Niko

Woody Herman... there's this overview of the Four Brothers Sax Sections by Alun Morgan and Joe Urso... here's the information on the end of 1954 and 1955: JERRY COKER DICK HAFER BILL TRUJILLO JACK NIMITZ PART OF 1954 DAVE MADDEN DICK HAFER BILL PERKINS JACK NIMITZ PART OF 1954 RICHIE KAMUCA DICK HAFER BILL PERKINS JACK NIMITZ PART OF 1955 RICHIE KAMUCA DICK HAFER SANDY MOSSE JACK NIMITZ PART OF 1955 RICHIE KAMUCA DICK HAFER ART PIRIE JACK NIMITZ JUN 1955 RICHIE KAMUCA SPENCER SINATRA ART PIRIE JACK NIMITZ PART OF 1955 RICHIE KAMUCA BOB HARDAWAY ARNO MARSH JACK NIMITZ PART OF 1955 RICHIE KAMUCA TED NASH EDDIE MILLER CHUCK GENTRY NOV 1955 BOB NEWMAN BOB HARDAWAY ARNO MARSH JAY CAMERON PART OF 1955 JIMMIE COOKE BOB HARDAWAY DANNY PETERIS HAROLD WILEY PART OF 1955 now, unfortunately, this doesn't give a whole lot of information - but it seems plausible that Kamuca and Nimitz were with Herman in February 1955 btw, the liner notes of the Urbie Green album on Vanguard mention that Flory was at the time of writing a member of the Tommy Tucker band... which reminded me to look at the liner notes of the Pierce album... the concept is super simple: Combine a group of horn players associated with Woody Herman with Basie's rhythm section and have Nat Pierce connect it all...

Flory probably hadn't moved to the West Coast yet in early 1955 (can't find a precise date for his move, some sources say 55, some 56), Nimitz was probably still with Woody Herman...

yes, that Brookmeyer album is great...

Good one... One album I bought this month and can strongly recommend is the new Alexandra Grimal / Giovanni di Domenico album Shakkei...

John Lewis - The Wonderful World of Jazz

how the Urbie Green is too progressive is beyond me as well, it has a rhythm section built around Freddie Green and Sir Charles Thompson, Ruby Braff on trumpet...

I want this, too, had read about it but seeing it increases the appeal for some stupid reason... will have to keep my eyes open...

Alexandra Grimal & Giovanni di Domenico - Shakkei I also liked the new Sullivan Fortner album but this sax/keys duo album is my favorite new release of 2025 so far https://alexandragrimal.bandcamp.com/album/shakkei

still on youtube, this is an interesting 1972 video of a band of Dutch bop advocates like Frans Elsen (who later organized many workshops with Barry Harris), Eric Ineke (dr, long time drummer with de Graaff e.g. on Chasin the bird) and Wim Overgaauw (g, heard in that Mobley clip) revealing that some of them might have owned some of the more recent Miles records.... no contradictions from my point of view, one can feel things differently in one decade vs the other... but I always thought that the European jazz musicians of those generations were unusually open to new ideas even late in their careers... after all, they built a career on absorbing ideas from far away quickly and convincingly... and later the guys here discovered that Bebop was the essence (or, to quote a recent Ineke answer to a question about advice for young musicians: "Bird is the word.")

indeed, I just thought about those albums with Dick Vennik from the 70s, those don't qualify as pure bebop, someone might have owned a John Coltrane record here his later music is again more boppish... funnily enough, a few years back, I was going through all the boxes with cheap jazz records in a store in Rotterdam and the owner approached me afterwards whether I'd seen Chasin' the bird in there... Apparently, de Graaff had just called because he no longer owned a copy and was looking for it. this is a cool video I just found, apparently from de Graaff's own account the music is all from the Hank Mobley in Holland CD but the footage in the first minutes or so shows de Graaff visiting New York's East Village in 1967, meeting Walter Davis Jr, Herbie Lewis and Hank Mobley...

regarding that last anecdote, how did Pauer say "your own shit" in German/Austrian? regarding Bebop piano players, there is also Sacha Perry...in places, his album with Aaron Johnson from last year is so purely Bebop it's almost comical https://aaronjohnsonjazz.bandcamp.com/album/nightmare

I would guess that forgettable means something like "if you could pick something to forget, this might be it", so indeed, the opposite of memorable - even though most things are neither memorable nor forgettable but fairly neutral... Moreover, we forget many memorable things and remember many forgettable ones... I guess that Steve's forgetting about his ownership of the record was a case of forgetting about a record that is neither memorable nor forgettable... [and, of course, a record may well be memorable even though the fact that one owns it is not memorable, especially for records one sees all the time in the bins...] regarding Morris, I recently bought a record by Thomas Morris and his Seven Hot Babies and was surprised to learn that not only was Thomas the uncle of Marlowe but somehow they both managed to record quite a bit while carrying a somewhat dubious reputation (quoting from the link: "probably because of lack of technical facilities owing to a non-existent formal instrumental education and training, his musical life occurred in a relative background of theatre shows, blues accompaniment and small gutbucket combo engagements. His was never a top name in Harlem and it is not astounding that he ceased his musical activities in the late twenties").

I guess stompin' uses a fairly technical definition of forgettable as the opposite of unforgettable... it boils down to the question whether "a forgettable album" and "an album I had forgotten about" are (almost) synonyms or not... I would say not at all, but then again I'm not a native speaker... btw, I had actually been curious about that album due to the contribution of Bobby Henderson whom I've liked a lot in other contexts... does one get to hear much of him?

Well, my brother and me wear fairly different beards and by now my hair is quite a bit whiter than his... But if you show someone a 20 year old black and white picture of him and ask whether this is Niko or Philly Joe Jones, most people will mistake him for me.... I am so curious what the liner notes will say...

I just reread the chapter about Denis Charles in Amiri Baraka's Black Music, a 1963 article published only later in that book. In there, Charles says that he didn't own a drum set until Buell Neidlinger bought him one in 1957 and that until then he'd been practicing on Frank's set... so Frank/Huss did own a trap set and was evidently talented enough a percussionist to record with Ed Blackwell, Sonny Rollins and Archie Shepp - even though always as his brother's sidekick/keeper/who knows and never on a drum set... still, in that combination, I'd say it's completely possible that he might have played a few local gigs with Kenny Dorham... Roger Blank, another percussionist from that circle remembers playing with Dorham on gigs like this in As Serious As Your Life... btw, regarding the claim about photos as proof of someone's presence, this is potentially tricky when it comes to brothers... for more on false names and cabaret cards, see e.g. the discussion of alto player Leon Rice here