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Gheorghe
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Posts posted by Gheorghe
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Hancock is great in everything he does. Recently I listened again to the first VSOP, that double album from 1976 with the acoustic quintet, the sextet with Maupin and Buster Williams, and the funky stuff with Wah Wah Watson. Great stuff, a journey through more than 10 years of Hancock´s musical history.
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Strange !
I wasn´t aware of March 12th, but yesterday and the days before I listened frequently to Bird. Starting with Sunday it was the Savoy and Dialsessions, the Birdland All Star 1950 and the Summit Meeting at Birdland 1951, well and yesterday on March 12th it was the 1947 Carnegie Hall stuff with Diz (by the way, some of the greatest Bird solos ever).
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1) I got the Jackie McLean-book also. It seems, that there are many biographies about great musicians now. When I was young, there was one Miles Davis bio, written by Bill Cole I think, about 1973. That´s the first bio I read. And "Bird Lives" of course......
Now just in the last few years, I got books about Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Fats Navarro, Tadd Dameron (2 books), Bud Powell, Wayne Shorter.....
2) about your comment of "never heard a piano successfully bowed".....maybe it should be a joke......, well the only thing I wanted to say is, that I remember Monk once asked his bass player (it may have been Ron McLure, it was around 1972....) not to use the bow, because he doesn´t like the sound. Maybe I can´t express myself well enough, and above all....... all I can think about here and in this context, is the music and the musicians who create and play it, and ...."bowed pianos" .... well maybe I´m too serious about the music and I don´t know enough people who would share that love with me.
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Though that "apologize for his bowed solos" is still an enigma to me, maybe it´s a question of taste, like Monk stated that he doesn´t like the bow...
But, with just 4 strings and a bow, Paul Chambers could blow better that some pianists with 88 keys.
Brings memories back to a speech Benny Golson made to the audience, when I caught him on stage with Curtis Fuller: "look at my axe, a lot of keys on it........, and.....look at Mr. Fuller´s trombone.......no keys.....just a ......slide. And with just that slide he blows more than me with all my keys...... "
In the book, he makes a similar statement about Paul Chambers.
Anyway: Since Paul Chambers was born in 1935, there are more musicians still alive or even active, who could tell about him in the book, not to forget the contributions by his widow an one of his sons .
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Do we have a title and an author?
Bertrand.
Title and author? I thought, the title of my thread is the title of the book and the name of the author ?! "Mr P.C. "the live and music of Paul Chambers" !!
@BillF: apology for those bowed bass solos? How apology, Paul Chambers was the greatest when it came to bowed solos. Actually he was the first bassman I really heard, he was almost a reason why I became a jazz fan. Never in my life I had heard something like that before, that you can "blow" solos on the bass fiddle, that speak the language of Bird or Diz.
I remember, that Ron Carter also tried a bowed solo on "Autumn Leaves" on the Miles at Antibes album, but it´s much weaker than Paul. Great as Ron is, he couldn´t solo like Paul.
I wouldn´t say now, that a bowed bass solo is so important to me, but anyway, the Milestones album was the first I got when still a kid, and the thing that appealed most to me was the walking bass line of Paul. A reason for me to become a lifelong jazzfan. I even purchased a bass fiddle when I was 16 or 17, and after 3 years of self study and above all - listening to what Paul did, what Mingus did - , I was good enough and could fill in, when no bass player was available. I also liked to solo because I thought like the piano player I was. But I didn´t have a bow. Once I borrowed a bow from some classic dude, but it was a cello-bow, and when I tried it, it sounded like bees flyin´ around. Eventually I "forgot" about bass playin´ and stuck to the piano....
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Just finished that great book about the great Paul Chambers.
Great reading.
The author reviews almost every recording with the bassist and gives us some informations about his personal live.
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Hi Mark !
Yes, about "Body and Soul" it is true Dexter used Coltrane´s arrangement of that tune with the vamp in the A sections. He did it on the same way on his fantastic album "Manhattan Suite", which was his latest album during the time I first heard him live. And in 1985 on the sound track of "Round Midnight", he still played it that way.
I think, Dexter often played songs on live occasions in a manner similar to his recorded versions, like "Good Bait": I got an album of Dexter at the Paradise Club in Amsterdam 1969, where he plays a very long and slow version of Good Bait. That´s also what he did in 1983, though I was quite astonished, because as I remember, "Good Bait" was not on the set lists of the concerts I heard between 1978-1981.
Great story about the way you got his autograph.
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Dexter was the first great jazz musician I ever saw live. Fall 1977, Indiana University Memorial Union in Bloomington, Ind. George Cables, Rufus Reid, Eddie Gladden. I was 14 and already into jazz, but it still changed my life. The authority, sound and stage presence were just overwhelming to a kid who could play the heads to "Yardbird Suite," and "Billie's Bounce" and was just connecting the dots with ii V I harmony and the like. I remember part of the set list. "Gingerbread Boy," "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" (with Dexter reciting the first 8 bars of the lyric), a fast blues to close and something else in between. They did a second set and I think "It's Your or No One" was part of that and, if memory is not playing tricks, Dexter played something on soprano.
Saw Dexter several more times, but that was the best. Of course, he always phrased behind the beat, but maybe 5 years later I heard him in Chicago and I remember the way he played "Moment's Notice" was so far on the backside that it sounded like the rhythm section had lapped him!
Faves: "Go," "A Swingin' Affair," "Our Man in Paris," "The Panther," "Generation," "The Apartment," "Bouncin' with Dex," "Swiss Nights Vol 1" -- I can't tell you how much I listened to those records when I was young. Lot of lessons in Dexter's playing -- melody, warmth, importance of sound. You know, there's a reason why, say, Kurt Elling has based a number of vocalise pieces on Dexter solos -- the phrasing is so songful.
Very interesting review, saw Dexter "live" around the same time, maybe a little later. the first time I saw him he opened his set with "It´s You Or No One", which he announced as "a CBS plagiat". Then followed "Fried Bananas" (Dexter: All about something very good to eat), the inevitable More Than You Know (I think he played it all the times I saw him), and the fast Blues "Backstages" with a long solo by Eddie Gladden.
Later, in 1981 he was still very strong, played a fanstastic "Gingerbread Boy" and a long "Body and Soul", which was an encore I think.
The last time I saw him in 1983, and I think he had slowed down a bit. Started with "Secret Love", then "Good Bait" at a somewhat slow tempo, More than you know (as always), and "Jelly Jelly Jelly" about the same way he does it on "Swiss Nites", but anyway, on that last occasion he didn´t play as much, it took almost 10 minutes until he came on stage, after his rhythm section had played 3 tunes, which I don´t remember since I was waiting for the chief.....,
I´m waitin for the book his widow is workin on, will be great to read it....
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I must admit I´m not too familiar with that name. Could it be the pianist, who plays one track on that 1948 broadcast that I have (a kind of all star event with Benny Harris, J.J.Johnson, Budd Johnson, Lee Konitz, Bud Powell, Max Roach and others ? I think I got one track with a Barbara Carroll replacing Bud for one tune (All the Things you are), with just the rhythm section. Well, maybe she was just starting, it sounds a bit "stiff", you know, the way some piano players sound if the try to play in the bop idiom, but still with that "edge" in it. It´s like Al Haig on the Town Hall stuff with Diz and Bird. Then in that early stage of his career he still got that "edge" in his lines, but later, oh boy he could blow almost like Bud, he learned his stuff.....
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Max Roach "Scott Free" (composed by Cecil Bridgewater) on the album with the same title from 1984
Max Roach "Call of Wild/Peaceful Heart (composed by Billy Harper) on the album "Max Roach in Amsterdam 1977".
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Very interesting. And about his talent to learn foreign languages, I remember how he made announcements in German when I saw him live in 1978 and 1979.
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I can say, Kenny Burrell has a special meaning to me. When I was very young and fell in love with jazz, the only stuff I knew was the typical bebop or hardbop setting with tp, ts/as, p,b,dr. I didn´t even know about styles and thought all that stuff is "old jazz" and stuff like Return to Forever or Miles´"Agharta" (then the stuff youngsters would listen to) which I thought might be "new jazz"......
The guitar I thought belongs to "new jazz" (70´s stuff) and I didn´t have no idea about earlier settings with that instrument. Then I purchased that double LP (BN LA-Series) "Paul Chambers & John Coltrane" which I really liked, and it´s Kenny Burrell on guitar. So that was the first time I heard a guitar player doing hornlike stuff, soloing like Trane, Miles and the musicians I knew.
So, naturally, Kenny Burrell was the first guitar player I purchased albums to get my "hard bop collection"........ . I heard Kenny Burrell before Wes.....
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If I might keep only two of Morgan´s albums, it would be "The Cooker", and "Search of a New Land".
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I don´t remember in which thread I read it, but thanks to informations I got here, I purchased the two "Wounded Bird" re-issues of Montreux Summit. What a gathering of great musicians from different styles.
Maybe it is not the highest musical standard, but anyway: Imagine.....Woody Shaw, Maynard Ferguson, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Slide Hampton, Hubert Laws, George Duke Bob James, Billy Cobham on the same stage. It´s a mixture of then modern 70´s stuff arranged by Bob James, and some standards like Blue March, Woody Shaw´s Moontrane, and others. Really long tunes, Blues March is over 25 minutes.
It sure costed a fortune to gather all them great stars all together on stage.
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well the Bird film really disappointed me.
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"To Bird with Love" is not really a "written book", it´s a deluxe collection of photos, letters, contracts, etc., and it was done as a co-production of Chan and Francis Paudras.
PW as a successor to Bird? Not really. A good player, yes, but not more.
The next genius musician who played a saxophone was Trane.
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Yes, the "Love is a Dangerous Necessity".....it starts with that "a capella horn arrangement", very similar to the movie score "Music for Todo Modo", which Mingus composed and recorded 6 years later (on the album Cumbia&Jazz Fusion). So I think this was an idea he worked out later, like many stuff the Mingus composed.
Well, it´s cut off when it starts to become a slow blues. Peggy´s Blue Skylight " is really nice, "Reincarnation of a Lovebird" also.
I also like the "I left my heart in SanFrancisco", though it´s more fun that vintage Mingus......
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A long time ago, I bought a quite obscure Mingus LP with that 1970 group, it was misdated as "1969" but must be 1970, Rotterdam or Amsterdam I don´t remember. Nothing special about it, the bass is practicalle unheard. Yes, the tunes were "Orange was the Colour of her Dress", "OP OP", and "The Man that never sleeps". I still have it, but I don´t think I´ll listen to it soon.
If you like Mingus´ 1970 recordings, better get the "America" dates (late 1970 for french label America), originally issued as "Blue Bird" and "Pyticantropus Erectus".
Anyway, that´s a really tired Mingus, sure there are great moments, but it would be years later, that Mingus really was back.
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The Bird-Kaminsky encounter I got on record, is from March 4 1949 CBS Adventures in Jazz, TV broadcast, NY 1949, the other trumpet player is Miles, Others involved on those 4 tracks are Kai Winding, Max Roach, Ann Baker ( voc on "I got a kick out of you) etc .....
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I know that photo from Francis Paudras´ book "To Bird with Love".
Really, some broadcast of Bird together with Max Kaminsky from around that time exists.
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I think it has a lot to do with the producer or the label. How much they are working on an artist. McCoy Tyner is a good example.
It´s also the times that changed. See, the late 60´s and the 70´s were a period of transition. Producers were tired of doing quartet/quintet albums only.
Look at the BlueNote catalog, they started make larger groups, augmented by studio musicians.
Mingus: When he got that heavy contract with Atlantic, after doing "Changes One/Two", they got tired of recording his working group and started with larger settings, adding electric guitars etc. .
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Sure he must have been a great musician. But I must admit, I didn´t really get into his stuff. It was with the Mel Lewis Big Band, after Thad Jones had left. See, I heard the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band and it really knocked me out. But then after Thad had left, with Bob Brookmeyer composing and arranging, it somehow disappointed me. Maybe it was cool for others, I don´t want to put him down just because I didn´t like it.
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Well, Eric Dolphy has a special meaning to me. See, when I was still a kid and didn´t know much about jazz, I somehow got "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus, Paris 1964". That special album, and the stuff that Dolphy plays on it, opened me up. Then I didn´t even have a Parker LP, I had heard only that Bird´s a legend, you know? So, when I heard that "Pakeriana" with Dolphy´s alto solo I thought well I haven´t heard Bird yet, but if Dolphy can do such fantastic things, Bird must be my next choice. So I got to Bird through Dolphy.
Needless to say I still had to learn to understand Dolphys musical concept, but it also helped me to dig a little more into the NewThing, to make me ready for Ornette, Don Cherry etc. .
The first album of Dolphy under his own name, which I got was the "Berlin Concerts 1961".
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Thank you all so much !
Herbie Hancock
in Artists
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I was at that concert- it was a blast!!!
Oh, you lucky ! It might be considered one of those unforgettable concerts, like the 1953 Massey Hall or something. I grew up in that period (mid seventies) and heard the guys that played and created music then. So, to me stuff like this is history.
Some other personal memories about or around Herbie Hancock:
I remember well when some other guy from school borrowed me the "Headhunters" album so I taped it. Until then (1975 I think) I didn´t even know that Herbie also played or plays acoustic stuff. That was the times we lived in. See: Keyboards meant electric keyboards, if you wanted to be update. From acoustic piano, during that time I only had heard from Oscar Peterson, since the older guys spoke about him or had his records.
But I dug the acoustic Miles Davis stuff, because Miles was like God and you got to know everything he ever did. So, when I purchased that "Miles in Europe" (Antibes 1963) with Herbie Hancock on it..........when I played it I was quite astonished. Is THAT Herbie Hancock, is THAT THE Herbie Hancock???? Sure I loved it, because - though "old acoustic jazz", it sounded "cool" to me, fresh, you know ? Not "corny" like the "Peterson-Piano" I had heard before.....