Peter Friedman

Mozart - String Quartet K.589 and Mendelssohn - String Quartet Op.44/3

Yes George Mraz is a marvelous bass player. He is certainly one of my very favorites on his instrument.I have seen him live a number of times and he continually impresses me. Not flashy or trying to turn the bass into a guitar. He lays down a solid bass line choosing perfect notes. His solos are highly interesting. Many good ones on this list. If forced to pick my top choice, it would be- Pepper Adams : Reflectory.

Not a familiar name , but a good swinging session.

I go back earlier than the 70's in beginning my collecting. In the 50's and 60's new jazz LP's were coming out regularly on many labels. Blue Note and Prestige were perhaps the hottest items, but there was also Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, Argo, Verve (formerly Clef and Norgran), and many other small labels that put out only very few albums. My first Jackie McLean LP as leader was on the tiny Ad Lib label. A nice couple of Donald Byrd LPs and a Doug Watkins LP were on Transition. Carl Perkins and Dexter Gordon LPs on DooTone was another small label. I should not forget Savoy and Bethlehem too. Of Course the big guys such as Columbia, RCA and Decca were there as well. There were many other labels in the specialist jazz record shops that don't immediately come to mind. The key for me were the musicians.. If they were musicians I liked, I would go for that album no matter what label it was on. The record shop in Detroit that I frequented most often was happy to play me a track from an LP that I was thinking of buying, if I was not already decided. If you were not located in a town that had some sort of record shop that catered to jazz fans, the odds of finding the small less known labels were most likely quite poor.

Dvorak - String Quartet No.12, Op,96 "American" / Grechaninov - Symphony No.1, Op.6

Alan Broadbent / Frank Golson / Putter Smith / Gary Foster / Chuck Manning / VR Smith - Ode label

Dave Peck Trio - Jeff Johnson, Joe La Barbera

Mozart -String Quartet K.575 and Brahms - Piano Trio in A Major, Op. Posth.

Unissued Session, Vol.1

D.575 and D.625