Gheorghe

It´s the best album Dexter made for CBS, one of his very best albums in general and maybe one of the best albums of late 70´s acoustic jazz. And not only the music, it´s the cover that´s great, and the liner notes is also great to read. I have only superlatives for that album and that Quartet.

Yeah, his chords and his voicings were unique. He could make a small band (with Fats Navarro, Allen Eager, Curley Russell and Kenny Clarke) sound like a larger group. For example "Our Delight". I can´t read more than the basics of chords progressions but I played it from ear and got those voicings even if I had to play it in trio. The way you lay the chords, the punctations, and it will sound like a "mini orchestra"...... And of course his out-chorusses, where he replaces the theme melody with a new line, you hear it on "Good Bait" , on "Our Delight" ....wonderful..... Somewhere I told the story about me and a bunch of fellow teenagers sharing the passion for jazz, how we "discovered" Tadd Dameron. It was around 1977 when that Miles Davis - Tadd Dameron in Paris 1949 came out and despite the terrible sound quality we dug it. And when I discovered the "Mating Call" - Tadd with Trane and told other kids that this Tadd Dameron played with Miles AND Trane, those who only knew Miles and Trane answered "if you say he played with Miles and Trane or they played for him, he must be a "big chief". And later we had fun humming his themes and his out-chorusses while sittin in the boat , fishing for trout. And for me Tadd Dameron is also a very unique pianist. That short solos are little "miniatura art pieces" as a friend of mine who also discovered Tadd thru me stated and damn right he was....

I first heard him in march 1980, when he played - also together with Harry Sokal at an after concert session in a now defunct club "Jazz By Freddie", after Sonny Stitt played here in town. So it was advertised that after the regular concert in a concert hall Mr Stitt will come down to the club and play with Roman and Harry. Roman and Harry played fantastic stuff, but Mr. Stitt was very very juiced and after two mediumtempo blues in Bb he decided to sit down at the piano and "play and sing"..... so sad to say there was no more 3 tenors....., Yesterday I had the honour to jam with Roman Schwaller and two other name saxophonists. Such a great musician and a beautiful guy. Three tenors with p,b,dr.

Well, from all VSOP albums that extremly short studio album is the one that´s got only 1 or 2 times spinnin´ here. The first Number Skagly would be cool, but it´s more a backbeat tune and the acoustic bass in the manner it´s recorded doesn´t really fit in. This number would have been great with a fender bass. The others is missing the tension I´m used to, that medium tempo swing number could be fine, but always those stops not only in the theme but in the solos too...., I like the other one from that year 1979, I think it´s titled "Live under the Sky", that´s really top....

My favourite acoustic group in the 70´s . But I think my favourite is the "Tempest at the Colloseum", though this one is also very very fine.

I don´t like the word perfect in music. Reminds me too much about one of the few occasions I heard classical music when two women (daughter my then girlfriend and her mother) took me to some opera and yeah, not my bag but I dug it and enjoyed it, but during intermission them two women start "did you hear how singer so an so did not hit the high C properly ? And so on and so on and they had fun doing that shit. I said well it sounds nice, I don´t know about the mistakes and if there are some, who cares ? As long as they bring the message out they are cool to me. They said that this is something like the cherry on the cake , to make observations like that. I said "can you get up there on stage and sing it better ? You can´t so you better let ´ em do their stuff as good as they know it....

Ok the way they look like or the tattoos.... I wonder how they sound and yeah, to hear them in trio format would have been the greatest. I like them all three, Gomez more in group than solo, his fast hi note stuff on "Me Myself and I" get´s on my nerves, but as a team player it´s a safe thing, All three some of the hottest guys around in the late 70´s and as I said, all three on "Me Myself and I" and yeah those exchanges Cuber with Pepper Adams on "Something like a Bird" is great. The way they look like. Well from my point of view as all I knew when I was a kid: Old guys who once were young guys... As about Tatoos, I can´t stand them, sorry and I don´t want to hurt nobody, but the only tattoos I saw in the past was the tatooed numbers ex prisoners had on the hand or so.... I don´t really like it. People say it´s a personal stuff you tattoo something that´s your personality, but what if I don´t want nobody to figure out what´s my personality about......, or what happens with such a tattoo if I change my personality ? Last weak I saw a guy with a gun tattood on his face. What if that guy changes and becomes a pacifist, he get´s rid of the gun-tatoo and get´s a white "porumbel" or "taube" ....( how you say in english to that bird ?)

As 1959 born maybe I was too young for the Beatles movement, at least those who were a few years older than me told me that. I have read somewhere that Ornette Coleman once recorded with Yoko Ono, I hadn´t known until then that she also makes music. From hearing stuff people told I always concluded she might be that tough woman that somehow became a cliché - difficult to handle artists under the firm guide of a tough lady, , like maybe Keiko the wife of Elvin Jones, like Buttercup for Bud, like maybe Maxine Gregg to Woody Shaw and later Dexter Gordon, same story. I didn´t have the same background as many who was a few years older than me who started with Beatles and Stones and later became interested in jazz. In my case I´d listen to easy hit parade stuff of early 70´s (Austro-Pop) what was on radio, hits and shlager´s and once by coincidence I heard "Milestones" by Miles Davis on Radio and I was "hooked" forever.....

Oh yes, those later Dials recorded in NY. With J.J. Jones added, right ? Yes, that´s vintage Bird.

Yes, I think there was two Howard McGhee albums, where one of the sidemen was featured with his extra group. One was a classic vintage bop session with some top bop musicians like J.J. Johnson and Max Roach I think, and some Kenny Drew trio at the end. the vol. 2 is a bit strange. It sounds different, much more melancolic, maybe if I remember right, the first tune was some stuff in C minor, right ? It´s not as intense as his group on Vol. 1. but very fine music. The tracks without Maggie with two guitars, bass and drums are a bit strange and unusual for me. It´s more focused on guitar virtuosity I think.....

Must be interesting. I think I´ll purchase it. It´s interesting, that all three were part of Mingus´ last studio album "Me Myself and I" . That Gadd Gang and the Brecker Brothers.....

I don´t remember exatly which one was Volume 4, but all those Spotlite LPs were very very important for Bird students in my youth. We listened to them all, though I kept only a CD with all the Savoy and Dial Mastertakes.

I think I posted it some times ago. Fritz Pauer was my mentor. I was a shy teenager at hi school and his niece went to the same school and got me in touch with him (of course I knew before who he is). What an honour for me that this great musician said I got a lot of talent. He was the one who encouraged me to play and was the first one who let me sit in with some fast company when I was 18 years old. I had the occasion to see that trio on several occasions, and the hi light was when they played with Johnny Griffin. I miss him.

I like George Cables very much and my favourite record is that with Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Lewis and Philly J.J., "Four Seasons". And of course I saw him on several occasions. Too bad I never saw Pepper Adams, he was scheduled on the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band in 1978 but it seems they had changed the personnel. 1985 was quite late in his career, yes? I had seen a photo of him from Toronto 1986 and he had cancer and only few month more to live. I don´t know who Pierre Dorge is, but that doesn´t mean nothing....

Same here. I like it much more with horns. Though I don´t have many, I like those with Clifford Jordan done for Steeple Chase, and that Art Farmer album with the Cedar Walton Trio doing Ellington Standards....., but I think those were from the 70´s

I saw Jimmy Witherspoon once in 1985 and it was a most interesting group, it also had Dee Dee Bridgewater , on piano was the Germany born but live long parisian pianist Siegfried Kessler, who played and toured and recorded a lot with Archie Shepp, on bass I think was Dexter´s bassist David Eubanks, too bad I don´t remember who was on drums. I´m not necessarly a vocal jazz fan, but this was really really great, and it really had a great trio who acompanied Dee Dee and "Spoon"....

would be worth a topic in the forum jazz literature. I thought the most bitter is the interview with Hampton Hawes. And there is a very unusual interview with Eddie Lockjaw Davis...

It also must have to do with the environment I grew up. My mentors were active musicians or listeners of more demanding music like Trane, Mingus, Ornette etc. and of course also "back to Bird". Decent trios were the bass and drum have more suportive roles, like those Oscar Peterson trios or those Erroll Garner trios you mostly saw in not strictly jazz upper middleclass households, oh yeah and usually they also had those Jaques Louissiere "Play Bach" ..... And even after the re-birth of BN with all those RVG-Series albums starting to come out in the late 90´s I don´t remember there was "Three Sounds" included..... so even then I didn´t have no idea who Gene Harris is....

Yes, I also read that interview with Griffin. Griffin had a great start in Europe when he came to Paris but maybe he missed the old days.

I somehow became much lesser interested in trio albums with the years, but that Horace Parlan on Steeplechase I have, I like it very much, mostly because it´s not such a dull trio album where bass and drums only have a supporting role. It has Danny Richmond on drums and I think that´s the reason why I bought it and love it so much. It has "Like Someone in Love" on it, and Mingus´ "Duke Ellingtons Sound of Love". As for Gene Harris, is it possible that he belonged to other jazz-cliques that those where I was part of ? I mean, until around 40 I didn´t know who Gene Harris was, none of my fellow musicians or musical mentors ever mentioned him. Same with let´s say Houston Pearson: I don´t know why but I didn´t even hear his name until a guy who was maybe 13 years older than me mentioned Gene Harris and Houston Pearson as some of his favourites.

Very interesting story, didn´t know that. Anyway, for me looking chronologically at the BN Story (and again I mention I´m a player, not a colletor) I always thought that some of those things in the early 60´s were a step back, I mean you had new artists for BN, you had older artists who started to explore new areas, and then you had a batch of very very straight ahead swing albums with let´s say Tommy Turrentine, with the Three Sounds, with Horace Parlan (and I love Parlan, but much more in the Mingus context and with drummers like Danny Richmond ).

Great photo, yes those were the days, wonderful time then.....

Maybe I´m not the greatest fan of Woody Herman since it never did thrill me the way the contemporanious Billy Eckstine Big Band or Dizzy Gillespie Big Band did, I would like to hear some from this, it has some famous players and I think Sonny Berman was mentioned in Ira Gitler´s book "Jazz Masters of the 40´s ". I also heard some of that "Bird with the Herd" which is fun, but for my tastes it´s a bit too tough and straight big band sound, very very well played but something I hear in the two mentioned big bands that I could associate with Bird, is missing or not fitting to Birds melodical and rhythmical concepts....., far from racial, but maybe african american musicians from that generation would have said it sounds "white"... I saw Woody Herman twice, one in 1979 where the played some Chick Corea compositions, and an all star small group 6 or 7 years later. I enjoyed both of them.

I´m not sure if I will buy this one. I liked John Scofield more before he joined Miles. I saw him with the Dave Liebman band of the late 70´s and before that he had recorded with Mingus, but in the Davis Group he somehow played more behind the beat, it was not as wild and fresh like Mike Stern was before in 1981,82. And though I saw every Miles Davis Show in the 80´s in Viena, now looking backward I can´t listen to the stuff after Al Foster was replaced by Vincent Wilburn and the increasing use of "programming".

Strange, the cover photo looks more like someone like Bill Evans. I don´t have very very much of Art Tatum, I have some 1941 "God is in the House" which is great, though the piano is of poor quality, it´s live. I also have 2 of the Pablo "Master Solo Pieces" and one from an obscure label "20th Century" or so with recordings from 1956, but obviously not in N.Y. but in L.A.... I also have a "Group Masterpieces" with Buddy de Franco on clarinet I remember..... Is this a later photography of Larry Young ? I only know those from the BN years, I think he died in the late 70´s but it seems he was quite obscure then. Dpn´t know the death causes, did he have a similar end like Tina Brooks, who also died in obscurity in the 70´s ?