Bud Powell's last recordings? (Ups 'n Downs)

[Brad]

Seems like the new biography by Peter Pullman is a bit delayed:

http://www.organissi...hy/page__st__60

Another interesting link:

http://www.npr.org/p...ive/powell.html

That's the one I was thinking about. That's it's delayed is unfortunately not good news but I think we've heard that before, sadly.

[paul secor]

Bud Powell in Paris - originally a Reprise LP; reissued as a Discovery LP; now available as a Wounded Bird CD - is one that I don't think has been mentioned. Apologies if I've missed it. Duke Ellington is listed as the producer. Not my favorite late Bud, but still a good one and worth getting and listening to.

[Larry Kart]

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hxfixqrgldde

NHOP (not to be confused with IHOP) & one William Shiopffe. 4/26/62, club date.

That's William Schiopffe.

[JSngry]

Also not to be confused with IHOP.

[jazzbo]

Bud Powell in Paris - originally a Reprise LP; reissued as a Discovery LP; now available as a Wounded Bird CD - is one that I don't think has been mentioned. Apologies if I've missed it. Duke Ellington is listed as the producer. Not my favorite late Bud, but still a good one and worth getting and listening to.

I really like that one. There is also one of the ten Mythic Sound cds that includes a whole cd's worth of extra material from that session, and a great cover photo of Duke and Bud. (But just try and find any of those Mythic Sound cds!)

[AllenLowe]

I should mention the Lausanne concert, one version of which I mastered for a Japanese company of what turned out to be dubious ownership, let us say. I still have several hundred copies that they sent me, and it happens to be one of the best late Bud things I've heard. If anybody wants a copy, I'll sell it for cost ($5 shipped).

Edited October 6, 2010 by AllenLowe

[brownie]

Yes, same material!

All good!

[Victor Christensen]

Amen, I have told this before, but I have been so lucky to hear him several times live here in Copenhagen, when he had a full month gig, some nights were bad and others like pure gold. but his mental health was not good and Buttercup guarded him like a hawk, he was never allowed any money, so he was trying to hustle everybody in sight, so sad.

Vic

[Gheorghe]

Dear Mr. Victor Christensen!

I suppose you are one of the most lucky persons around, since you had the chance to see and hear Bud live. Why not write more about your impressions about those nights, I just can´t wait reading some more. I think Bud´s playing in Copenhagen was somehow better than the 5 albums from Golden Circle/Sweden (and a 3-CD set of more material „Budism“). The album „Bouncing with Bud“ is really a highlight of Bud´s recorded career. I also have more tracks of Bud from the Montmatre, even with Don Byas and Brew Moore sittin´in.

Yes, I know the stories about Buttercup, it´s written in Francis Paudras´ book. Maybe that´s the reason why Bud chose to play „Someone To Watch Over Me“. Bud didn´t play that tune often, he used to play it when he was in a more depressed mood, like in 1955 or on his last studio album for Roulette.

I also like the videos of Bud from Montmatre. His version of „Anthropology“ is just fantastic, and above all „Round Midnight“. Bud maybe was quite in his own world, but it´s strange to watch him during Round Midnight as he keeps turning his face to maybe someone in the audience, just smiling like if he had a little flirt with a female fan.

I learned much about the secret of Bud´s sound just from looking at the way how he sat at the piano, the position of his head and the way he moves his fingers. Being a piano player myself I had tried for a very long time to „sound like Bud“, and though I had all the music in my head, it didn´t come of with exactly his sound or his phrases, even if I knew his vocabulary. After having seen how he moves (or doesn´t move) at the piano things changed and it started to flow how maybe it´s supposed to be. I got the greatest praise from my wife, who one day said „sounds like some unissued alternate take of him, that´s you playing?“.

I think the problem during his later years was that his performances where not persistent. If everything was write, he might do fantastic things, even adding fresh material and deeper and more daring harmonies to the songs. If you kept him on the wrong night or even the wrong set, he seemed to have lost all interest in what he was doing. This manner became even more drastic during his weeks in september/october 1964 at Birdland. On some nights he´s very inspired, but even the next set could have been a quite sad experience, like one occasion where he starts Monk´s „Off Minor“ , plays one chorus and stops playing for 11 minutes of quite boring bass- and drum solo…..

[Pete C]

I only recently became aware of the live in Geneva disc, which was only released in the last couple of years. Fabulous playing, a day after Lausanne. I'd say that those two nights in Switzerland are possibly the best Bud on record after 1951 (I think his best playing in late '61 & early '62 was stronger and more dynamic than the 1953 broadcasts and Massey Hall). I agree with Allen on A Portrait of Thelonious as the best late studio date, at the same high level as the two Swiss dates, and much better sound.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Pete C

[Gheorghe]

Yes, that two albums from Switzerland, Lausanne and Geneva. It´s really great Bud Powell, this and the "Blakey in Paris 1959" and "Essen Festival All Stars" . If I listen to that Geneva album and to the worst tracks from "Golden Circle" especially on the limited edition of 3 C Ds "Budism" it seems that Bud still could be the greatest of all the time, if the vibrations were rite. If something hurted or annoyed him, he would loose all his musical energy....

But all that great albums from some happy moments during his European stay from ´59-´64´don´t have much to do with that album "Up´s n Downs". That´s another story. I got that album to and have been listenig much to it. I got the original Mainstream LP and later a CD with the two bonus tracks "No Smokin" and "I´m alway chasing after rainbows". And it has some studio photographs, you can see Diz on it, and Stollmann the producer, and Rashied Ali and Scott Holt, who are the "unknown" bassist and drummer.

[xybert]

I'm curious as to how The Return of Bud Powell was received at the time of release. I heard it for the first time a few weeks ago and have been listening to it a lot since then. There's so much of it that's objectively 'not right' but in spite of that, i don't know what it is, but i keep reaching for it. 

Anyway, i'm not trying to get all revisionist on it and claim that it's a misunderstood work of genius, and i'm not looking to be validated by some long lost review. I get the criticism and i'm expecting the reviews to be critical. But yeah, anyone know whether it was reviewed by Downbeat for example? Cheers.

[Gheorghe]

Never got infos how it was received then, but it isn´t that weak like the shaky early 1955 Verves. Well, he flubs some breaks (I know that you know) but recovers quickly on solo parts.

Peter Pullman states that he plays "The Best Thing for You" as always, and I like the simple but sly lines on "Hallucinations" here at a moderate medium tempo, even if the solo break before the improvisation chorusses throws him.....

But I get tired reading that "it should have been distroyed, never released".

Some sources say it was recorded in september 64, others say it was recorded on october 22th 1964.

Anyway it´s still better than the worse live tracks from Birdland from the period september october......

 

[xybert]

Thanks for your thoughts Gheorghe. It's really interesting to me. On first listen i thought "okay, my curiosity is satisfied but i can't see myself ever listening to that again." But i keep on listening to it, and the more i listen the less 'shocking' the flubs and flaws become. I find it hard to express, i'm not trying to minimise Powell's decline or whatever. In openly stating that i actually enjoy this album, i don't want to come off like some creepy guy who gets enjoyment from watching a depressed man wrap his car around a tree, like some sort of rubbernecker, getting perverse pleasure from watching a disaster or whatever: it's not like that at all. It's also not a weird 'Powell Worship' thing where he can't do any wrong in my eyes. Art, music is such a strange, subjective thing. Why listen to this, over and over, when i can listen to not just objectively better Powell recordings but perfectly executed albums by other artists? I don't have the answer.

There's something about Powell for me. You're always hearing him, no matter what state he is in. A 'lesser' Powell album is not the same as a 'lesser' 'artist x' album (not to be misconstrued as Powell Worship). I wish i could express myself better; they really need to invent a 'ya know what i mean?' machine that can translate vague thoughts and feelings in to articulate text.

[JSngry]

Have you checked out the first Frank Hewitt album?

[paul secor]

That's a very good one.

[xybert]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Have you checked out the first Frank Hewitt album?

No. Is his first album 'We Loved You'?

[JSngry]

Yeah. To me, it's got that same "not right but totally RIGHT" vibe to it that Bud always had. You might well enjoy it, becuase Hewitt was dealing from a pretty deep "getting it out" place and if he couldn't get it exact, by god he was gonna get it right. Everything fits, ya' know?

Now, having said that, I just can't enjoy The Return Of Bud Powell or much of Ups N Downs..they feel like a man still throwing punches after he's been knocked out...I mean, yes, that's all noble, and god bless him for that, but...I'm glad to have heard those, just need to remember them more than hear them.

Now, having said that...the "Round Midnight" on Ups N Downs is seriously profound, not sad, but transcendent. But for me, it stands out as a sharp example of what the other things from those sessions(?) lack, namely, some semblance of life, no matter how tangential it might have been by then.

[Gheorghe]

16 hours ago, xybert said:

Thanks for your thoughts Gheorghe. It's really interesting to me. On first listen i thought "okay, my curiosity is satisfied but i can't see myself ever listening to that again." But i keep on listening to it, and the more i listen the less 'shocking' the flubs and flaws become. I find it hard to express, i'm not trying to minimise Powell's decline or whatever. In openly stating that i actually enjoy this album, i don't want to come off like some creepy guy who gets enjoyment from watching a depressed man wrap his car around a tree, like some sort of rubbernecker, getting perverse pleasure from watching a disaster or whatever: it's not like that at all. It's also not a weird 'Powell Worship' thing where he can't do any wrong in my eyes. Art, music is such a strange, subjective thing. Why listen to this, over and over, when i can listen to not just objectively better Powell recordings but perfectly executed albums by other artists? I don't have the answer.

There's something about Powell for me. You're always hearing him, no matter what state he is in. A 'lesser' Powell album is not the same as a 'lesser' 'artist x' album (not to be misconstrued as Powell Worship). I wish i could express myself better; they really need to invent a 'ya know what i mean?' machine that can translate vague thoughts and feelings in to articulate text.

Thank you , you really make a point.

And some thoughts ocurred to me during the last few weeks.

I must admit after dozens of years of awareness of Bud´s music, when I listen to some of the highly praised early recordings, praised by those who permanently write his later efforts a only "a shadow of himself" and so on, they don´t move me as much as some of his later stuff. Those high speed "Get  Happy" and "Tea for  Two" from July 1950 or the ultra rapid "All Gods Chillun" from Carnegie Hall, it´s incredible, but for my tastes right now it´s too much up in the high register, and I find much more enjoyment in the best recordings he made in later years, like the musical balance you find in his "Bouncing with Bud" 1962, his 1959 solos when he set in as a guest with Art Blakey, and still on his 1964 "Invisible Cage", his best work on the Golden Circle gig . More in the medium register, the chords on ballads much deeper....., it´s more the very inside of the music, not so much showcasing.

[soulpope]

9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Thank you , you really make a point.

And some thoughts ocurred to me during the last few weeks.

I must admit after dozens of years of awareness of Bud´s music, when I listen to some of the highly praised early recordings, praised by those who permanently write his later efforts a only "a shadow of himself" and so on, they don´t move me as much as some of his later stuff. Those high speed "Get  Happy" and "Tea for  Two" from July 1950 or the ultra rapid "All Gods Chillun" from Carnegie Hall, it´s incredible, but for my tastes right now it´s too much up in the high register, and I find much more enjoyment in the best recordings he made in later years, like the musical balance you find in his "Bouncing with Bud" 1962, his 1959 solos when he set in as a guest with Art Blakey, and still on his 1964 "Invisible Cage", his best work on the Golden Circle gig . More in the medium register, the chords on ballads much deeper....., it´s more the very inside of the music, not so much showcasing.

Same here ....

[xybert]

On 7 December 2016 at 3:39 PM, JSngry said:

Yeah. To me, it's got that same "not right but totally RIGHT" vibe to it that Bud always had. You might well enjoy it, becuase Hewitt was dealing from a pretty deep "getting it out" place and if he couldn't get it exact, by god he was gonna get it right. Everything fits, ya' know?

 

Thanks for the recommendation. We Loved You and a few other albums are on Spotify; i've saved them to have a proper listen at some point.

19 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Thank you , you really make a point.

And some thoughts ocurred to me during the last few weeks.

I must admit after dozens of years of awareness of Bud´s music, when I listen to some of the highly praised early recordings, praised by those who permanently write his later efforts a only "a shadow of himself" and so on, they don´t move me as much as some of his later stuff. Those high speed "Get  Happy" and "Tea for  Two" from July 1950 or the ultra rapid "All Gods Chillun" from Carnegie Hall, it´s incredible, but for my tastes right now it´s too much up in the high register, and I find much more enjoyment in the best recordings he made in later years, like the musical balance you find in his "Bouncing with Bud" 1962, his 1959 solos when he set in as a guest with Art Blakey, and still on his 1964 "Invisible Cage", his best work on the Golden Circle gig . More in the medium register, the chords on ballads much deeper....., it´s more the very inside of the music, not so much showcasing.

 

11 hours ago, soulpope said:

Same here ....

It's nice to know that i'm not the only one who feels this way about later Bud. Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

[Gheorghe]

I don´t like to bump old threads but it just came to my mind that on tuesday I talked on phone with a great altosaxophonist, who in the 60´s was a recording artist for E.S.P. and if I remember right, there were some postings from Bernard Stollman that I think were deleted later, where he told his version of the story of the "Ups ´n Down" session, that he produced it but didn´t think it would be worth for release and later gave the tape to someone so years later it was released on Mainstream with wrong recording dates , wrong personnel and wrong liner notes (quite astonishing since it was written by no one less than Nat Hentoff). 
I asked the guy if he knows that Stollman then was "Bud´s Manager" and the response was "Stollman would tell anything.....period". 
So there still is mistery about it.......