Gheorghe

The "Live at the East" was my first LP of him, bought in the 70´s. I saw Pharoah on several occasions. The last time I had the LP with me and thought maybe I let him sign it for me after the concert, and I would tell him that I bought it when I was a teenager, but then I thought he might do autographs and went home with the album unsigned....

I saw Sonny Stitt in 1980, it must have been in March. He traveled as a single artist but was supplied with a fantastic trio for that evening. The great Fritz Pauer on piano, the great hungarian bass professor Aladár Pege , and I think Fritz Ozmec on drums, really a superb trio. But Sonny Stitt was quite juiced. He still played well on the concert, though he did silly stuff like lecturing those three great musicians. And at one point he shouted to the audience "What do you want to hear" and one guy shouted back "Salt Peanuts", and Sonny made that grimasse and played something else (I think "They can´t take it away from me"). After the concert it was planned he would play more at the defunct club "Jazz by Freddie" with the same rhythm section and two other great austrian tenorists Harry Sokal and Roman Schwaller, but it went completly out of controll and after one jam, a Blues in Bb, where he had to sit down, he went to the piano and fooled around on the piano and tried singin.... Really a sad memory....., but the next day a three day festival "Jazz Frühling" started, with Dex, Griff, Chet Baker, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, heaven on earth for 3 days....

There was a change in Miles´ music in 1973: It started with a band still similar to the "Miles in Concert 1972" and early in 1973 Miles after having broken his legs in a car accident still was unconfortable on stage and had a cast, and keeping Balakrishna, Badal Roy and Lonnie Listen Smith from the "1972 Style" with slight indian touch. Then later he created the style that would last until his retirement in late 1975, where he had the group formed by Lieb, Cosey and Lucas, Mike Henderson, Al Foster and M´tume. So the Vienna Concert late in 1973 was another music than the group in early 1973. After Lieb left, it was Sonny Fortune on alto sax. But the repertory of the group from late 73-75 was quite similar, about the stuff you hear on "Dark Magus", "Agartha" and "Pangaea". That was "our" music when we were 14-16 years old and during school intermission we would do percussion patterns on the tables and seats and one would imitate the wah wah trumpet sound with his voice and bend down, and the others jumped around until after intermission the next lesson would start and the teacher would yell at us to stop. And we bought those huge sun glasses and tried to "act cool". It must have been like the kids in the 40´s imitating Diz and so on..... I remember how all came by when I told at school that I had got "Pangaea" while the others "only" had "Agartha"...... My mother was a bit desparate , she would say "why can´t you bring neatly dressed boys who play nice instruments like let´s say a violin. So, sometimes it was a shambles after they left, and she was unhappy when she saw the signs of beer bottles on the good old Bosendorfer Piano. But...... despite of my livestyle I was blessed to be very good at school so things like that.....loud music, long haired older guys, beer bottles and cigarettes were tolerated. I told you that to give an idea of how it was to be a fan of the so called "New Miles" as older people called it.

Well about Elvin we know much: He was married for decades to his japanes wife Keiko. She was always there and tuned his drums before the gig. I saw her on stage doing that before Elvins group started. In Laurie Peppers book about her husband she describes here very well, and that she lectured Laurie how you might "handle" a husband who is into drugs, to keep him off the bad guys, to take care of his money and buy him "presents" like jewellry, sharp threads, expesive watches and so on, to keep them reasonable happy.... Pharoah, as much as I know, married a much younger woman and they lived on the Coast and I think they have a child too. There was an interview with Pharoah were he said that, but he also said he hated the place were they lived.....

Thanks for posting those three classic BN albums which are among my favourites. And they are "Island Recordings". I had a period, when I thought I must get all albums, but let´s say if it´s about Hank Mobley I seldom listen to something else but Soul Station, Dippin, and together with Griff and Trane on "Blowin´Session". I spin all the Herbie Hancocks, maybe the one without horns not so often as the others. And of course Dolphy. In general, I have a lot of BN unspinned, and certain albums I listen to on repeated occasions...

Brings memories back, those wonderful festivals in the late 70´s, Ron Carter was on Schedule, and since you mentioned Woody Herman, he was the Finale of the Festival, his "Thundering Herd 1979" very very modern, with an electric bass, and some tunes composed by Chick Corea. George Cables first with Dex, later with Diz...... such a great pianist....

Yes, the great band with Dave Liebman. Vienna late in 1973, it was on TV also and since I was still underage and couldn´t go to the concert at least I saw it on TV. Those were our heroes, "Lieb", Al Foster, Mtume, Michael Henderson......

His album Rhythm X or how it was titled, was one of my favourites when I got deeply into 60´s avantgarde as a teenager. During that time it was rare and completly unknown to me but the guy who had a lot of "Free Jazz records" let me make a cassete, together with Don Cherry´s album "Complete Communion". I was a fan of Don Cherry and had asked him to give me as much Don Cherry stuff as possible. I later bought the Mosaic Box of Cliff Jordan mostly for the including of Charles Brackeen´s album.

Klaus Ignatzek played in Vienna also, I saw him at the defunct club "Jazz Spelunke" here in Vienna. He also was famous for his collaborations with Romanian singer Anca Parghel. great

Interesting that now reading this I thing we know very little about his personal live. He seemed to keep it off publicity, that´s really okay. Other jazz wifes were pretty well known, like Lucille Rollins for example...

Considering @Big Beat Steve answer to something I said...... thinking about it know and comparing his role with Howard Rumsey, sure they had a talent of getting groups together and especially Chubby Jackson´s additional role of a kind of "cheerleader" and sure Chubby Jackson kickin´them Herman Herd´s asses @JSngry assured his role in "jazz history" from a larger point of view....... Nevertheless, or is it my mistake of looking back at things that happened before I was born, I doubt jazz bass students of my generation would have been lecturedmuch about Chubby Jackson at those "Jazz Conservatories". Maybe that´s why our disc collections are a bit smaller than those of big listeners. At some point even I played bass and would have developed further but my "first love" as an instrument (piano) let me abandone that plan. I´ll write a new separate topic about that period when I get it together with my poorer writing in english... For the students or among the "gang" of guys I was part of, 40´s jazz bass was mostly O.P., Ray Brown, and so on. And for straight walking and keepin time maybe Tommy Potter, Curley Russell, Al McKibbon... When I look at so called historical DB Reader´s Polls, some who were "top" then, are not mentioned much today or sometimes I don´t even know their names. It happens also in more recent periods where sometimes young artists get top billing for short periods and then they disappear ....

Thanks for sharing.

I forgot I have this one too. It was a strange Bootleg label "Queen Disc" obviously with Boris Rose tape recordings. So I have Chubby Jackson on this and on the second side of the LP "Saturday Night Swing Session" which I bought because it has Fats Navarro. And as I read your posts, he probably was more a showman and a guy who got bands together. So in the history of bass from now looking back maybe his role is not the biggest.

Now my impressions after listening to the two CDs : The first CD is wonderful. Indeed there is more material from the Billy Berg Gig, this was Diz and Bird at it´s best, like the Town Hall 1945. And it´s well enough recorded. Only one thing: Sometimes it sounds like if Stan Levy does the bass drum all the time so you can´t hear Ray Brown´s bass, especially on Groovin´ High, in the old style like Gene Krupa, am I right ? Al Haig is very well recorded and it´s a great thing to hear all soloists. Al Haig in 1945 already had a great tehnique but still sounds a bit stiff. The Finale Club 1946 was already on Yardbird in Lotus Land. Very fine Bird and Miles, Miles muted all through and very very Gillespie influenced at that time. Joe Albany......well that sounds really strange. Somehow it sounds like I sounded when I started and after listening to it on tape I always was puzzled, I wanted to sound like a bop pianist, but what came out was not what I would have liked to hear or to produce. And more experienced players told me to "get that edge off". It must have been the same situation, and now reading the liner notes and reading that Bird was not pleased with it and called Dodo Mamorosa for the studio date, it becomes very clear for me. The 3 tunes from Shrine Auditorium 1948. Many said it´s very very weak Bird. Well, it sounds exactly like on "Bird on 52nd Street" also from 1948. Bird sometimes plays shorter phrases and seems to have fun with it or joking a bit. I was not aware that it means Bird was drunk or stoned or whatever. I like it and my opinion is that you could imagine that this way of playing influenced Ornette Coleman. Tell me if you share my impression. The Rhythm Section on the 1948 tracks is wonderful !!!! Al Haig again, but listen how much progress he made since 1945. Here he is perfect and I really enjoy it. He got it all and it´s clear why Bud said that "Al Haig is his idea of a perfect pianist ". Tommy Potter sounds wonderful and is very well recorded, and his solo on "Out of Nowhere" is just beautiful. He didn´t solo often, but he is the ideal bassist of the bop era. And J.C. Heard is a great drummer. He played with Diz in 1946 and I witnessed a wonderful re-union between Diz and J.C. Heard in 1983 when Diz used him as drummer. That was the best Diz I ever saw live with a moving version of Round Midnight, together with the fantastic Ed Cherry and Mike Howell. The second CD was very very difficult to listen to. I´m not the kind of collector who might listen to all stuff. That´s the worst recording sound I ever heard. At least you can hear Bird well, and the rare occasion to hear Frank Morgan. Don Wilkinson is very fine and seems to have been a bit influenced by Wardell Gray. So the line up is great. But you virtually can´t hear the bass and it sounds like a duo of Larence Marable (who was a very good drummer I think I heard him on better recorded sessions with other musicians, also in LA) and the horn player. And sometimes it seems they are not together at all or is it the fault of the terrible recording quality ? Instead of the bass you hear such a deep blurred sound that really hurt me and let me feel like if I had a Tinnitus. There is one short item with a drum beat that reminds me of the rhythms Ornette Coleman´s "Prime Time" did, with some short phrases by Bird. Very interesting to hear such a similar to rock beat as early as 1952. Only the last track recorded 2 weeks later has a much better sound quality . I´m not an audiophile, but if a recording sounds really painful, I mean literally painful for my ears that anyway get worse, I say I will spin CD 1 very often but I doubt I would ever spin again the CD 2.

oh yes, how could I be so wrong. Dizzy Reece was with the "Paris Reunion Band" in the late 80´s , right ?

I don´t know about his personality, I only heard him on record on the "Saturday Night Session 1947" with that mixed group of swingers and boppers including Fats, and I think I have one of those gold cover Xanadu-LPs with a "bop Group" around the era when Woody Herman did some boppish lines like "Lemon Dropper", and also played "Dee Dee´s Dance", I think Conte Candoli was in that group, it might have been one of those "Bop Revisited"...... On "High On an Open Mike" on the 1947 Broadcast he does some "bass solo" alternating with Buddy Rich, but as a soloist he cannot be compared to Pettiford, Ray Brown or even Tommy Potter who sometimes did short but wonderful solos like on "Out of Nowhere" .... In my youth, I heard from other guys, that Buddy Rich was quite a tough leader and did not tolerate guys with long hair in his band. I had very long hair and they said to me "you coudn´t look like that if you had to play with Buddy Rich"

This sounds very very nice ! Thank you Jim !

Sad to hear that BE was so ill he had to be carried to the bandstand. Besides his drug thing, what did he suffer from, not being able to walk himself. Chet Baker also was a bad junkie all his live long but though his face looked like if he was 70 or even 80 years old, it was astonishing to see that physically he looked quite okay for a guy towards 60. I saw him a few months before he died, but he was very articulate, started on time, made nice announcements and played......oh ..... he played better than ever....

I lost the trace how all those different groups of youngsters call themself nowadays. During my youth in the 70´s it was the hippies, that´s sure. Here in Austria, if someone had long hair, the older people got angry and called them "Hippies" or "Beatles" During those days (1970´s) I had long, long, curled hair and got some names from "hippie hating guys" like maybe the line Chubby Jackson had in the film. But I wasn´t a hippie, since I didn´t smoke hașiș or reefer or what you call it, didn´t live in communes and have sex in group and so on. The only purpose was to look a bit older than I was. Sometimes, girls from that hippie scene would think I might be a good friend but my "dream woman" would be neatly dressed, with mini skirt, heels and hosierie, girls I didn´t have success with because with my long hair and the slight begin of some beard and ragged jeans would scream over other sorts of guys.... Later in the early 80´s it was all over and I heard about a group of youngsters who called themself "mods", but I didn´t really know what it is. It was the time when everybody was wearing those "La Coste" shirts with the crocodile on it, and I learned to play tennis which I didn´t dig really but thought it might be an entrance to meet some nice girls.... Now, I lost the trance, some are all in black, some have dread look, some are neatly dressed....., That´s how it goes, everything get´s faster. During my youth, a certain fashion would last for about a decade and so (50´s look, 60´s look, 70´s look....)

Wasn´t MPS that label, who recorded so much Oscar Peterson in the early 70´s ? Monk again trio.....well sure , but that´s something he did already. But I imagine that if Monk wouldn´t have all those psychical problems, phases of deep depression and having got rid of playing....., I mean if he would have been more optimist, he could have remainded at CBS and try to combine his style with a little up to date to reach other, newer audiences. I once heard that after the 1969 Big Band recording they wanted him to play an album of Beatles tunes. Well I can understand that he didn´t want it. I also never was a Beatles fan (olders tell me that being 1959 born I am too young for it), but I bet if you asked me to play "Yesterday" (anyway the only Beatles Tune I know ad hoc) it would sound like if Monk did it. That´s somehow a habit of mine, if I play solo at home and someone askes me to play "this and that" , what I normally don´t play, it will be in a Monk style because it seems that his harmonies are very logic for me and the fingers hit the keys just that way, out of instinct. My wife loves the way I play and sometimes out of fun she askes me to play a non jazz tune she would like, just to hear how it sounds if I play it. So she says "Play Hildegard Knef´s song "Roses raining" or how you say it in english, and a new "Monk ballad" is born ......I chose to play it in Db, sounds nice.... She say´s play something classical: The only classical tune I manage to play somehow out of memory is a certain Valse of Chopin in Ab, and sure it sounds in a more deliberate Monk manner. If someone comes by around Chrismas time, she says "Play Oh Tannenbaum", and it becomes a Monkish Chrismas in Ab, since it sounds too square in C... I say, it would have been nice to hear a more healthy and happy Monk augmenting his group maybe with someone like Larry Corryell, Stanley Clark, Al Foster and an interesting sax player of the 70´s , most of all Dave Liebman, or Gary Bartz or so on, and of course percussion also.... Look, Mingus also made a step into fusion by using Larry Coryell, John Scofield, percussion and so on, and even an encounter with Stanley Clark was planned before he died..., so it IS possible to make certain compromises and fulfill the demands of a good paying major label without giving up your music.....

oh sorry, I don´t want to be mean. I repeated only what I said then. We saw it and were all prepared for a rhythm section of maybe Roy Haynes or Max Roach or Kenny Clark, a bassist maybe like Tommy Potter or Curley Russell if not Ray Brown or Mingus, and maybe if not Bud, then sure Al Haig on piano.... I don´t want to become mean and put anything down now, in any case not in my age where you get more tolerant, but that was my first impression then, our first impression then, during a time when more modern music from Trane to electric Miles was on and Charlie Parker nevertheless was our "old hero". And many of us wanted to learn the basics of bop as a springboard for further developements and mostly the drummers and drum-lovers were disapointed, So please @Quasimado, and all of you, I beg your pardon for an obviously harsh comment....don´t want to hurt nobody....

Finally my copy arrived yesterday. Of course I still hadn´t the time to listen to it. Anyway, some of the Billy Berg tracks and the Finale Club tracks I already have on the Spotlight LP "Yardbird in Lotusland", but I want to have time to listen to it closely and then I might write my own review of it (should I do it here or as a separate thread on "Recomandations" ?) One funny story for you all: Since I had ordered it last summer, anyway very shortly after I read about it here on this thread , it took so much time until I got it yesterday. As the shipping adress is "Austria" I´m sure it happened "once again" that they confounded Austria with Australia. Austria is a small country, and not all people overseas have heard of it and sometimes when we were on holyday in more exotic destinations and they asked us were we from and answered "Austria", they said "Oh Yeah, cangoroos, koala bears, crocodile Dundie" . When we were bored from this, we might mention our "second home" and would say "România".....AND..... they know it, they say "oh, Football, Dracula" . Anyway in countries of latin based languages they understand some words and we might understand some of what they say in spanish, french, italian etc.... But to go for sure, when sittin at the bar or having sun at the pool, if we are asked where we come from, if we say "Austria" we add: The Country where the "Mozart-Kugel" (Mozart ball) was created

Time flies, I saw him with Thad Jones-Mel Lewis in 1978, he was one of the major soloists, he and Steve Coleman played and soloed on alto....., it was 43 years ago and I still remember it.

I don´t have 10.000 CDs or LPs, maybe I have more than 1000, I didn´t count them, and even on those I have some I wouldn´t listen to often, since once in the past I made the "mistake" to try to collect classic BN and Prestige recordings, but don´t have to listen to each Lee Morgan album on BN and each Coltrane album on Prestige, I´ll always go back to one ore two that was key experiences for me . And as a busy man I probably have one hour the day to listen to music. If it´s a CD set of two CD,s I might listen to the second CD the next day.... Among those who used to play when I was younger and still played a handful of gigs before the pandemia, I even think that I am the one who has the most LP´s CDs, most fellow musicians have less. They listen more to live music when they don´t play. So it´s much easier for my wife to find something I still don´t have, you know, for Birthday, for Chrismas.... She saw that Monk Deluxe Edition with the French Title at "EMI Columbia" in the first district of Vienna and was sure I might like it, since she knows about my admiration for Monk. So I like it most for the addition of Barney Wilen and the great playing , both group and solo. I close my eyes and listen to the fantastic playing of Charlie Rouse on "Rhythm" with that gimmick of Gb B E A D G C F Bb in the A section instead of the regular rhythm changes. That´s something I really like and do myself also. And I imagined how "Blue Light" might have sounded, if Monk would have played in the 70´s and would have been open to some rock beats like Diz was during that time.

Colour or not, I remember the exitement of us all when it was advertised to be shown at a "Jazz Film Week" organized at "Volkshochschule Stöbergasse" (in 1050 Vienna) back then. Bird and Diz are great, but that grinnin´ drummer and that jumping bass player look silly and it´s outright poor drumming at least for a be bop group. It sounds more like a Gene Krupa styled drumming, not fitting to the music of Bird and Diz. Dick Hyman is "okay", but it´s more a conservative style, not really bop piano. But a good pianist sure. I heard him also on a track "Honeysuckle Rose" from about 1950 which appears as the only Dick Hyman track on an LP of Birdland Broadcast "Miles Davis - Stan Getz at their rare of all rarest performances" (Kings of Jazz , Italy). That´s also some neat oldstyled piano). But on the film you don´t even see him, you only see his hands...... Here the cover of the LP Davis-Getz, with that one short trio version of Dick Hyman on "Honeysuckle Rose". The pianist on all other tracks is Tadd Dameron .