A1 You Stepped Out Of A Dream (5:00), Written By Nacio Herb Brown , Gus Kahn
A2 Body And Soul (7:10), Written By Edward Heyman , Johnny Green
A3 Round Midnight (8:30), Written By Thelonious Monk
B1 Hello, Tony! (7:25), Written By Václav Zahradník
B2 Yesterdays (9:00), Written By Jerome Kern
B3 When The Saints Go Marching In (4:05), Traditional

(play all) 

Arranged By – Václav Zahradník
Arranged By, Trombone – Slide Hampton
Artwork By – Josef Zich , Miloslav Žáček
Bass – Klaus Koch
Drums – Billy Brooks
French Horn – Emanuel Hrdina , Vladěna Bouchalová
Guitar – Rudolf Dašek
Photography – Pavel Vácha
Piano – Vince Benedetti
Producer, Recorded By – František Řebíček*
Recorded By – Jan Spálený , Tony Matzner
Saxophone – Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky , Johnny Griffin , Mihály Ráduly , Ozren Depolo , Ronnie Ross
Trombone – Erich Kleinschuster , Jan Hynčica , Lumir Zrucký , Zdeněk Pulec
Trumpet – Dizzy Reece , Jaroslav Lautner , Jiří Izera , Miloslav Bureš
Tuba – Petr Fleischer
Vibraphone – Karel Velebný

Recorded at the Supraphon Studio in Dejvice, Prague, from 18th to 20th october, 1972

The third and final Zahradník-Record I own. This has been posted here before, but I just do it again with more pics and tracks. Slide Hampton came back to the CSSR in 1972 to work with Zahradník on this record and again brought some friends with him, this time Johny Griffin, Ronnie Ross, Dizzy Reece and others. The concept changed abit for this record, no more soloing but a more “balanced BigBand-Sound” the linernotes say. Abit of a downer for me, compared to the other two records this one is abit weaker, but still a great one (and if you have three records one has got to be the “worst”, even if it’s actually great. You get my drift).
Also there is only one track written by Zahradník on this record, B1 “Hello, Tony!”, which is actually the one I like most. But the rest is great too, most notably A1 “You Stepped Out Of A Dream” and A3 “Round Midnight”.

The usual links :

Vaclav Zahradnik – Euro Jazz :
Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm | discogs | google

Vaclav Zahradnik :
Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm | discogs | google

That’s it for my Zahradník records altough I know of atleast one more I would like to have, “Jazz goes Beat“. Let’s hope this one crosses my way sometime in the future.

And in other news, I set up an Eastern-Crates on Myspace-Account, it’s not finished yet, but if you want to be friends with this page then just send me a friendship-request. Would be nice to see who is reading this.

A1 The End Of Love (4:40), Written By Slide Hampton , Václav Zahradník
A2 B&S (Suite In 3 Parts) (7:35), Written By Slide Hampton
A3 Gardener’s Waltz (7:00), Written By Slide Hampton
B1 Jeanette (10:40), Written By Václav Zahradník
B2 Fashank In Blues (8:35), Written By Rudolf Dašek

(play all)

Artwork By – Miloslav Žáček
Bass – Barre Phillips
Clarinet, Saxophone – Dušan Húščava , Jan Václavík , Jaoslav Hájek (tracks: B1, B2) , Miroslav Krýsl , Rudolf Ticháček (tracks: A1 to A3)
Drums – Stu Martin
Flute – Jiří Stivín , Jiří Válek
Guitar – Rudolf Dašek
Photography – Vilém Sochůrek
Piano, Electric Piano – Laco Gerhardt
Recorded By – František Řebíček , Tony Matzner
Saxophone – John Surman
Trombone – Jan Hynčica , Josef Petržilka , Miroslav Koželuh , Slide Hampton , Zdeněk Pulec
Trumpet – Jan Čapoun (tracks: A1 to A3) , Jiří Hlava , Jiří Jelínek (tracks: B1, B2) , Miloslav Bureš , Nikola Janev (tracks: A1 to A3) , Nikola Janev (tracks: B1, B2)
Tuba – Petr Fleischer
Vibraphone – Karel Velebný

Recorded at the Supraphon Studios Prague on March 31, April 1 and 2 1972.

Another record by Václav Zahradník, this time with Slide Hampton. Zahradník and Hampton had been performing together at the International Jazz Festival Prague in 1969 and Hampton was so impressed by Zahradník that he came back in March 1971 with a few friends. Most known might be Stu Martin who was the drummer for Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones for some time. And the drumming is one of the best parts of this record.

This record is definately in my Overall-Top5. The unique approach of Zahradník I refered to earlier is extremely well done on this record, it is amazing how he manages to combine BigBand-Sound with raw Jazz. Especially noteworthy is A2 – B&S (Suite in 3 parts), an absolute masterpiece in my book. Have fun with this. Also noteworthy is that Tony Matzner obviously experimented with Cutting-Tape-Technics, B2 – “Fashank in Blues” contains a rather audible cut at 7:36, probably done with the Master-Tape (no computers back then, remember).
A funny sidenote is also that A3 – Gardener’s Waltz (written by Slide Hampton) is actually a hommage to Václav Zahradník because “Zahradník” means “Gardener” in czech.

The usual links :

Vaclav Zahradnik and Slide Hampton – B&S :
Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm | discogs | google

Vaclav Zahradnik :
Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm | discogs | google

A1 Blow I (7:15), Written By Rudolf Dašek
A2 Jaumeau (12:45), Written By Václav Zahradník
B1 Intima (5:05), Written By Milienko Prohaska
B2 Ritual (5:20) Written By Andrei Tovmosian
B3 Autumn Sun (9:35) Written By Milcho Leviev

(play all)

Arranged By – Václav Zahradník
Bass – Klaus Koch
Drums – Andrzej Dabrowski
Flute, Saxophone – Simeon Shtierev
Guitar, Sitar – Rudolf Dašek
Percussion – Petr Šprunk
Piano – Laco Gerhardt
Produced By, Recorded By – Tony Matzner
Recorded By – František Řebíček , Jan Chalupský
Saxophone – Dan Mindrila , Mihály Ráduly , Ozren Depolo , Raimond Raubischko , Václav Maňas
Trombone – Andrzej Brzeski , Hubert Katzenbeier , Zdeněk Pulec
Trumpet – Jiří Izera , Miloslav Bureš , Václav Týfa
Tuba – Petr Fleischer

Recorded At The Supraphon Studios Prague In October 1970

I couldn’t get too much info together. Václav Zahradník was born 1942 and died 2001 in Prague. During his short life (61 years, really a shame) he had alot of different orchestras (or more probably always the same one with different personell and names) apart from an acting career in movies and television. I personally own three records from him that I consider to be true gems in my collection.

The great thing on all these records is that he managed to mix the typical BigBand-Sound with a more freejazz-inspired, raw approach. Imagine a musician soloing off accompanied by a huge band playing the rhythmical/tonal background. Check the tunes to get what I mean.

This record features exclusively musicians from eastern countries (as the title says) aswell as only compositions from eastern composers/jazzers. It was a present from a very dear friend, thanx again for that !

The usual links :

Vaclav Zahradnik – Interjazz :
Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm | discogs | google

Vaclav Zahradnik :
Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm | discogs | google

BTW, I got myself a discogs-account to add the info from this site onto discogs or vice versa. You can check my discogs-userpage here.

Another “a la carte” record, this time it’s jazz (and its in stereo too, but has nothing to do with the “Stereo a la carte” record).
This is a compilation giving an overview about parts of the czecheslovakian jazz-scene at that time. This is really a great record, filled with very energetic and smooth Jazz, one of the records I pop on my turntable quite often. For someone totally new to chzecheslovakian jazz this might be a good record to begin with, but it seems to be rare. Bands featured include Hot Breath, Combo FH, Jazz Q and Jazz Sanatorium.

The Song I chose for today is B1 SHQ-”morning of a faun”, one of the best songs on this record. Altough the record itself was done in 1980 this song is from 1977.

It’s actually quite hard to find exactly this “Jazz a la carte” on gemm.com, maybe just take a look for records from SHQ, there are some for sale there.

Karel Gott was the Megastar of the eastern countries, there is no doubt about that. He started in czecheslovakia but his music was not even stopped by the iron curtain and he is still recording songs and does shows all over the world, including the US and Japan. One example of his work is the titlesong for “Biene Maja” (no idea what the title was in other countries, just look below for a picture), a show which was broadcasted all over the world.

Altough he was a real pop-singer his work was always very fresh and ad-hoc. Also he did all he could to reach wider audiences, most of his songs are avaiable in versions of several languages, including czech, german, russian, english, italian and more.

This record is one of his works from the time when he really started to go international, the interesting thing is that although most of the songs on this record are in german language and it was aimed at the german market (and thats the west- aswell as the eastgerman market, to be precise) the whole record was recorded by Supraphon in Prague, Czecheslovakia and Amiga just licensed it for eastern germany.

The song I chose is a A5 – “Der allerletzte Liebestrank” and its my heads-up for all crate-diggers and samplers out there. Do you know the feeling when you want something really bad but just can’t reach it ? Its the same with this song, the drums are really fresh but there is not one moment in that song where they are really playing alone, there is always some other instrument or the voice over it. Things like these drive me crazy sometimes Also take note of the synth-sounds, that record is from ‘75 and it was mainstream-pop.

You can look for Karel Gott on www.gemm.com, there are really loads of records around, but be aware that he is really a “pop-singer”. His records from the seventies are mostly funky though.

And there is some more excellent information about Karel Gott on Maisies World.