erhodes

Interesting... We had a lively thread on this topic back in 2007. Which particular pre-'65 Gilmore recordings/solos would you cite in this regard? And how comfortable are you with the dating of Gilmore's work with Sun Ra circa '62-'64 when you begin to look closely at this?

As part of some Max Roach listening I've been doing recently, I came across two recordings of the 1960 band with Stanley and Tommy Turrentine in the front line: "As Long As Your're Living" (Enja 4074) and "Max Roach - Again" (Affinity AFF 32). I'm not a Stanley Turrentine enthusiast but those recordings are very interesting and Stanley's work bears interesting comparison with the George Coleman work that immediately preceded it in Max's band, not so much for the sound but for the fluidity and the confidence with which Stanley handled Max's up tempo pieces. Also... There is a documentary on the Pittsburgh jazz scene called "We Knew What We Had - The Greatest Jazz Story Never Told". It's been on PBS. It's extraordinarily revealing unless you already know that Kenny Clarke, Ahmad Jamal, George Bensen and the Turrentine brothers all came out of Pittsburgh. And that's the beginning of a very long list. The film doesn't dwell on the Turrentines but it covers them and there is pointed commentary on the different courses of their careers. The Tommy Turrentine piece was of particular interest to me since he appeared on Archie Shepp's "Mama Too Tight" and Shepp compared him to Fats Navarro in the liner notes. There is indeed more here than meets a first listening of "That's Where It's At" or "Hustlin". Somewhat to Jim's point...and then to some other points...

A group of violin players! At least that's what he had on July 29. It was maybe a half dozen guys, all playing "avant garde" violin together in sort of like a chorus behind his sax. I don't remember any of them taking any solos. And they may not have played all the time. They may have played one or more group improvisations when Frank wasn't playing. But it was as much a visual spectacle as anything else. Unlike anything else in any of the other sets that I witnessed. I don't remember anything about a bass player or a drummer, though he may have had those instruments as well.

Trane played the Village Theatre twice in 1966, once as part of the Lovebeast concert series (his concert as on August 12) and once on a double bill with Ornette (December 26). I was at both concerts as well as the July 29th set that Ornette headlined. The Heritage Auctions flyer would appear to reference the Lovebeast date and has nothing to do with the later concert. The two shouldn't be conflated. As for the personnel, I'm fairly certain that there was no trumpet player at the December concert. The Reference goes two ways on this. The discography...which mentions an audience tape that the authors had not heard at the time of publication...lists Salgato. The chronology, which includes reviews by John S. Wilson and Elizabeth van der Mei (though Wilson apparently didn't stay for Trane's set) does not. It's been a very long time but I would remember if some unknown trumpet player had been with Trane that evening. It' didn't happen. The Reference doesn't list a tambura player either. And van der Mei lists and comments on all of the personnel including Omar Ali and Algie De Witt. The Marion Brown piece is interesting. The ESP recording is listed here. It's not impossible that the recording session took place on the same day as the concert but the coincidence raises questions for me, as does the idea that Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake did thirteen songs in their set. I don't remember that..unless maybe it was a medley...and I don't remember seeing either Dave Burrell or Grachan with Marion, though the 55 years may be interceding here. It would be interesting if ESP recorded...or was supposed to record...Marion's set. The matter of Trane tapes that still haven't seen the light of day will not be news to most of the folks on this board. Ben Young played what seemed to be previously unheard Trane on the WPI Jazz History Database thing he did on Trane's birthday. Presumably...but not assuredly...a second version of "Equinox" from the Sutherland (March-April 1961). The "late" Trane thing I am holding out for is a the February 6, 1966 set at Lincoln center when Albert Ayler sat in. Decades ago I was communicating regularly with a major Cecil Taylor collector..the precursor to Richard Shapiro and Rick Lopez...who told me that when he was hanging out at the Studio Rivbea someone approached him with a tape of "late" Trane where Albert's presence was clearly audible. They guy wanted too much money...this was on the street...and my friend passed. But he is very knowledgeable and he's sure about what he heard. Calling Bertrand...

Video of the entire January 11, 1961 set. Six tracks total including the two tracks with the Nobuo Hara Sharps and Flats big band.

This is from the Priestley Mingus biography, p. 110. "Ted Curson even reported that Mingus not only went down to the Five Spot to hear Coleman, as it seems did every other musician in New York, but sat in on piano; he also took Curson and Dolphy along in his car. After a while he said, 'Do you think you can play like that?' Of course, we could. I'd just got my picket trumpet. Eric said OK." And here's a quote in the same book attributed to Mingus, pp. 109-110. "Now aside from the fact that I doubt he can even play a C scale...in tune, the fact remains that his notes and lines are so fresh. So hen [disc jockey] Symphony Sid played his record, it made everything else he was playing, even my own record that he played, sound terrible. I'm not saying everybody's going to have to play like Coleman. But they're going to have to stop playing Bird." And this is Mingus quoted in the liner notes to "Mingus Dynasty", which was recorded in 1959. "Recently a young man came to New York with a plastic horn who critics are saying will cause a new era in jazz. He's doing atonal things that I've heard other musicians do, but he talks with his horn in the profound and primitive way Bird did." What Mingus expressed concerns about was not Ornette but that "lesser" musicians would hide behind Ornette the way they had previously hidden behind Bird. The "Mingus Dynasty" notes quote Mingus at some length on this topic, including a brief conversation between Mingus and George Russell where Russell seems to agree with him.

Recorded in 1979. Some duplication with what has already been listed... Ahmed Abdullah Life’s Force Muhal Richard Abrams Spihumonesty Air Air Lore Fred Anderson Dark Day + Live In Verona The Missing Link Billy Bang Distinction Without A Difference Duo Sweet Space Anthony Braxton Solo (Milano), Vols, 1 and 2 Performance 9/1/79 With Robert Schumann String Quartet Seven Compositions 1978 (seems to have been recorded in 1979) Dave Burrell Winward Passages (1979) John Carter Variations Suite of Early American Folkpieces for Solo Clarinet Tandem 2 Jerome Cooper For the People Andrew Cyrille Nuba Anthony Davis Hidden Voices Jack DeJohnette Special Edition In Europe Chico Freeman No Time Left Beaver Harris Live at Nyon 360 Aeutopia Safe Beautiful Africa Negcaumongus Jay Hoggard Days Like These Joseph Jarman The Magic Triangle Black Paladins Oliver Lake Zaki George Lewis Homage to Charles Parker Jila - Save ! Mon. - The Imaginary Suite M’Boom M’Boom (Columbia) Joe McPhee Old Eyes and Mysteries Roscoe Mitchell Sketches From Bamboo Jameel Moondoc Evening of the Blue Men David Murray Sweet Lovely Sunny Murray Aigu-Grave Live at Moers Festival African Magic James Newton Portraits Old and New Dreams Old and New Dreams (ECM) Don Pullen Magic Triangle (w/ Joseph Jarman, Don Moye) Don Pullen/George Adams All That Funk Don’t Lose Control More Funk Sam Rivers Contrasts Max Roach/Archie Shepp The Long March, Parts 1 and 2 Max Roach/Anthony Braxton One In Two – Two In One Max Roach/Cecil Taylor Historic Concerts Woody Shaw For Sure! Archie Shepp Live at the Totem, Vols. 1 and 2 Bird Fire Tray of Silver Attica Blues Big Band Live at the Palais des Glaces Leo Smith Solo Music: Akhreanvention Spirit Catcher Budding of A Rose Touch the Earth Horace Tapscott Live at I.U.C.C. (Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra) Lighthouse, Vols. 1 and 2 Henry Threadgill X-75 Volume 1 McCoy Tyner Horizon Mal Waldron Mingus Lives Jazzbuhne Berlin '79

The Ayler discography at http://www.ayler.co.uk/html/sessionography.html lists an unissued version of "Saints" from this date. That's the "ballad" track issued as "Spirits" on Spiritual Unity and as "Saints" on Spirits/Witches and Devils. I'd like to know if Shepp played anything else besides "Hambone" and, ultimately, whether or not all or part of the Sun Ra set turns out to have been recorded. Baraka's notes and some of the subsequent commentary suggest that the answer viz. the Ra material is no but when the Tolliver and Moncur tracks were issued on the lp it got my attention.

No. On all counts. That band...those bands...were some of the most exciting and wonderful music I ever heard. I saw them live...the Meditations sextet with Elvin, Rasheid and Pharoah...at the Jazz Workshop in Boston a month or two after the Seattle date (but before Meditations was recorded). It literally changed my life...very much for the better. I will concede that one person's nightmare is another person's dream. But that's all I will concede. I won't let this comment go unanswered. This is the most exciting development in recorded jazz in quite some time. And Trane & Pharoah is one of the most important and compelling pairings in the history of jazz.

Not exactly what you're asking for but perhaps of some interest... In 1959 Rivers was introduced to a precocious 13-year-old student of Alan Dawson by the name of Tony Williams, who later recounted in a DownBeat interview that “Leroy Fallana, a piano player, asked me to join his band. I was about 14 or 15. He hired me, Sam Rivers, and a bass player named Jimmy Towles.” The quartet played at the brief first incarnation of Club 47 (now Club Passim), where Dawson had been performing with a trio. This led Rivers to a reformulated quartet with Galper, Williams, and bassist Henry Grimes. Rivers and Williams were members of the Boston Improvisational Ensemble, which the latter described in a DownBeat interview as “doing things in the afternoons where they had cards and numbers and you’re playing to time, watches, and big clocks; playing behind poetry, all kinds of stuff.” The pair also played together in a quintet led by trombonist Gene DiStasio that included pianist Mike Nock. In the interview cited above, Galper also stated that “Under Sam’s tutelage, we were the first to play free on standard tunes,” and in a 2007 interview at WKCR, he recounted that “‘time, no changes’ is something Rivers had worked out in the 50′s — calling out, for example, ‘E Anything’ on the bandstand meant a tonal center of E; this would be the only basis for improvisation.” Keep in mind that all this was going on here in Boston at roughly the same time that Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, and Cecil Taylor were breaking similar ground in New York. Here's the original link. I haven't checked to see if it is still live.

Dreck is in the ear of the behearer. I was at that concert as well. I thought the orchestral "juxtaposition" with Ornette's quartet worked out well enough, though I wouldn't have had as much to say as that review. but Dewey Redman played his ass off. I just about jumped out of my seat. The most interesting thing I remember about the Mingus set was the pianist, John Foster. That's the only time I ever saw or heard him. Didn't know his name until I looked it up years later in various Mingus discographies. I remember that Foster's glasses seem damaged and he had repaired one of the side pieces with a band-aid or some light colored tape. I remember too that he seemed a bit disheveled. But his piano playing was outstanding. At least as strong as anything that Don Pullen did with the band. At a distance of almost half a century I would venture that it was the best piano playing I had heard with Mingus since Jaki Byard (though I never saw Byard live, with or without Mingus). But the really interesting thing is that, at a certain point, Foster got up from the piano and paced back and forth across the stage in a manner reminiscent of what Mingus might do when he was excited or agitated. Foster seemed agitated. Then Mingus got up and started pacing too almost as if he felt obliged to do that. So at one point they were both pacing on the stage. Nothing happened from there but Foster was the most interesting figure on the stage...musically and in his stage persona...other than Mingus.

When you saw it, do you remember if it had English subtitles or were there Scandinavian subtitles (I'm not clear on what specific language it is) per the release in this thread? I was glad to have access to it and I did not find the subtitles to be a distraction but I admit to being at a loss with the non-English dialogue, particularly from Ayler's European girlfriend. I got the impression that her commentary might have shed some light that was not coming from the other sources. Overall I was glad to see the film and I am glad that it was made but I think the Lee Morgan documentary by the same director is a much better film.

I don't believe it was. Most of what is on that site has not been released and is not even on the "circuit". But the discographical details vs. this commercial release are clear.

Many thanks for this. It's at least a start. Which was what I was thinking when I started this thread. David Wild did a good job through the 70's but it seems no one has tackled it on that level since. KH1958's description of the Caravan of Dreams and the material that might derive just from there (and then) suggest that there are whole worlds of Ornette that have yet to be properly documented.