestige 2-fer titled "Rediscoverd Masters". I think it had a quintet on the last side, but I don´t remember who was on it. I think the trumpet player didn´t sound so great, but maybe my memory is not right.

Well my hearing is not what it was when I was 20 (and even then I couldn´t understand "whisper"), so I´m not really an audiophil, but to hear the cymbals loud that´s what I love. I don´t like records where the drummer can´t be heard the way you hear him live. So if one version of Out to Lunch sounds better because you hear Tony Williams better, I´m with you. I don´t know what my copy is, I don´t think it´s a RVG, it´s a BN CD, but much older than the RVG Series.

I think I have this, but there were so many Sonny Rollins on Prestige in his early period......, I don´t know which is which. I hear Rollins on a Monk Prestige album under Monk´s Name and I hear Monk as a sideman on a Rollins album. Was it the same session. It was always strange with Prestige since many albums had complete different sessions on them, like a sampler. I think one track was there that I always will have in mind and it was "More than you know". It´s strange I don´t think Monk recorded that tune often, and I have read in a Monk bio that Monk shortly before his death when he had been inactive for almost a whole decade he wanted to play "More than you know" together with Barry Harris. It´s interesting that he chose that tune. I don´t even know if it´s true. I think I played it many many years ago when a friend was visting and that there was a medium tempo blues in Bb which really grooves and the friend shouted out with enthusiasm "yeah, that´s it, that´s it " .....anyway when I was a starter I would buy anything that had Paul Chambers and Philly J.J on it, I think I have this, but there were so many Sonny Rollins on Prestige in his early period......, I don´t know which is which. I hear Rollins on a Monk Prestige album under Monk´s Name and I hear Monk as a sideman on a Rollins album. Was it the same session. It was always strange with Prestige since many albums had complete different sessions on them, like a sampler. I think one track was there that I always will have in mind and it was "More than you know". It´s strange I don´t think Monk recorded that tune often, and I have read in a Monk bio that Monk shortly before his death when he had been inactive for almost a whole decade he wanted to play "More than you know" together with Barry Harris. It´s interesting that he chose that tune. I don´t even know if it´s true.

Didn´t know that Ira Gitler had a saxophone himself. In context with Prestige Records I heard about the instrument named "Buescher" on an other occasion. But it was a trumpet. On the liner notes of one Miles Davis album the producer writes that Miles arrived in the studio without his horn, and then one guy in the studio said "I have an old Buesher in the trunk of my car" and Miles told him to bring it in, and indeed Miles played the whole session on that Buescher. I don´t remember which album it might have been but it sounded great. About Trane playing an alto I have never heard. On the other hand, this kind of "swappin´ horns" seemed to be in common on Prestige. Isn´t there a Jackie McLean album on which he plays a tenor ? It sounds a bit funny, it´s got a kind of hollow sound. You hear the ideas of McLean , and a strange sounding tenor. Same with Bird. He also recorded for Prestige and used a tenor on it.

I think I have some Uptown albums, maybe one is a Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie thing from the mid forties ? And maybe one of Hank Mobley live ?

"Jimmy Smith At The Organ" I think was one of those many many on BN from the mid fifties on. I really lost the trace. I never was a "organ freak" but I loved some of those Jimmy Smith albums, I think they were subtitled "The Incredible Jimmy Smith", like they had "The Amazing Bud Powell" or "The Eminent J.J.Johnson" ..... The Jimmy Smith I like most and still listen to is that session with Donald Bird, Lou Donaldson, Hank Mobley and Art Blakey. That´s the surrounding I like most. Or the "Sermon" though it doesn´t have a drummer as good as Blakey. From the trio dates, there is quite much of it, I have one which has a very fast "The Way You Look Tonight" on it. It sound´s a bit funny to me but is fine and grooves.....

I have not heard this, but Lucky Thompson sounded good, his sound reminded me a bit of Don Byas, I heard him in several bop surroundings with Bird, Diz, Bud, Monk and so on. As much as I know he also spent some time in Paris, but I don´t have no idea what happened later to him. It seems that from that generation of bop tenorists, Dexter, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Charlie Rouse he somehow didn´t have as much luck for a constant career....

That means the last time I saw him was in 2013 at Porgy&Bess. Same playlist: Blues Walk, Alligator Boogaloo, Over The Rainbow, Wee, Fine and Dandy, Whiskey Drinkin´ Woman......, And the rap "not recommended to fusion or confusion musicians" was there, it was always since the first time I saw him in 1985. Then he had Herman Foster on piano, huge block chords. On the last occasion it was a japanese girl on organ that was great. The guitar player was the same who was always. The drummer was also japanese. Lou was 87 then.

Maybe my favourite from the "pre-quintet" period of the early Prestige albums Miles did in the first half of the 50´s . It´s strange that for "Bag´s Groove" you had to buy the other album with that title. I´m not into discography and details and for me it´s only the music that counts, but the way how they splitted sessions on different albums was a bit annoying . The best tune in my opinion, I mean the best of Miles and Monk colaborating is "Bemsha Swing". All that crap that was written about that session, but you hear "Bemsha" and you hear that musical love and respect between Miles and Monk. Listen how Miles really get´s INTO that tune. I love it, I love the whole session.

He must have been in his late 80´s when I saw him the last time. He still looked and played like a man at least 20-25years younger, really astonishing and the only sign of age was the set list which was almost identical in later years. But to play "Wee" and "Fine and Dandy" at that speed...... amazing. It was late enough that I heard him live for the first time. It must have been in the mid 80´s and he must have been in his late 50´s or around 60 years old. I remember he played an ultra fast version of "Cheek to Cheek".....a tune that I love to play, or play a bop line based on that standard. 72 bars, AABCA form, easy cheesy

Well, the question if Powell´s Verve stuff ist hold in lower regard thant the stuff on BlueNote........ I think it´s from the listener´s point of view or a question of taste. I really think there are many who like the Verve more and maybe would say if I could keep only one Bud Powell Album it might be "Jazz Giant". The difference is that the Verve albums is more focused on the piano. There is no solo space for the drums and the bass and having Ray Brown and Max Roach one could have done more with it, not only a supporting role. That´s a question of taste or a question what you prefer. Many music lovers and also students who want to learn or transcribe Bud´s solos are interested only in HIM, and don´t even remark that it is or should be a trio record. In my case, or from my point of view or my aproach to listening, it´s a loss if you have THE Max Roach and don´t really HEAR him, or have a Ray Brown who was the greatest soloist on bass (having "One Bass Hit" in mind, Brown with Gillespie´s Big Band !!!!) and you don´t hear him better, and I will miss something. In my case the first Bud I heard was with Bird and Fats and Art Blakey and you hear the whole thing, you hear when Bud starts a solo he might pick up some phrase or idea from the fellow soloists and build up on that. That´s why I like the BN albums more, it´s more the guys playing together. About Sonny Stitt´s album: Yes his MUSE albums are very nice. He is one of my favourites from the first minute on, my first album was that blue Prestige album from 1949 with those strange angry birds on the cover, and by the way it also had Bud and Max Roach, so this is an album I enjoy more than the Verve trio albums. Sad story with Stitt, with Dexter, same thing. In the 70´s or early 80´s when I saw them live, you still could hear their greatness and they were living legends, but both destroyed and dumb in their heads due to alcool....just a tragedy....