Gheorghe

A classic and a must in every jazz collection. But I never understood why they played the solos on "St Thomas" in swing rhythm here. Olinga.....Dizzy´s composition I think. Milt Jackson performed it with Diz in 1981 in Montreux. Great performance.

I don´t have Lotus Flower. Is it Woodys working group with Steve Turré , Mulgrew Miller, Stafford James and Tony Reedus ? When ended Woody´s contract with Columbia. In the same year like Dexter´s contract with Columbia ended ? The only Woody Shaw from that period I have is from Electra Musician with Bobby Hutcherson added to the group. I saw the band in early 1983 and it was one of the best concerts I ever saw. Dewey Redman is great ! I remember the "Old and New Dreams". Stan Getz from 1995 ? Should it be 1985 ? Didn´t know he recorded for Concord. The only time I saw him was with a quartet with Lou Levy on piano...... I think I have somewhere an LP of Getz from 1990. Getz would have been okay, but I didn´t like the album very much. Might give it another try sometimes.. ..

I´ve read somewhere that at Newport 1977 Mingus presented an augmented band that played "Cumbia", and it had bassoon and oboe like on the studio production, and there was also a duo set of Mingus with Neloms, where Mingus played a lot of bowed solos. THIS would be of interest,

I think I have not listened to this for decades. This is really very good playing by Dexter. I think they kept him sober for those nights, since it was most important for his further career. The combination with Woody Shaw and those superb players Ronny Matthews, Stafford James and Louis Hayes is the best, really a dream band. I like Stafford James much more than Rufus Reid. Stafford really has power and pulsation, I like it better than Rufus Reid, who sounded somehow laid back on certain points. Ronny Matthews was such a fantastic player. He became Johnny Griffin´s piano player, I also like his playing more than George Cables. Same with the great Louis Hayes, I like his drumming more than Eddie Gladden. Don´t misunderstand me, I don´t want to put them down, but the band here is just the best thing that could happen. Well, once I heard a fantastic bowed bass solo by Rufus on the bossa tune "I told you so", taped from Village Vanguard on July 4th 1978. Dexter with Shaw always was great. Some particularly great performance can be heard on the Montreux Summit from 1977 on the small band set Dexter with Woody and Slide Hampton playing "Fried Bananas" "Moontrane" . And also the 1981 "Gotham City" is astonishing good, since it has such superb players like Cedar Walton, Percy Heath and Art Blakey and even George Benson. And with this rhythm section, a ballad like "A Nightingale sang at Berkley Place" is not as extreme slow tempo as his usual ballad performances like his eternal "More than You Now", which is so slowly played that it´s almost rubato.

Who does not have short time memory issues in his senior years ? So, does he still play ? I saw him live maybe around 2005, I think he was 80, looked much younger. The band was titled "Fountain of Youth". Nothing special, but nice....I mean the band. Roy Haynes himself is one of my favourite drummers, but with that 2005 band he was not so much on spotlight, I think it was mostly medium tempo standards....

Incredible, such a rare document of early bebop, and I never saw Howard McGhee in a video. They are fantastic. Pettiford´s solo...... But as I know, the first recorded be bop in LA was the Billy Eckstine Band with Fats Navarro in early 1945, which is recorded on the Spotlite label as "Together".

I think the inspiration of Lester was not so strong as the story about Bud in the film. They named Lester since Dexter was a tenor player and the part were "Dale Turner" tells Francis about the sufferings he underwent during Army Service is Lester´s story, and the use of "Lady" for fellow musicians..... But most of it is Bud´s live in France, the friendship with the French jazz lover, the difficult relation with Buttercup, the days of relaxing in the Normandie, and the return to Birdland...,

I remember the paintings on the Verve 2 LP sets were used on all those 2 LP sets in the 70´s. And there were paintings on the Columbia Contemporary Masters (3 Bird LPs "One Night at Birdland" "Summit Meeting at Birdland" and "Bird with Strings"). And the Dexter painting was also on the "Homecoming" I think when Bruce Lundvall still was the boss of Columbia". Lundvall after leaving the company startet the Electra Musician label and most of the artists who were under contract by CBS left and started to record for Electra Musician. That´s how I remember it. Dexter´s last record for CBS was "Gotham City" in 1981 and in 1982 Electra Musician started and the next record of Dexter for Lundvall was "American Classic" on Electra Musician, as Woody Shaw who also made 2 live albums for the label.

This time I can´t say much, because the musicians were not on my main screen. I have always been fascinated of Gato´s playing on the BN Don Cherry albums, but didn´t notice him really after that. There were tons of albums under his name in the record stores when I still didn´t know about his playing with Cherry, but I suppose that was another kind of music.... I never was really crazy about violins, what I really liked was the violin in the McCoy sextet at that time (Ran Blake was his name ?). I heard Buddy Tate with a Woody Herman All Star Band in 1985 which was fun, but more that kind of "Concorde Label" music, that new "Mainstream Swing" with Scott Hamilton and Varren Vaché as youngsters, and Buddy Tate and Al Cohn as veterans, nice. There was also a double album of a typical Concorde jam with those artists without Woody, I think "blues up and down" and "Rifftide" was on it, but since it was too polished mainstream especially from the rhythm section, I eventually sold it .....

It´s astonishing how Lester on this painting looks very similar to the painting of Dexter on "Homecoming". I mean, when Homecoming came out and I purchased it, I was surprised that the painting of Dexter on the cover is so similar to Lester´s .

Thank you ! I also thought that medjuck was referring to Dexter´s playing in the movie in general, but since part of his playing in the film is also that strange version of "Midnight" I thought it would make sense to concentrate a bit on the tune itself. Anyway, there is not so much playing of Dex in the Film. There is "As Time Goes By", "Una Noche Con Francis", "Rhythm a Ning", Society Red, Autumn in NY and a few more. About his playing, his solos are very short but my first thought then in 1985 was that it sounded better and not so erratic than what I had heard and seen in 1983. Maybe he had people watching after him, controlling his alcool consumption. Bernard Travenier described Dexter during the time of the film shooting as very weak, "a 62 one, who is an enigma to the doctors, has " no liver" etc (I think I read that in Stan Britts book about Dexter). Actually, the main part of the story shows the paralels between Bud in France and Dexter himself, both alcoolics who needed people to control their alcool consumption. It´s exactly like Francis Paudras remembered Bud. Sometimes sober since he was not allowed a drink at the club, sometimes stealing another costumer´s drink or even a bottle....just the same. Two artists of the same generation, with the same problems......

Interesting point of view. That audience reaction you described is similar to the experience I had from the small hours at "Jazz by Freddie" with Alfred Kobler, the late, legendary Viennese club owner and DJ (I wrote a long story about that atmosphere in my thread in "Miscellanious Music" : "Blues for Mike". I describe that raucous regulars that frequented the club in those small hours, when Freddie would spin a lot of JATP or Lionel Hampton Big Band. In my case - you write it helped you form into becoming a lifelong jazz fan - it was vice versa. It was quite amusing and anyway at that small hours we all were a bit loaded, but what formed me into becoming a lifelong jazz fan and part time musician was more the Miles Davis groups, Trane, Rollins, 60´s avantgarde, some of the best 70´s electric jazz, and for historical knowledge and study of bop Bird Diz Bud and so on.....

It was part of my musical developement. It was all around that time. The Lost Quintet is great, but sometimes the atonality of Chick Corea on Fender Rhodes gets on my nerves. I don´t need everything polished and like outbursts into atonality, but the Fender is not the best instrument for that, it´s more for a funky sound, but for Cecil Taylor like excursions the acoustic piano sounds better.

I would say the tune "Round Midnight" itself was not really written for a saxophonist like Dexter. I never really liked it when Dexter played "Round Midnight" or "Ruby My Dear" (which was from the "Manhattan Symphony" session, but issued on "Great Encounters". That´s it, I love the tune Round Midnight, but not the way Dexter plays it, and by the way, I couldn´t imagine that Monk would have used Dex as a saxophonist in his quartets... The grossly overproduced version of "Midnight" in the film itself ...... two basses, all that effort for a tune....., it is the part of the film, where Dexter (Dale Turner) get´s the opportunity to make a studio record in France.....

I saw Mingus playing the bass with a big cigar in his mouth. But smoking while playing I don´t think this is really confortable, but I have to enjoy a cigarette for relaxment. That means after a gig. I never could smoke while playing, or standing or walking and even don´t like to talk, if I smoke a cigarette since I enjoy it in certain situations of happy solitude.

I remember I bought those brown or yellow 2 LP sets from Verve, the 1946 with Bird on it, and a 1944 with a very hot solo by Illinois Jaquet. I think I bought it because there was a club in Vienna (Jazz Freddy) and in the small hours Mr. Freddy the great Jazz DJ usually would spin those JATP´s and people danced to it and shouted and yelled. And I also liked it, but it seems it was the atmosphere, the beer consumation. Anyway, great and wild solos. JATP and Lionel Hampton Big Bands, that was what he would spin in the small hours. But at home, where I usually listen to music much more to study how a group works together, how the drummer fits to the horns etc.... or just closing the eyes and enjoying a great solo or a beautiful theme, I think nowadays JAPT with it´s conservative drumming and somehow "stiff and very straight swing" would be of lesser interest for me....

I also have it with this cover. I think I bought it in the late 70´s in Basel/Switzerland. Since during that time there were not many individual biographies about leading jazz artists of the 40´s (I already had the two Bird books , the one by Reisner and the one by Russell with the fictive essays about a night in Brussel and with Dean Benedetti), but I think other books still were not written. I think Diz´ book "To be or not to bop" came out a little later...., there was still no book about Bud . The Ira Gitler book was the first one that gave infos about Bud´s return to Birdland and his last performances at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall and was written when Bud was still alive.

The first Non-Steeplechase release I had, and actually the first Dexter LP I had when I was a teenager, along with Dexter´s contribution on Dizzy´s "Blue ´n Boogie" from 1945, was the Black Lion LP from 1967 with Kenny Drew. Nils Hennig and Albert Heath. I like especially the drum sound of Albert Heath. Yes, I was aware of that, they issued a lot of material later. I think I have some, that I got from the widow of a friend and fan.

Right !

Yes, I was aware of that, they issued a lot of material later. I think I have some, that I got from the widow of a friend and fan.

That means I had only Cheese Cake, Neptune and I want More. I had decided not to buy "Cry me a river" since it was only one half Dexter. Later I listened to the dexter side and like the ballad, but "April" is not really up to Dexter´s standards. After "I Want More" I lost the trace, I didn´t intend to collect them further......, but we played "I want more" with a nice saxophone player, who later became a doctor....

Yes, those are the MPS albums we had. The "Koko", see I am not sure it was 45 years ago, maybe it can be the Album "Supersax Plays Bird", I saw the cover and it seems to be similar to the one I had bought. Maybe "Koko" is one of the titles, I remembered it only as the "Koko" album. It was an expensive hard cover Japanese LP. There was also another one titled "Salt Peanuts" and it had some nude girls in a cup of salt peanuts as cover photo.....

On some bootleg label there was a 2 CD set of Dexter at Vanguard in 1983. It was recorded on 27 februarie 1983, when Dexter celebrated his 60´s birthday. It´s quite painful to hear, in any case much worse than what @mhatta posted from 1988 in Japan. The playing list is among others "Secret Love" which was also the first tune on the terrible performance I saw just 2 weeks before, than it has the obligatory "As Time goes By", which is only a shadow of the wonderful version on "Manhattan Symphony" only a few years earlier, it has "Soy Califa" much to fast for what was Dexter able at that time, a rambling performance of "Hi Fly", a tune that sounded so great on "Gotham City", and I think it ends with "Jumpin´ Blues"... I had bought it out of curiosity but never listened to it again....

At that time I fell so much in love with what Jackie does on that encounter with Dex, that I was looking after similar records, and the "Ghetto Lullaby" from the same period, also live at the Montmatre really amazed me (and my friends). I also remember the green and the blue 1966 live performances "Dr. Jackle" and "Tune Up". I think, "Tune Up" was released a bit later, not in the 70´s, but in the 80´s.

Supersax got very much listening around here. It was very common here, I think it was MPS albums, and I had a japanese album "Koko" too.