Whats your jazz story?
As the title goes, how did you get into jazz. What age, what artists, what sub-genres of the art?
A partial essential jazz list for a jazz newbie (who loved the Blue Note Sound)
I created the following list for a jazz tyro. It's more hard bop centric - but that's the sound they wanted Ahmad Jamal – Ahmad’s Blues Andrew Hill, Black Fire Andrew Hill, Point of Departure Anthony Williams, Spring Art Blakey – A Night in Tunisia Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - Complete Blue Note Recordings Art Blakey, A Night at Birdland Volume 1 Art Blakey, A Night at Birdland Volume 2 Art Blakey, Free For All Art Blakey, Mosaic Art Tatum - Capital Music collections Bill Evans, “The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961” (Riverside, 2005). Billie Holiday – Lady in Satin Bobby Hutcherson Happenings Bobby Hutcherson, Components Bobby Hutcherson, Total Eclipse Bud Powell, The Amazing Volume 1 But Powell, The Scene Changes Cannonball Adderley Quintet – Somethin’ Else Cannonball Adderley, Somethin’ Else Cassandra Wilson, New Moon Daughter Cassandra Wilson, Traveling Miles Charlie Mingus - Ahh, Um Charlie Parker – Charlie Parker With Strings Charlie Parker & Dizz...
I started out as a 12 year old. I was introduced to jazz by my uncle who drove a Porsche Kharman Ghia with a cassette player. He put on stuff like Evans, Getz and the Modern Jazz Quartet. I loved the sound.
ReplyDeleteSo that prompted him to invite me to Newport in New York when I was 13. I went to see a cavalcade of all stars at Yankee Stadium - Milt Jackson, Dizzy, BB King, Mary Lou Williams, Zoot Simms and others.
I was hooked for life.
Born, raised and lived for about 60 years in New Orleans, so jazz was everywhere. But two things really got me intio the deep dive. When I was a freshman in high school, a new radio station started in NO, WWIW. It was a low watt am station, but it played nothing but big band and 40s-50s jazz - somehow they also had the rights to Yankees baeball games, and they aired them together with all the NYC radio ads. Few years later, another station started, WWOZ, which is still going strong today (available for streaming at wwoz.org). OZ plays mostly modern jazz, from NO and elsewhere. And, although we now live in Seville, Spain, we are fortuante that there is a strong modern jazz scene here, with live performances just about every night of the week. Even have a few NO style brass bands, and a Boswell Sisters tribute band (O Sister), which also performs original songs in the same genre.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the invite and for starting this blog. I'll eschew Groucho's advice for once, and belong to this club that will have me as a member.
An expat ! . My wife and I considered moving to Paris permanently in the 1990s. Kids happened after we got married after living together for 10 years ;-)
DeleteMy "kids" are both in their 30s and are doing extrenely well, so I had no hesitancy about relocating. Been in Spain 3.5 years and zero regrets.
DeleteThat's awesome PMAC. We were young and in love and in our early 30's and had come off of early bad marriages. When we thought about it seriously, we had friends in the Paris environs. My aunt and uncle lived in Spain for 4 years as expats and then went to live in Panama. Loved it.
DeleteNow I am in my mid 60's and have two 24 year olds who are very needy of my wife and me. They are great kids but always need me for something or another ;-)
I started listening to music in general around 1971 or 72. At that time I tended to acoustic folk, Tom Rush, David Bromberg ect and popular bands like the Grateful Dead and Allman Bros. A friend who was a few years older than me would play John Coltrane's My Favorite Things from the Impulse release from 1963 recorded at Newport. That more or less planted the seed. Once I got to college, 1974, I started listening to CTI releases and started to work back from there discovering Bird, Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro, ect. Releases with decent liner notes would suggest artists to check out. Trips to Boston to visit my girlfriend (my wife since 1985) would always include stops at various record stores and the Harvard Coop, which had a great cutout section. Today I keep an open mind on what to check out but I have a hard time with free jazz, think Coltrane post A Love Supreme. I also have a soft spot for 50's sax driven R'n'B.
ReplyDeleteMy late father-in-law was on many CTI releases. He was a classical violinist in NYC, but paid the bills by working on jazz and rock recordings. He played on Nina Simone, Deodato, Jobim, Burrell, and Grover Washington records. And, most famously, he was on Lennon's Imagine lp (my wife still gets royalty checks from it, and she also has a pencil sketch that Lennon drew of himself during the recordings).
DeleteThomas - I am still a deadhead and ABB fan. I was a Grateful Dead taper/trader. But I was into jazz before I became a deadhead and big fan of theirs. These days my listening more centers on jazz, African and chamber music
Deletepmac - I went to school with Creed Taylor's son and we played in a a few small jazz groups togtether. The kid was really humble and quiet. That being said, I disliked much of the CTI overly produced sound and considered CTI a jazz killer in the 1970s
DeleteI was never a huge CTI fan, either. But, I do still regularly listen to the Jobim CTI releases and Burrell's God Bless the Child.
DeleteWe lived in South Africa. I became a music lover at a very early age, with the encouragement of both my parents. - When I was about three or four ny dad came home one day with a portable gramophone (phonograph) and a very large stack of 78s, mostly the popular songs of the mid-1930s to the early 1940s. My mom had studied piano and was knowledgable about the classics. I loved everything that I heard and spent a lot of time listening to the records. In those days the only home entertainment was the radio and gramohpone records. My love of music of all types continued to grow but I hadn't yet been exposed to any modern jazz. That happend only in 1954 at the age of 14 when I acquired a 10" LP by the Australian Graham Bell traditional jazz band, which I played for a schoolmate who loved traditional. He told me that he had an LP of jazz that he couldn't stand, so perhaps we could do a swop? I asked if I could hear it, and whenI did I was blown away by hearing for the first time the modern sounds of jazz - it was "You're Hearing George Shearing'. I was hooked. The swop was made and from then of I was addicted to modern jazz. I did my best to find out as much as I could about the music, which wasn't as easy back then as it would be much later, but I succeded to a small degree, and I managed to find records by Parker and Gillespie, The MJQ, and other pioneers of the music. I eventually ended up with an ernormous collection of books on the subject as well as magazines and of course the music itself on LP. It never stopped and at the ripe old age of 84 I like to reminisce about the American jazz musicians who I saw and heard back in S.A. such as the great Tony Scott, Bud Shank and Bob Cooper with June Christy, John Mehegan, Richard "Groove" Holmes and others.
ReplyDeleteThat's my story.
Mel, you probably mean the Graeme Bell Jazz Band :)
DeleteMy jazz journey really started with the R&B boom in the UK in the 60s. Having listened to the likes of The Stones, Yardbirds, Graham Bond etc I wanted to dig further into the real thing. My local public library was fundamental in my musical development as I went from Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Pete Williams etc to the more sophisticated urban blues of people like T Bone Walker, plus the homegrown Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. This led me to explore jazz through albums like Ellington At Newport '56, Sonny Rollins Vol 2 (with Monk and Misterioso), Shelly Manne's My Fair Lady, numerous Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers albums, all of which I borrowed (and taped) from my public library. There was no stopping me now and I obsessively recorded jazz programmes on the BBC and even Voice of America. When I started work I was able to gradually build my own jazz collection and occasionally see live jazz, including Roland Kirk at Ronnie Scott's. My tastes developed over time and I was soon heavily into Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane etc. I am still overwhelmingly interested in the golden age of modern jazz (as well as mainstream, big bands etc) and although I appreciate the talent of many contemporary jazz musicians I prefer to spend my time with the music that first got me into jazz.
ReplyDeleteVietnamese immigrant to France, i was introduced to jazz in my twenties by a student friend from argentina via his idol Gato Barbieri period impulse.From this i had discovered the duo of Gato & Dollar Brand Confluence and plunged deeply in the third world jazzmen & latin flavored jazz or spiritual jazz like PSanders DCherry CCorea AMoreira and the free jazz,avant garde, european expatriates in Paris like SLacy MWaldron ASilva SPotts AShepp or CBaker
ReplyDeleteListening Gato i was introduced to his idol Coltrane and so on,the impluse artists, Coltrane to Miles via Kind of blue, i felt in love w BEvans voicing and AJamal trios.The piano trios led to KJarrett CCorea , HHancock and all the Greats from Blue Notes catalog. Living in Paris i 'm exposed to european jazz recordings from Ecm, Enja Criss Cross Steeple Chase..In short, discovering jazz is like following a multicomplex treasured trip. I'm on my seventies and the hunting is still my passtime favorite and the river is still deep for new or old gems..
First of all, I would like to say that I was one of those who thought that this was music for people who thought they were very intelligent and looked down on others (when I finally heard a jazz album I realised that a lot of great funk came from there, and the great singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and great jazz musicians also made me keep on trying to see who was playing with her).
ReplyDeleteMy beginnings were with Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis (his electric era), Hermeto Pascoal, Herbie Mann, George Benson (a little later, because unfortunately I first heard some of his albums from the 80s), Eumir Deodato, Airto Moreira, Lalo Schifrin, Mongo Santamaría, Tito Puente and some others.
Later on I heard John Coltrane – A Love Supreme and some others and I got into free-jazz a little. In Spain, free jazz was not heard on the radio (and even less now, only the occasional jazz programme at night) and more jazz-rock. In general, little jazz could be heard on the radio. On public TV, some live jazz could be seen (here are some of the live performances that were not destroyed: https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/jazz-entre-amigos/ ), TV in Spain is awful now (you also don't see any films from before 1980, and even less black and white films, except for 1 or 2 films a week) and there is no music anymore.
Others first jazz of my first days: Nina Simone,John Mayall.
ReplyDelete