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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.......

Got to get that book !

It always was a favourite of mine. I had had the old LP of course and it´s one of the very few albums I did re-buy. Mine is also a reissue from Japonia, since almost all stuff on the back cover is written in Japonese letters, But that´s not what interests me, since my only interest is the music itselfs and this is what I might call just a "perfect record". It think all kids of my generation where fascinated of the title tune. And I like also many live versions of it.

Yesterday I saw that concert "Music for Wayne", Mr. Lightsey with Paul Zauner tb, Wolfram Derschmidt (b) and my favourite drummer Dusan Novakov. There was also a very very fine alto saxophonist, but his name was not advertised so maybe he was a last minute add for unknown reasons. A part of the repertory was songs written by Wayne or dedicated to him. I remember "Fee - Fo-Fum" which Lightey had recorded in 1983, then the wonderful "Infant Eyes" and McCoy Tyners "Contemplation", but there was also other songs and some blues in Bb. One of the finest moments towards the end was the drum solo by the wonderful drummer Dusan Novakov After the concert I met Mr. Lightsey to talk with him, just a wonderful gentleman, and I had the LP from 1983 with me (the one on which Chet Baker is sittin in for two tunes), which also has some Wayne Shorter songs (among them "Fee-Fo-Fum" ). and got it signed. It was a wonderful evening I enjoyed very much.

I saw Curtis Fuller some years ago live at Jazzland, on trumpet was Jim Rotondi. Got the CD "Bone and Bari" signed by Curtis Fuller. He was such a nice gentleman ! "Daahoud" is one of my favourite tunes to perform. You can really stretch out on those changes !

That Freddie Hubbard album. @HutchFan posted it and said that it would be exactly what I like to hear, as he was right when he pulled my coat to the Keyston Bop albums which I´ve enjoyed the last few days. Though I seldom buy records , maybe I tell Serena about it hopin to get it on some occasion 😉 The Basra album is a great one, I must listen to it again. About Desmond I can´t say much since I don´t have his records.... Bird ´n Diz ! Though it has the great Monk on it, I might say that from all Bird´n Diz encounters on record this one is the weakest. The tunes were not well prepared, it seems they just were quickly set in the studio. Diz plays mostly muted here (somewhere I had read that he had had an accident earlier and his chops were a bit down ) Monk is great, but there would have been better surroundings to present them three their music. But I must admit that first I had the Bird´n Diz at Carnegie Hall, the Summit Meeting at Birdland, the Massey Hall concert, the old Guild records , each of them were more exiting that this one.

Just "Round about Midnight" I was listening to this fine gathering around Jackie McLean. All of them are "Bird Songs" and what really knocked me out was "Shaw Nuff" with that dialog between Griffin and McLean. Cecil Payne is also very fine on his solos in that set. At one point, he´s even quoting from his own composition "Ninnie Melina". The ballad "Don´t Blame Me" done by Duke Jordan is also very very nice. He was always an enigma to me. Somehow, like Tadd Dameron he didn´t have the most dangerous tehnique but has a very individual style, evidently with no influences from other players. His trademark remain his intro´s to some of Bird´s tunes on the original recordings, they became standard intros. Ron Carter has some exceptional solos here. But he plays completly else than his usual style. Much more traditional boppish with a more old fashioned sound than his usual bass sound. Maybe the only thing that keeps me from listening very often to records like this is, that all tunes are straight walking swing, there is not much variation, no latin for example. It´s just very straight 4/4, some a bit faster, some a bit slower......

I have to thank @HutchFan. On this thread he had posted those two, some months ago and when I asked him about it he stated "it´s exactly what YOU will like". And damn right he is. That´s the kind of music I listen to with most pleasure and exitement. The three from the frontline each of them my very favourites, the rhythm section superb, Billy Childs such a great piano and keyboard player, I first heard his stuff on that J.J.Johnson-Nat Adderly album from Japonia from the late 70´s. He was so young and such a gas. And bass and drums in the best matter you can imagine, the way that they can be heard. The music still some swing rhythm, but in the manner I like it. Creating tension and space as well. My all time favourite Hubbard tune from as early as I was maybe 13,14 "Red Clay". I like the original record and all those super powerful live versions, like with V.S.O.P. I listened to it the last two days somewhere after midnight. Between the equipment and Serena where 2 rooms with closed doors, so I could really listen to it LOUD to hear everything like it would have sounded from stage......

I think Les McCann - who is a master - belonged to another "stream" than the one I grew up with (the BN, Prestige, Impulse artists) but the radio DJ of the weekly "Jazz-Shop" seemed to like him very much, when I still didn´t know many names in jazz. I remember he spinned some earlier stuff of McCann, where he plays a regular trio, or maybe with a horn, and on one of them - as that Radio DJ (Herwig Wurzer) explained us - he did welcome Monty Alexander on stage. I never had heard of them, but Herwig said that Monty is blood young but plays a more conservative style than Les McCann and from what I heard, I can confirm that. Nor Monty Alexander would have been on my "screen" but he sounded more like something similar to Oscar Peterson. I must say I liked more, what Herwig spinned of LesMcCann. And a few days later, how could it be else, I bought the omnipresent "Montreux 1969" . It was not exactly, what I ususally listen to (´69 was more a years of transition as I felt it, Miles slowly goin electric, Pharoah keepin the Trane spirit, Ornette Coleman playin´again with Charlie Haden, so "Compared to What" was somehow an exception in my small collection.....but fine of course......

I don´t know what the first album is, but "Our Man in Jazz" I must have heard at someone´s place. It seems to be the foundation for that fantastic European Tour that formation did afterwards, with Cherry, Grimes and Higgins. It´s interesting that all those three were linked to avantgarde jazz , but Sonny didn´t make the "step beyond" and kept playing standards in swing rhythm, but a bit more "open" than with a piano player. So I think Sonny had "flirted" a bit with avantgarde rooted players, but other than Trane he didn´t go into free jazz.

You said it ! When we were that "gang" of 18 year old jazz addicts, I had what we called "the blue Tadd Dameron album", it was a cheap Musidisc titled "Tadd Dameron-Fats Navarro, Birdland 1949" and it´s a super hot set or two sets of bop live. And on each title there is a nice Dameron solo. He could play lines as well as fat chords and often started his solo more boppish, but different to Bud, and ended it with fat block chords. On ballads he had a wonderful sound, and his voicings were unique. I also had "Miles Davis-Tadd Dameron Paris 1949" and "Tadd Dameron-John Coltrane" on Prestige. All have very much solo space for Tadd. And if he would have reacted to the injustice that was done to him (dissed as playing "arranger´s piano") , on "Eb Pob" he plays such a virtuoso solo it would have been equal to Bud. We boys always said he can do it and if he was annoyed by crittics maybe he did that solo on Eb Pob to say "okay if THAT´s what you wanna hear, I can do it easily, but it´s not what I think to do permanently".

Yes, the "Let ´em roll" is what I was referring to. I didn´t remember the title, but remember the cover now. Sometimes I listen to it in the little hours of a hot summer night, that´s where it fit´s for me.

oh, shame on me, that means that his RCA period really spanned over at least two years. And I realized that the first album of Sonny - Cherry was done for RCA, I had known only the live albums of that group in Europe, but must have heard the original at some friends place. You know, others collect, you hear it at some place...... But I remember at some other´s friend´s place, who was the pioneer of Austrian Free Jazz, there was the Rollins from maybe 1964 or was it 1966, anyway something with Hancock and Tony, that´s where my musician friend told me that Sonny had borrowed Miles men when Miles had to lay out due to illness..... I remember with those free jazz only guys it was also that way, that they stated they don´t play and won´t play regular stuff, not even C-Jam Blues. They wanted me to join them, but I did understand free only as a thing that grew out of let´s say C-Jam blues. So I had to say no......, I´m too deeply rooted in forms of jazz....

So you are more into it. I´m just where they talk about the Charlie Parker Influence, I think soon there will be Sonny´s first recording. About the mid 60´s period I don´t know almost nothing, somehow I have much of Sonny with Don Cherry, that step to avantgarde, and then is a big hole and then the 70´s where I saw him live and bought many of them Milestone records.

Would be quite a challenge. Until now the best jazz book with interviews , the one I really like is Art Taylor´s "Notes and Tones".

Those many many Grant Green albums, I think I might listen again to one of them. I think the one I loved most was some that was titled after a Rollins composition. "Solid" maybe ? But I was always astonished about those numerous albums that were under a certain motto, like one is with soul, one is with spirit, one with latin, one even with western and so on. "Music for all occasions", was that how Lion and Wolff wanted to sell his records ? Ah, there is another I love, quite untypical for me it has a Beatles Tune but I love it, or my wife likes it more than other "jazz". But I don´t remember if it was under Hank Mobley´s or Grant Green´s name. Oh, and there was one with a no horn frontline, with Green, Hutch, and ah..... an organ player..... The Philly J.J. I remember I saw the cover, it was Galaxy, right ? Somehow it was almost impossible to purchase them, if you didn´t purchase them when they came out. Same with the Red Garland albums for that label. It seems that many former Miles sidemen from the first quintet recorded for that 1970´s label, too bad they seem to be OOP.

From what period is that ? Once, at a late friend´s place he spinned some Rollins playing standards like Afternoon in Paris, and some other standards and bop tunes, with a rhythm section that seemed to have been "borrowed" from Miles. Sounded very good. Is this from the same session. I´m quite uninformed about many labels, but RCA always seemed a bit strange to me. It seems they never had something like their "house artists", like let´s say there were the BN artists, the Prestige artists, Impulse of course, Verve for more mainstream jazz et cetera . But RCA always pop´s up here and there: Blakey, who was a BN artists, made "Plays Lerner and Lowe" for RCA, Bud, who was first a Verve and than BN artist, made two very very strange albums for RCA, and here Sonny Rollins. I think I remember I must have this somewhere, but I doubt I spinned it more often than once. As much as I remember mine had or still has a little different cover and might have been titled "Byas and the Girls". I think the only Byas I had and that was a gas and was spinned over and over again was that "Black Lion" album with Anthropology on it. The "Byas and the Girls" sounded outright tame to me in comparation to "Anthropology" or the "Savoy Sessions" (I think this is the other Byas I have ). Maybe I should give it a try again. I´m not too familiar with them girls. Mary Lou Williams it seems I have read a lot about here, but more in the way that she was a maternal figure who tried to help many strung out guys, and that she was into some kind of religion.....

It´s one of my favourite albums from that period. They are so great. I think, Woody Shaw´s composition "Sweet Love of Mine" is on that.

Last week: "More than you know" as performed by Sonny Rollins on Roadtrips Vol. 1 . Amazing ! Yesterday night: " Round Midnight" as done by Joe Henderson on Freddie Hubbard´s "Keystone Bop": It´s a fierce version of the tune, solos in double time....

How much would I have liked to hear this. It´s interesting that Mingus until "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" was not really involved with guitar players, at least I don´t remember he used them in small bands or touring bands. There is a bit Spanish guitar on "Black Saint" but not really involved in the band playing, more as kind of an interlude here and there..... But Coryell really was involved with Mingus in his last two years of recording. He got much solo space, beside the "Three or Four..." I mostly think about his brilliant playing on "Three Worlds of Drums" and the "Farwell Farewell" with that wonderful solo on that great D flat tune...... So it would be interesting to know what stuff those five guitars played on that occasion you saw them. One of the most disappointing things that happend with jazz concerts in my youth was when the already scheduled concert tour of late autumn 1977 (it would have been a tour with Larry Coryell and Phillip Caterine to promote his albums). I already had made my plans to travel from Austria to Germany to see the event, it was advertised and all, and then it was cancelled. But at the same time Mingus had made that strange album with Hampton.....

I have this one. What impressed me most was the live set from Boston, the rest is a bit uneven. If I remember right there is one private track where someone took the drum chair who is not a drummer and it sounds terrible. But there is also a short broadcast where Buddy Rich (who is great but not necessarly my favourite) plays some superb brushes behind Eager.....

Yes, that´s it. At Kongresshouse they performed those two tunes, a bit of drum solo feature (Mr. Hi Hat and The Drum also waltzes" plus a fierce version of Round Midnite. Once thing I remember: The night before, Max Roach who already had arrived came down to Jazzland to hear and greet Art Farmer who performed. The next day, when it was Max Roach´s concert, Farmer was in the audience and greeted by Roach from the stage......

Very similar to my entry in Mingus´ music. When I still was not a jazz fan, maybe 12 or 13, someone had a sampler with Jazz History and the only thing I dug was the last two tracks: "Milestones" from the Miles Davis sextet, and one of Mingus´ late fifties tracks from those albums "Dynasty" or "Ah Um" and that´s where I started to become a jazz fan with ambitions to play myself. So I bought first a Miles Davis album (Steamin´) and then somebody had "Great Concert" but stated that it´s too advanced for him, I gave it a try and that it was !! The best music I had heard in my live util then ! Same here in other surroundings: In the summer of 1964 when I was 5 years old, we did our holiday in France, while Bud Powell was performing in a Beach Resort called "Edenville". To bad that I was only 5 and not yet a Powell fan !

I just started it a few days ago. Got it from my wife. Right now I´m at the point where Sonny first had heard Hawk´s "Body and Soul" and his idols where Louis Jordan and then Hawk.

What I listen to is very dependent on the certain mood I´m in. Usually I spin "Black Saint" in a warm spring night, when you can open the windows. But I have not cited it as my very favourite Mingus. If I might keep only one, it would be the 3 LP set "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus", you know Dolphy, Jordan, Byard, Richmond.....