Gheorghe

Yeah, they are from the austrian federal land Upper Austria (Oberösterreich), the capital is Linz where the famous Bruckner-Conservatory also has jazz classes and where my main mentor and leader Allan Praskin taught for many years. The Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra has a very flexible repertory ´, they played with international stars like Johnny Griffin, but also worked on crossover projects combining austrian folk songs,( which maybe is not exactly my alley) , but they are great, and there wonderful trumpet player Simon Plötzeneder also performed here in Viena . A former member was the late great Bumi Fian, a first class trumpetist I also played with, who ended so tragically as a total victim of booze and beer.

Yes, I remember when it came out and it was about the time when Sanders again started to play in a traditional tenor-piano-bass-drums formation doin also things from the past, similar to Archie Shepp, but of course into another direction. This tour de force "Dr. Pitt" or how it´s called was on most live shows I saw myself. I saw Pharoah about that time here in Austria and they also played some bop tune like "On a Misty Night" and some standard ballad with the trademark Pharoah Sanders outing..... Wonderful. Well, we must admit this was the time when some former pioneers of Free Jazz returned to straight ahead acoustic jazz. I´m sure if Trane would have survived, after world jazz into electric jazz trademarks he also would have done something with quartet again during a time when there was a comeback for acoustic jazz ..... I have to look out for a tune composed by Jaws that must be on some of those Griffin-Davis albums, I think if I remember well it is Db combined with Bb minor (which is similar with the same black keys) and I heard it on some two tenor stuff and might listen to it a few times to check the form of the song for my own purpose , I mean I had played with a two tenor thing this year but would have asked for that Lockjaw tune if I knew exactly how it goes. I don´t even remember the name of the tune....

This sure was a great experience. I would have liked to see Michael Weiss and also talk to him..... Great ! Glad you went out to see a live gig again after this corvid pandemic. I remember how it started in early march 2020 and Dave Liebman-Richie Beirach was chancelled in the last minute, it would have been a concert I would have attended together with my wife to show here and maybe meet the guys who were among my first jazz inspirations in the mid seventies. Hope you will see more live performances, I´ll go out tomorrow to see the 40 years anniversary of my favorite Austrian Drummer Mario Gonzi (please read about him on wikipedia, he will play with me also in the next months. .....

Burton Green was also on some ESP things right ? He really was something and had a lot of eastern european roots which I like. And the highlight here was when he performed with first rate austrian avantgarde musicians like the late great Fritz Novotny (Reform Art Unit) and Fritz showed him his then latest composition "Pannonian Flower" which Mr. Green liked and performed with them, and later at Green´s suggestion they concluded the concert with some Monk tunes, I remember "Crepuscule with Nellie" was on the set !!!!! Green loved Monk.

I somewhere told that I missed a lot of the late 80´s developement of jazz for different reasons, or I just listened to other music mostly more funk based things like Ornette Colemans "Prime Time" or the several electric Miles, but I think I remember Gary Thomas. Wasn´t he with Miles at some point ? I remember there was lot fans of Osby but must admit I never heard him. I had heard the name and had heard a name Ozzy Osborn and didn´t know which is which and haven´t heard any of them. So some people in a german jazz forum said that he is the future of jazz and I didn´t know it.....crazy......

I also did read it, but it made me so sad to read that almost from day to day description of Mingus´ terrible terminal desease. I mean not only be confined to a wheelchair but not even able to move your hands and have difficulties to speak, I think it´s inhuman, such a terrible thing , I almost had to cry , I loved Mingus soo much and he was my first great inspiration of jazz. Sue was a wonderful woman, there sure were some bad times in their marriage too as maybe both were difficult personalities, that sometimes clashed but she was also a stunning tall lady , a pleasure to look at her.

I love it. Charlie Rouse at his best. Some people like other tenor saxophonists with Monk more, but Charlie Rouse is wonderful and my favourite tenor player with Monk or in other surroundings. And Monk is so great here, I learned a lot of things for my own musical understanding from this double CD. And it´s wonderful to hear such extended versions of my favourite Monk live pieces "Bemsha Swing" and "Evidence". If I remember right, they play both "Just You Just Me" and "Evidence" , same chords as you might know. And that rare thing "Bright Missisippi" is very useful, you can do such things spontanously if you want to give something on the changes of "Sweet Georgia Brown". I think I once heard another unissued and incomplete version of "Honeysuckle Rose" also from that gig. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention "I´m gettin´ Sentimental on You" the Tommy Dorsey trademark tune, incredible how Monk does the theme as a solo intro......

Wonderful ! I love it and so great fellow musicians. I heard Sherman Ferguson first with Eddie Harris, he is a great drummer, and Fambrough with Art Blakey, and of course William Henderson on many occasions with Pharoah since he replaced the late John Hicks on the piano chair.

Yes i guessed that since I read with much pleasure some of your impressions of him, you really know his stuff.

I want to say, that his "Life at the East" was one of the handful of records I had in my still very small collection right at the beginning of my jazz career. I told you on more than one occasions that the second so called "jazz" I heard at maybe 14,15 years was the Mingus Thing with Dolphy in Paris 64, and that opened me up for more of the so called avantgarde stuff, starting with Ornette and Trane and maybe my 4th or 5th own record was the mentioned "Live at the Village Vanguard Again". So I think among my first 10 jazz albums was that Pharoah Sanders "Live at the East", because I saw it at my record dealer. So you can imagine what meaning it has to me since about 50 years. Even my mother (born 1921) heard it and LOVED it ! The last time I saw Mr. Sanders live was a few years ago, in 2016,17 or so. He still had some power left for a wonderful performance but I was in sorrow seeing that he obviously had difficulties to walk and after soloing he often hold his hand to his chest, obviously in pain and discomfort. One thing I really regret is that on that last occasion I had my old album with me and made up my mind to try to meet him for telling him how young I was when I started to love and admire him. But imagine, at the 57,58 years I was old I was too shy to ask to meet him, I was sure he would not be approachable....later dudes from here told me that it wouldn´t have been that way and he would have been nice and would have appreciated my praise and admiration for him. Does anybody know more about his physical condition and the cause of death ?

Fats Navarro was born on 24.09.1923 in Key West, FL. Imagine, around 2000 I even visited Key West to walk on the earth where this genius trumpet player was born. When I first heard him on record on "A Night at Birdland" (with Bird and Bud and Art Blakey) and read that he was only 26 years old when he died, I was shocked and thought right now he would be in his early 50s. Though I´m a piano player I learned very very much from the lines he played, so great ! I had heard that tragedy struck also some of his family members, his wife died quite early and his daughter who was a lawyer also died early. Maybe some surviving family members coincidally would read this .

I´m glad I´m not the only lousy reader, but as a piano player I didn´t really have occasions where I might read. I never wrote an arrangement, usually I play with two horns and maybe suggest some voicings here and there, but very rare since they know their stuff. I have a tune in mind, an original, not typical for me it´s a simple slow waltz I want to dedicate to a person, and I have the voicings in mind, but for writing I´ll ask my trumpet player who is a trumpet teacher on some jazz conservatory, he knows it better than me.

I think the sections featuring Bird are also on one of Bird´s Verve records "Fiesta" if I remember right. And "Mambo" and Tanga" is very fine on a "Spotlite" LP with some live Bird with Machito and very fine Howard McGhee-Brew More also, all of it from about the same time .

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.