Gheorghe

The Woody Herman 1979 interpretation of "Better Git it in ya soul" is fine. It´s on that Concord album with guest stars Dizzy, Woody Shaw, Stan Getz..... 1979

you can pn me or mail me

I think I bought this once a very very long time ago. Somehow I was not really happy with it. I love "sugar free" saxophon but Peppers sound of "Goodbye" is too piercing. And somehow I have a problem with enjoying some of Pepper´s compositions. There is one "My Friend....(who), on it, but that theme is so terrible long, I think I even lost the trace when first listening to it. I think I remember there is some other tunes of him, that I like more. One is about a rapid train in Japan, one is a back beat tune titled something like "wish list" ....

Erich Kleinschuster. A great personality of jazz back then, and a helluva trombonist. But I also remember when he left the hall during Miles Davis´ concert at Stadthalle here in Viena around the mid 70´s (I think there is a "bootleg" CD from the event, similar program like "Dark Magus") , he and his gang, and talkin negative about Miles (well, that´s a question of taste, ok until here), but one week later he started to try "jazz rock" in the clubs, replacing the bass fiddle with a fenderbass, and the piano with a fender rhodes , first dissin´ Miles and than try "rock" ,

You still around. I think it was years that I read you the last time ?

1985 ? He died a year later and looks quite well here. You wouldn´t expect that one year later he was dead.

I heard somewhere, that he also had played with Miles, is that true ? That´s when I first heard or read his name.

I like his arrangements for Mingus, and his composition "Song for Harry Carney" almost sounds like a Mingus original. I think, Mingus started almost each concert with this tune. The live versions are much more exiting that the studio version. Oh yeah, and recently I heard his arrangements on the "Lee Konitz Nonet" from the 70´s. A very good album.

I always had a cat. Once we had a reddish tiger cat called "Smoti" and he seemed to like the music I heard, especially if I spinned Monk he seemed to like it very much. Or if I got up to play some Monk tune and impro on piano, he would sit on my lap and enjoy it. I never saw something like that. Many years later I got that book from Nica Rothschild de Koenigswarter with all them photos and the famous "3 wishes" of jazz musicians and there are many photos of Monk with cats around him. Well, she had so many cats, I couldn´t handle that, I always had to have only one cat as family member.

This was my times, and this band was Blakey´s ticket back to top listing after some "lean years" that happened after the 1971/72 "Giants of Jazz" world tours . This two albums were advertised in the German Jazz Magazine "Jazz Podium" and then there was "In This Korner" and we all heard that great edition with Ponomarev, Watkins, Schnitter, Williams, Irving....., the messengers where back, like many other acoustic jazz greats. Wonderful memories.

I love it too, but the most interesting Andrew Hill I ever heard was on Bobby Hutchersons album I don´t remember the title, maybe "Dialoque".... ? I would have liked to hear one thing that was on one Sam Rivers double LP from that paperbag-cover albums , it was Sam Rivers´ album and had the session by Rivers , which I later bought as something called "Extensions" or "Dimensions" without piano, with Julian Priester on it, very very fine, but what really impressed me then was the second LP where Andrew Hill was the leader. I had borrowed that double album from a friend and taped it on cassette, but I don´t have those cassettes anymore, which is natural. But I don´t know what Album it was, it must have been from about the same time, 60´s, and I think it had Bud Powell´s former drummer J.C. Moses on drums, a very fine drummer.

I don´t have many Verve Records from the 60´s, I think I have that Wes Montgomery album with Wynton Kelly Trio, live at that Half Note ? I think I saw his signature on the back cover and then thought it is "Cecil Taylor"..... About Impulse I didn´t know that he had founded it. I always had thought it was Bob Thiele. Other then Verve, I have lots of albums from Impulse. About CTI, I love "Red Clay", it´s one of my very favourite albums in general, and one of Hubbards best albums. I might listen to the following Hubbard albums for CTI too, if it´s good stuff. I think I bought that Chet Baker at Carnegie Hall once, with Bob James playing acoustic and electric piano. Maybe in general CTI didn´t have so much that I used to listen to. I heard people loving Bob James, people who otherwise didn´t know other jazz artists....., but he´s cool, he can play...

Well yeah, Sy Johnson was a very good arranger and did many arrangements for Mingus, I think for his "Let My Children Hear Music". And the two times I saw Mingus live, he always started the set with "For Harry Carney", a minor blues in Bb with an ostinato bass-figure. Great tune especially the voicings. It´s quite strange that Mingus, who usually played his own compositions, always started the set with this tune, that was not composed by him.

I think I had this one, maybe it was one of the first Dynasty albums ? Then, most of the members still had played with Mingus, Somehow, especially because I had such an affinity to Mingus´ music who was among the very very first things I heard and led me to become the jazz fan I´ve been for the last 5 decades, I was so deeply depressed by his passing that I just couldn´t believe it. And hearing "ghost bands" play his music somehow hurt me. It even took me many months until I could buy "Me Myself an Eye", which came out in early 1979 and first I thought "A Mingus album without Mingus playing bass can´t be worth listening". Later, I think 10 years later I saw one of those "Mingus Dynasties" at Wiesen, but it was sad. Though the only left active Mingus musicians were nobody less than John Handy and George Adams, there was no fire in it, and Jimmy Knepper was conducting but seemed completly bored. Those were guys in semi coma doin some sad stuff without any life in it. As many records, I think I had sold or misplaced that "Chair in the Sky" after 2 times of spinning, I still was suffering that Mingus was not here anymore.....

Oh I´m really sorry to hear that. I just had mentioned him in the "What are you listening" when I answered on a reply about Easter European Jazz , where I mentioned Rolf and Joachim at Newport in the early 60´s ......

I think I read somewhere her version of the short gig with Mingus at the Jazz Workshop in June 1964, shortly after Jakie Byard had left the band for a short period. It must have been hard work to carry the load of such a giant. There were many hassles with the boss, and Danny Richmond tried to calm it down, talkin also to the mother of Jane Getz. The album Live at the Jazz Workshop "Right Now" is great, but not necessarly for the playing of Miss Jane Getz. The force is from Clifford Jordan (I never heard him play with more power and emotion), the incredible bass of Mingus and above all Dannie Richmond. I´m not sure now, but to encourage her to play again on the record, Mingus bought her some presents, and her mother took her to some "hokus pokus" , I don´t know how you say.....

When I was younger and had time for rehearsals, we played "Cumbia&Jazz Fusion" on at least three occasions live. With all them sections, the ostinato bass intro, the horns comin´in and the different sections from latin to swing to a short ballad time, to the satirical "Mingus Rap" and the out chorusses and all. Since the bass player good as he was, didn´t have the right hoarse voice, I had to take the role to "sing" that vocals...... I did Fables also, I have Meditations on Integration in my head and the changes of Rockefeller I know , but I don´t have the time any more. Not for rehearsals. Just get on stage and play the set list as it was discussed havin coffee before gig....... For Mingus I mostly played what I heard live when he was alive, The set order he had than. I think Meditations was no more on it, but Faubus was. Sue´s Changes also, nice chords ! As for Andrew Hill, sure I love much of his works and have two BN albums of him, I think one with Joe Henderson and one with Dolphy added, and maybe as a sideman on a Bobby Hutcherson album where he also contributes compositions which are great. But I don´t remember Andrew Hill was very much mentioned during my upcoming in the 70´s. Eveybody knew Monk and I have been playing Monk tunes all my live, but please not "Blue Monk" or "Well You Needn´t" with the Miles bridge instead of the original bridge, So I couldn´t say I could play an Andrew Hill tune "ad hoc" . He is great but maybe he was more an insider thing even during the time they recorded him. My impression is that BN hoped to discover the "next Monk" . Same with Graham Moncur III. They could sell very well Herbie Hancock as pianist/composer in the 60´s.

I love it, vintage bop tunes and ballads also from that period...... played by that too unsung hero. And I love those old BlackLion LPs, I have quite a bunch of them, all of them US stars recording in Europe. I think the producer was Alan Bates.

Yeah I remember those times very well. But many players did include very much of Eastern European Folk music in their brand of jazz. I think this was supported by the governments who would not like that their artists play stuff that was created in USA. I got to know some of them personally, mostly from Romania. I knew the guys from Vocal Jazz Quartet (Nicolae Ionescu was the leader), Johnny Răducanu the pianist who also wrote an autobiography which I fear I have misplaced somewhere, Harry Tavitian - Corneliu Stroe „Duo Creativ”, and many others. Female singer Aura Urziceanu I think emigrated to Canada....., and sure I also met some cats from Cehoslovacia, Polonia and Republica Democratică Germania (GDR it was named in English I suppose). Wasn´t there the pianist Joachim Kuhn from over there ? I think he left to the occident very early , I once saw a picture of him playing at Newport maybe in the 60´s. I think he had a lesser known brother who played clarinet. I think I didn´t meet musicians from Soviet Union, maybe from the now independent Republica Moldova (than a Soviet Republic), who had been separated from Romania after 1940..... Maybe most I liked Valeriu Ponomarev, the soviet trumpet player best known with Blakey. I liked him most because I must admit I prefer american styled jazz, I don´t really have it with "searching the own roots" as it´s about music.....maybe a question of taste...., but I think it always was a secret how he had managed to get to USA....., once he was asked and said "no comment !!!!"

In my youth or better said in my surroundings and fellow musicians it was else: Maybe the MJQ sounded else after they left BN and Prestige and got a more classical approach, but though they choose a more relaxed and more silent way to play than Diz and Bird , they all were real "cats", they formed the rhythm-section of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, they all played with Bird, and minus Lewis who was a fine pianist himself, all played and recorded with Monk and Bud. So I got to at least some of the earlier records of the MJQ through Diz, Bird, Monk. And don´t forget that fine stuff Sonny Rollins did with them also for Prestige. With Brubeck it was another thing. I really didn´t get to know one single music lover from the people I hang around or played with, who said "yeah, I dig Brubeck", and at least I learned it was another kind of society who liked Brubeck. And when by coincident one of those, maybe a school teacher who heard I go into jazz (when I started to listen to Mingus, Miles, Trane , Rollins etc. ) told me to check out Brubeck because he is GREAT, he is TOP, he borrowed me an album and despite the fact that I didn´t like the cover picture (this Brubeck looked to me like a secondary school headmaster from the early 60´s, completly "unhip"), I expected if he so "hot" as they say let´s spin it, and..... even my mother (born 1921) somehow heard it through my room and came in. She was not educated to jazz but when I would spin Mingus´ "Meditations", Ornette´s "Lonley Woman" she said that´s really great deep music , but when she heard "this" Brubeck she said "WHAT´s THAT KITSCH ? I thought you hear good music like "your" Mingus and so on, but this is NOTHING !". So even my oldish mother didn´t like it..... And I never could change my mind.... you can say it´s my fault, but I can´t do it....

Same here with Cool Struttin´ , but how could I forget about Blue Train when I mentioned my choice of 5 albums ? It was my entry in the BN-Mythos when I was still a boy. I mean, the first BN I heard. And Bud with Fats and Rollins , Monk, and Ornette Golden Circle I think were the first five I had. And that was a bitter time for the label. Many good albums were OOP, I had convinced my record dealer to order some directly from the States and after some months they arrived and I didn´t leave my house for a week because I was busy diggin that fine stuff.... The time for BN was so bad, I noticed it because my record dealer had all his LPs not in the alphabetical order of Artists, but of Record Labels, one for Prestige, one for Impulse, one for CBS, and a very small one for BN. But when I browsed through the BN´s hoping to find all them great artists, Rollins, Griffin, Mobley, Morgan, Hubbart, Herbie , Wayne etc, I was shocked when I only saw stuff from musicians I hadn´t heard about. Who was this Meredith Monk, I was interested only in Thelonious Monk, and who was Freddie Roach, I was interested only in Max Roach....., etc......

Too bad I missed the chance to see the comback of the MJQ live. Though I´m not the biggest fan of it, especially if it goes to much into classical influences which I don´t really like, I like the early albums for BN and Prestige. They played "together again" on a 3 days Jazz festival from friday to sunday, but I was in the Army and got only a day off on saturday, so I just arrived on friday evening when Miles started his set, heard all the music from sunday but had to be back on Sunday, so I missed things like MJQ and Libration Orchestra..... Lee Konitz doin´ "Oleo" might be interesting, I don´t have very much Konitz, one is the Prestige stuff with Miles as co-leader, I think one of Miles from Roost 48 with Konitz replacing Bird, and one 1977 Konitz Nonet which is very fine and has a superb rhythm section. I think it was on Roulette. Oleo sure is fine, but I would miss a drummer......

I had supposed they were brothers. Sam Dockery I only know from a Blakey LP from 1957 "Plays Lerner and Lowe" which I got coincidentally in the 70´s while looking for a Blakey Album..... Well, nice pianist, but I didn´t hear nothing so special, I mean compared with other pianists who played with Blakey or vice versa.

Yeah, me to, but from the 60´s my first choice of Dorham is "Una Mas". I like the tune and like to play it too. And Hancock and Williams of course .

Miles in Europe still remains my favourite "second quintet" record. Until then I had heard only one or two albums from the "first quintet" and I bought this one "Miles in Europe" with another cover over here. It was very cheap, only 70 shillingi, less than the half price for a regular LP back then 5 decades ago. Yes, "I Tought About You" was not on it. But I was overwhelmed by the power of Tony Williams and the fresher sound of Herbie, other than Garland who sure is very nice. I don´t know how often I spinned that fast versions of "Walkin" and "Milestones", much more exiting to me than the original Prestige sessions. And imagine: Once during that time (I was maybe 16 years old) I stayed at the place of my sister and listened to it loud in my "kid-room" and my sister just had called a craftman to fix something in the house and later told me that this guy had shouted with enthusiasm "great music, wonderful !!!!!". Those were great times. Jazz was much more popular then....