First Jazz you ever listened to?

[mikeweil]

Do you remember the first Jazz piece(s) you ever consciously listened too, and at what occasion, under which circumstances.

Mine were a few EPs from my brother's collection, or rather his wife to be, who worked in a record shop for some time:

The Modern Jazz Quartet (Prestige, the Vendome session)

Lionel Hampton Trio (with Billy Mackel, Vogue, This Is Always and September In The Rain)

some Dixie band I do not recall.

Must have been in the late 1960's.

Then at an otherwise disastrous students' party, Coltrane's Equinox.

[Rooster_Ties]

My uncle played a number of things for me, when I was probably in high-school. They didn't really leave all that much of an impression on me at the time, but later - when I was in college - he played more and more for me, and some of my earliest specific memories of particular jazz artists were probably of Charlie Parker, and Diz, and probably also Miles. Also, lots and lots of big-band material, including Duke, plus a dozen other more conventional big bands, plus some Kenton probably. And, oddly enough, Sun Ra - who my uncle also loved to tell stories about.

So, I guess my earliest jazz-related memories were really more about the stories my uncle told me, more than the music itself. It wasn't until about my junior year of college, before I took the "Intro to Jazz" class, offered by the music department. Did my final term-paper for the class on Sun Ra -- not because I particularly "got" Ra's music back then, but because I was so taken with the stories my uncle had told me in the few years prior. I can't remember any specifics, but the stories were probably about my uncle having seen the Arkestra at the Chicago Jazz Fest in the early 80's (which would have been only about a decade before I did the paper).

I remember him (my uncle) talking about all the costumes, and dancers, and lights, and the WILD, WILD solos the various band members took. I don't even think my uncle really "got" Ra all that much, when you get right down to it. I think he just got off on the spectacle and theatrics of the whole thing.

The first jazz recordings I ever owned (I had cassette tapes of them, made for me by a friend), were of KoB backed with Nefertiti (with the tune "Prince of Darkness" from Sorcerer, tacked on at the end of the tape, after Nefertiti). And another tape of "Mode For Joe" backed with "Power to the People". I about wore those two tapes out over those first couple months, playing the Miles tape non-stop some days.

[slide_advantage_redoux]

My dad had a nice swing era LP collection, although most of it was the white swing bands. He did have a couple of Louis Prima/Keeley Smith sides that cooked, but the lp that stood out from those he would spin (usually on Sundays) was a Louis Jordan and his timpani 5 re-release. That was some great sh*t, and I still dig it.

The first jazz side of any impact that I owned was a Clark Terry/Bobby Brookmeyer quintet (the one with China Boy on it). (It is upstairs with most of my LPS, but I am too lazy to retrieve it for the sake of this post)

I think it was on Mainstream. My uncle gave it to me when I was first starting band, and my initial impression was "these cats look really square" (what with those big ass black framed glasses that Brookmeyer wore along with his conservative haircut)

Boy was I wrong! I stuck the side away and didn't really check it out until I was in High School. What a GREAT side...all that improvised counterpoint. I wish I had all of the sides that C. Terry and B. Brookmeyer recorded together.

Edited January 9, 2004 by slide_advantage_redoux

[Jim R]

It's kind of vague for me. It would have been when I was in high school (early 70's), when there was a lot of jazz influence in "rock" music of the day... but to try to focus on the first that most people would label "jazz"... it might have been Eddie Harris & Les McCann's "Swiss Movement"... or maybe one of the Crusaders' albums. The Crusaders were the first live jazz I saw (twice), and that made quite an impression.

Of course, I'm sure I heard some jazz well before that (maybe Pops or Basie or Ella or ? on TV variety shows in the '60's), but my parents owned few recordings, and no jazz. There was lots of music in our house when I was a kid (from my Mom's piano or my Dad's radio), but mostly classical and pop standards.

[brownie]

My brother got the jazz bug around 1952 when I was about to reach 13. He kept listening to Sidney Bechet who was a big star in France in those years. I really enjoyed those Bechet tunes. Then he played some Armstrong. We listened to radio shows by the one and only Hugues Panassie. Panassie's tune song was 'Cornet Shop Suey'. This sounded so much better and enjoyable than the other music I was lending an ear to at the time!

[vibes]

As a punishment when I was in high school, my father used to make me listen to an Ellis Marsalis CD he had gotten by mistake from Columbia House. At the time, I listened primarily to death metal, so listening to this Marsalis stuff was torture. He'd make me listen to the whole CD before I could go back to my own music.

The way I got into jazz is a little unusual. My interest started with some tracks on Atheist's (a death metal band) last album which were somewhat jazzy. I decided to try looking for some vibraphone music, because for some reason it reminded me of music I liked in the "Tom & Jerry" cartoons I liked as a kid. A local CD store had a computer that would allow you to search by instrument, so I searched for vibraphone music and settled on a Verve Lionel Hampton/Oscar Peterson comp. That was about seven years ago, and today, I primarily listen to jazz. My jazz collection is several times larger than my metal collection ever was. Amazing how that happens.

[Bright Moments]

sun ra:

[Parkertown]

Kind Of Blue

Totally reeled me in, in the spring of 1998. I had found the Columbia Years boxed set at the library, ON CASSETTE! That got me started, so I bought my own Kind Of Blue and then I never looked back!

I completely pursued all the Miles I could find for about a year and a half, then started delving into the music of his sidemen, and so on. Now I've probably got about 3000 or more jazz cds. It used to be my main focus and I ignored rock/pop for awhile. But now I spend my time listening to both about 50/50.

I'm glad I started listening when I did, as it was around the same time that the jazz reissues market really started cranking out the remasters. Because of this, I was able to avoid most of the older issues and get the newer 20/24 bit remasters.

But, I've also learned that just cuz it says 20/24 bit remaster, doesn't always mean you're gonna like what you hear. I now know more about whose mastering work I like and don't like.

Edited January 9, 2004 by Parkertown

[Man with the Golden Arm]

I've sort of nibbled away at jazz.

Like Evan above my first ever album that got played all the time was the original score by Neil Hefti to the Batman TV show. Boy do I wish i had that one just for hangin on the wall. I remember running around the living room with a little blanket safety pinned around my neck.

But my earliest memories (and I believe I might have shared anecdote on the BNBB so excuse for sounding senile) were my Dad's Jimmy Smith albums. He just had two - 'Bashin', the Unpredictable...' and 'The Monster'. The local drive-in eatery that was a diner in the winter had a juke w/ "Walk On The Wild Side" as a single. Still one of those yesterday like memories of dropping a nickel a few times when we would go there for a weekly nite-out. Probably had more to do w/ it being something familiar and even more to do with flipping through the buttons and watching the lights on the box. 'Bashin'' side one had heavy rotation at home along with some Sinatra, and my favorite of all covers "Whip Cream and Other Delights" (Had a fit when Mom informed me that she got 50 cents for it at her garage sale while I was in college.)

Never paid much mind to anything jazzy after that save for a friend's "three words for you" lecture after telling him how I thought Clarence Clemmons was the nuts on this album called "The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle": "...John Fucking Coltrane. Man!"

Well after that I again didn't take the hint and became an LP buyer (at $2.99 - $3.99) of Stevie Wonder and the Kudu Grover Washingtons. So I guess the first jazz I really played and actually "listened to" would be 'Mister Magic' and 'Feels So Good'. Wore those babies out! Then I went to college and just started listening to the same crap everybody else did - late 70's and 80's rock. Not even something cool like the Talking Heads but just rock...sheesh.

Not until the re-issue era and having a design teacher who was into Reid Miles (I could've cared less at the time) did I put it together and see the light. My first CD purchase was a pair of import Japanese Blue Note comps, (and 'Aja'). At that time 'Chronic Town' and 'Murmur' were heavy stuff but once I uncrated that little Sony-D4 and pulled out those two discs that I paid just an unbelievable amount of money for at the time, $16 or so each!!!! and cued up "Moanin'" it was all over.

[Alexander]

Around the time "Bird" was released in theaters, my dad picked up a Verve compliation which was designed to capitalize on the film with the misleading title "Bird: The Original Recordings." I listened to it, but I must admit that it didn't reach me at the time, and it would be many years before I was willing to give Parker another chance.

Several years later, a friend of mine exposed me to Miles and Trane. I'm pretty sure that "Milestones" was one of the albums we listened to that weekend, along with "Kind of Blue," "E.S.P." and "Miles In The Sky."

The first jazz album to really REACH me was a Horace Silver compilation.

[marcoliv]

i don´t remember exactly which album was but for sure it has been one of the CTI releases of Benson or Hubbard probably when i was 2 or 3 years old

Marcus Oliveira

[Peter Johnson]

Brubeck's "Time" series (all of them) on LP, courtesy of dad, about age 5 (1976)!

[chris olivarez]

Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith and Chico Hamilton "the Dealer".

[jazzbo]

Dad had lots of Goodman (big band sides, he played a little clarinet in high school but never afterwards) and Ellington (a few, including Uptown) and lots of Glenn Miller (go figure) as well as jazzy Gershwin interpretations of this or that type (he's a NUT for Gershwin.) Mom had some Brubeck lps, mainly Stardust on red vinyl, and Bossa Nova USA. These were part of the listening rotation in our home, and I heard jazz also at a friend of the family's, more modern bop stuff, and Louis Armstrong who I used to love to hear and watch on tv.

Then in Africa Peace Corps volunteers would give me records they didn't want from their "care packages" sometimes received, and I got a Leo Wright and a Charles Bell on Atlantic that I played and played and sort of sealed the jazz deal for me. I started trying to find more jazz there in Swaziland, but there wasn't much; when I returned to the US in a year or so I found quite a bit. . . .

[John B]

Kind of Blue and Blue Train, right around the same time.

It was hearing Miles' Tribute to Jack Johnson for the first time that really set me off.

[The Mule]

I think it would have to be big band music from this Reader's Digest set:

This was in my grandmother's record collection when I was a kid and I would listen to it from time to time. The sleeves on the records had really cool charcoal-pencil drawings of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, etc. (see below) and the box came with an interesting booklet illustrated with some great photos. I eventually asked my grandmother if I could have it and I brought it home and listened to it often. I still have it in my collection, although it's gotten pretty dog-earred over the years...

[mikeweil]

Thanks for sharing your memories!

Keep 'em comin'!

[Selim Sivad]

My first exposure to jazz? The same as it was for probably about 90% of other American kids...

SS

[JohnS]

I have a vague memory of hearing the Gerry Mulligan Quartet on the radio when I was in my early teens and thinking how different and interesting it sounded. Not long after I heard "Pennies From Heaven" by Stan Getz- a friends father had some jazz 78s. It was a year or so before I really got into jazz after a brief flirtation with r&b and the pop of the day.

[montg]

In college I remember reading somewhere that Dylan thought Miles Davis was cool, so I checked it out, buying 'In A Silent Way'. I liked it, but it didn't really lead me any deeper into the jazz waters.

About 7 years later I heard a Sunday afternoon big band radio show that I liked. I bought a Basie CD, heard Roy Eldridge going over the top at Newport with the the Basie band, and I was hooked.

[Big Al]

I decided to try looking for some vibraphone music, because for some reason it reminded me of music I liked in the "Tom & Jerry" cartoons I liked as a kid.

Same here! I loved the scores from Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies; still do, in fact. Man, some of those scores really swung! So that was always in the back of my mind.

But the first time I consciously listened to a jazz record was when I put my dad's copy of Blakey's Mosaic LP, when I was 17. I still remember hearing that ensemble come roaring out of the speakers, followed by the most thunderous drums I'd ever heard. (At the time, my idea of thunderous drums was John Bonham. Still is, in a rock sense anyway).

Never been the same since (neither has my wallet)!

Edited January 11, 2004 by Big Al

[GA Russell]

Remember Bosco and Cookie cartoons? I watched them as a toddler. As I recall, their music was Duke Ellington or someone strongly influenced by him.

[medjuck]

Same here! I loved the scores from Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies; still do, in fact. Man, some of those scores really swung! So that was always in the back of my mind.

Carl Stalling, who did the music for the Warner Bros. cartoons, often used pieces by Raymond Scott. Also I have a Jimmy Lunceford version of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down which is the theme for the LoonyToons films. Merry Melodies used Merrily We Roll Along which is P.D. The writers of Merry-Go-Round get royalties everytime one of the LoonyTunes is on tv!

[chris]

The movie "Bird" and the controversy about it got me interested, though I'd heard a variety of jazz before. My first intense listening was "Giant Steps" and "Kind of Blue" -- can't get much more cliched than that!

[tjobbe]

I guess when looking at my current avatar you can easily guess what it was... so it was not only the american kids starting with Vince G. tunes although you'll never get them out of you head .....Linus and Lucy simply swings

The first records I got where old Dave Brubecks "Impressions of...." my father doesn't whant to play on -at that time- new Revox tunrtable and some Chris Barrber Dixie stuff while the first self-paid one was at age of 14 Pat Metheny's LP Watercolors in 1977 ..

Cheers, Tjobbe

EDIT: although those jazz record loving made you a little alien at school at those times

Edited January 11, 2004 by tjobbe