Gheorghe

Glad to read you again, lookin forward to your interesting contributions and discussions on the forum. Best regards. Gh.

But what a beautiful surrounding for making a record. You can take a break and sit on the meadow or under a tree. When I recorded when I was younger, it was an ugly street without trees.....

Strange, I certainly know all the musicians involved and some of them I saw live also, but about a Dick Griffin, who is obviously the leader, I haven´t heard ever. Maybe he is not so well known in Europe ?

It sure must be ! It is possible that I don´t have all Milestones, since especially in the early 90´s a didn´t have much time for music, I was doin a second job to my main job, was fallin in love with the girl who became my wife.... Now I´m listening more to the live albums, but this here sure is fine, ballads I suppose.

That´s the album cover I also have. Really, I like Whims of Chambers most of all three, because it´s the best personnel for a typical hard bop album. Beautiful photo, beautiful quiet and romantic street, where may this have been ? And, I didn´t know Chambers was so skinny, I saw other photos where I see only his face and it was more the kind of a very round "baby face". But yes, he was the greatest bass player of the 50´s and early 60´s. But I think, after 1961 or so he recording activities got less intense. The last recording I heard of him was on the quite obscure "Rajah" from Lee Morgan, which was issued long time after Morgan´s death, and somehow Chambers doesn´t have that sure and fat sound he once had....

Thank you for your impression about it. Seems to be more for historians than for music lovers or musicians. Like some of the books I bought and never really read, since there is so much out of music stuff in them. I like bios about musicians, written by people who knew the music. Ira Gitler´s "Jazzmasters of the Forties" is still one of the best bebop books I have read. I really agree with you.

I have not heard of her, but the title "what have you been doin for the rest of your life" I know from a later Earl Coleman album, I think it was on Xanadu in 1977.

Though I don´t have many listening experiences of Stan Getz from the mid 50´s, I can imagine that Lou Levy must have been ideal for him. He was really a great, underrated pianist. He played with Getz in 1981 at Velden Jazzfestival in Austria, and then with Art Pepper, since Pepper´s own trio seemed to have missed the plane. So it was Pepper with Getz´s trio. Your impression of Peterson added to a horn player is easy to understand for me, since I have an Eddie Lockjaw Davis album with the OP trio from 1977, and always thought how fine it would have been with Tommy Flanagan, with whom he made a studio album around the same time... I know there is recordings of Zoot Sims with OP, but I didn´t hear them. Zoot was from the Lester Young school, and the finest combination I heard is on a date at the Parisian Blue Note Café, where he is accompanied by the Bud Powell Trio, and Bud really adapts his playing very well to Zoot´s style. He plays a bit softer than usual, a very very beautiful and relaxed set.

Have listened yesterday evening to "John Coltrane-Duke Ellington". Really nice after a day with lot working, just to relax. John Coltrane is masterful, great as ever. But I think it was done mostly for commercial reasons. The best parts are those, where the piano lays off and Coltrane plays trio. Only on one track , where they use another drummer, I miss Elvin, since it´s only a very simple, basic oldtime styled drumming. I´m more familiar with Duke´s tunes as playing repertory than his playing himself. I have Duke-Mingus-Roach, and now this one. He seems to have a very spare style, not like Basie or Dameron, but somehow to compare.....what someone called "arranger´s style". But on the last tune "The Feeling of Jazz" he really comps beautifully... Download.jfif Download (1).jfif

I bought the then available BN LA double album "Paul Chambers-John Coltrane" which has much of the "Whims" on it, then the whole session from LA with Kenny Drew, and those Transition side with Curtis Fuller on it. Whims of Chambers is one of the best hard bop BN albums, I mean, Philly J.J., wow, an allstar thing. I love it. The other stuff I bought later as a very expensive japanese CD I think it is called "Message from the East". Stablemates is my favourite track on it.

I love his work with Monk, that´s were I really can hear him. I heard Ron Carters Quartet of 1979 with Kenny Barron, Buster Williams as second bass, and Ben Riley, so I can say I heard the trio under the leadership of Ron. Very fine. And he is on the Electra Musician album "Sphere" from 1982, were they play with Charlie Rouse. But as it happens on studio albums, you hear the bass louder than the drums, so I don´t hear every aspect of what Riley does on it, since in studio he seems to have been underrecorded.....

I hope much. As a 1959 born I came in touch with his music in the 70´s, though the first album I had was from the 60´s and had him with Don Cherry, Henry Grimes and Billie Higgins. I saw Rollins live also for the first time in the 70´s and enjoyed his Milestone albums from that time, and never in my live I will forget things like "Don´t Stop the Carneval" ... Only once in Miami a strange thing happened to us: We arrived early in April 2000 and learned the next day, that on the day of our arriving Sonny Rollins was playing in town. Too late for Sonny , but then James Moody was scheduled at "Van Dyke´s" on Lincoln Road, and there we went. And during intermission, smokin a cigarette in front of the clubs, you know how it comes, you talk to other fans, and mention the missed Sonny Rollins event, and one of them who pretended he is from Switzerland but lives in Miami, said "I don´t like what Rollins did after 1975". Well, especially my wife was kinda puzzled, she said "we have now 2000 ......so don´t you thing you missed much, 1975 was ages ago....."

It sure must be ! It is possible that I don´t have all Milestones, since especially in the early 90´s a didn´t have much time for music, I was doin a second job to my main job, was fallin in love with the girl who became my wife.... Now I´m listening more to the live albums, but this here sure is fine, ballads I suppose.

Al Foster Tony Williams Elvin Jones Danny Richmond Philly J.J. Roy Haynes, This is only a few, I love drummers and must HEAR them.

I also have bad hearing, but don´t wear a hearing aid. The only problem is I don´t hear hi frequenzies well, and I want to hear the snares and the cymbals louder. Sometimes studio recordings are not helpful for me, if they reduce the level of the high sounding parts of the drums. And I don´t hear hi notes very clearly. If a piano players gets up in the high register, the runs kinda peter off for my ears, But otherwise I don´t have many problems. Okay, many voices talking at the same time, impossible for me to understand, but in my job only one other person is allowed to say something at the same time. So there is no mess of voices. Police films, if the street noise or other noise is louder than the guy who talks. With pillows I also have a strange habit. I sleep under the pillow, at least I have to have the face and the nose out of the pillow, but the head and ears covered .

hard to say. My "hour" of record listening is usually before dinner. First I come home after work, then we have coffee and talk and laugh together, and later I go into the other room and spin a CD, which I listen to very very closely , I mean really every aspect of it, and then it´s time for dinner. I have a demanding job and a family life and for more music I rather play myself. So I don´t really listen to music before it´s time to go to sleep. If I´m very exhausted and don´t want to figure to much out, it might be a routine album like the old Prestiges and BNs from the 50´s early 60´s ...... but more I like stuff that´s a bit more advanced or live recorded....

I saw Blakey live on many occasions. I think the last one was shortly after this record was made. I think in spring 1989, in any case Javon Jackson was on tenor and Benny Green on piano. I was sittin in the first row and could enjoy Blakey´s fantastic drum sound, I like to hear them cymbals and snares very clearly. But on the album it seems they had put the drum on a very low level because I can´t hear THE powerful Blakey sound. Is this due to the way they underrecorded his drums ?

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) ?