Gheorghe

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.....

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..."

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....."

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....

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....),

Now I know what movies we had seen on TV: "Something wild" " Unlawful entry "

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....

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.....

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.....

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....

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 ?

I think I am a bit too young to have been too aware of Charles Lloyd. He was a big thing going from late 60´s into early 70´s and a certain kind of generation or social group adored him. When I dig get acquainted to jazz a bit later, a bit after the popular years of Charles Llyod I doubt his name was so much mentioned . My drummer was 4 years older than me (né 1955). Like me he loved Trane, Rollins, and all of them and once mentioned that he also likes Charles Lloyd and I didn´t know who is that. Others said better listen to Trane and so on if you want to hear "the original"..... I saw Lloyd only once with that Petrucciani , scandinavian bass player and young talented drummer, but let´s say I heard Jackie McLean on the same schedule and I remember everything about McLean but nothing special about Lloyd. I had that Electra Musician album, but there are other tenorists I like better. He seems to have a certain philosophy about all it that doesn´t reach me really. Well, I think some of the guys a bit older than me, who got a tenor sax sometimes called "Forest Flower" and I had to play it. So I had to play it quite a few times.....

I´m not really an audiophile and most time I´m so focussed to listen to the music that I forget if something is mono or stereo. Strange album somehow. I always try to find out if the combination Art Pepper and the Rhythm Section is as good as it´s advertised. I got to know so called "West Coast Musicians" like Pepper, Mulligan, Baker much later, when there sound and surroundigs had changed to more modern approaches. That´s why I have Pepper´s sound from the late 70´s early 80´s in my ears. What I hear on this record is a very very smooth light alto combined with a more smoother touch of the "Rhythm Section". It´s like if they tried to adapt there sound to that light and easy listening alto sound. Not everything came off well: "Jazz me blue" sounds a bit out of fashion even for 1957, and "Waltz me blue" is a try of Art Pepper to contribute an "original" but it´s not really a qualitative composition. The story behind the session is also a strange one. It tends to dramaticize too much Art´s junkey live. Well, the music sounds so fair and smooth it´s hard to believe that a hopless junkey plays those lines and that sound..... I don´t really know what records cost since I haven´t bought any recently, but those Tina Brooks things all were reissued on BN in several editions I think "RVG Edition" "Conoisseur Series" or what they were. I had or still have "Back to Tracks" which I like most. Then another I think from the late fifties with Lee Morgan on it, but forgot the title and think it was released after his death, and I think there was still another one which was not as great as "Back to Tracks". And he is a very fine sideman on a Freddie Redd album, I forgot the title, it´s not the Connection, but it has both McLean and Brooks on it and wonderful compositions. The first starts with a rubato playing and then they get into a crisp tempo, beautiful changes on that, I think it´s titled "The Thespian" or something like that, got to play this with a quintet....

Wonderful performance and Tina Brooks is also so great on this....

The studio album Decoy was somehow a disappointment for me after the "Star People". The only "catcher" on it, that was played live also around 1985 was the keyboarders composition "Code M.D.", nice for it´s chords..... Some 1981 studio material may be interesting. I like most the more "rough" band imediatly after his comeback, the band with Mike Stern, Bill Evans, Marcus Miller, Al Foster , especially at the beginning when Miles played a lot of open horn, a bit rusty maybe, but challenging. Later that year, from late summer on he played almost only muted and barely audible. From the Japan concert I barely can hear Miles. Maybe again he had contracted pneumonia....

Sad to hear the area is in decline. As much as I imagine as an European, it must have been nice for holiday if you couldn´t afford to travel to more exotic countries with islands , palms and sand and blue sea.... And nice if there was so much entertainment for the evening. I mean if I make holiday with my wife, we like to dance or listen to music or do some shopping after a day outdoor. But the only 2 times we took the plane to the States it was goin to Miami Beach to be sure we have 2 weeks of sun, warm water, shopping in the evening and dancing...., there is to much risc of cold and rainy days in mountain areas even in summer time. But a lot Jewish People are also living or making holiday in Miami Beach, maybe for the same reason. Nice people, they often asked us where we comin from....

Love his playing and his compositions, he had it all. But really he would have deserved more recognition. I mean, if I think about that "Paris Reunion" edition somewhere around 1985/86 where he was featured and played so great.....fantastic !!!! And when the all stars were announced, he got less applause, very very embarrassing, he would have deserved it all. It was the line up Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Leo Wright, Graham MoncurIII,.

That´s true. Well isolated yes......you might expect a tenor saxophonist. Henry Grimes with Hamid Drake and David Murray was one of the greatest things I heard.....

Maybe because my ears are mostly used to then so called "modern jazz" from bop to free-to 70´s electric, the clarinet is a rare thing. And especially those screamin´ clarinets from old time dixieland or what it is really are painful to listen to me, I don´t like that sound . Even great clarinetists like let´s say John LaPorta on those "Bands for Bonds" with Bird, Fats, Tristano .....or on that all star bopsession from late 1948 great as they play it sounds a bit out of place and could happen easily without them. I love Dolphy´s bass clarinet, and Perry Robinson´s clarinet on that 1965 Henry Grimes album for ESP.....

I read Dave Liebmans autobiography and he tells that he played a lot in the borș circuit in his youth. As an European I hadn´t known until than what the borș belt meant, but it must be a nice holidayday place.... The first time I read about it was in Ira Gitler´s book "Jazz Masters of the Forties" about Bird and Diz´ bassist Curley Russell, that in the 60´s he was seen playing in hotel bands in the borș circuit.....

I kept only "Off the Races" and the one with Pepper Adams live (I don´t remember which joint, it was in the early sixties and had Lex Humphries on drums, very fine drummer who died too early). There are too many for me. I think I have another one from 1967 but forgot the title. On the other hand I have some Donald Byrd as sideman for other players (Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley , Bud Powell)..... As for the 70´s era if I want to hear early to mid seventies electric jazz I prefer Miles Davis when he went all electric....., somehow it is possible that the electric Byrd didn´t reach Europe as much as the electric Miles........ Bill Hardman is nice and can play, but I doubt he would be "studied" much by aspiring young trumpet players. I have played with some really fine trumpet players who had studied all their stuff technically and musically but I doubt if I would ask them about Bill Hardman he or she would say "Gee, that really was a source of inspiration for me). I saw Bill Hardman once, but it was towards the end of his live I think in the 1980´d in Cehoslovacia with a fine local trio, but it was only one set consisting of 3 tunes "Walking" "My Funny Valentine" and "Night in Tunisia"....so... nothing special for more memories..... Art Farmer had lived in Viena for some time. I still have "To Duke with Love" signed by him with a dedication for me..... Too bad I was too young to see Kenny Dorham live. From all those mentioned here, he is my favourite from that era of the 50´s . From 60´s jazz I prefer the players who became famous then, but of course "Una Mas" is one of my favourite records and I love to play "Una Mas" since the audience really likes it, mostly at the end of a gig, it´s a good "crowd pleaser".....

Thank you so much for sharing this with us. But I´m glad to read here, that Mobley was not "homeless" like some press reports stated.

You are not the only one ! I think he changed very much. On some youth photos he is quite thin, then he was heavier. The most times I saw him he was a bit Mingus-like. Short and heavy, light yellowish colour, kinky hear and a short beard. And when he was into his 70´s he had his hear slicked back (a thing that some afro americans did in the fourties including Miles), When I saw Miles after his comeback in 1981 he also had his hair slicked back again, not the afro from the 70´s. But the most important thing is the music. Jackie McLean is my favourite alto saxophonist and one of my very favourite musicians in general. His sound....fantastic. Last week I played with a soprano-saxophonist and his soprano sounded a bit like Jackie on alto...... wonderful....