Gheorghe

This is also a very good performance. It has our Austrian Star Guitarist Karl Ratzer. Baker and Ratzer also played as a duo at "Jazz Spelunke" around that time.

Referring to Howard McGhee: Yes, maybe. I never saw him live. And I don´t know how he might have sounded at that late stage of his often interrupted career. I only noticed, that on the Charlie Parker Memorial on Video (I think it was done in London), which was in the Mid-60´s, he looks a bit worn out, and his chops seem to be a bit "rusty". Nothing left from the incredible fast runs and high notes he did in the 40´s. So I was not really curious to buy those late albums when they were probably around..... The last sign of McGhee I read was a short time after that brief "comeback". It was an announcement in Down Beat, they tried to raise funds for Howard McGhee, who had some vascular problems I think. I don´t know if his son was with him when he died.....

I think around the late 70´s there was a recently recorded album of them and it was titled something like "Young at Heart" , which I didn´t purchase then. But in the "bop category" of my listening preferences" there is a lot of good McGhee from the late 40´s and I really heard that most of all boppers you could here the roots of Roy Eldridge. And his playing on those legendary Latin Session with Machito is some of the very best trumpet of that time. Otherwise I don´t know almost nothing about his later activities. He might have had a short comeback in the mid 60´s since I have a nice little Sonny Stitt album on Black Lion, titled "Night Work", and I saw him on a video of a Charlie Parker memorial concert with J.J, Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Walter Bishop, Tommy Potter and Klook. But nothing from later. I heard he died in the 80´s and that his son Boots has or had a homepage on which he showed some rare photos of his famous father.

The rare moments when I listen to him is also the Ray Brown/Ed Thigpen or the MPS with Singers Unlimited or some Pablo (O.P. Jam with Diz and Clark, Jaws etc) and Jaws with the O.P. trio. I think I saw him twice, once in the late 70´s in a drumless trio with Joe Pass, and in the 80´s in a trio with NOHP and Martin Drew, were I wondered why he didn´t play with guys from the States.... I have heard that he was adding a guitar again after he had a stroke and needed the guitar since his left hand remained impaired.... But somehow he was not really a model for jazz students of my generation. The great Fritz Pauer (austrian pianist and teacher at jazz conservatory) told his students more to listen to Bud, Monk, McCoy Tyner, and once he said to me "listen to some Wynton Kelly.....that´s "sehr gesund" (very healthy)....

Well, sure there are different opinios. Relating the the pic posted from me with Bud, I like very much the video of Bud playing "Round Midnight" live at Copenhaga with Nils Orsted Pederson and Joern Elniff, where Bud seems to play the ballad for a nice woman in the audience. He looks at her and smiles as he plays that fantastic version of Midnight, some of the best he ever played, he really talks through the music. It´s not the only example of a more introverted player who looks at the audience while playing. It is reported that Hank Mobley also looked at the people for whom he played. And Miles Davis always kept his eyes open, you could see this even behind his huge sun glasses. But I remember I saw him playing without glasses also....

Must get this one !

Well in the late 70´s he got top billing here in Europe, but before his comeback and all his recordings mostly for Steeplechase and later Timeless and other labels , he was unknown at least to people of my generation who were part of the current scene or who were budding musicians. So let´s say we first heard him when he was billed on all those festivals, because from 1978 on he got a lot of gigs over here in Europe. And almost all of us knew him only from that moment on, since for all jazz buddies I knew, but also for mentors of that time, so called "Westcoast Jazz" was not really mentioned. Most of the fans of Westcoast jazz, and fans of Brubeck were people from the generation of my father. My father never liked "jazz" (he listened only to more difficult classical music like Beethoven, Wagner and so on) , but some of his colleages at University would like Shorty Rogers and Brubeck etc ..., but didn´t know much about bebop, east coast hard bop, modal, free and electric jazzrock .

Isn´t Tres Talbras on a Joe Henderson album from the 70´s also (Canyon Lady) ?

I have not heard his name until I read a Jazz Podium interview with him in 1978, the famous German jazz expert Gudrun Endress was doing the interview with him. Sure there were questions about his past, but Chet was very articulate on that interview and made interesting statements and announced that he had overcome the drug addiction (maybe he tried for a hot minute). But shortly after the interview I saw him live with a trio and really liked it, even if at that point I missed a drum set but later understood that he preferred to play without drums. I saw him many times from 1978-1988 (with the exception of two gigs where he didn´t show up in 1983 and 1984) . And besides that, he had played much with the great Austrian guitarist Karl Ratzer (they also recorded two LPs in Paris in 1980). Chet and Ratzer played a duo gig at "Jazz Spelunke" too.

....... I had to google him.....never heard about him..... ok guys, though I didn´t understand a l l the postings, I sure apreciate Larry Young´s "Mothership" too, as I apreciate all his BN recordings, but that´s another thing. Larry Young, during my youth was best known for his tenure with Tony William´s Lifetime. Classic BN albums were almost unavailable during that time. RTF had a lot of fans and being part of what happened in music than, you couldn´t exclude it and wouldn´t do so. I said I didn´t apreciate it as much as the post Miles Herbie Hancock things, but it was very good music and that certain 2014 CD is really worth listening, maybe not recommended for all - acoustic fans. Anyway, thank´s for finally giving your statements about it

must be good, okay I don´t know who Gil Goldstein and Pete Levin are, but Wayne, Stanley and Lenny is a dream team....

Yes, that´s a great list of artists. But though in 1965 I was only a 5-6 years old boy, even when I was a teenager I couldn´t complain here in Viena: We had many clubs (Jazz Freddie, Jazz Land, Jazz Gittie, Jazz Spelunke, Rumpelkammer and sure some more) and you always had somewhere some great musician playing, and last not least, the first musician I heard in a jazz club was Johnny Griffin....., and that was not big clubs like let´s say Ronnie Scotts might have been, it was only a room with an old pianino, some place for a set of drums, a bass player and a mike for a horn player, some tables, and a bar and a back-room, and almost everywhere a terrible WC.....and the list of famous US Stars who played there is really long....

Any reason why this one doesn´t get answers or comments ? Is it because of Chick Corea´s non-musical "activities" ???? Well I would say he was such a great musician I don´t care what else he did or believed. Or would a classic-music- fan not like Mozart only because he was with a certain society, that has fans and others how don´t like it ? Chick Corea sure has a very important place in jazz history. So.....no love for that album ?

Thank you ! And becauses you mentioned the Night of the Cookers, that´s also very fine, not only the two trumpets (Lee Morgan very rare on muted trumpet on "Pensativa" and sounding a bit like Diz with muted horn......, and most of all the combination of that powerful trumpets with that strong rhythmic combination of drums and percussion.... Have to look for the Shaw-Hubbard reissue. A more modern aspect of the echoes of Fats/McGhee.

I saw him with Dizzy in 1983. Such a great drummer. And recently I heard him on that Bird at LA on the three tracks from 1948 where he plays really some fantastic drums.

Closed Eyes. Great stuff, especially because of the collaboration with Johnny Griffin. But it is a pity that it has such weak drumming. If there would have been Kenny Clarke or Art Taylor, who played and recorded with Bud in France, it really would have been some exiting thing. Maybe it´s a bit too much of the ugly hollerin and croaking of Bud. When he got back to Birdland he omitted this strange habit and you hear the piano and not the vocal croaking... But I´d like to say something about closed eyes. In the past I sometimes had that "habit" of closing my eyes while playing, and my wife who was in the audience said "cut the thing with the closed eyes out. People come to hear you AND to see you awake, not "sleeping" . And she was right. On stage it looks better if you don´t close the eyes.....

oh, that´s really bad news. I liked his contributions to the style Miles had in 1972, and I think I heard him with Dave Liebman also....

I must admit when I became a jazz lover I had not heard his name yet. I first read an interview with him in the german book of interviews with jazz musicians (Jazz Podium by Gudrun Endress) and that interview was quite strange. While other name musicians like Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Max Roach, Elvin Jones were very articulate, Bley made some really strange and almost cynical statements like that acoustic jazz is dead (maybe it was at that time in the mid 70´s ......) and that none of the youngsters has the right to play acoustic just because it was there at some time, and that he was part of the developement of acoustic jazz and has the authority to say something like that. And when asked about his collaboration with Sam Rivers, and that Sam Rivers is really fast, Bley answered "yes, but not as fast as my synthisizer". Really strange. Then at my drummers place I saw an album "The Faboulous Paul Bley quintet" and on the cover photo was Don Cherry and this was the album with the original Ornette Coleman group with Paul Pley added on piano and billed as the leader of the session. Well, that album not recorded well at all, you barely can hear the piano, and the compositions with the exception of Parkers "Klactoveedstene" and Roy Eldrige´s "I remember Harlem" are Ornette Coleman compositions.... Much later I purchased Rollins meets Hawk and it has Paul Bley on piano. And 2 years ago my wife bought me for birthday a couple of CDs and one of it was "Jimmy Giuffree Trio live at Graz 1961". That´s the most Paul Bley I heard and this is really fine. My wife didn´t know anything about it, but saw the cover and that it´s "live" so she bought it. Maybe drumless trios are not my first choice of listening, but if I want to hear something more quiet, but neverless demanding, I spin it and enjoy it. It´s another brand of jazz, more a quiet form, but not like ECM, and yes......I can dig it on certain times....

Reminds me of a funny situation. Once when I was maybe 20, I had a girl friend who wanted to carry my bass fiddle through the village. (Sure, I was a jazz-only musician, but we were on holiday at a mountain village and when the locals organized a party with austrian folk music and dance, they asked me to play with them, so I had to get my bass fiddle to the location for the performance, but my then girl friend, really nicely dressed for the event and an eye catcher for the locals and turists with her long blond hair and green eyes said "I want to carry the bass fiddle" (I didn´t have a bag for the fiddle) , so I begged her to not do it because a girl shouldn´t carry such a large instrument, but in vain, she wanted to be seen with the bass fiddle so I had to let her do it.

Cuscuna is right. I would even go further and say it´s one of the ideal all acoustic albums from that comeback of straight ahead jazz in the late 70´s . Every aspect of it: The cover photo, the design, the liner notes, the choice of tunes, and above all the musicians. I hadn´t heard so much Dexter before I saw him live at that period. Here he is still in top form, you couldn´t thing it all would come to an end very very soon after it. Here his kind of more relaxed "behind the beat" playing is not as obvious as later, when things started to become a mess. Well I heard him again in 1980, still with Eddie Gladden, but Kirk Lightsey on piano and John Heard on bass, which still was a good and long performance. I had not heard about Lightsey before, but he was very articulate on piano. But as much I love drums and drum solos, an almost 20 minutes drum solo by Gladden on the always present "Backstairs" was a bit too much. Once I heard a tape that someone had made from Vanguard in July 1978 where the band played most of the material of "Manhattan Symphony", with "Dolphin Street" which was not part of the album, with a ballad on each set, one of it the "Times goes By" and the other "More than you know". And on Cables´ bossa "I told you so" there was a fantastic bowed solo by Rufus Reid.

But he might have had a hard time when THE Woody Shaw was also on trumpet...., I mean nothing wrong with Reece, but I think Woody was such an exceptional trumpet player and stylist that it may not be easy to combine him with another trumpet player. I remember in the 80´s there were two Blue Note albums Shaw-Hubbard, one was titled "Double Talk" maybe as a reminiscence of the old 1948 Navarro-McGhee 2 trumpet session. But I couldn´t find those 80´s albums any longer. BN did almost all reissues, why not stuff like this, like McCoy Tyner-Jackie McLean, or the live Joe Henderson ?

Chick Corea´s RTF was very very popular when I was at high school, but I think among all those, who loved the then en vogue jazz-rock/electric jazz, the fans of RTF were a certain group. Most of my school-buddies were more into Hancocks "Headhunters", the Billy Cobham-George Duke stuff and sure....the Miles bands were he played mostly the trumpet connected with the "wah wah pedal". But one guy, his nick was Bimbo, who was a more quiet and sensitive guy, got me into RTF also, so I picked up the then recent albums "Where have I known you before" and "Romantic Warrior". Maybe I was not as enthusiastic about it like Bimbo, who stated that this music "changed his life". Well, I was not a super wise kid, but at least I thought "what can change my life if it just has started ? So let it run how it is". We had several discussions.......what kept us together was the love for the music, since he listened to other kinds of jazz as well, but when he started about more philosofical stuff about how to change your life and how the world can become a better world ....., well I think I was or still am too hedonistic for those thoughts...., I love to work, I love my family, I love my hobbies, that´s all. It also was the same thing with girls: Bimbo was nice looking, he had a slight similarity with John Travolta, so some girls might scream over him, but his "mistake" was that if he fell in love with a girl or thought he felt in love with her, he idolized her too much and wanted to convince here that "together we will make this world a better world and will work hard to become ideal human beings or stuff in that direction..... Many girls soon got tired of that, they wanted fun and what ever else...., or got scared or unsure because of those ideals... I told Bimbo "hey why not just f..... them girls, why all those heavy and deep thoughts.....? Well, at least we kept in touch, listened to records and visited each other. About 30 years ago I lost contact, I had an increasing demandig job, a side job, a house and a family....and I don´t know in what direction he went further... When my wife bought for me this fine album with Jean Luc Ponty added (she said "I don´t know what it is, but I liked the cover photo"), I was overwhelmed, that´s just a fantastic live album with some of the stuff from "Romantic Warrior" and "Where have I known you before" ) I remembered Bimbo, the strange guy from high school and searched him on google, but without succes. He seems to have disappeared. The combination with Jean Luc Ponty is really an ideal one, and Ponty´s own composition "Renaissance" is one of the highlights of that fantastic album. As well as Frank Gambale replacing Al DiMeola, the original guitarist. Stanley Clark and Lennie White still are some of the greatest musicians on bass and drums as they were then. An interesting aspect on CD 2 is that at some point they get into old straight ahead stuff with a typical Blakey-Jazz Messengers Beat, and then including Horace Silvers "Senior Blues". The combination of "Aranjuez-Spain" is wonderful, such a wealth of music. Fantastic compositions and new aspects of "Romantic Warrior" Highly recommended.

I also have this CD. But I almost never listened to the second CD with all the remainders with fals starts and discussion and so.

I bought it in the 70´s, I don´t have many of that silver cover series, maybe "Ornette Coleman´s Free Jazz" and "Mingus Blues and Roots", and for more easy listening the then very popular "Les McCann Eddie Harris Montreux 1969". At that time I was astonished that "Avantgarde" was quite traditional, it´s all straight ahead swing, and they don´t really go "far out". But this was still in 1960, when there was still a lot of the old hard bop. But they all sound wonderful, "The Blessing" is one of the most traditional compositions of Coleman, also a very interesting version of it is on the 1958 Hillcrest Club recording, sometimes released under the leadership of Paul Bley, though he is barely audible on those. Both Trane and Cherry loved "Bemsha Swing". Trane played it with Monk, and Don recorded it on several occasions....

All of those are great. I was only a bit disappointed with sound quality of the Griff/Lockjaw, since the piano of great Tete Montoliu is underrecorded and sounds sharp. But nobody mentioned one of the greatests: The Elvin Jones group. That´s maybe one of the very best.