The blue Note trumpeters

[king ubu]

Dave Burns would be another one they mostly missed out on.

Tommy Turrentine - I fully agree there, wonderful player!

As for KD in the sixties, I'm one of those who consider "Whistle Stop" better than the later ones with JoeHen. I'm more drawn to KD in earlier years ... the Jazz Prophets material, the Debut album, Quiet Kenny etc., than to the five albums with Henderson.

[colinmce]

My favorite Dorham by far is the Cafe Bohemia material. I never quite warmed to the other 50s stuff on Riverside & the like. I still haven't heard the Matador/Into Somethin' sessions.

[Larry Kart]

Dave Burns would be another one they mostly missed out on.

Tommy Turrentine - I fully agree there, wonderful player!

As for KD in the sixties, I'm one of those who consider "Whistle Stop" better than the later ones with JoeHen. I'm more drawn to KD in earlier years ... the Jazz Prophets material, the Debut album, Quiet Kenny etc., than to the five albums with Henderson.

I like what I've heard of Burns, but how much was there in and/or of Burns to miss out on? A nice but rather low-key player, no? Might as well plump for Idrees Sulieman or Ray Copeland.

[king ubu]

Dave Burns would be another one they mostly missed out on.

Tommy Turrentine - I fully agree there, wonderful player!

As for KD in the sixties, I'm one of those who consider "Whistle Stop" better than the later ones with JoeHen. I'm more drawn to KD in earlier years ... the Jazz Prophets material, the Debut album, Quiet Kenny etc., than to the five albums with Henderson.

I like what I've heard of Burns, but how much was there in and/or of Burns to miss out on? A nice but rather low-key player, no? Might as well plump for Idrees Sulieman or Ray Copeland.

Yes, that's true ... and Sulieman is one I like even more! Ray Copeland, too ... and the before-mentioned Richard Williams.

Those aren't big names, but Tommy T. was mentioned, so ... I guess I just enjoy pursuing these "minor" figures just as much as the bigger names.

Dizzy Reece, too, btw, though I guess ironically the one album not on Blue Note might just as well be his best. But the Duke Jordan album and his own with Mobley and Kelly are favourites, too.

[BillF]

Isn't it consensus Dizzy played under a pseudonym on "Rollin with Leo"?

Actually though I sometimes think it is, the consensus here is that it is not (though this is in discussion of "John Birks" on "Let Me Tell You About It").

haven't looked into the booklets recently so it might well be in there, too, but going through the Left Bank Performance Listings

http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/leftbank.html

I got the impression that most of the lesser known names on the Leo Parker BNs are local players from Baltimore, Bill Swindell, Purnell Rice, John Burkes, Yusef Salim all pop up there...

Hm. Not being able to hear the tape, I'm not sure "John Birks" (on the Blue Note personnel lilsting) and Johnny Burkes are the same person.

>

Isn't it consensus Dizzy played under a pseudonym on "Rollin with Leo"?

Actually though I sometimes think it is, the consensus here is that it is not (though this is in discussion of "John Birks" on "Let Me Tell You About It").

>>>

Isn't it consensus Dizzy played under a pseudonym on "Rollin with Leo"?

Actually though I sometimes think it is, the consensus here is that it is not (though this is in discussion of "John Birks" on "Let Me Tell You About It").

Thanks Lon, though the name is too uncanny. I haven't heard either session, but I would think the tone, phrasing and licks would give away it's Diz, unless he purposely played differently as to not give it away.

When I listen to the session I allow myself to entertain the possibility that it is Diz purposedly playing differently, I do hear some similarities. I can't know either way. My copy of the cd is packed and shipped to Ohio so can't revisit right now

Dave Burns is listed as the trumpeter on the Rollin' with Leo date and that seems convincing to me. On the couple of tracks I've just listened to I'm sure it's not Dizzy and the trumpeter sounds like the same guy who plays on James Moody's Wail, Moody Wail (also listed as Burns.) Perhaps the confusion arose because of Burns's long association with Dizzy as a Gillespie Big Band sideman.

[Niko]

we are talking about "Let me tell you 'bout it", actually, and afaik (might be wrong) it's John Burks there, which is right in the middle between Birks and Burkes - so if all those guys I haven't heard of come from Baltimore, and if there apparently is a Baltimore trumpet player named Burkes who even played with Bill Swindell, that makes me tend to think it's Baltimore John Burkes/Burks on the Leo Parker record (plus: that Left Bank Listing has many small typos) (btw wikipedia is wrong here and attributes both Parker BN albums to Dave Burns)

Edited April 7, 2013 by Niko

[mjzee]

I think that if it was Dizzy, Cuscuna would've let us in on the secret.

[Mark Stryker]

Hey, I just learned from Oliver Lake's twitter account (seriously) that today is Freddie Hubbard's birthday. So in honor of Freddie and this thread ....

[Niko]

here's more evidence of Baltimore trumpet player John Burks

[king ubu]

Maybe there's more in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Crossroads-Lives-Legacies-Baltimore/dp/1934074527/

Actually wanted to get it, eventually, but haven't yet ...

[jazzbo]

No matter who the trumpeter is it's a very good date.

[Joe]

Love all these guys, KD especially, but, to my ears, Blue Mitchell above all really understood the BN "aesthetic" and made his approach work within that BN groove... he could be moody, he could be boppy, Silver-y, funky... maybe not as prepossessing as Morgan, not as fiery... but also a bit more, um, careful, and not in a cautious way... dig Blue's contributions to Brooks' BACK TO THE TRACKS, e.g. Quintessence!

Also, Dave Burns... a trumpet player of incredible technical prowess... wasn't he a trumpet teacher of some renown? Anyway, he's heard to very good advantage -- he actually gets to stretch out some -- on Arthur Taylor's A.T.'S DELIGHT and Dexter's LANDSLIDE (more Tommy Turrentine there, too).

[JSngry]

I like what I've heard of Burns, but how much was there in and/or of Burns to miss out on?

The Vanguard sides he either led or played on are very nice, imo. So there's those, if they might have been out on missed (is that correct grammar?).

[Chuck Nessa]

I like what I've heard of Burns, but how much was there in and/or of Burns to miss out on?

The Vanguard sides he either led or played on are very nice, imo. So there's those, if they might have been out on missed (is that correct grammar?).

Nice but nothing like KD, Lee, etc.

[JSngry]

No, not. But there for the listening anyway.

Truth be told, I've never really gotten gut-punched by Blue Mitchell either. Nice, as you say, but...

[Chuck Nessa]

No, not. But there for the listening anyway.

Truth be told, I've never really gotten gut-punched by Blue Mitchell either. Nice, as you say, but...

me too.

[paul secor]

When I think Blue Note and trumpet, Lee Morgan comes to mind first and foremost.

[Larry Kart]

No, not. But there for the listening anyway.

Truth be told, I've never really gotten gut-punched by Blue Mitchell either. Nice, as you say, but...

me too.

To me he usually sounded like he never had a good enough horn, though surely that was not literally the case. It's like his sound never had the "ring" to it that his style otherwise suggested that it should. Not quite same thing as Charles Tolliver's nanny goat tone (I'm quoting what some critic or musician whose name I can't recall -- perhaps A.B. Spellman? -- said of Tolliver at the time) but probably related.

[Milestones]

To come back to the original notion, I still see Lee and Freddie as the main figures of the 1960s. KD was done halfway through the decade, Byrd's chops slipped (plus I'm still behind on hearing his work), and Mitchell seems most renowned for his work with Silver. Other trumpeters have to be behind for being less-recorded (especially on prominent records) and offering less scope than Lee and Freddie. And certainly these two men, especially Lee, cover the entire decade.

But it's been a great discussion; a lot of interesting stuff.

Now trying to determine the 3-5 most representative saxophonists on BN in the same decade would be a real challenge (not even going to go there).

Edited April 8, 2013 by Milestones

[Larry Kart]

Mobley, McLean and...

[JSngry]

alto - J-MAc, LD, Ornette,Spaulding (sic)

tenor - JoeHen, Wayne, Hank, Turrentine

[Mark Stryker]

Even harder: Single most definitive Blue Note LP of the 50s? '60s? You almost have to break it down by genre: bebop; hard bop; soul jazz; post-bop; avant-garde. Awfully hard to not just make it a list of faves and I could see inumerable variations. Here are two approaches avoiding perhaps some of the more famous records ("Moanin', Maiden Voyage, Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers).

Bebop: Monk's "Genius of Modern Music" or Bud's Amazing Bud Powell Vol. 1"

Hard Bop: Mobley's "Roll Call" or Horace Silver's "Horace-Scope"

Post-Bop: Shorter's "Speak No Evil" of Tyner's "The Real McCoy"

Avant-Garde: Cherry's "Complete Communion" or Eric Dolphy's "Out to Lunch"

Soul jazz: Jimmy Smiths "Back at the Chicken Shack" or Turrentine's "Blue Hour" .

Wlid card: Rollins' "A Night at the Village Vanguard" (in my top 2 jazz albums of all time.)

[Jim R]

In this period, BN mostly recorded bebop/hardbop and soul jazz, with a smallish number of somewhat outside albums and an even smaller number of very outside albums. Hubbard certainly worked on a lot of bebop/hard bop albums and a fair few of the outside ones (there are quite a lot of these that I haven't heard). But he only ever appeared on one soul jazz album - Lou Donaldson's 'Lush life'/'Sweet slumber' and I don't think many Hubbard fans would say that the two solos he took in that album ought to carry much weight in a discussion like this.

Come on, now. Lou Donaldson certainly recorded plenty of "soul jazz" sessions, but "Lush Life/Sweet Slumber" is not one of them. Does not fit that mold at all. It's too sophisticated and highly arranged to be in that category, imo, not to mention the emphasis on ballads, and the fact that it was what Gitler referred to as a "little big band". It's one of my favorite Donaldson sessions ever, and I think it's misleading and even a little insulting to refer to it as "soul jazz". Don't pigeonhole Lou. He had plenty of range before (and after) he started emphasizing soul jazz.

[Justin V]

we are talking about "Let me tell you 'bout it", actually, and afaik (might be wrong) it's John Burks there, which is right in the middle between Birks and Burkes - so if all those guys I haven't heard of come from Baltimore, and if there apparently is a Baltimore trumpet player named Burkes who even played with Bill Swindell, that makes me tend to think it's Baltimore John Burkes/Burks on the Leo Parker record (plus: that Left Bank Listing has many small typos) (btw wikipedia is wrong here and attributes both Parker BN albums to Dave Burns)

John Burks is also pictured in the liner notes of Let Me Tell You 'Bout It. I once wrote Buck Hill and asked him if he could share any information about Burks and Bill Swindell, but I didn't hear back from him.

[king ubu]

No, not. But there for the listening anyway.

Truth be told, I've never really gotten gut-punched by Blue Mitchell either. Nice, as you say, but...

me too.

I'm with you on Blue ... some very nice music indeed, but he fails to really grip me. Also on those organ dates, I think I usually get more from Virgil Jones than from Mitchell. Though Mitchell assembled some prime bands for his Riverside albums and the band with Cook/Corea/Taylor/Foster was very tight ... but I kind of always expect to like it a bit better when looking at the albums and line-ups than I acutally end up liking them while listening.