Ahmad Jamal Live 1999 | RIP Ahmad Jamal (1930-2023)

Photo © Daniel Sheehan. Source.

Let's start with an enlightening fact: do you know what ahmad jamal means? Obviously it is an Arabic name (long ago, in Pittsburgh, he was Fritz Russell Jones), but not just any name. Ahmad means highly praised "implying one who constantly thanks God" and jamal means beauty; In brief, Highly Praised Beauty. That is indeed the music of brother Ahmad Jamal.

You probably know that the new Ahmad Jamal album, Saturday Morning, is out. It's been described by Ahmad's website as an album "following on from Blue Moon...made up of the kind of ballads to which only he holds the key. Each one is a moment of grace, shining like a star in the sky of American Classical Music...with his light-fingered but rhythmic style, he sends us into a sensuous trance and leads us to a musical climax: a sound, which is pure groove." The album can be purchased here.

For this post, I have a 45 minute long video of an Ahmad Jamal concert to show you.

Chick Corea Quartet plays That Old Feeling

Chick Corea. Photo source.

RIP Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (1941-2021)

The July 1992 German tour of Chick Corea and Friends was the concert series of which I've already posted one here. This video, also from the Stuttgart concert, features Bob Berg on tenor saxophone, Eddie Gomez on bass and Steve Gadd on drums, going through That (same) Old Feeling:

Chick Corea and Friends in Stuttgart, 1992

RIP Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (1941-2021)

July 1992. Chick Corea plays a series of concerts in Germany with his quartet featuring Bob Berg (tenor saxophone), Eddie Gomez (bass), and Steve Gadd (drums). The video I'd draw your attention to is from the Stuttgart stop of the tour. The band plays Waltz for Dave, written for Dave Brubeck, first recorded for the 1978 LP, Friends, with a band whose line-up was almost identical to this touring band in Germany (all except tenor player who, in the original record, was Joe Farrell).

More than a week after this performance, there's another TV footage of the song circulating online, this from Philharmonie Am Gasteig, Munich, which you can view here. 🔺

VHS Diaries#1: Ellis Marsalis Trio

RIP Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. (November 14, 1934 – April 1, 2020)

Syndrome, a composition by New Orleans pianist and father to Wynton and Brandford Marsalis, Mr. Ellis Marsalis,  first appeared in one of his early albums.

Here, with the assistance of a relaxed, grooving trio he performs the same song at Bern Jazz Festival, 1997. I couldn't identify the bassist and drummer. If you know their names, please leave a comment.

RIP Nancy Wilson (1937-2018): Lady With A Song

Originally posted on 21/12/2013. Re-posted on 14/12/2018.


Moving on with our Women in Jazz series, sooner or later I had to mention Nancy Wilson whom I came to know and admire in the Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley album.

Here is a digitised copy of a tape of mine from 1997, recorded off air during Bern Jazz Festival,  featuring Lew Matthews on keyboard, John Williams on bass and possibly Roy McCurdy on drums. They perform Lady With A Song.

John McLaughlin Trio in Stuttgart, 1992, Part II

John McLaughlin Trio | Live at Jazzgipfel, Stuttgart, Germany | July 3, 1992

John McLaughlin (acoustic guitar) | Dominique Di Piazza (electric bass) | Trilok Gurtu (percussion)

Reincarnation (McLaughlin)

Bob Mintzer Big Band in Berlin

Some truly great moments of solo expression against the backdrop of a big band can be heard on this superb concert video from Berlin, 1987. Arranged and conducted by tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer, and loaded with excitement and wit, it is the perfect homage to the tradition of big bands in whose last days Mintzer, as an alumni of Thad Jones-Mel Lewis and Buddy Rich big bands, lived an active life.

One of the tenor saxophonists who emerged from the school of New York players in the 70's, Mintzer was not only the member of the Grammy award winning Yellowjackets, but also led his own BB, touring the world, of which this concert from November 1987 was filmed and broadcast.

A teacher and lecturer, and the writer of over 200 big band arrangements, Mintzer perfected his instrument in working with various musicians and bands, from Art Blakey to Gil Evans, and from Randy Brecker (also featured on this video) to The New York Philharmonic.

The John McLaughlin Trio, 1989

This fine John McLaughlin Trio concert was recently unearthed amongst my VHS tapes. Even if the tape contained absolutely no information, either on it or on the filmed concerts, as TV stations usually do (adding a logo, a date, end credit), it's not hard to guess it's coming from the 1989 European tour whose London wing (November 27, 1989) was recorded as Live at the Royal Festival Hall.

My second guess is that the concert is filmed at Continental Europe, most likely Germany. (If it's actually from 1989, then its Stuttgart gig can be viewed here.) Furthermore, the footage is from only the first set of the concert and even this first set is incomplete, missing the first song which is Blue in Green by Miles Davis.

There is a tight, often exciting interplay between the players whose performances are interlocked in more than oe way: John McLaughlin on acoustic guitar, Kai Eckhardt-Karpeh on electric bass, and Trilok Gurtu on percussions. Even for someone who is not so keen on acoustic guitar/electric bass combination in a jazz context, in which case I'm one of them, Gurtu is adding enough textures to make the music completely worthwhile. Surprisingly, the music is more leaned towards composition rather than the improvisatory traditions McLaughlin had previously demonstrated in his live concerts.

McCoy Tyner & Freddie Hubbard Live in Stuttgart + Interview

McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard in 1961

A torrent of notes on keyboard and flugelhorn. Three decades after the photograph above was taken, pianist McCoy Tyner and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard are back together, this time in Stuttgart, Germany.

Freshly digitized from a nearly disintegrating VHS tape (while the image remains amazingly intact, reminding us about the virtues of analogue formats that at least allow for some sort of extraction), this exciting concert is the complete TV broadcast of McCoy Tyner Trio featuring Freddie Hubbard and Ralph Moore.

Jazztage '90
Stuttgart, Germany
July 13, 1990

Freddie Hubbard (t, flugelhorn), Ralph Moore (ts, ss), McCoy Tyner (p), Avery Sharpe (b), Aaron Scott (d)

R.I.P. Bobby Hutcherson (1941-2016): World Peace

Bobby Hutcherson, the crystal-sounding master vibraphonist, is dead at 75.

An obituary on The New York Times remembers him as the "vibraphonist with coloristic range of sound":

"Mr. Hutcherson's career took flight in the early 1960s, as jazz was slipping free of the complex harmonic and rhythmic designs of bebop. He was fluent in that language, but he was also one of the first to adapt his instrument to a freer postbop language, often playing chords with a pair of mallets in each hand."

Bobby Hutcherson was extensively recorded for the Blue Note, both as the leader on superb albums such as Dialogue (with Andrew Hill and Sam Rivers) and as a sideman (always bringing a new identity to leaders' sessions) on indisputable modern classics of the 1960s, among which Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch! always passionately remembered by friend and foe.

After the end of his long tenure with the Blue Note, he went freelance, never stayed with any label for too long. However, one of his longest running projects since the late 1970s, was a touring all-star band, The Timeless All Stars, with Curtis Fuller (trombone), Harold Land (tenor saxophone), Cedar Walton (piano), Buster Williams (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums).

John McLaughlin Trio in Stuttgart, 1992, Part I

I had posted this concert previously as a Hamburg date whereas it's actually from Stuttgart, and performed two years later than the given date.

This features the electric Jozy (even though played acoustically) and an animated Indo-bop sort of scat which is rather excellent.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton on this band:

"[McLaughlin] is punching out rows of notes which are almost as impressive for their accuracy as for their power. The themes are no longer as obviously visionary and Eastern-influenced and the guitarist seem content to re-run many of stylistic devices he had adopted from the days with Miles Davis through the ringing harmonies of Shakti and back out into a more obviously jazz-grounded idiom."

Moondog Live in Stuttgart

Cover of a Moondog 7" EP from 1953

The blind composer, street musician, Nordic mystic, and instrument inventor Moondog (born Louis Thomas Hardin in Marysville, Kansas) moved to Germany in 1974 and lived there until he died in 1999, age 83. (Read about his illustrious, fascinating life on this Wikipedia entry.)

Here, one of Moondog's musical performances is filmed in Stuttgart, 1992, featuring his new compositions which were later released as Sax Pax for a Sax, in collaboration with London Saxophonic. When the album was released 6 years later, it reached no 22 on Billboard chart.

On this video Moondog and London Saxophonic perform:

Dog Trot
Sandalwood
New Amsterdam

The band members are:

Bobby Hutcherson: Never Let Me Go

"Eschewing both the prettiness of the vibes and the conventionally bluesy delivery of Milt Jackson, [Bobby] Hutcherson's music had an abstract side which only Walt Dickerson approached," Richard Cook sums up the master vibraphonist's style in his Encyclopedia of Jazz, "yet he kept hold of the slow vibrato that Jackson espoused."

Case in study: Never Let Me Go, performed with the Timeless All Stars at the Subway jazz club in Cologne (Köln), Germany, 1986, accompanied by Cedar Walton (piano), Buster Williams (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums).

Is hypnotic the right word for it?

Albert Mangelsdorff Plays Cappriccio Funky

Rockish and funky, this is a good example of the virtusity and multifaceted technique of German trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff.

Filmed live during a festival engagement in Germany, 1992, the Albert Mangelsdorff-Wolfgang Dauner Quartet plays an extended version of Cappriccio Funky. (Dauner, born in 1935, was the pianist of United Jazz and Rock Ensemble.)

RIP Joe Temperley (1929-2016)

Repost of Junior Mance and Joe Temperley Play Duke Ellington, in momery of Joe Temperley who passed away on May 11th 2016.


Some days ago, on October 10, Junior Mance entered his 85th, more than 7 decades of which lived as a jazz pianist of high caliber. Mance's notion and execution of blues, a happy and swinging one, has always been a source of endless fascination and joy for me. It is easy to be hooked to the sound of his trios, though in larger formats, like the video presented here, most of the relaxed playing and wonderful interaction remain intact.

In April 1994 Mance formed a long-lasting trio with bassist Keter Betts and drummer Jackie Williams, the former being his collaborator since the 1950s, when they both played for Dinah Washington.

This group enjoyed various gigs and hosted several guests at various occasions who were  mostly tenor-saxophonists with whom the band toured and recorded materials by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. One of these guests was the Scottish multi-instrumentalist Joe Temperley who was only one year younger than Mance and a resident of the US since 1965. Aside from a live recording on-board a cruise ship, issued by Chiaroscuro, this video, recently digitized by me, is a vivid example of the quartet in action, filmed during the Bern jazz festival in 1997.

I Don't Dig Garbarek's Music, But If You Do...

I'm interested in anything categorized under the uncategorizable family of jazz, while being aware of the problem that most of it turns out to be anything but jazz. The video I'm posting here, at least to my ears, falls into non-jazz category. Yet, it is an example of a product sold as jazz and bought in huge quantity by European jazz festivals.

Since I've promised to digitize and publicize all my jazz VHS tapes, I do post this as an act of completion: The Jan Garbarek Group playing Jim Pepper's Witchi-Tai-To in Stuttgart, Germany, 1992.

This ECM artist sounds so thin and mechanical that I wonder why the labeled never released, for instance, Kenny G.?

To me, jazz remains to be an urban, modern sound, always transcending the most materialistic objects and situations into sublime beauty. And it doesn't sound like music played by Scandinavian shepherds in 17th century.

George Adams-Don Pullen Quartet at the Subway

Like many of you, I first heard this band as the nucleus of Charlie Mingus's 70s groups, at least those involving George Adams and Don Pullen. Dannie Richmond, of course, had a much longer history of owning the drum chair in Mingus's establishment.

Yet, it was with post-Mingus recordings that I fell in love with the music they were making, a music which, according to Richmond, must have influenced even Mr. Mingus himself.

Hand to Hand, featuring Richmond and Adams was one of the most played records in my "early advanced" years of listening to jazz. Since then, I haven't lost my interest in this marvelous unit whose key members sadly died too soon.

The quartet, adding Cameron Brown, started as a one-off live band, but miraculously lasted for nearly a decade, and it was recorded regularly in Europe. This video tape from Cologne, Federal Republic of Germany, is one of them.

The band is full of fire and fierce energy. This makes Lee Jeske to compare them with a Lamborghini:

John Scofield Trio, 1987

John Scofield must mean something special to Germans. He had numerous appearances on various German TV networks, both before and after the fall of the Berlin wall.

As for this particular posted broadcast, known as Jazzbühne, I learned from German Wikipedia that two years after the concert was filmed, at some point towards the unification, the program came to an end. But guess who appeared on its very last broadcast? Mr. Scofield, again. (I even ran into him in Berlin's Kantstrasse last May, where he was signing CDs outside A-Trane club.)

I'm not sure if I have the tape of the very last Jazzbühne broadcast in my VHS collection, but here there is this one from 1987 when Mr. Scofield is accompanied by John Riley (drums) and Anthony Cox (bass). They go through these compositions:

Turn Around 00:00 -- 7:19
Science and Religion 07:50 -- 14:11
Flower Power 14:30 -- 19:20 [incomplete]

John McLaughlin Trio in Hamburg

Recently digitized from my VHS archives, this footage captures the John McLaughlin Trio in Hamburg, Germany in 1990. Typical of a McLaughlin concert, there is lots of interplay going on between McLaughlin on acoustic guitar with Kai Eckhardt on electric bass and Trilok Gurtu on percussion.

Apologies in advance for the abrupt ending of the footage which leaves the last song incomplete. The tape has run out.

McCoy Tyner Big Band

McCoy Tyner Big Band
JazzFest Berlin, Philharmonie
November 3, 1990  

Fly With the Wind (M. Tyner)

Trumpets: Virgil Jones, Kamau Adilifu, Earl Gardner; French Horn: John Clark; Trombones: Frank Lacy, Clark Gayton; Tuba: Howard Johnson; Saxes/Flute: Joe Ford, Doug Harris; Tenor Sax: John Stubblefield; Piano: McCoy Tyner; Bass: Avery Sharpe; Drums: Aaron Scott.