Gheorghe

oh yes, just listened to some tracks on it on youtube. Sounds great. Very very nice. Brad I really can understand you and can follow your thoughts in an obiective manner. Sure I didn´t remain at the mind of a teenager and became the busy and successful man I have been for the last 40 years and every day I learn and study something new and have a wonderful wife whom I repect and love . But maybe on non business manners some seeds were already settled then. And it seems that many dudes of my generation, many fellow musicians and mentors of mine had the same experience in musical tastes, at least over here. We all dug Miles, Trane etc. and 70´s electric jazz , and from Miles, Trane etc we might get back to bop, so most the guys I know had and have the same tastes that spread from Bop over Modal and Free to Rockjazz and Funk and so called "post bop" or neo bop" of the young generation. I haven´t seen one of them who at one point might get more inside Brubeck´s music. Some things in my early live never changed: Jazz, Fishing and at 13 I would dream to find a woman who looks sharp and has long hair and heels and all, tall and slim and a stunning appearance , and though you get mature and look for much more important things, the caracter, the personality, but this old stuff of the physically attraction remained the same..... Please forgive me if the stuff I wrote is a very subiective point of view , I didn´t have the intention to hurt you, and though you might not change my musical tastes never think you are speaking only for yourself. I really hear you.

Well okay, I´m sure Paul Desmond really knew his instrument and had a unique sound, but as it happens, maybe he is too much associated with Brubeck. From those with a lighter sound I think I listened more to Lee Konitz thru Tristano and Birth of the Cool and some other albums under his own name. He is the one I like more from that period and from the so called "cool jazz" which is not my strongest point. Maybe I had another start for jazz: The first alto I ever heard was Dolphy, followed by Bird and then culminating in Jackie McLean. I know some don´t really like McLeans sound and quite sharp intonation, but I am an addict of his sound. Then, let me see..... Jimmy Lion is great, Arthur Blythe.... Well the one who told me how great Brubeck is gave me "Time Out" to listen. I think one of the tunes other than Take Five was Blue Rondo a la Turk. I was listening to that album and tried to find something that would fascinate me like the only three jazz albums I had then (Mingus with Dolphy in Paris, Miles Davis Steamin, and Bitches Brew). I would like to mention I was about 13,14 at that time, and even my mother (born 1921) said "Meditations on Integration" is some of the greatest things she ever heard (and she was not a jazz listener), and later loved Ornette Coleman´s "Lonley Woman", well, she was somewhere around and then came into my room when I was "listening" as recommanded to the borrowed Dave Brubeck album, my mother asked "What´s happenin´, what´s that KITSCH you listenin to?" . And later, gettin in touch with playing musicians I don´t think one of them recommanded me Brubeck. I must say that the only three persons who wanted to pull my coat to Brubeck were listeners , but not players. Bill Smith: I heard to pieces of him on the Impulse Album "Americans in Europe" from Koblenz 1963 and though it´s another music than what I usually listen to, I like it, it´s okay.

I mostly like the slower tracks on it. That version of "I Can´t Get Started" with the wonderful bass solo of Mingus, and the tune that originally was recorded as "Love X" on Impulse. This is one of the most beautiful ballads I know.

At Wiesen Jazz Festival 1983 (Austria) Timeless All-Stars was scheduled, but actually the musicians who played were others than scheduled. I think it was scheduled with Bobby Hutcherson and Curtis Fuller or so, and actually the band that played was: Jackie McLean - Bobby Hutcherson - Herbie Lewis - Billy Higgins . What a great group and some of the best sets I ever heard, each of them a very favourite of mine, and they played "Blue´n Boogie, "What´s New", "Star Eyes" and "Salt Peanuts". I´ll never forget this. But it seemed to be more a "Blue Note All Stars" than a "Timeless All Stars". But when a critic wrote a review of the festival at Jazz Podium, he still mentioned "Timeless All Stars" with the schedules personnel, not even mentioning Jackie McLean it was very annoying. Enrico Rava was a favourite of the DC at a now defunkt very small jazz clubs in the 70´s (Jazz Spelunke). I think he was en vogue by a certain group of listeners who also listend to lets say Jan Garbarek, those more european sounding players then.... Warne Marsh with Lou Levy might be interesting, I had heard Marsh only in context with Lennie Tristano. Lou Levy was a great bop pianist, I saw him with Art Pepper 1981. Abdullah Ibrahim then was "Dollar Brand". I only saw him for few minutes in 1979 with some kind of african orchestra, but somehow it was not my music...., he was conducting then or at least stood in front of the orchestra with his back turned to the audience like conductors do.... Michel Petrucciani I already commented. First hearing "wow", but even then I detected a more classical approach in his playing.

Oh, in Viena, my home town.........must have been high moon for those who were from that certain kind of jazz fans who were older than me and most of them definitly middle class. I somehow never could connect to Brubeck since when I was a complete starter on listening and playing the music with my heroes being Miles, Mingus, Ornette and Bird and still not knowing all the others , one of the older guys told me that I must listen to Brubeck, that he is the very best of "jazz". From my point of view that meant "better than Mingus, better than Miles ???", and after one half side of an album I realized that it does not touch me. So, talkin about Brubeck I definitly had the wrong start.

I think it´s from the same session or about the same time as "Idle Moments". Very fine playing. I think once in two, three years I feel like listening to both of them. Person, Cranshaw Harewood is a very fine rhythm section, but I discovered that I´m listening less and less to those more "smooth" rhythm section. Even if it´s straight ahead jazz, I like it a bit more "pushed" with more challenging drummers like Tony Williams, Joe Chambers or Philly J.J. and a lot of others....., and Herbie or Andrew Hill on piano..... But no question, very fine music. Only I think it was in the vaults for long time, maybe Lion and Wolff thought it´s too similar to "Idle Moments".

Somehow it never got an entry in my collection. Maybe when I saw it I just didn´t want to by another "piano trio" album. About beer at sessions, I couldn´t do it. It slows you down. After a session of a gig it was fine. One good drafted beer and a cigarette to relax. But for some years I haven´t been drinkin an alcoolic beer, I got used to non-alcoolic beer. Only the cigarette after the gig remained. Never took drugs so I don´t have any idea how you react to it. Once a guy shared a reefer with me, but I couldn´t feel nothing special about it. I think it made me somehow depressed or not so optimistic feelin and after that half reefer I saw no reason why to smoke this instead of a cigarette.... About Hampton Hawes on piano: I don´t have very very much of him on record. I like his solos on a Wardell Gray live album from the early 50´s were they play mostly bop standards like Donna Lee and so on. But something about his playing is more straight hammered on this. Hampton said he was the nearest thing to Bud Powell, but I don´t hear that. He´s got a helluva technique but I don´t hear something as special as I heard in other pianists. Strange to say, I really like his fender rhodes playing on the 1973 Montreux Things with Dexter and Gene Ammons....

Interesting statements about the more radical scene of certain groups of youngsters during the time, when I myself was at high school ! But the jazz friends I had at school or got to know who mostly were some years older, never talked against american jazz. The other way round, artists like Miles, Mingus, Ornette, Rollins and back to Bird were our idols. I knew there was also some radical folks who were against everything. I was not interested in those kinds of matters, never demonstrated for or against something. I liked Monk´s statement in a Valerie Vilmer interview were she tries to get some "political" statements from him and he only said "I don´t let that bug me".

I´m not sure now but I think I heard an excerpt of one tune of it (Timmon´s Dat There I think) on a commercial. Love that record. I love this Hutcherson album very much. He was such a flexible musician, from mainstream to avantgarde, and the occasion when I saw him together with Jackie McLean AND Billy Higgins was one of the greatest concerts I remember....

Wonderful ! I wish Lester Young also would have made a record with the Red Garland Trio.

I love to read reviews from users, much more than just posting an album cover and if time permits it, I try to make similar efforts. I think, I purchased "Black Saint" a bit later than my first Mingus LPs (the Paris Concert with Dolphy) and the 1960 Blues and Roots. This was somewhere in the mid 70´s. Maybe I was still a bit too young at that time, since I missed some bass solos (for me, besides being the great composer he was, Mingus for me was the bassist that impressed me mostly and when I picked up bass as a second instrument I tried to get some stuff from his way to play a solo) . And maybe a was a bit too young to dig this kind of Mingus´ soul, and in my case the alto of Mariano still sounded completly strange since the kind I knew alto was Bird, McLean, Dolphy, Jimmy Lylons....) . For years, and sure at that moment when I bought "Black Saint" his two great quintets (the one from 1964 and the one from the 70´s with Adams/Pullen) those two impressions somehow had spoiled me on other more albums with more written parts..., I saw Mingus after Adams had left and was replaced by Ricky Ford, still very very hot stuff....) But some years later I gave "Black Saint" more listening and really enjoy it now. It seems I must have been more mature to dig it.

I listen very often to those two, love everything about it. Mr. B is my favourite singer, together with Earl Coleman, Johnny Hartman, Kenny Hagood. If there would be more airshots of the Eckstine Band discovered I´d be glad. Once while he was still alive he stated that he still has unussued material of that period. I like those combinations of Singer and hip Orchestra (dig Tadd Dameron´s arrangements ) and if I don´t listen to jazz, I like Max Raabe and his Palast Orchestra because it has that sly irony in the way he sings with that vacant look and hip voice and hip dressed, and there´s a lot of space for the soloists of the orchestra too.

I´m sure some of you, during their playing career had to play gigs that are memorable not necessarly for the music, but for strange cirumstances and I invite you to share those stories here. I want to tell you a true story, the people involved are quite famous, though sorry to say the two musicians who played that gig are no longer among us. In the early 80s I knew a guy who was the brother of the remarkable Austrian author and journalist Conrad Seidl (best known as „Beer Pope“ since he wrote a book about beer). That guy who was the younger brother of Conrad told me that his brother will marry soon and thinking about the music for the wedding party he thought that some jazz would be cool, and if I could get a small group together and play, it would be some good money. So I asked him where the event will take place and he said at the Theater of the Otto Wagner Hospital (psychiatric hospital in Viena, better known as „Steinhof“). I said „you kiddin´“ , we are supposed to play on the grounds of the nuthouse ???? He told me that it is because his brother Conrad is a fan of the Art Nuveau Style and the hospital grounds are famous for their art nuveau church and theater building. Do they have a piano I asked and learned that there is no piano. Shit….. because at that time I didn´t own a portable keyboard. But I wanted the gig because money was cool, so I told him „look, I also play the bass fiddle, so fix it and I´ll get the other musicians so you will have your band. During that time if you wanted to meet musicians to fix a gig you just had to found them at two jazz bars in the 6th district „Café Einhorn“ (run by former saxophonist Uzzi Förster) or on the other side of the street „Jazz Spelunke“. So when I came in, the great late trumpet player Karl „Bumi“ Fian (best known for his tenure with the „Vienna Art Orchestra) was sittin at the bar and greeted me and I said „look, Bumi, I have that gig, it´s the wedding of Conrad Seidl but there´s no piano so I must play the bass fiddle“. He said sure let´s do it. And we get Walter Grossrubatscher (former with Woody Shaw, Conte Candoli, Junior Mance) on drums. „You want to play just with trumpet, bass and drums?“ Quite a thin instrumentation really, but anyway….. We didn´t need to rehearse, since we would play standards only. So the gig was fixed and we were told to get early enough to the theater to set the drums, check the sound and start to play when the party gets inside. And we should wear dark suits and white shirts. Okay, the day of the event arrived and I was supposed to be the first there to check how the surroundings are. So I drove to the place with my old Citroen 2CV (popular name: „duck“), with the neck of the bass fiddle stickin out of the roll-off mobile roof of the car. From the parking area to the theater there was a few steps and since it was a hot day in July I had taken off my jacket and wore only the trousers and the white shirt. Strange feeling steppin on the grounds of a nuthouse I thought, and above all, the door of the theater was locked. I banged at the door and the windows ….. no reaction. Then two muscular guys with shaved heads and white hospital clothes came torwards me, started grinnin´ and sayin „hey nuts what you doin´, move on! “ I answerd „no no, I´m a musician and have to play here“ The two guys from the staff (mental nurses you say ?) started to laugh in an ugly manner and said „Gee, you a musician, that´s mighty fine, you got some other stories too ? I tried to tell them „But I´m not kiddin´, I´m really a musician and have to play here !“ It didn´t help, they really thought I´m nuts and started to grab me. I yelled „I can proove it, come along with me up to the parking area, you see my Citroen with the bass fiddle stickin´ out of the roof !“ They laughed and really thought I´m one of the insanes of the hospital, they grabbed me and I´m sure they wanted to bring me back to some closed ward. Thanks God, at that moment the guy who had booked us came down and saw what happend and explained that I´m one of there musicians for the wedding party. The two guardians let me go, but not without shoutin at me why I didn´t say that earlier….(I really did , but maybe if you are at a nuthouse and tell somebody from the staff that you are a musician and have a bass fiddle in the car, it sounds weird….). Finally my two fellow musicians arrived and we played the gig. I don´t remember much, but Bumi and Walter were great as ever and I had a hard job to cover the lack of a chord instrument, especially on ballads I got a lot to do and I mean I´m a piano player and just had picked up the bass fiddle in 1978 when I bought one for rehearsals at home until I started to practise and after one, two years I had mastered it well enough to fill in on bass if somebody called for a bass player….. I still have the bass fiddle at home but haven´t touched it for decades, concentrating on piano only, but it is a very good instrument (someone who didn´t know better and sold it from about 550 Euro (7500 austrian shillings then) but it´s really an old and wonderful sounding instrument and about the same time I got an offer from the great austrian bassist Johannes Strasser (former with Art Farmer, Chet Baker) , but didn´t want to sell it. Maybe when I´ll be retired I might try it again. You don´t forget to play an instrument, you only have to build up some chops and will have blisters at the beginning….. I hope you like my story and will contribute some other stories about „strange or even scary gigs“…...

Great list . Thanks ! A fellow Mingus Fan. Yeah. I love his music, mostly with Jimmy Lions, but when I tried to read his liner notes on "Unit Structures" I must say I understood only "Bahnhof" as we say in Germany and Austria (means I didn´t understand nothing). At one point there is a question "Where is Bud ?" without any context to the other heavy stuff. Bud still lived at the time of those recordings and even had made his last own recording and the two met each other. So I didn´t understand the words, but the music really touches me.....

Thank you all for your interesting answers. Now I understand better, why some listen to a certain musician in a row for several days. It´s possible I did similar things when I was very young and just a listener or starter until musicians who would let me play with them, first of all "Allan Praskin" told me it´s not necessary to have "all Dexter records" to understand the style of Dexter, you don´t need to have all of Buds recordings, until you have to learn as well about the past and also to contemporanious musicians (he mentioned Athur Blythe whom he admired ).... Now I just don´t have the time for listening in a row. I have to manage a very demanding job, have a family live and sometimes play a gig. I noticed that some who really are deeply into jazz, also listen to classical music. It´s strange but that´s not really my biggest point. In my case, for me myself it´s jazz with all aspects, I can feel and do so much with so called "jazz". But if we listen to something else or watch it on TV, it might be a ballett like "Swan Lake" or some opereta by Lehár Ferenc or some italian compositions, or just "german or italian shlager" on TV.

I´ve heard about that album but don´t have it. Yesterday I listened to "Bremen 1983" and is fantastic, since I saw the same band , but with Steve Turré on tb , just a few days earlier at Konzerthaus. When I look at this photo, Woody seemed to be quite hefty, and when I saw him on several occasions in the 80s he looked quite skinny. Reminds me of Fats Navarro, who in later years wasn´t "fat" anymore..... and also had a very short life,

Thank you, this is the special method of flyfishing that started in Japan and is called "Tenkara". Nice fishing in a trout populated small river. So it´s really possible he also is a passionate fisherman like me...

Usually I´m only into music on this forum, but being a fisherman also (my second live long passion) I noticed the rainbow trout. But you are not supposed to grab it that way That´s what I meant about the rainbow trout

I don´t think I have very very much Zoot. The first time I heard him on "Miles and Horns" on those things like "Tasty Pudding" , then I liked very very much the "Tenor Conclave" with Trane, Hank, Zoot and Al Cohn....., and the biggest surprise for me was that set of Zoot with the Bud Powell Trio at Blue Note Café in 1961 or 62.

Another question in the same context: I have noticed that some of the board users listen for days or even weeks to certain kinds of style or musicians, like @HutchFan he listens for longer periods to female singers like Carmen McRay and others, before that for a longer period to latin music . So my question: Do they decide that they want to listen for longer periods to music under a certain motto ? I tried it that way a long time ago, to listen to let´s say all BN recordings of Lee Morgan or Hank Mobley or Jackie McLean or other BN artists, or once around Bird´s Birthday to all the Bird records I have......but I stopped it. First of all because I don´t have the time to listen to many records, or if I have time I sit down and play myself or my mood switches from one day to the other so I don´t want to fulfill a series of listening to one artist or one style, if I´m just in the mood to listen to somethin else. I might listen one day to let´s say "Ascension live" and decide the next day I will listen to some other more open Coltrane like "Village Vanguard Again", but the next day I come home and might say hey now I want to listen to some Mr. B and the Band (Billy Eckstine in the 40´s ) and say well tomorrow I listen to this or that, but then I feel another way and decide to listen to some easy stuff like "Soul Station" or something like that....

What tunes are on that album ? Fine photo of Bud. From the Golden Circle 1962 I think....

I still have the old cover with that pop art like on Bitches Brew and might spin it again. There were also some short studio pieces on it, and one of the surprises was that he used Ron Carter again for a kind of ballad I think that it was titled "Little Church". And the strong Keith Jarrett on it. This was the first time I had heard the name Keith Jarrett and when he came to Viena in 1975 I had thought that might be some funky stuff. I think Steve Grossman was on sax on the tour band 1971. I think on the last piece there was a man´s voice who made some statements....... Anyway you know how that went. We all bought the next Miles album. Bitches Brews, then Live Evil, then On the Corner and the live thing "In Concert 1972", then the "Get Up with it" and "Big Fun" (of lesser interest with the exception of Ife") , and "Jack Johnson" was lesser known, but really strong and fine... So I wouldn´t say I am a collector, but I was there when those albums came out and were bought, listened to and discussed .....

I like Brew Moore. Even if he was not among the most famous and successful musicians, though he was strongly influenced by Prez, he could hold his own on bop sessions with really fast company as Bird, Miles, Fats, McGhee, J.J. Johnson, Bud, Max Roach, Blakey Machito. His solos on the AfroCubop sessions (Spotlite Label UK) and "Miles Davis-Last Bop Session 1950) are fantastic, as his Steeplechase recordings from the mid sixties in Denmark. He really had an unique manner to hold his horn, that was also influenced by Prez.

I thought the "woman" on the photo is a man. Really not feminine.....

Thanks for sharing this. Wonderful Mingus from the time of the UCLA record. and the great Cecil Taylor, with Jimmy Lions. A fantastic piece.