Gheorghe

He writes, that Jackie McLean was working on his autobiography but then he died (never knew the causes), and that he was in contact with McLeans wife Dolly, who stated that she will complete the book, eventually with the help of family members. I hope there is something goin on in that direction, since I´m sure a lot of fans all over the world would buy it.

I heard the Lone-Lee on radio in 1977 when it came out. We had that fantastic weekly jazz on radio on Ö3 (Jazz Shop) and the guy who run it was the legendary Herwig Wurzer, something like an austrian version of Symphony Sid, the voice in the night with his special style of hip talking. I had it on tape and years after that wanted to buy it but it was no longer as CD on Amazone, and the only version I found on discogs was LP, so my wife bought it for me for father´s day two years ago.....

Well, I also could not say there might be much which is new to me, but it´s a nice chronological thing about all his musical activities and recordings from the beginning until his late career. Not, that I wouldn´t know the records or other things, but it is easy reading before goin to sleep. I read a few lines and don´t have to count sheeps Like let´s say Carl Smith´s "All recordings of Bud Powell", also a chronological thing. What I miss, and maybe never saw, would be something more personal, maybe some photos of his private live, his wife, his children, and I never knew what was the cause of his death. He was 74 and had a fantastic creative life and his education thing on Hartt, but I would have hoped he would have lived some more years.

Ajaaa, alles klar

A very good book about Jackie McLeans recordings, very interesting thoughts. Really for musicians.

Danke Dir sehr ! He super oder "leiwaund" wie wir in Wien sagen. Und für einen Wiesbadner schreibst Du ein tolles Wienerisch ! Ja, unsere Frauen, sie leben hoch !

Yes, that was 1986. After that, Eddie Harris played for TWO WEEKS at Jazzspelunke, Dürergasse 1060 Viena with the same bassist and drummer. Fantastic, I was there almost every evening (which was easy for a working person since live music was only until 22.00h . And they played mostly the stuff from that LP. Did you see it too ? I was mostly sittin at the bar, I was a Spelunke regular and played there quite often. One evening, when the Eddie Harris was on stage, Austro-Pop-singer Wilfried was there, and we talked a lot about jazz, he stated that he is a big fan of Eddie Harris and has all his albums. Really a great evening. Great music, and after that a lot of talk and laughin with Wilfried. He seemed to be happy there is a guy to talk about jazz and other things of life, without wanting an autograph or something...... , this was an evening when everything was right....

Yes, agree to everything. Especially that Bud is in best form with horn players, like Byas and here the rare encounter with Moore. There is another wonderful set of Bud with a Lestorian tenorist (Zoot Sims) from Paris also (I have it on Mythic Sound, but it is also on the CD version of the ESP record. The tape anamolies are also on my copy of the session with Moore, but I didn´t buy this one since I already have it from the Francis Paudras archives...., it´s the same on that....

Oh yeah, Dușco Goicovici , I loved him. This is another musician who was presented at Herwig Wurzer´s Jazz Shop. That Macedonia stuff is great, isn´t one of the tunes that wonderful "saga secorama". And the other , more "american" thing was an Enja recording "After Hours". And I love his trumpet sound....., once I heard that Miles also liked him very much and was the first who told him to go to the States.

One of my favourites of course. The first LP I had was "Schizofrenia". I love all other BN also very much, but this one was the first. The last time I saw him live must have been around 2004, 2005 or about that time. He still looked much younger than past 70, he could have been 50. The rare event was also that before the concert startet (at Vienna Concert House) Joe Zawinul came on stage and announced Wayne..... Wayne was great, but the kind of music they played was much more difficult than all those "All Seeing Eye", "Ju Ju" and how they are. It was somehow avoiding rhythm, it was more free, but not in the aggresive way free players used to play, somehow other stuff, maybe a bit like the kind of ECM. Only at one point he quoted a little from a composition I know...

How about Coltrane´s fantastic playing and sound on the 1956 Prestige album Tadd Dameron with John Coltrane ? All those beautiful tunes, "On a Misty Night", "Soultrane" "Mating Call" , and Coltrane is in top form on those .....

I must admit I maybe was "too young" for the Stones, as some of my a bit older friends said. (born let´s say 1953-55) while I was born 1959. Same with Beatles. Before I got acquaintet with jazz I listened to the usual hit parades with all that early 70´s stuff like "Mexio", "Mama Lou", "Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree" or stuff like that, so I wasn´t really informed about the 60´s rock´n roll bands as a kid. But I first read the name of Charlie Watts in DB in an extended interview, he had long hair then, but was very skinny, but I was astonished how much he knows about jazz and jazz drumming and how many name musicians he knew. And I got it confirmed yesterday when it was in the newspaper about his death that they wrote he had been a big jazz fan too.

Danke Dir sehr !

Never saw that. Frrom what year is it, it may be fifties, early sixties . Did Peter Ind really have such long hair and such a beard then. Is this before the hippie movement. Also on later photos he looks a bit like a hippie. Anyway I have heard, that Lennie Tristano was a very strange person and some of his students also became a bit "strange" and always remained associated with the "Tristano School". Somehow I didn´t listen much to other Tristano records than those from the 40s, mostly with Billy Bauer in trio, and then of course with Konitz and Warne Marsh, but very very little after 1955 (I only liked the tracks live with Konitz, but somehow I´m not prepared for all that overdubbing. I still have a record "Crescent into the Maelstrom" with some really strange music, but two very fine solo ballads from 1965 in Paris, I think Darn That Dream is one of them.

Thanks for your interesting example of pianists. But the interesting thing about Oscar Peterson is, that he almost never was fully mentioned in books about jazz during my youth (Joachim Behrend, Arrigo Pollilo, Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, etc.) He didn´t make "history", he filled concert halls, mostly with people in evening robes who otherwise do not listen to jazz. He was a very technical pianist but tended to play clichés and just banged all them keys and covered everything, with that grin he had.... But he was never a history figure like Trane, Miles, Monk, Diz, Rollins and ....yeah Dexter of course as one of the jazz masters of the 40´s and still running very well in later years. And yeah, Dexter compared to Stitt was a showman, an entertainer and of course one of the most important post war tenors. Maybe my question in the title of the topic was very influenced by my kind of listening more like a musician. I don´t need to have a guy who´s nice and talks to the audience, I listen very closely to each note and how he resolves difficult chord progressions and can play all tempos from ballad to real uptempo. That´s maybe that recently I found more stuff to learn and study than Dexter in his last years when he had become a star.....

There is still a record shop in the first district of Vienna, it´s EMI. This has been when I was still a kid and bought records there. Great that it survived for so long time, and they still have enough jazz, so that even I can find sometimes something I didn´t have. Thats where I usually go if I go shoppin in the Inner City with my wife. Two days ago it was a special occasion because we are preparing our 25th anniversary of wedding. You know, dress for the occasion, and above all, the right shoes. I like shopping and have a good taste for fashion and shows so she is really happy to do this things together with me. After we found the right shoes in a really fancy luxury shoe shop we were happy and relaxed and enjoyed the early evening in the fancy innercity of Vienna, among all them tourists. And as it is, we passed by the record shop and my wife says, hey why don´t we go inside and look a bit, I´d like to buy you somethings. Our game is always the same, I tell her....look a little if you find something for me, and though she´s not a jazz fan she knows what artists I like. She passed by the rafts with Austrian or European jazz and asked: Monk? I said, might be hard I think I have all of them. "Mingus"? I said good choice, but I have lot of Mingus. She picked up the "Newport Rebels" and I said gee I don´t have that. Herbie Hancock she also "knows". I said, yeah but not Headhunters I have that, and all BN I also have. She picks up "VSOP live under the Sky" and I really didn´t have that. After that "jazz exercise" she said "When I was a little girl, my parents once took me to the opera "Magic Flute" by Mozart, I liked that. So I said ok let´s buy it for you. This was a bit hard for me since we are no classic specialists. I saw some edition that seemed to be old, decades old, so better not and asked what is a more new edition because it might sound better, and that I bought for her. I also heard that once, I remember that soprano "Queen of the Night" ...

oh yes, now I see it. Mine had another cover. But even if you posted it, you got a little review from me, even if I wrote it only from my memories, just re-listenig the music in my head....., but yeah when I will have the necesarry time, I will spin it. Now I hear music almost only "in my head", all the solos all the tunes, and so on, just to relax between hard work and if I come home I´m too tired....

I have one from about 1976 when he played for a short time with the Messengers with Blakey. I think it was an Roulette album, and I think it had allready Dave Schnitter on tenor, who was later with the really great comeback group of 77,78. Schnitter sings vocals on "Georgia on my Mind" and get´s a little into yodlering á la Leon Thomas.... I remember Dailley does some Garner like left hand on "Blues March".... I think I didn´t give it much spinning because somehow 1975,76 is somthing like a dry period for acoustic jazz. It was somehow half hearted remake of hardbop, and quite a difficult time for Blakey. I think he really had a comeback one or two years later, when he toured the world again.

Yes, Michael Ray would have sounded great with Mingus. I love his playing with Sun Ra and saw them live in 1980

Very sad. But is it possible he had been sick for years, I saw a later photograf of him and his face looked like if he had a stroke, partially paralized..

As for Lester Young it seems it never disturbed me. It really swings. But about Dexter in the late 70´s early 80´s it really starts to disturb me as years passed. With Lester, it always swings, and with Dexter it seems to swing only due to the superb rhythm section. If I listen closely to it, as an unit it almost seems to drop completely . Even in the early 70s there were occasions where it didn´t disturb, as on his Prestige albums and on the three CDs "Swiss Nights", but later..... The last occasions I saw Dexter in the 80´s was in March 1980, in summer 1981 , and early in 1983. I think he was high on each occasion, but 1983 was really an embarassing experience. He was late, completely drunk, and not as sharp dressed as usually and his playing uninspired and the set was extremly short.....

wow this might have been the last time Bird played with strings. Bird with Strings in general is not exactly what I listen to much, maybe sometimes I´m in a mood where I like it, mostly in wintertime if it´s comfortable at home and I want to hear such a sound...

I´ve tried to identify other musicians who would play behind the beat, but with the exception of Dexter none comes to my mind, or if there ar, maybe they not on my "playing lists", maybe? I hear Bird/Bud/Diz and co from the Bop Era, Miles, Rollins, Trane, Mingus, Ornette, Joe Henderson and so on and so on, this is only a few of them, but who plays behind the beat ? Or is that another kind of music, maybe the ECM Stuff that Is not really reprezented in my playing lists (with the exception of Drum Ode and Lookout Farm by Liebman).

Sure I know it and appreciate it, but I´m referring to the working groups.

Thank you for your answer. Sorry to say, I don´t know his song "I´m Hip" and it seems I wasn´t so well informed about jazzy and humorous caberet-ish singers etc, since at that age I was completly into jazz pure and didn´t listen to anything else. Now being a bit older I can get fun out of contemporary german/austrian shlager like DJ Ötzi, Ben Zucker since my wife likes it very much and it´s the music we dance and make garden partys even if it´s only us two, thats the finest thing to enjoy live without always needin company... For my own interest and playing efforts it remained jazz, so the only association I had was that Miles album (anyway my wife bought it for me once for birthday ).