What got you into jazz?

[7/4]

Mahavishnu later lead to A Love Supreme and Bitches Brew.

Funny, but that's exactly what a Hari Krishna said to me once at the airport.

[Hot Ptah]

I was a big fan of the rock music of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I also had some blues albums and had a few jazz albums, which a musician/guest sold to me at the Howard Johnson's I was working at, in a minimum wage job while going to high school. That purchase included a scratchy copy of "Kind of Blue", which did little for me. It was O.K., but did not floor me or anything.

I saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Miles Davis on ABC's "In Concert" TV show. The Mahavishnu program made me go buy "The Inner Mounting Flame" and "Birds of Fire", which I liked. I also bought some Weather Report albums, and saw Return to Forever in concert. I was listening to Zappa's "Grand Wazoo" and "Waka Jawaka", and had an urge to get into jazz, but did not know what to get or how to start.

I heard McCoy Tyner's "Trident" album when it first came out and it hit me. The doors flew open in my mind and I could hear and understand jazz. So I took a lot of rock albums to a used record store in Madison, Wisconsin where I was living and got a bunch of cash. I took the cash to Discount Records on State Street in Madison, and a sympathetic clerk (wish I knew his name) picked out the following for me. (I have since learned that Chuck Nessa had managed that store for several years, a few years before this fateful day, and that the guy who waited on me was most likely trained by Chuck). The clerk picked out:

The Genius of Louis Armstrong, Vol. 1 (2 LP set)

This Is Duke Ellington (2 LP set, RCA, an early greatest hits set)

Billie Holiday-God Bless The Child (2 LP set, Columbia)

The Best of Count Basie (Deccas)

Herbie Hancock--Maiden Voyage

Art Blakey--Free For All

John Coltrane--The Art of (2 LP set of Atlantic recordings)

John Coltrane--2 LP set on Impulse, his "greatest hits" for that label, with a white bird on the cover

Charles Mingus--Better Get It In Your Soul (2 LP reissue of "Ah Um" and "Dynasty")

Charles Mingus--Tijuana Moods

Thelonious Monk--Brilliance (Prestige 2 LP reissue of "Brilliant Corners" and "4 x Monk x 5")

Oliver Nelson--The Blues and the Abstract Truth

Sonny Rollins--Saxophone Colossus and More (a Prestige 2 LP reissue)

Wes Montgomery--Beginnings (Blue Note 2 lp set)

Cannonball Adderley--Somethin' Else (the clerk said it had the best Miles Davis playing of any record in the store)

There were other LPs too, I just can't remember which ones were picked out on that day and which ones I bought a short time later. I am sure of the ones listed above. I also remember that the clerk told me that virtually anything on Blue Note or Impulse was good.

That got me off to the races. I never looked back. I was hooked. I took a jazz history class with Richard Davis within a few years after that. I was a jazz fanatic by then, but that really helped to intensify my interest. In that period I saw some live shows in Madison and also at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, a possible drive from Madison in one night and back (especially when you are young). I saw Gary Burton, Pat Martino, Modern Jazz Quartet, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, Dizzy Gillespie, a trio of Randy Weston/Richard Davis/Don Moye.

I moved to Ann Arbor right after the class with Richard Davis, and there was a great deal of live jazz presented by the Eclipse student organization and by a small club, the Earle. Within my first six months in Ann Arbor I saw live concerts by Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Betty Carter, Cecil Taylor Unit, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, George Lewis, Dave Holland, James Newton/Anthony Davis, Roscoe Mitchell, Count Basie with Joe Williams, Leon Thomas, Larry Coryell, Mary Lou Williams, Stan Getz, Max Roach, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Kenny Burrell, Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Chico Freeman, Hubert Laws, Mose Allison, Art Blakey, Marcus Belgrave and the Ellington Orchestra. There were also truly great jazz shows on the student radio station, with a lot of avant garde played. After that, it was a foregone conclusion that it was going to be a lifelong obsession.

Edited June 23, 2007 by Hot Ptah

[skeith]

Mahavishnu later lead to A Love Supreme and Bitches Brew.

Same for me, except that I would add that I think Cream, particularly those long instrumental jams, prepared me for Mahavishnu

[7/4]

Mahavishnu later lead to A Love Supreme and Bitches Brew.

Same for me, except that I would add that I think Cream, particularly those long instrumental jams, prepared me for Mahavishnu

I was only 12 or 13 when I heard Mahavishnu, I don't think I heard any the long Cream jams by then. More likely the Allman Bros., Hendrix and Santana.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

It's interesting how many came in through Rock. Is that an age thing?

MG

[mikeweil]

Maybe so - when I started listening to music it was the second half of the 1960's, when the Beatles dominated the radio. Almost no jazz on German radio, at least not during hours acceptable for a schoolboy. AFN had half an hour of jazz every evening around 7 p.m., but the Germans not before 10 p.m. - I stumbled over that AFN show by accident as I was listening to the science fiction stories to practice my English - the jazz was before or after that. They always had the latest releases, even some rare stuff like Lloyd McNeill's self-produced first album that I never saw anywhere - still would like to buy it.

During afternoons while doing homework it was classical stuff, mostly 20th century, later it was jazz or pop.

But I wouldn't say I came to jazz through rock - rock, pop, clasical and jazz were all present on records in our household, and I listened to all of that at the same time and took my choices - still do it like this.

Edited June 22, 2007 by mikeweil

[K1969]

It's interesting how many came in through Rock. Is that an age thing?

MG

I'm 34 which makes me a late 70s/80s kid. For me "rock" then - the Clash, U2, The Police and the crap pop glut like Phil Collins and Huey Lewis that you couldn't get away from - pushed me away to look for something else. I've since learnt that in the 70s the boundaries were much more blurred between rock and jazz. Folk and Jazz often mixed too - check out John Martyn's Solid Air for Tony Coe's beautiful playing. But in the 80s it was so compartmentalized - or seemed that way at least. Rather than rock, it was private radio in London - bold DJs like Gilles Peterson broadcasting illegally around London from vans - who broke me into Jazz. That plus the Crusaders of course. So in short I can dig how people of a generation before found jazz via rock. But for me, when Jon Bon jovi ruled airwaves, rock was more of a barrier

Edited June 22, 2007 by K1969

[Big Al]

John Coltrane--The Art of (2 LP set of Atlantic recordings)

That was the first Trane record I ever heard. It alternately seduced me and scared the hell outta me. Took me years to recover and finally appreciate its majesty!

[Shawn]

It's interesting how many came in through Rock. Is that an age thing?

MG

Yeah, I think it's an age thing. I was born in 1970, when I was barely 3 I discovered the turntable. Found some 45's at my Grandmothers (Hey Jude/Revolution, Satisfaction, Jupiter's Child, etc) and I was a fanatic. By the time I was 4 I had my own stereo and had started listening to some of the records my Mother had around the house (Beggar's Banquet, Pearl, Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits, Machine Head, Paranoid, Deja Vu, etc).

First concert was The Doobie Brothers w/UFO opening up! Saw KISS on the Paul Lynde Halloween TV special in 1976 and it changed my young impressionable mind. Saw KISS on the Destroyer tour in 1978. Most of the Eighties was spent alternating between progressive rock & heavy metal. First "jazz" records I got were:

[Hot Ptah]

It's interesting how many came in through Rock. Is that an age thing?

MG

I think so. If you came of age between 1967-76, and were an intelligent youngster who cared about music, you probably listened to the more challenging rock groups of the day, including those with some improvisation, extended instrumental passages and non-routine song structures--all of which could be a bridge to jazz.

It would have been unusual for a high school or college student in those years to listen only to jazz and not the rock music of the day. It would have made you a real eccentric in America, and it would not have been easy to find the jazz records or any jazz broadcasts or magazines, in many American cities.

There were kids in my high school class who mentioned Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Don Ellis--but they were also listening to the Allman Brothers and other rock groups.

Just look at all of the threads here at Organissimo about the late 1960s/early 1970s rock musicians.

[BruceH]

Listening to it.

[Hot Ptah]

Listening to it.

You are fortunate. For years I listened to it and didn't "get it".

[RDK]

It was either jazz or doing a nickle in Sing-Sing.

[Noj]

My uncle and oldest brother played heavy metal constantly. I was fed a steady diet of AC/DC, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Scorpions, and many other purveyors of the screaming guitar solo and long hair. My other older brother listened to alternative rock, so I heard The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, New Order, REM, Social Distortion, and others. This was in the late '80s when I was around 12-13yo. In my quest for my own identity I began to listen to skateboard punk bands such as Firehose and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and since rap started to gain its momentum I began listening to Public Enemy, De La Soul, and NWA's Ice Cube. At the same time a friend who lived across the street introduced me to Jimi Hendrix.

Jimi changed everything for me. To my ears, his guitar solos ran circles around the pyrotechnics of heavy metal. Jimi's solos had substance, and seemed to be more suited to the overall theme of the song. So, I started delving into Classic Rock, getting into Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and many others. Jimi Hendrix, for a time, was the pinnacle of all music to me. More and more I enjoyed hearing instruments and focused less on singing.

At the same time I was still listening to heavy metal, alternative rock, and rap. Some of my friends knew club DJs and I learned about how rappers were sampling old jazz songs for their music. I began to want to hear those old jazz songs, so I learned a few names and bought a few cds. I dug through Mom's old records and she had a Wes Montgomery plate. A friend was given his father's record collection and introduced me to John Coltrane's Africa/Brass and then played me a song which really shifted everything for me: it was "Song For My Father" by Horace Silver.

I then bought "Song For My Father" on a Blue Note Records compilation, which, along with the Blue Note Rare Groove series, inevitably led me to the Blue Note Bulletin Board, where I discovered there are the coolest bunch of music addicts in the universe! People with massive collections were quick to offer me advice on what to buy and names to look for. In about 6 years, I have acquired hundreds of albums with a seemingly flawless success rate due to knowledge gained here. My family and friends comment on my "huge" collection and I laugh knowing it is miniscule in comparison to others. I look at my collection, and mostly see the holes.

Edited June 22, 2007 by Noj

[freeform83]

Tom Waits, who remains my favorite musician.

However, after getting into Monk freshman year of college, it took me less than a year to find Eric Dolphy and free jazz. Some of the free-er stuff reminded me of what I loved about spacey pre-Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd (circa freshman year of high school) -- only more so.

Edited June 22, 2007 by freeform83

[Rosco]

When I was a kid- about 6 or 7- my mother had a part time job in a charity shop. One day she brought home this stack of old records- mostly 78s!- which I started to work my way through.

They were mostly awful. However, in amongst the stack were three 78s by Earl Bostic. I was immediately transfixed by the sound of the saxophone and- on a couple of sides- the vibraphone. Also in that stack was a 45 of Dave Brubeck playing 'Take 5' (a different take than the LP version, which I've still yet to see issued on CD!)... again I was hooked by the saxophone.

After getting bored with TV at the age of 11 I started to listen to the radio constantly- and I mean constantly! I would stay up till midnight, with a radio under the covers searching for interesting things to listen to. It could be jazz or blues or classical or reggae, whatever. Radio seemed a lot less 'compartmentalized' in those days. I started hearing jazz-funk things like the Crusaders and Herbie Hancock's disco-oriented stuff.

At that time we had an excellent record department in our local library (it is now pitiful!). I started to explore all the artists that interested me... Herbie, John McLaughlin, Weather Report, Chick Corea... all for free! (I also head Coltrane for the first time- Ascension!!! Scared the shit out of me)

Of course the name I kept hearing in relation to all these artists was Miles Davis. Someone I knew owned a copy of Bitches Brew, which just blew my 15 year old mind. Shortly after I found a copy of KOB, which blew it again for entirely different reasons.

When I was 17 I got a job in a record distributors. I was like a kid in a candy store. I got to hear ALL kinds of amazing music; jazz, blues, folk, world music, r&b, soul, rock and roll. An amazing time where I just soaked up everything I could. As much as I love discovering new music now, I still try and get the feeling I got delving into all that different stuff during that period.

[JSngry]

I suspect that my story's pretty much like everybody else's. When I was a freshman in high school, this senior chick in the band really dug me. She was into Trane & Charles Lloyd. She invited me over to her place after school one day to make out and the changer was loaded with jazz lps. Of course, making out soon became a lot more. I developed a Pavlovian association with jazz and hot unbridled sex that continues to this day. To this day, whenever I hear "Sombrero Sam" I feel my testicles being licked, and I must excuse myself from any situation where "Lonnie's Lament" is playing, lest I create some embarassing stainage,

[clifford_thornton]

[Morganized]

In 1962, I was looking for something that had more depth than rock 'n' roll. Started reading down beat and listening to records, and I was on my way.

Same here, albeit almost 30 years later.

26 years later for me, and I don't know if I was looking for more depth than rock 'n' roll, but I know I was bored by what was on the radio.

Fast forward to high school when I hung around with a lot of band guys who turned me on to Maynard Ferguson and the very album which opened this thread, The Crusaders' Southern Comfort. Not long after that, Taxi was a popular show on TV which lead me to Bob James and other soft jazz like Grover Washington

Crusaders, Grover Washington, Bob James - these kinds of musicians have probably led more of my generation towards discovering Gene Ammons and Booker Ervin than anyone else. Funny when you think how, for some, they and their ilk represented the nadir of jazz.

My first exposure to jazz was in junior high, when I joined the jazz club (I played in the concert band and it seemed to be a logical move) and I played bass clarinet and tenor sax there. We played pretty straight-forward stuff like Vince Guaraldi, but me and another dude in the club would have these wild-ass jams on our own, just two tenors and we had a blast. My mom bought me the popular jazz records at the time (early 80's) like Grover Washington Jr, Spyro Gyra and Chuck Mangione.

Funny enough, I was watching ESPN Classic the other day and they showed a clip of Grover playing the National Anthem at the 1982 playoffs between the 76ers and the Celtics.

My story is similar to many already posted. As a teenager I loved old rock and roll, early Beatles, Stones, etc. Through that I ran into John Mayhall and followed that thread for a while. Got extremely bored with pop radio. Knew the tune in three notes. That led to the Contempory Jazz of the times...Grover Washington, the Crusders, Bob James, David Sanborn, yada yada.......followed that thread for a number of years until it went completely "smooth"......and couldn't take it anymore. Decided to look to the past and picked up Kind of Blue and a Coltrane compilation of his Atlantic output.....After that I was hooked on the real thing and wondered why it had taken me so long to find it.....Many CDs and many years later I am still intrigued by music and the artists who make it.

[Chalupa]

I suspect that my story's pretty much like everybody else's. When I was a freshman in high school, this senior chick in the band really dug me. She was into Trane & Charles Lloyd. She invited me over to her place after school one day to make out and the changer was loaded with jazz lps. Of course, making out soon became a lot more. I developed a Pavlovian association with jazz and hot unbridled sex that continues to this day. To this day, whenever I hear "Sombrero Sam" I feel my testicles being licked, and I must excuse myself from any situation where "Lonnie's Lament" is playing, lest I create some embarassing stainage,

Might well close down the board. No one is going to top this post. Ever.

[K1969]

I suspect that my story's pretty much like everybody else's. ( ) When I was a freshman in high school, this senior chick in the band really dug me. She was into Trane & Charles Lloyd. She invited me over to her place after school one day to make out and the changer was loaded with jazz lps. Of course, making out soon became a lot more. I developed a Pavlovian association with jazz and hot unbridled sex that continues to this day. To this day, whenever I hear "Sombrero Sam" I feel my testicles being licked, and I must excuse myself from any situation where "Lonnie's Lament" is playing, lest I create some embarassing stainage,

Yeah right, I too got abducted by jazz nymphomaniacs almost every other day. Had to get cellophane covers for all my LPs. Kind of a drag.

[sidewinder]

One of the major causes was my parents picking up a Buddy Rich UK Liberty LP called 'Mercy Mercy Mercy' in the early 1970s - cool cover of Buddy in kaftan. At the time I was taking brass instrument lessons and this one got me hooked on both big bands in general and Buddy in particular (if I recall right the LP was in the bargain rack at Woolworths for £0.50 ). I also recall reading in the notes about Art Pepper making a comeback of sorts on this LP and marvelling at his fantastic alto playing - he was pretty well a forgotten man at that time. From there it was into delving through a jazz-mad uncle's record collection with Charlie Parker 'Pick of Parker' on Verve, Wardell Gray Memorial Album Vols 1 and 2 on Transatlantic and the rest is history.. (within a year or so of this there were major reissue series over here on Prestige, Milestone and Impulse and my record collection started to fill up).

Edited June 23, 2007 by sidewinder

[MoGrubb]

What got you into jazz?

We did some Glen Miller stuff for a talent show in jr hs. Then I was

asked to play bari with a stage band in hs. We did some Kenton,

Dorsey, etc. very badly. Anyhow I went to hear Basie, Kenton and

Ferguson live, and marveled at how the soloists stuck to their guns

while the band blasted around them, got more interested in what the

soloists were doing than the bands, per se. Pretty soon small groups is almost

all that intrigued me, e.g. Trane, Monk, Bill Evans, Cannonball, etc.

The energy level that these groups produced sealed it forever for me

for small group jazz.

[porcy62]

Consider the posts of Chuck and JSngry, put them in the correct order with the thread's title and drawn your own conclusion.

Edited June 23, 2007 by porcy62

[J Larsen]

When I was in HS I spent a lot of time over at a friend's house. I was really into punk/indie/rap at the time. His father had what at the time seemed like a massive cd collection to me (this was at a time when not yet everyone had switched over and there were still large vinyl and cassette sections at Tower). Anyway, the guy had a lot of jazz, in addition to a lot of semi-obscure 60s rock that I got into. He used to make me one or two tapes a week, always rock, except one day he gave me a tape with Kind of Blue on one side and A Love Supreme on the other. From there I explored.