Gheorghe

I think, fitting to the VSOP thread might be also the Herbie-Chick Corea Encounter from 1978. That´s the same story: The two key figures of 70´s jazz, who both had played with Miles before, gathering together. When it was in autumn and my wife asked me what kind of records I would like, I said if it could be something similar to VSOP, from the same period, it can be acoustic or electric, just to be good music that I might like. And she got this one ! It was very very much discussed and listened to in 1978, and a "must have" album. I saw it only on TV then. Somehow I didn´t get the record and now finally, listenig very very much to 70´s jazz I have it. It´s fantastic, they really cook. Maiden Voyage and Spain are really highlights, and the stride and swing jazz on "Liza" is also outstanding. It has influences of Bud and Monk in it, as Bud and Monk each did stride very well, but not copying it from others, but doing there own stuff with it.....

Anyway I wanted to open a topic but glad to see we have one about McCoy Tyner. I would say that McCoy Tyner as an influence on other upcoming pianists was as important than Bud Powell before him. Bud Powell would have hunderttousends of followers who would take some influences of his style into their own piano playing, that´s the 40´s and 50´s . And then the next great influence on others might have been McCoy. I´m glad I saw several steps of his career not in historical manner like Bud (who died when I was still only 6 years old) but live by listening to him, see him on stage, hear others who might have got some influences from him, and buying his records and waiting for the next record to appear. In the time of 1977/78 I was in the last two years of high school or "Lyceum" or as you might call it and we guys would discuss new upcoming releases of the musicians we admired, and at least two were with McCoy Tyner: Super Trios, and "Milestone Allstars Rollins Tyner Carter" . IMHO, McCoy Tyner has a similar important role on piano style like Bud Powell had before him.....

Hello ! About BN´s being more conservative or not: I thought because you always still have parts of straight ahead groove with a walking bass. I noticed this on "Empty Foxhole" on the first tune "Good Old Days", on the 2 Golden Circle and on other occasions. About your separate point: I´m a 1959 born (wasn´t that the year when "Shape of Jazz to Come" was recorded ? So I came into jazz in the 70´s and as you know, in the record shops in general there was more the new music, the electric jazz and for acoustic you had to seek some remainders from old cataloges. We had about three record stores with good jazz sections: Radio Kratz in 1060 Viena, Emi-Columbia in 1010 Viena and it was a bit later someone told me about "Red Octopus" in 1080 Viena. In the first shop I could purchase "Empty Foxhole" and the then latest album, the 1976 recorded thing with the early edition of "Prime Time". Later in Autumn there was the Impulse "Crisis", which I thought is the most advanced thing since it doesn´t have straight ahead swing sections... At "Emi Columbia" I purchased "Golden Circle Vol. 1 and 2". And I loved and love everything Ornette did, from the first listening on. There is no way I would consider the electric Prime Time inferior to the old acoustic days. "Neoconservative" institutional jazz doesn´t mean nothing to me. I was there when the actual style of the decade was Jazz-Rock and electric Jazz, same as people of the generation of my parents possible was there when Bird and Diz played on 52nd Street. So how could I exclude a certain decade, a certain style. You had to learn music, not only from the historical point, but from the point to be able to understand it and play it properly, maybe add your own thoughts to it..... You can´t appear as a new boy wonder in the style of 60´s Miles and make speeches where you tell us, what´s good and what has to be ignored.....

All of Ornette´s material for BN is great, it´s interesting that the very first OC on BN I heard and purchased was Empty Foxhole, when I was a teenager, since it was the only avaiable acoustic Coleman at that time. But all BN´s including his sideman playing with JackieMcLean is much more conservative than other projects. I always call it "Free Jazz Light". Especially "Cry of Love" and the other from the same date "New York" or somehow like this, are very accessible OC releases. I like most "Garden of Souls".

Well I might give it another try, but that will take some time, because now I´m busy listening the CDs my wife bought for my Birthday and then maybe others might follow tomorrow. Until now from the Birthday Batch I listened to Coltrane´s "Love Supreme Live Seattle 1965, "Coltrane meets Ellingon" and "Return to the Mothership" (all really great). With Dexter, I was a big big fan of him for many many years, starting from the Savoy´s in the 40´s on. But somehow I got tired of a lot of his stuff, with the exception of "Manhattan Symphony" which is one of the best acoustic albums of post-electric "acoustic revival"..... Philly J.J. was one of my favourite drummers from the beginning on. He is on my first "jazz album" (Steamin´) and his solo on Salt Peanuts........ Max Roach, Philly, Roy Haynes, Elvin, Tony an so on, I love drummers and a great part of my liking music or not is in context with what the drummer does.

As much as I remember he later founded the label "Electra Musician" and took a lot of former CBS Jazz Artists with him. But I think it was short lived and as well Dexter as Woody Shaw made only one or two records. There was also the Bird and Bud in Washington 1953, and Clifford Brown/Max Roach 1956 live. Some other musicians were less interesting for me, but I should have purchased a thing that I think I remember as something with Joe Henderson, Chick Corea, Lenny White titled "Glass Menagerie" or something like that.

Yes it may be a question of different tastes. Billy Higgins is one of my favourite drummers. I like the "insistent accenting" very much, I like it if a drummer really lifts the stage and pushes the musicians. Others like the drummer more as a suportive role, like Harewood maybe was. Harewood was much used by BN in the early 60s for more swing routine recordings. Let´s say I have very much chronological BN stuff, but less from the more mainstream of "Three Sounds" "Ike Quebec" or "Stanley Turrentine" . In that context I think it was the same way with Dexter when he started at BN. He was from the batch of older, then nearly forgotten players after long time of prison, not even having a carbaret card. My personal afection to BN is much more what became new and more demanding, the series of Freddie Hubbard records, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, Sam Rivers , Herbie Hancock, McCoy, with drummers more like Billy Higgins, Elvin Jones of course..... Dexter was better off during his comeback in the late 70´s. That´s when CBS really did interesting projects with him like "Sophisticated Giant" and above all "Manhattan Symphony" and listen to the drummers he used THEN. Eddy Gladden, that´s really powerful and it really pushes the proceedings to a highly emotional manner. Those were good years, but I think the increasing drinking problem of Dexter stopped CBS for further projects. Even the last CBS "Gotham City" is more or less a gathering of all stars like Blakey, Percy Heath, Woody Shaw...., and very very short......

Maybe there were some Shorty Rogers fans or West Coast fans in Austria too. I think it was a generation thing. I supose that it was the generation for the college kids of the 50´s who were into that, and they were gentlemen around 50 years old, usually in solid social positions at a time when I was young and into Trane, Mingus, If they dug Brubeck what they did, they might have dug Shorty Rogers also ? As I said I haven´t even heard about that name in a time when I thought I know everything starting with Bird /Diz and all the boppers, diggin Trane and Ornette and the then contemporanous electric jazz like Miles, Headhunters, Billy Cobham-George Duke, Return to Forever etc. About Dixieland, I think I had heard once about a "Dutch Swing College Band". There were so many Dixiebands like "Barrelhouse Jazzband" "Two Beat Stompers" and so on. I think that was another kind of audience. Usually they hated what they called "modern jazz", even if they were not particularly old". But that´s the story I already told you....

Sometimes, in the LP era there were pics of album covers inside the cover of the LPs, sometimes even in chronological order, and since I was already a Miles Davis fan when I was a kid, I saw this too. I didn´t know what "Nefertiti" should mean, anyway it´s written in a way I missread it and thought it reads "Neferetti" which sounded to me like an Italian name. So I thought this is maybe an Italian Film composer and it could be a collaboration between an Italian composer and Miles Davis. Like Miles-Michel Legrand in the 50´s and again after 40 years in "Dingo"...

ist normal so bei uns. Ösis, Ossis.....darf man keine Wunder erwarten . Der Witz ist aber, wenn ich in meine 2. Heimat 1000 km weiter östlich fahre, dort haben sie alles, da sehen wir in Ö. arm dagegen aus.....

Oh yes ! And, how do you like it ?

we tried to find non alcoolic "Sekt" and the only we found was "Kindersekt" with Cherry Aroma and Kindersekt "White". So we drop it on revelion (how do you say in english ?) and I´ll have a non alcoolic beer. Lammsbräu I don´t know, my favourites ar "Clausthaler" or "Schlossbräu" here in Viena. And all that presents from other companies with bottles of champange and bottles of "Punch" I gather them and try to find people who would like it. I keep only the ciocolata or marzipan

Yesterday evening I was listening to the second CD and I´m just mesmerized. It´s such a fantastic concert . Unusual for RTF on the second CD they go into straight ahead on two occasions, on one Lenny White provides a kind of "Messenger Beat" like Blakey. The most beautiful thing is the medley "Concierto de Aranjuez/Spain". I heard there is also a DVD about that concert. My DVD-player is "kaputt". We´ll get another one after the Winter Holidays and will buy it. RTF with Jean Luc Ponty for me, and "Swan Lake " balet for my wife (but also for me, since we saw it live with the Bolșoi ballett (Lacul Lebedelor = Lake of the Swans" and loved it, and maybe she would agree to look at "my" RTF" also....".

Great, so we are already two. Don´t misunderstand me, I like Free Jazz very much, but if it´s straight ahead I don´t like those stop and go´s like it´s on that disc....., they swing really hard on "Under The Sky". But I like the first tune, only if I could hear the horns better....

Yes, it was hard to purchase. Sometimes I was lucky and ordered it from my record dealer and got it after some weeks or months. The only source of information was the "Bielefeld Jazzkatalog", a book that came out every year and the BN stock was reduced. I was lucky to find here Ornette´s "Empty Foxhole" "Golden Circle Vol. 1 and 2" and Wayne Shorters "Schizophrenia". About Shorty Rogers reissues I can´t say much. I think, that circle of friends and musicians I was around, mostly from them early to late 50´s born guys didn´t really listen to so called "West Coast Jazz". This seemed to be more the stuff of another kind of society which was older, they dug Brubeck and Shorty Rogers and so on. I only heard the name Shorty Rogers for the first time , when a 1927 born (then around 50 years old) middleclass gentleman who played a little drums invited me to his house and most of his collection was Brubeck and Shorty Rogers and so on. Somehow I couldnt get the same "butterflies in the belly" I got from Trane, Ornette, Mingus or from the past Bird/Diz/Monk etc. .... It seems that there were different "listener-categories" in Viena then: those of my "gang" that were into let´s say Bird and Bob and hardbop into 60´s New Thing until contemporanous electric jazz, and on the other hand that generation mostly middle class style that listened to Brubeck and Co, and the Oldtimers with Dixie and so on... There was not very much communication between them. And there were those who listened almost exclusivly to Oscar Peterson..... Once someone invited me to a matinee at some nice beer garden and a Dixieband played. Some of the more "open to beyond Dixie" knew me and asked me to sit in on piano for a number. Well they called "Georgia Brown" and when my solo came, I had in mind some impressions like Fats Navarro´s line on the Saturday Night Jazz session were some boppers mixed with oldtimers, or the 1947 "Bands for Bonds" were Bird and Diz did some oldtime tunes for "fun". So I sure played the changes, but didn´t do "ooom pah" but played more in a bop styled manner, maybe with a nod to older musicians like Teddy Wilson or Clyde Hart. Two younger guys in that Dixie Band who just played there "for money" smiled to me and loved it, but the leader, a white bearded really hefty guy, an ex policeman hated it and said it´s "Chinese Music", while I only tried to make a friendly connection, like let´s say "we all love music, the tune is a common field and there is no discrimination in music".... but it didn´t work with those guys....

I got that fantastic double CD from my wife for birthday. It´s great how she sometimes finds something I don´t have and probably might like. Such a great stuff, I have listend only to the first CD and I´m bursting with enthusiasm. "Medieval Overture" bring memories back to those old days when this was brand new. Chick, Stanley and Lennie are really fantastic, and the guitarist Gambale is new here , instead of Al Di´Meola" and the biggest surprise is Jean Luc Ponty. His composition "Renaissance" is fantastic ! I´m looking forward hearing the second CD.

I was served with it first in an Italian Restaurant in Viena. When I was in Italy I still drank Campari. I was astonished I found it, exactly that six-pack you show here, at former "Merkur", now "Billa-Plus". Since then I always have some bottles at home and drink one on special occasions. I liked to drink more beer when I was young, reduced it to maybe one small bottle of beer or a glass of wine on saturday evening but stopped even this, since I have to take some medication and am afraid that it might clash with even the smallest quantitude of alcool....

Yes I have this also, it is from the same date, but if I have to choose between the two, I prefer "Go" Don´t know what Spotfy is......

I usually order my books by Romanian online libraries. I This one is very fine. Sure I "could" read it in english, but that would take to much time, I might have to use the dictionary quite often......

San Bitter, that´s some kind of alcool-free Campari, since I´m not allowed to drink alcool. And "Schlossgold" alcool-free every day for dinner. It´s the best alcool-free beer I know.

Yes, that´s the best Billy Eckstine band I ever heard. Too bad there are not more of that format. I like the Savoy´s also very much, but here you hear the band better.

I have all BN´s of Dexter but the only one I´m really fond of is "GO". Doin´Allright is ok, but Al Harewood is not necessarly my most favourite drummer, it´s a bit "tame", On the other hand, "Dexter Calling" as a dream team rhythm section, but somehow it doesn´t work as well for Dexter as others. Our Man In Paris is great as a vintage bop re-unit. But "GO" with Billy Higgins is the best "pure Gordon" in my opinion.

Thank you Daniel, maybe the didn´t make the CD properly. It´s a "Wounded Bird" CD, but I had other Wounded Bird and they sound wonderful..... But if "the mix is almost perfect", the studio album of VSOP is not perfect at all. The bass is recorded too loud, and the horns sound off mike. The live recording "Under The Sky" is much better recorded.....

First of all Trane in Seattle with "Love Supreme Live".

Coltrane is so great !!! Only on one tune where they used another drummer than Elvin, the drummer does not fit to Trane´s great solo, you could imagine how this would have sounded with Elvin. Ellington has a unique piano style. It´s more an "arranger´s style" maybe in the way Basie did it, or later Tadd Dameron did it , or on ballads it´s a bit more impressionistic. That "bell" sound on the intro of "Sentimental". The best on piano is Ellingtons comping on "The Feeling of Jazz". That´s some really great chords.