Gheorghe

It´s quite nice, but sounds somehow untypical for BN-Records. Maybe it sounds a bit more like what they called "Cool Jazz".

Well I have doubts people from my generations would have other kind of Sonny than that from the late 70´s on. I don´t have any reason to dislike what I heard. The albums that were around were fine and exiting, for example the Milestone Albums like "Don´t stop the Carnaval" with Tony Williams, then the albums with Al Foster on drums Sure I have heard some of those Prestige albums mostly "Tenor Madness" on record, but at the time I was listening most, I liked to stuff he did with Don Cherry, last not least for Billy Higgins. But as I said. Sonny Rollins aged in his late 40´s was the Man we saw live and admired, damn good drummers with him, I remember Jerry Harris on electric bass and maybe Mark Soskin on piano.....

It´s my favourite Curtis Fuller record. In my youth I had the wish to gather at least one record from all those heroes of mine. Let´s say my first jazz was the First Miles Davis Quintet and sure I had records from each of the members, let´s say "Blue Trane", "Whims of Chambers" "Blues for Dracula" and "Garlands of Red" or so, and sure when I heard "Blue Trane" I heard Curtis Fuller and got that "Opener". That´s how I bought records.... Indeed a great event. But somehow I remember that Mingus was not very happy with the results and later said "too many friends". But as an ultimate Mingus Fan in my youth I sure had that double CD. But somehow, from all listening I have the feeling that the Mingus from 1970-1973 still was not the Mingus with all that power, especially on his own bass. Ironically I found the bands from 1975-77 much sharper, especially because Richmond was back, and Mingus was playing more of those exiting solos up into the highest register of the bass. I never will forget his solo on "For Harry Carney" in summer 1977, where he played that pizzicato up into the register of a violin and back to the deep deep notes, the best school to learn to play the bass fiddle....

I have it, but must admit I have not spinned it for quite some time. I had seen Thad Jones with his Bigband with Mel Lewis and I think that´s how he will be remembered by most of all fans. I think I also have a Debut record that is called "The Fabulous Th.J." He was a great trumpet player but maybe got a bit forgotten. Jazz students might listen more to the other BN-Artists who were trumpetists, like Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard or from the generation of Thad Jones maybe to Kenny Dorham or even Fats Navarro.

Did they have the same hair-dresser ? nice legs , not the greatest but they look nice....

Miles Davis Modern Jazz Giants...... so important for me when I was in my first year of listening to jazz, I mean Miles, Bags and Monk, I think I liked most "The Man I Love" and "Bemsha Swing". It seems there are treasures I have never heard about. Oh Boy: MY favourites ! Each of them a special favourite of mine and extremly important for my making of a jazz musician. I saw Joe Henderson the first time on TV 1977 in a group that had Ratzo Harris on bass, that´s what I remember, Chick Corea was for some of my school buddies the universum of it all, they were "Return to Forever Freaks", it was more the peaceful guys of them, I mean I was longhaired too but more one of the bad guys, while the other category of long hairs was the more peaceful ones.... Ron Carter was also a reason for me to learn bass, and Billy Higgins was my favourite drummer for Bop and Free during that time....

Ronnie Mathews was a Monk expert !

Two different albums. I had spinned "Bird Fire" last week. Brings a lotta memories back. I saw Archie Shepp in 1979 (when this album was recorded) in Viena at Congres-Haus. Same personnel: With the stellar ryhthm section Siegfried Kessler, Bob Cunningham and Clifford Jarvis. This here is some super bebop at its best. Four tunes, each one sheer beauty, power and perfection. I like especially "Parker´s Mood" which I seldon had heard being played with so much emotion. One of my favourite post Free Jazz albums of Shepp. There would have been another called "Lookin at Bird" but since that album was only Shepp with NHOP it was out of the deal for me, since I can´t enjoy without drums and just don´t like NHOP´ playing so much when it is solo time..... Yesterday I heard Mobley´s Workout. Especially for "The Best things in Life are Free" since I had heard Austrian Tenor-Star Ray Aichinger do it very fine on Wendesday. The album is very nice, great team with Green, Kelly, Paul, Philly J.J., but if I had to pick out just one of the straight ahead tunes it would be "Uh Huh", that´s music for late hours when I actually listen music. In rest it might be a bit too much straight ahead, there´s no Bossa or Samba, no Ballad, just playn 4/4 tunes.....

Oh ! I have never seen this records, but Pharoah Sanders is one of my very very first great listening experiences in the early 70´s. I don´t know how often I had spinned things like "Karma", "Thembi" "Live at the East", and the very first I had heard might have been Trane´s "Live at Village Vanguarde Again". Some of the best music I ever heard. And like Shepp, after being in the forefront of avantgarde he re-appeard in the late 70´s early 80´s with straight ahead quartets like the Dexter Gordon Quartet or the Johnny Griffin Quartet would be, but never completly abandoning the free spirits of 60´s avantgarde.

I think the only recorded example of Dick Twardzik (how hard to pronouce that name) is a version of "April" on the Musidisc LP "Happy Bird". But it´s Bird who really shines on this , and the strong bass of Mingus. Maybe I heard another example too, but I am not sure. In any case, the West Coast part is missing in my discography, I fear to say. Somehow, from the short listening experiences his playing seems to have some directions that remind me of mostly Tristano (whom I like more, if he does not do that overdubbing crap) and maybe from that film I saw about Joe Albany. It sounds a bit like if Dick Twardzik would have listened to some 12 tone things, that kind of classical music of the 20th century. I got to hear Chet Baker for the first time in 1978, before that, with all the Giants of Jazz I had seen until then, Chet was a completly uncommon name for me. But from 1978 on, when I saw him live for the first time, I liked him and saw him dozens of times. I even have some of his records from the 70´s or 80´s ........But the reason may be that Baker in his last 10 years sounded much more like let´s say early Miles, or Kenny Dorham...

Yesterday I enjoyed listening to some top acts in Austrian Jazz here in Viena at Zwe, that wonderful little club which is something like a jazz laboratory, so many raising top acts have been spotted there if you watch out for talent scout. Yesterday the band of established great musicians was the highly appreciated Ray Aichinger on ts, with great guitarist John Arman and all of them, and after intermission Ray asked me at the bar if "I´m motivated" and yeah if he asks, I have to be ! So I sat in for 3 tunes, nice feeling cause how in December I have no gig.... The big surprise was a so nice played "The best things in live are free", and one Ray Aichiger original cauld "Old Danube".....really great them guys.....

Thank you both !

Rollins with Monk sounds very good. I think there are different sessions, one is with more originals, is not "That´s call This" from such a session, like "Friday 13th" and so on ? And another one is with standards, like "More than you know" ? Than I think I have it. But also the Sonny Rollins album on BN, where Monk replaces Horace Silver is very interesting....

Dave Liebman Drum Ode I think, And Miles Davis Dark Magus, and all stuff by Hancock or Chick Corea of that time. From the acoustic field most of what where Milestone-Artists.... each of them is great ! And Mingus who just became one of the top acts of all tours, festivals, just like Miles ..... I know what I don´t want to hear from 1974: So paradox that "Drum Ode" is one of my favourite albums from that year, it´s the only ECM album I like. I hear all those ECM names and I just can´t manage to get into that stuff.

That sounds very very interesting. I should try to find it. I love that combination Ornette, Pharoah, Izenzon, Moffet and though I am not a classically trained musician, I´d like to hear some stuff with orchestra. The harmolodic string quartets Coleman wrote, it´s quite amazing stuff....

A classic of my youth !

Is it some augmented form of the original Ornette Coleman Trio ? I heard some stuff I think, where Ornette had augmented his group, especially in the late 60 and shortly before Prime Time. (I loved Prime Time, it was my favourite "jazz rock" beside Miles Davis during that time). I think those records were extremly hard to find. It had took me YEARS back then to get together the two LPs of "Golden Circle". BN was dying or disappearing when I started to love jazz in the first half of 1970´s

It´s interesting from my point of view to see that most fans of LD associate him for his work with organ players. It seems that different audiences have different points of departure in their beginnings of listening to jazz. In my case, the organ was completly absent in my consciousness with the exception of the moments, where Miles plays some chords on the organ when I saw him live in 73/74. It lasted until the mid 80´s when there was a little club that spinned always BN records in the small hours and that was the first time I heard an organ (A Date with Jimmy Smith, the one with LD, Donald Byrd, HANK MOBLEY and Blakey) which I dug and bought. And later some Larry Young albums, especially "Unity". But Lou Donaldson.... I got to hear him on record very very early in my making of a musician, it was when I still was a kid and had the two BN Thelonious Monk albums, absolutly basics for becoming a musician ! And on that one session where Max Roach replaces the eternal Art Blakey, there is LD with KD. "Carolina Moon".....eh ? I think LD was quite unknown in my country until he started to tour Europe in the 80´s. First time I saw him quite late, I was already playing myself, and LD was on stage in 1985. But I remember those tours in the mid 80´s still was a regular quinted with a bass player, a better drummer and an acoustic piano. I had some amuzement when I first saw Lonnie Smith with that Indian Turban, whom I had not known before and who sure is as fast as Jimmie Smith, but somehow after one show with the same gimmicks on following shows, I lost interested and would have loved it to hear LD´s wonderful alto again with a regular jazz quartet, and above all with some better drummer than the last time I heard em ..... Oh that´s a treasure ! I should have got signed a record by LD but allways thought artists sign only newer records of their own since they are proud of their latest achievment. ......... I WAS WRONG ! I wanted to get a record signed by LD and went to the record store to buy one I had thought is very new, it was called something like "Sweet Poppa Lou" or so, and when I spinned it I could not believe this is true. It was some hidous mid 70´s funk without any musical interest. So I had got trapped, the record landed in the garbage can. Don´t get me wrong, I love mid 70´s funk and jazzrock if it´s the Miles Groups, if it´s the Headhunters with Herbie, if it is some of the electric Chick Corea, if it´s Billy Cobham and George Duke, but not that music which sounds like background music in a shopping mall...... So I got no LD autograph.... I am not an autograph hunter since I get a bit ashamed if I ask for something like that, so I didn´t even dare to get Pharoah Sander´s autograph on my beloved copy of "Live at the East".....

I think there was some Ornette Coleman albums that I have read about but that never were available, may it be Sience Fiction, then there was some I think it was called "Chappa Quappa Suite" and so on. Maybe they was on Columbia and usually Columbia cut stuff out from the catalogue as soon as it appeared. They had some great jazz artists, but other than Miles who´s albums always was reissued other artists where cut out of their deals....

I that you ? Can you explain what kind of hat this is ? I think if Monk would live, he would like to have it on his head 😉

I think one side is actually a Tadd Dameron lead session, the so called "Atlantic City Band" Tadd had. It´s interesting that I have also an album with the same title, which is on Blue Note, I think it has Lou Donaldson, but is not the Birdland Jazz Messengers record....

I think I have two of those records: I think they are titled "Tangerine" and one other from the same session, I think they have Thad Jones on trumpet, it could be Louis Hayes on drums, and the great Stanley Clark on bass !!!!! But nevertheless, I think that "Prestige" recordings during that time, meant less money than later. I think..... at least from what I read about Dexter during his stay in Europe, that he became quite forgotten in the States and played only sporadically there...... There is another one I never could purchase though it might be the most interesting: It is something from Montreux with Hampton Hawes, Bob Cranshaw and Kenny Clark and maybe from Montreux. I have a Gene Ammons record with the same rhythm section, where Dexter sit´s in so I would like to hear the real Dexter album to, but to buy the whole compilation only for ONE record I want to here, would not do it.

All time favourites of mine all the great musicians.

All those Onkel Pö´s records are great. From the music anyway. And of course I have heard both of them live many times. It´s only a pity that the great Tete Montoliu is a bit underrecorded or the piano is not well recorded. .....

Maybe he is not much mentioned anymore, but one of my absolute favourites here in Europe was Siegfried Kessler. He lived in Paris and was famous for playing very very often with Archie Shepp. He had it all, he could play avantgarde, he could play first rate be bop and he played the blues like no one else, as I witnessed when I saw him the last time, in 1985 at Hollabrunn with Jimmy Witherspoon and Dee Dee Bridgewater !!!!! Two vocals in one group, a stellar rhythm section, heaven on earth.......