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Everything posted by Gheorghe
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87-yr-old George Coleman groovin' at Smalls this week.
Gheorghe replied to BillF's topic in Miscellaneous Music
Now I saw the video. It´s quite a sad aspect from 2000 on for us who witnessed greatest tenorists in their prime, to see him in the latest stages of their splendid careers. There were dozens of them. I all saw them when they were in their prime, mostly in the 1970´s maybe early 80´s.... Well, when I saw Wayne Shorter in 2004 or so, he still was full in action and looked much younger than past 70. Johnny Griffin in the same year was a frail old man with a weak sound, having to sit down while playing. Sonny Rollins also was short of breath in later years. Pharoah Sanders also had slowed down and was in obvious discomfort when I saw him. Archie Shepp the same. Others lost their abilities due to booze and drugs and died in their 60´s like Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt.....really sad..... Here, George Coleman has to be led on stage and has to sit down. He is short of breath which is mostly obvious on ballads, where he tries to play fast runs to cover his breathlessness. But what shocked me most was that fact that he seemed so isolated, paying no heed to the rousing rounds of applause, with a vacant look when not playing. But they shouldn´t have filmed the whole intermission with that bald headed guy with the photo camera, who is always standing there.... -
I had to google what "dungarees" means. Oh my God, my fashion nightmare if women wear that stuff........, Yeah, as much as I remember, those Messengers in the late 70´s did wear that kind of casual wear, Blakey himself had dungarees jeans which made him look even shorter than he was. I remember those bands with Bobby Watson (I think he was the "musical director"), David Schnitter, and the great russian trumpetist Valeriu Ponomarev , James Williams on piano, Dennis Irvin on bass, they really cooked and brought the Messengers back for top billing after a weaker period in the earlier 70´s. My favourite LP was "In This Korner". I think, one year later David Schnitter was replaced by Billy Pierce, and on bass was Charles Fambrough, so I saw those Bobby Watson featured Messengers on more ocasions....
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Is this the one with Earl Coleman on it. I´m not really a fan of vocal jazz, but I love Earl Coleman, Billy Eckstine, Johnny Hartman etc......, and it´s great to hear Sonny in that rare context..... Interesting all star thing. I heard Dizzy about the same time with an All Star Band, I don´t remember exactly the personnel, but it was Diz with Phil Woods, maybe Steve Turré , I don´t remember who was on piano, Rufus Reid was on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. Well I would have liked Jackie McLean more than Phil Woods, but he is also okay. Maybe Diz due to advanced age did not hit every note the way he wanted but it was pure bop, you still could learn very much from listening to him. I remember they played "Tour de Force" or this was the only track that was recorded for television than.....
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I have the two volumes as individual CDs, Japan Toshiba Series, it was very much around in the late 90´s early 2000´s . It´s really an exiting, albeit sometimes rough thing. On my Vol. II CD there is a wrong listing of the 2 tunes played. Breakin Point is the latin beat thing in A natural, and Jodi is the fast modal tune. Freddie Hubbard seems to be in better form than Lee Morgan, all are great, and the combination Pete La Roca and "Big Black" is a dream team. But I didn´t really like the liner notes, it seems it is written by some college kid who doesn´t really know what´s goin´n on. I don´t read liner notes while listening to music, but sometimes after having listened to it I read them...... Maybe for some not so hard core fans the outworks of the tunes are a bit too long and go too far out. Let´s say on Vol. 1 that Clare Fisher bossa. When my wife heard the beginning she said "Gee, sounds like holiday, having sun at the pool and so..." but when it got more into improvisation she said "bye bye" and left the room.... On Walkin´ , Lee´s feature: Why do they speed up. It´s okay to play Walkin quite fast like Miles did it in the 60´s , but I think they are almost on double speed at the end, and I don´t mean "double time"..... They play Bud´s "Glass Enclosure". During my youth some students had to play this or to transcribe it I don´t know exactly what, I thing it´s more a pseudo classical thing. But that "V.S.O.P" irritated me, I thought about my then favourite band with all them greats. I must admit I don´t know who Danny D Imperio is....
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From the 80´s stuff I like "We Want Miles" most since you hear a band workin at Miles played a lot of open horn on those, I think most from Kix and Kool. But later that year he played to much muted solos and it´s hard to hear him. The Band of the first part of 1983 still was great , when Mike Stern still was there. Scofield as much as many like him more than Stern, he had a tendence to play more laid back and I liked more the wild rough thing Mike Stern did. When Miles played some keyboard I like it more than Robert IrvingIII, since Miles had that specific Milesian chords. After that, it started to bore me. For some years always the same things, that "New Blues", that "Time after Time" and "Human Nature". I think the last time I saw him live there was a bit more music you can improvise on, and Kei Akagi was a hell of a keyboard player since he was not only a background role, he could really "blow" on solos, a very good choice. When I heard Miles for the first time after his 5 years hiatus it was very exiting, but then it started to become a parody. And I don´t know who made Miles outfit, but it somehow became a parody of himself. Those wide trousers make him look even shorter than he is, and that artificial "afro" where he looks like a king-poodle also looks funny...... When he came back in 1981 they told he was quite sick, but he looked more handsome and played more than later in the 80´s ......
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Don´t know how to remove that quote up there, since I had posted already but when I write something else it´s still here. But whatever...... My question: What is a "Flamingo´s " song. I knew the ballad "Flamingo" and could it play right now. Sure I also know "I Only Have Eyes for You" ... a Billy Eckstine thing isn´t it, I got it in my head ..... About the other records, at this time I can´t say much. Wynton......I liked to hear him with VSOPII or what it was, at least three original masters and the two young brothers to play since they couldnt afford to book Freddie or Wayne or Freddie and Wayne didn´t want to do that for more years.....Heard him once again in the same year 1983 with his then quintet, young neat guys, some kind of acoustic 60´s jazz, not more.... About the not strictly jazz related Mambo ....I don´t know it. I heard some non jazz latin music at some peoples places and it is nice, but I couldnt say who played, When I was asked once about other genres like "Blues" (I don´t mean a jazz blues tune) or "Latin Music" I usually said look I like to eat a gulaș , it has meet, pepper, onions and all in it, so I like it. But I don´t have to eat separate the onions only , or the peppers only or the meat only.....
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Yeah and I was in the middle of that Parker/bop kick. I discovered Parker from reading the liner notes of "Steamin" and from the title "Parkeriana" of Mingus, my only LPs then. And I noticed that saxophonists were crazy about Charlie Parker and if you listened to Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy AND Charlie Parker, you were hip. Later I got acquainted to Jackie McLean too, and those four alto players are the sound I have in my ears. But I also heard Arthur Blythe and Donald Harrison do great things....., what I don´t like are more syrop sounds on alto, I think the alto must be "sugar free" for my tastes .....
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maybe some day I will save it on usb stick for the car, for a longer drive you can listen to such stuff. For really listening I prefer more demanding stuff.....
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I don´t really know what is Tone Poet, but I had the Herbie Hancock album on the BN LA series with them ugly paper back covers and blue letters. But while other albums from that series where reissues of entire albums, this was only a sampler and had a few tracks from each of Hancocks LPs. The Prisoner is great, especially for the contributions of Joe Henderson. I bought individual CDs of the Hancock albums. I couldn´t read who is on it. I think I have somewhere a Charlie Parker Memorial 1965 (10 years after Charlie Parker´s death but it has more musicians form the generation before Bird (Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldrigde). Well I like "Whims of Chambers" more, because it has Trane and Philly J.J., but I have heard not for only one time that some do not really like Chambers with arco. Why ? The first arco I heard in my live was Chambers on Well you Needn´t from the "Steamin´album" and then on "Whims". It was incredible. I couldn´t believe that you can play something like that on a bass fiddle and Chambers was something like a "hero" for me . Well that BN album is nice and there are fantastic arco solos, but it´s a bit too much. A whole album mostly bass is a bit too much. That´s why I like "Whims" more. Bass player as leader yeah, like Paul on "Whims" and Mingus on all his albums, but leader does not mean you solo all the time.
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This is my only Art Farmer album under his own name. I bought it about the time it came out since Art Farmer lived in Vienna if he was not touring and played a lot there. I got it signed by him with a dedication. About the same time in the 70´s some of the Supersax were bought by Bird fans and first we said "wow" , but while you can go back to Bird at any time and find inspiration, you won´t spin Supersax to much after that first "wow". And last but not least the rhythm section is too mainstream like, It almost sounds like it could be a machine, no live rhythm section. Most kids over here had the two MPS albums I think with Blue Mitchell and Frank Rosolino added. "SaltPeanuts" and "Koko" were more expensive and not found everywhere. Actually my second Miles LP then (after "Steamin´".....my third was "Agharta"). But it had another cover and was very cheap. But I loved it most. Soon I founded it much more interesting than "Steamin". Especially that fast "Walkin´" fascinated me, with Tony Williams drum solo.....
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I must hear that , Gary Bartz playing "Misty Night". Strange but over here there are not many players who play that tune. I heard Pharoah Sanders do it. Gary Bartz, besides all his musical explorations starting with the great contributions to Miles Davis always had a big heart for be bop. On those two fantastic albums of "Heads of State" he plays many bop tunes.
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Very interesting statement @Peter Friedman, especially your remark about "pleasant music, easy to liten to, but lacking musical depth" . At that point I think I would have loved it when I was a kid and just loved to listen to "jazz piano" since I played piano "from ear" from my earliest childhood on (with no other instructions that listening to the attempts of my father to play the first sections or bars of some Beethoven stuff (Moonlight sonata, for Eliza) and explaining the scales and give me perfect pitch and so, but those piano trios like hearing Oscar Peterson at some friends house I loved it and wanted to "learn" to play in that "manner". "Three Sounds" I would have liked but it was unknown over here. It´s strange, but as much as I learned more about playing and getting offers to play in combo settings, I became less interested in trio settings. There is no greater pleasure for me than comping a fine horn player and then play the best stuff I can when it comes for me to solo. Good, very very good horn players give me the best inspiration. As for Garland, same here: His trio albums can get boring, and though he played with Philly J.J. while with Miles, he preferred Art Taylor on trio settings and I like Philly J.J. more. But one thing: Garland´s "block chords" . Every time I hear that, I can learn something about voicings. To play an intro with some inspiration of how Garland would have played the chords can be quite interesting.... I love all the pianists you mentioned, but I doubt I have heard them playing trio on stage. I heard Kenny Barron with Ron Carter, Ray Bryant with an austrian quintet, John Hicks with Sanders, George Cables with Dex and Diz....., Jimmy Rowles with Ella......I think I never heard Steve Kuhn, I have heard he was with Trane but Trane replaced him with McCoy.....
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Right, Art Farmer didn´t make many records for BN, I think he was with Hank on some Horace Silver album.........oh yeah, on "No Smokin´" since I like to play that tune.... I have only one Art Farmer record, it´s "To Duke with Love". He was a regular here in Viena and played at least twice for several days at a club..... During the 70´s I heard a very very strange remark from a club owner, who booked a lot of great musicians, but when some guy at the bar asked if Art Farmer also will play at that joint he said "no comment about Art Farmer". The customer insisted "why ?" and the club owner answerd: "Art Farmer tries to be whiter than the whites..."
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87-yr-old George Coleman groovin' at Smalls this week.
Gheorghe replied to BillF's topic in Miscellaneous Music
Me too, it was early in 1979 and the band was Hilton Ruiz, Ray Drummond and Billy Higgins. -
Cool Struttin is the ultimate hard bop album. I have heard in Japan in the 80´s or 90´s or early 2000´s were tea houses where they always spinned music like this, I mean "Cool Struttin", "Blue Train", Donaldson´s "Blues Walk" and so on. And.....oh yeah....the cover photo is fantastic, it has everything I like and you can imagine how day dreams for a jazz loving teenager were "one day I´ll get it, one day I´lll have a woman with legs like this....."
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Agreed, the 1971 band was great and sorry to say I was only 12 at that time and too young to see them when they did Vienna. But a friend of mine, who was 4 years older saw them and said they were great. Keith Jarrett.... from my listening aproaches of the wild stuff Keith did both on electric piano and organ, I had thought that this is THE Keith Jarrett and was disappointed when in 1975 he played only acoustic and solo and more in the ECM style.... On the other hand, I like the 1972 concert, it´s a live version of the stuff he did on "On the Corner" and is that different style he had then, more with some indian instruments as there was Badal Roy I think, and some Harakrischna or Balakrischna on an electric sitar I think. The year 1973 was just the beginning of how about the band with Dave Liebman, Al Foster, M´tume, Pete Cosey and Mike Henderson sounded until his semiretirement in late 1975. Fast funk tune at the beginning, a slower passage with Lieb on Flute "Ife", and some other that you also hear on Dark Magus, Agharta and Pangheea. It was the band that was in Viena at Stadthalle in November 1973. Miles was my idol then, the music of course, but as is the case with a 14 year old boy, you want to do everything your idol does: When I spotted that he drank a certain brand of beer on stage (Brau AG) I had to have also that beer instead of the usual "Schwechater" or "Gösser" here in Austria. I also wanted to have such big sunglasses and be "cool" or even "nasty"...., and I let my anyway kinky hair grove so it might look a bit like an "afro".... I heard an unofficial tape of Miles the same year 1973 in Berlin, also a few days after Viena and it sounds very similar to Viena, same tunes..... Dark Magus from 1974 is the best presentation of the band with another idol of mine "Dave Liebman". I heard something about that 1978 session, but since Miles is not on tp I´m not really interested. I only saw some session photos and was shocket to see how fat Miles was on it. Maybe it was wrong medication for the hip and wrist ailments he had, and too much beer......when he got back in 1981 he again looked smart on stage....ds Too bad Miles didn´t tour exactly during the time I would have "needed" it most, I mean from 1976-1980, when I was at hi school or early student with more leasure time to travel to spots....
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Swing Street
Gheorghe replied to Hardbopjazz's topic in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...
Would like to be for a short time into a "time machine" and be there entering the 3 Deuces to hear Charlie Parker . In my case, as early as 1930 is a bit too early for me, I would have liked to be on 52nd Street from 1945 on until as much as 52´nd Street WAS the street of jazz. (I don´t know did Birdland close in 1965 ? Then maybe you could have heard all styles there, from bop to free, wonderful) -
Quite a good idea, since I usually don´t pick up only tunes. If I find the time to listen to an album, I listen to it as a whole album. I don´t know who is Vince Guaraldi, but Miles Davis´s collectors items is nice, by the way for the from me adored Round Midnight, by the way featuring Bird and Rollins on tenor..., and for very very much amount for that first participation of Philly J.J. one of the best drummers of all the times.... A certain album I spin when I´m in a certain mood is Mingus Blues and Roots in a warmer spring night, like in late April.....Mingus was born about that period, and I can imagine folks goin to a "Wendsday Night Prayer Meeting" (though I don´t go to churches or such meetings....),
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Now I know what movies we had seen on TV: "Something wild" " Unlawful entry "
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Every time I get good musicians to play Round Midnight. I can understand why Monk played it almost on every gig. One of the best compositions ever. You get tired of playing other tunes, but Midnight never becomes routine....
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Sometimes I did listen to Lou Donaldson with the Three Sounds, but it´s nothing exiting, just easy listening music. I don´t know exactly the story behind the way how this trio, similar to Oscar Peterson but without the big name of Oscar Peterson entered to BN cataloge with so many issues. As I say I don´t hear something that would really fascinate me, it´s a nice "mainstream" piano and not much from the to me unknown bassist and drummer.....
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I love it, and sometimes I listened to those three "Sky" "Filles" and "Silent Way" and of course Bitches Brew one after the other. Such a great evolution. But I still wonder why "We Want Miles" as a great live album when Miles still played "jazz" and not "pop" is not in your "Jazz of the 80´s".... Somehow I have the impression Grover Washington "came and went"..... In the early 80´s DB reported he shared stage with Sonny Rollins (Grover on soprano of course and I remember the commentary "or would you like to face Sonny Rollins on stage with a tenor ?)..... Someone sometimes bought me an album under his own name, it was nice easy music, but something like "background music" as it seemed to me. Nothing challenging.....
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I don´t collect that much any more. I keep some key albums of the artists I like . Well I don´t have classical music that much, maybe some Three Tenors (vocal) something with Pavarotti, a DVD of "Swan Lake" or so, so my jazz "collection" (better said "examples for study" ) is in alphabetical order so I might find easily what I wanna hear. If I feel like listening to some Jackie McLean I´ll find it that way.... I´m not really meticulous about it, it´s for the purpose and the purpose is the music. I listen to it like I listen to live music or as if I´d play myself in that group..... I doubt many of the guys I meet on stage have "enormous record collections". I also observed that may collectors don´t really talk about the music itself , you think you got a new "jazz friend to exchange impressions with him" and the only stuff is he knows records dates, record labels, and if he has "Charlie Parker at Birdland from March and Mai 1953" he will not sleep well until he has purchased the missing April 1953 and so on....
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I must have that, Jackie McLean is one of my all time favourites as a musician, and I´m an addict of his sound and phrasing..... Ron Carter and Tony Williams dream team, Hank Jones is a wonderful sounding pianist and plays beautiful, though I don´t have albums under his name. I have read more about those records of topnotch hornplayers with Carter-Williams done in Japan I think. Wasn´t there also one of Sadao Watanabe with that trio ? Who are the others who played with that rhythm sections. I think I missed that and it went OOP very early. Wasn´t it on Galaxy Label ?
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