Onkel Tobi

This recording is taken from the legendary Hamburg music hall, Onkel Pö. After opening in October 1970, it became on the the venues for Jazz in Europe, participating in the New Jazz Festival at Hamburg.

Jazz/pop vocalist Esther Phillips is joined here by Henry Cain, Wes Blackman, Bill Upchurch, and James Levi for a set that includes 'Stormy Weather" and "What A Difference A Day Makes".

"… Already the music made by the young Collins, born 1932 in Leona/Texas, was praised to be especially 'cool'; and of course, when he performed on the tiny stage of Onkel Pö's Carnegie Hall on Eppendorfer Lehmweg in Hamburg, he was joined by his band called The Icebreakers. Naturally, on this winter evening no cold barrier needed to be overcome, certainly not in the overcrowded Pö, where most probably (as so often) tropical temperatures will have prevailed. . . . His name adorned the star line-up at the Montreux Jazz Festival and at the Paleo-Festival in Nyon, just around the corner on Lake Geneva. It was also in Nyon that his terminal illness first broke out.

Extraordinary talented jazz trumpeter Woody Shaw recorded at the zenith of his personal development in 1982, accompanied by a sensational group of musicians. The group includes drummer Tony Reedus, bassist Stafford James, the pianist Mulgrew Miller and the trombonist Steve Turre, who became one of the new young voices of the jazz trombone shortly afterwards. Shaw's playing was characterised by technical perfection (just as those of his role model Freddie Hubbard) and a hands-on approach when it came to sound and tonality; Shaw was extremely fast when he wanted to be but never lost the clarity of his musical language.

"When Freddie Hubbard came to Hamburg to get on the tiny stage of Onkel Pö's Carnegie Hall, he was right at the centre of the world of jazz, probably more than ever before or after in his career – together with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams the trumpet player had set-up the quintet 'V.S.O.P.' three years earlier; as the other four people of the group had previously formed the legendary second quintet of Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard could be considered to be his direct successor. . . .

This recording is taken from the legendary Hamburg music hall, Onkel Pö. After opening in October 1970, it became on the the venues for Jazz in Europe…

Recorded live at at Onkel Pö‘s Carnegie Hall, in Hamburg in 1981, this concert represents a typical Jazz Machine live performance, and the selection of tracks feeds on concise themes and motives from all established sources of the hard bop era where the musicians get plenty of room to stretch out and Jones specially proves his mastery again and again.

"Considering the current developments on the market for Presidents of the United States one should probably remind the public, that even this strange bird – John Birks Gillespie from Cheraw, South Carolina, born in October 1917, nicknamed 'Dizzy' since the start of his professional career and thus declared a bit crazy – once wanted to become President of the United States. Seriously? Most probably not.

Here it comes: the next thrilling memory of a musician whom the world of jazz must never forget - despite his early death in 1989 at the age of only 44. After the earlier release of a concert given by the quintet of trumpeter Woody Shaw in 1982 at he Onkel Pö's Carnegie Hall in Hamburg we are now turning back the clock another three years for this CD.