Gheorghe

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.

What is on sides 4-10 ?

Oh, I knew Nicolae Simion very well since he came to Austria (he changes his surname from the original Romanian "Nicolae" to "Nicolas" ) . We played some gigs together before he settled in Köln. I remember the first time I met him, it was a Jam Session I led at a club named "Tunnel" and didn´t know him. He had his tenor, came up on stage and wow !!!!! He spoke English and I thought he might be from the States, so much tenor he played and so damn good. Soon I would chase other, weaker musicians from stage to have only him with the trio and it was heaven on Earth. Well after someone told me he´s from RO I talked to him in his language and we played some gigs. Only the last time I missed it. It would have been a tribute to Monk and I was scheduled, but didn´t appear, it was "just one of those things.....", man he was pissed off and he was damn right.

I hadn´t known about those multiple album reissues until I got two of them from my wife for x-mas. And good luck, it was nothing I would have already had as individual cd: it was a 2 CD Dizzy set with "Bahia" and "Dizzy´s Party" from the mid 70´s Pablo, and the other was that Mingus "Newport Rebels + the two Candid albums from the early 60´s . About your impressions on Magic Touch: Yes, it´s possible that he hoped to make some money with it. The last few years must have been terrible for Tadd: Bad health, a bad habit, no gigs and no money. I read the bio about Tadd (in fact, there are two of them, but one is more complex) and the last chapter is really depressing.

Fantastic. I have them as individual albums, the first I got was the Mating Call, but it had another cover, one of Tadd on piano in the studio, with a red cover and the title "Tadd Dameron with John Coltrane". The album with Fats is fantastic, that´s the great band from Royal Roost 1948, wonderful. Fontainebleau is wonderful but maybe not as strong as "Mating Call". There was another session for Prestige in 1953 but it filled only a half album, the fanstastic stuff with Clifford Brown, the so called "Atlantic City Band". The last album "Magic Touch" disappointed me. Some remakes of old tunes, but the new compositions are to "smooth", I like the more tricky things like "Hot House", "Good Bait", "Our Delight" and so on. And the disappointment also was that Dameron himself was no longer playing himself. Bill Evans is not really an adequate replacement. Tadd was during the end of his life and to ill to play a piano. It reminds me of Mingus´"Me myself and I" where he couldn´t longer play the bass himself, and the two replacement basses can´t fit into the role Mingus himself had on bass. That´s what I think about the Magic Touch album, same impression....

I don´t know what XR....and all this means, but Miles Davis Quintet 1956 was THE MUSIC, that made me become a jazz fan and later player almost 50 years ago. Then, only "Steamin´" was available with another cover. But it was spinned always. Pocket money was scarce, so for some month this was my only Jazz LP. That´s why I only knew "Miles, Trane, Garland, Paul, Philly J.J." as musicians and they were my heroes , each of them, like let´s say some Pop singer or actor for teenage girls. Well, I had heard one Mingus tune on a "Sampler" and he soon became my next and even stronger hero. Strangely, "Cookin, Relaxin, Workin" were not available then in Europe and it took me years to even know that they exist, until I purchased them. Strange, but the very first Quintet album "Miles" never impressed me the same way like those four. On the other hand, when I got "'The Musings of Miles" it fascinated me and I called it the "Pre Birth of the Quintet" because it already had Garland and Philly J.J. on it.

I must have this, thanks for announcing.

Fritz Pauer was my mentor when I was a highschool kid. His niece was a schoolmate and made the connections. From then on, it was Fritz Pauer who encouraged me and he was the one who let me come up on stage and sit in with fast company when I was 18 years old

ok, thank you, that´s the reason why I had not heard about it. I had his three BN albums from the 1500 series. It´s strange that especially in the fifties some temporary BN-Artists all made 3 albums in a short period, and then switched to other labels: Curtis Fuller Johnny Griffin Clifford Jordan Paul Chambers

Is it possible, that the "Two Bones" was not orginally released, since I knew only about the other three albums. By the way: I got "Bone and Bari" signed by Mr. Fuller himself !!! The Rollins 2 CDs is just wonderful and sure one of the best few live albums in the BN cataloge. Such a wealth of invention and still a major inspiration for jazz study...

I saw Jim Rotondi here in Viena for the first time with Curtis Fuller ! Great trumpet master. This year he was again in Viena with a "Dameronia" programm, it was an evening dedicated to the music of Tadd.

I have them as individual LP´s from long ago. The Fats Navarro-Sonny Rollins thing is the greatest . I think I remember on Vol III I only liked the stuff with Curtis Fuller, side A is quite weird and unorganized, From the trio recordings if I remember right I liked most the "Time Waits" with Philly Joe Jones !!!!!, and the compositions on it.....

The Shaw Washington frontline might be interesting. I never heard this Tyrone Washington, Horace says in his autobiography "Get to the Nitty Gritty" that he had troubles with Washington because his playing was to far out for his hardbop stuff. But that might be interesting, I like it if horn players get a bit "one step beyond"......, But Washington seemed to have a short career, but if you have Woody ......what could be wrong ?