I Remember Bebop - piano Trios?

[Dan Gould]

I already have this en route

https://www.discogs.com/release/10189476-Various-I-Remember-Bebop-The-Complete-Recording-Sessions

but curious who might be familiar with it as apparently a UK release only but by Sony?  Concept is certainly intriguing and I imagine the track times are short to force these legends to play to the length of a 78, more or less?

Thanks in advance.

[Chuck Nessa]

Issued in the US circa 1980.

[Dan Gould]

Yet when CDs were still popular and reissue programs still happening ... only CD set seems to be in the UK.

Is it as good as I hope, @Chuck Nessa, if you know?

[Big Beat Steve]

18 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Issued in the US circa 1980.

Omnipresent in the jazz bins in the record shops over here for quite a while in the 80s too. 

According to the Discogs listing some of the tracks are longer than the typical 78rpm limit (and would just about have fitted on a 12").
https://www.discogs.com/master/580388-Various-I-Remember-Bebop

Somehow I remember this 2-LP set has been discussed (or at least mentioned approvingly) here in a previous thread. But who will be able to locate that thread?

Edited August 28, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[mikeweil]

The US double LP omitted several tracks due to playing timne limitations. There was a French double CD with all of the tracks:

https://www.discogs.com/release/10189476-Various-I-Remember-Bebop-The-Complete-Recording-Sessions

I think the recorded sound could be better. Musically, very good, but not as exciting as I expected it to be, but that my be just me.

[mjzee]

3 hours ago, mikeweil said:

The US double LP omitted several tracks due to playing timne limitations. There was a French double CD with all of the tracks:

https://www.discogs.com/release/10189476-Various-I-Remember-Bebop-The-Complete-Recording-Sessions

I think the recorded sound could be better. Musically, very good, but not as exciting as I expected it to be, but that my be just me.

Columbia US released a second twofer, "They All Played Bebop," that I believe contains the missing tracks.  (The first disc is fleshed out with some random tracks Columbia owned.)

https://www.discogs.com/release/6230466-Various-They-All-Played-Bebop

 

[jlhoots]

4 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Issued in the US circa 1980.

That's the version I had. Sold when I divested all of my vinyl.

[Dan Gould]

42 minutes ago, mjzee said:

Columbia US released a second twofer, "They All Played Bebop," that I believe contains the missing tracks.  (The first disc is fleshed out with some random tracks Columbia owned.)

https://www.discogs.com/release/6230466-Various-They-All-Played-Bebop

 

Hardly the same ... they condensed the original to just the C and D sides so eliminating tracks from the 1977 recording.

The irony of this issue is that it would get pushed out in the Various section and could easily be mistaken for tracks recorded during the era and therefore of less interest, if your collection is large enough. But this was living masters recording compositions organized thematically, and while they were very much in their prime.

I am hopeful that I am going to enjoy this one alot.

And may I say while I like the CD cover best overall, the musicians at the piano bench with photos in their respective pockets gets a thumbs up from me too. I would have been fine if they used that on the CD issue.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Dan Gould

[Gheorghe]

Wasn´t that the idea of french jazz writer and occasional pianist Henry Renault ? 

He always was seekin "remaining bop pianists" after Bud had died, Monk had retired and so on. 

But it´s hard to imagine Jimmy Rowles as a be bop player. Wasn´t Lou Levy more a bop player ? And wasn´t Tommy Flanagan more from the 50´s Detroit scene. I mean one of the best, most technical pianists, period. But not really a bopper. 

I would have liked to hear how Sadik Hakim sounds. On the few Savoy sides he sounds very very stiff, like someone who tries to pick up something from Monk, but without the wit and rhythmical conception of Monk, and it´s such a stiff chromatical playing with so stiff syncopes it doesn´t "flow" . It sounds more like classical syncopes. 

Al Haig playing Diz must be great. Haig was a great piano player, but not in 45. On the old Diz records he also sounds very stiff, but from 48 on he was fantastic, he had learned all the stuff and his playing with Bird at the Roost, or with Wardell Gray and so on is first class. 

[Dan Gould]

3 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Wasn´t that the idea of french jazz writer and occasional pianist Henry Renault ? 

He always was seekin "remaining bop pianists" after Bud had died, Monk had retired and so on. 

 

Yes but its Renaud.

[Brad]

I have this record (not the cd) and I think it’s fantastic. I think you’ll enjoy it. The only negative for me and it’s minor is that my copy is badly warped so I miss part of the first song on side 1. 

[Peter Friedman]

I have the two French CDs of this material. Great stuff. 

I disagree with Gheorghe regarding Tommy Flanagan. Perhaps it is a matter of defining what is a bebop player.

Tommy Flanagan grew up in Detroit along with Barry Harris, Pepper Adams, Curtis Fuller, Donald Byrd and many others who were strongly focused on Bird, Diz, & Bud. They played and recorded numerous bebop tunes by Bird, Tadd Dameron, etc.

 

[Dan Gould]

I guess Gheorghe is really thinking about original, on-the-bandstand at the moment of creation, bop pianists, when, as he says, some might have been less rhythmically on the ball than others.

But I agree with you Peter because when these guys were developing, bop was it.  

 

[mhatta]

It is difficult to define "bop pianist".

1. someone who follows Bud Powell's style, especially in rhythm and power.

2. who has played with Charlie Parker

3. someone who was active on 52nd street or in New York City during the height of the bebop revolution (about 1945-1950)

The young Lou Levy is definitely in 1., but I don't think he is a bop pianist.  Jimmy Rowles played with Parker, so he is at least in 2. If 3. is important, not only Tommy Flanagan but also Barry Harris would be out. And personally, I don't think John Lewis is a bop pianist, although he has played with Parker.

[JSngry]

Here, this should clear up any confusion:

 

[Gheorghe]

4 hours ago, mhatta said:

It is difficult to define "bop pianist".

1. someone who follows Bud Powell's style, especially in rhythm and power.

2. who has played with Charlie Parker

3. someone who was active on 52nd street or in New York City during the height of the bebop revolution (about 1945-1950)

The young Lou Levy is definitely in 1., but I don't think he is a bop pianist.  Jimmy Rowles played with Parker, so he is at least in 2. If 3. is important, not only Tommy Flanagan but also Barry Harris would be out. And personally, I don't think John Lewis is a bop pianist, although he has played with Parker.

Yes, I was thinking of what you described as "3." 

But sure, John Lewis is not a bop pianist, though he was a key figure in the 40´s as pianist in Dizzy´s big band and composing key bop tunes like "2 Bass Hit" etc. 

I like also his playing with Bird on "Summit Meeting at Birdland". 

I didn´t know much about Lou Levy, he was not well known over here in Europe. But I saw him with Stan Getz and he also had to play for Art Pepper, since his then püinist Milcho Leviev as his whole rhythm section had not arrived. 

I had not known that Jimmy Rowles had played with Bird. As Lou Levy, Jimmy Rowles was not really well known over here in Europe. I first "saw" him on the cover of the Mingus album "Three or Four Shades of the Blues" where you see a quite worn out, grey guy with a cigarette stickin in his mouth. But he only played that white styled solo piano interlude that sounded like a children´s waltz. And later he played with Ella, but as Ella was, pianists almost never got a real solo spot. 

I think Jimmy Rowles is on the Dial sides Dexter made in the late 40´s but as much as I love Dexter, mostly his Savoy sides, those Dial sides somehow bored me. 

[Peter Friedman]

No.3 is far too limiting.

Bebop was being played in a number of other cities during the "height of the bebop revolution. Los Angeles and Detroit were prime examples. It is likely that in other cities such a Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Chicago were just a few other places where bebop was being played between 1947 and 1950. 

[Big Beat Steve]

In the same manner, even No. 2 is far too limiting. A bebop pianist need not have played with Charlie Parker ever and yet can be a bebop pianist in accordance with the way he played jazz.
It can of course be argued that all those pianists who played with Charlie Parker (trying to figure in his countless rhythm sections here ) must have been bebop pianists one way or another but does this, by implication, mean that the opposite can be true too? I.e. "if you haven't played with Charlie Parker you cannot be a bebop pianist"?
 

 

 

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