Dizzy Gillespie, Digital At Montreux, 1980 (1981)

I bought this for $1 because it was Dizzy Gillespie and Bernard Purdie and Toots Thielemans. I knew all of the players and I couldn’t see it working – so I was curious. Also the album is red vinyl and I thought that was fucking cool. This was one of the first records I ever bought actually. It’s fucked – the sound is all gone but I still play it. Now and then. Funny thing is it is absolutely nothing special – at all. But it sorta hypnotises me, draws me in. All three sound better on so many other recordings I have of them – alone; doing their own thing/s. But this sorta works because it doesn’t really work. I doubt that makes sense – but that’s how I hear it in my head when I’m listening to this anyway. Funny story though. A couple of months ago me and a fellow Purdie fanatic are gushing about Purdie to another guy; a musician. So it’s one of those musician-chats; not so much that we’re all trying to impress one another – just that we’re all pulling out stories. And so two of us are on and on about Bernard Purdie the master drummer. We’re this and that about all his accomplishments: Steely Dan and Aretha Franklin and on and on – the context, I should stress, is that this album is playing in the background. And the third guy in on the conversation had asked about who was playing. So we’re giving it major chat – like a couple of lobsters really. And then, when we’re done listing Bernard “Pretty” Purdie’s accomplishments – this other guy, guitarist Rob Winch, says very politely, “I played with him once, at the Montreux Jazz Festival when we were over there in 1980”. Fuck me that was funny!

The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown