Gheorghe

His real name ist Raimund ! On advertising and billing he is listed as "Ray". Because he calls himself Ray, I once suggested we play "Ray´s Idea" and many folks play it in F or ....Chet Baker recorded it in B flat, but Ray suggested D flat which is my favourite key for that tune. Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie recorded it in Db back in the 40´s.

Great record, if I just want to hear some swingin stuff just to relax. Very nice and so easy to identify each of them. I´m less familiar with Zoot Sims and Al Cohn than with Trane and Mobley, but both sound nice. Zoot is a bit more boppish and Al Cohn likes to bend notes, it was kinda trademark of him, I saw him live once with Woody Herman and he is easily to recognize. Never saw Zoot and I think I heard him only on the Miles Davis and Horns, and on Bud Powell in Paris at the Blue Note. Hank Mobley, what a shame: Now everybody is talking about him, and when I heard all the surviving greats when the came an increased interest of acoustic jazz, and Dexter and Griffin could return to the States, Mobley was "a forgotten man". What a shame.

One of my favourite tenor players here in Austria is Ray Aichinger, who´s sound is quite similar to Hank Mobley´s. I always enjoy to hear him live and this is his latest album. Most of the tunes are originals by himself and by the Brooklyn born trumpet player Mark Osterer, really catchy tunes, most of them boogaloo. My favourites here is "Old Man and Seagull", "Oide Donau" (Old Danube), and the wonderful fast samba "Flight of the Tucan".......

I think I have the Monk, maybe some other, if there ever was one with Mingus too I must have it.

So great ! Alice Coltrane with Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis is tops. Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, Cecil McBee and Jimmy Garrison, what else you can wish And Pharaoh´s Harvest Time my new favourite. The second live performance at Willisau ...... wonderful, Pharoah has been one of my first musical loves.....

I first heard Joanne Brackeen in 1978 with Joe Henderson. Joe Henderson was and is one of my favourite tenorists and the big surprise was Mrs. Brackeen on piano, who sounded like someone who really loves McCoy Tyner, which is great, really great ! She was the surprise of the whole tour and very positively commented on "Jazz Podium". Some years later she was billed on a "Trumpet Super Night" and was billed on a Chet Baker-Joe Farrell group where she would have been on piano. Anyway there was three sets. The first would have been Chet-Farrell, the second Dizzy Allstar quintet, and the third Wynton Marsalis qintet. Before start the MC announced that Chet could not come because he remained locked in a camera de hotel în Roma. Whatever....... so it was a Quartet with Joe Farrell . But during the course of the set they also did some tracks of Brackeen Houston but sorry to say I didn´t atract my attention. Somehow it didn´t sound like "jazz" and without a drummer I´m lost.......

I have two tracks I got traded: Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gorden, George Benson, Hancock, Carter, Williams: "April" and "Caravan". That´s great. To bad there was not a whole record of THIS ALLSTAR FORMATION, it would have been something like the Allstar Gathering of Massey Hall. To have Diz with Tony Williams, man Tony really spurred Diz to heights. I think an equal eveniment was the 1980 Diz with James Moody, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones, Ray Brown and Philly Joe Jones. Other that Miles, I fear that Dizzy didn´t have such a good choice for drummers like he had in the beginnings. Kenny Clark and Max Roach was it. But later? He should have had more daring drummers. Well....Mickey Roker was great.

I posted it yesterday when I heard the first CD. This night the second CD. Again: The best Sonny Rollins I ever heard which is near to the level I enjoyed on his live performances. But......in mod evident there is not much love here for Sonny when he was no more a Twen or around 30, but from his later forties on..... I like that kind of Sonny Rollins most. Never heard better Calypsos than here Carnaval and St. Tomaas, and on Swingtunes like Isnt she Lovely and Moritate he swings like the way, most of you who love the old bebop Sonny rollins might be delightet.

This night I have listend to this superb live concert. In my opinion this is some of the very best Rollins after 1975. There is some tehnical problem with the recording at the beginning, where you can´t hear Stanley Clark properly, but that does not reduce the non plus ultra quality of that music with Sonny in best playing mood. I know there have been some discussions where there are opinions that the Rollins of the 50´s or so was "better° but not for me: I heard him live only from the 1970´s on and seldom was seeking first for then historical records, since those giants were here and performed. So I have a completly different point of view about this. There are great tunes, some of them from a then recent album others even looking back like Moritate from an old old album. Al Foster anyway is some of my very favourite drummers, period. And Stanley Clark and George Duke mostly have been known for their immense contributions to fusion/funk/jazzrock, but really excell on older stuff too. For example, both had played with Dexter Gordon. Stanley Clark is the highlight of a then newer Dex recording, and George Duke is on a live recording of Dex from the early 80´s around the time Gotham City was made.....

I heard this last night ! Such a great music, Freddie Hubbard in great playing mood and very daring, and a dreamband with all of them stars. I had seen Benny Green and Javon Jackson with Art Blakey in the late 80s. Great tunes. My favourite is "Phoebe´s Samba".......

Was my first Charlie Parker entry ! It was the moment where I had to start to learn that music for me to play, I mean to play including more knowledge of playing jazz. Until then I was just the admirer of music like the contemporanous Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, of Ornette Coleman late Trane, Pharoah, Sun Ra. I discoved Bird just from trying to read liner notes, where there was mentioned Charlie Parker. Before that I didn´t know there was astonishing modern soundig music as far back as 1950.

One of my favourites of McCoy ! I saw this group live in 1980 at TU Viena.

Love Supreme Live in Seattle I love very much. But I couldn´t do anything else at the same time. Coltrane means very very atent listening for me, to get every second of the music.....

No questin: Pharoah Sanders´ "Harvest Time". Some of the most beautiful things I heard in all my live.

Well I never bought whole albums with Dean Benedetti recordings, since I just can´t enjoy pieces where the other soloists are cut out. That´s why I love the Roost Recordings, you have fine solos by Kenny Dorham and Al Haig on all tracks. Or the Boris Rose, Fred Hersch recordings from Birdland, all the solos of Diz, Fats, Bud, imangine what a loss this would be if they were cut out.... I also like the "Happy Bird" from 1951 in Boston, where I sometimes paid more attention to Wardell Gray, he never played better !

I think Hank Mobley, in one of his extremly rare interviews, he must have been very reclusive personality and a lowner, I asume, and he mentioned something about a movie soundtrec about the Algerian War. I had not known that Mobley, who wrote some very fine and slick tunes for combo instrumentation, would do such a programatic opus. That would fit more to Mingus, like his soundtracks for Todo Modo and for some thing about drug contrabanda from Colubia to NY. But 1970 sure was not good year for Mobley anymore. I think he was right into his beginning respiratory problems. On the "Thinkin about home" which is loved by many, I tracked an evident lack of breath, his lung problems had started. He would not every again find his way back.....

Got it for Chrismas ! Definitely the BEST THING I have heard this year. So beautiful ! Pharoah Sanders is one of my very special favourites from almost my beginnings of listenig to music !

Wonderful music ! The personnel on Carnegie Hall 71 is a dream band with Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, and the two drummers Clifford Jarvis and Ed Blackwell is heaven on earth for me ! Such a great version of Trane´s Africa ! Most beautiful also "Universal Consciousness". I saw it one time in România at a book store but didn´t have the money to buy it, and the next day it was already sold. Eventually I found it in Viena. The touch of Ornette Coleman with his violin choir is just incredible. It´s his unique style, so great ! And Alice Coltrane is fantastic both on organ and harp ! Her way of playing the organ is so near to the way John Coltrane would solo, it´s amazing.

Tomorrow is Revelion, most people drink champagne (I´d only spin "Blue Champagne" maybe) but we both do not drink no alcool, so to have somethin sparklin´ at ora 12 in the night of Revelion we had bought two little bottles of Bitter Lemon. We both do not drink alcool.

I have this one, somehow it was on radio in 1977 spinned by the "Austrian Symphony Sid" Herwig Wurzer, who had his jazz radio shows live from the Castle Zusertal near Graz. Now if I hear it, I like some tracks, I think there is also with Howard McGhee, but I fear after some tracks I get tired of that kind of music.....

It´s one of my favourites, and the first tune, that´s a more easy listening tune, maybe what they call "boogaloo" and I must admit, it is the best of that kind from all the boogaloo era. The compositions on the albums is all great

I have a 4 CD set of all the Roost recordings of Bird. The Rockland seems to be the same material like on the old "Bird is Free" which was here in Europe on market. For many from my generation, who lived in the later era of Free Jazz, listening to Ornette and Pharoah Sanders, this was the first approach to bop and was bought much for the title "free".......😄

My favourite: "Love is the thing" ! I love that ballad and play it often !

Some of my favourite bop albums. Very fine recorded and Stitt with Bud is wonderful. This confirms my theory that Bud never played better than in company of other congenial partners, like THIS ONE, like the "Night at Birdland" or "Massey" or with Blakey in Paris and all those occasions.... The sides with J.J. is also great, but goes into another direction, maybe this is what later would become "cool jazz" ?

Thank you ! I MUST listen to this again, so beautiful and I remember that Serena (my wife) liked it very much. I have that and like it. This must have been about the time I saw him with another rhythm section. But I must admit, after some time it gets a bit more difficult for me to listen to Art Pepper. Sure he sounds much better that the more "white" sound he had in the 50´s, but maybe it was too much booze and to much drugs, but it seems that his imagination was quite impaired in those last years...... sad ... Yeah we mentioned this yesterday, this one I like most from the early Wayne Shorter albums