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What Artist/LP/CD Got You Hooked On Jazz


mrjazzman

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There's a generation gap here. I became interested in jazz when I first heard 2-beat music such as Firehouse 5 on a once-a-week radio program. The South Bend record stores / departments had listening booths where I could pretend to be a custopmer and hear 45s - Bessie Smith, JRM, Armstrong Hot 5 reissues. Al Smith's Record Bar ("The House of Jazz" IIRC) was downtown and even advertised in Down Beat. The first disk I bought and soon lost was a Lu Watters 78. Read JRM/Lomax, Really the Blues, and eventually Inside Bebop at the neighborhood branch library.

A few years later I got a 45 rpm player and found a dime store that sold jukebox cutouts, mainly Chess/Checker blues.

They weren't scratched at all, either. WLAC in Nashville was a good education in blues, good for a lot of Midwestern kids. Finally in college near Chicago in 1958 I started seeking music in earnest and finding more recent jazz, Bartok, and Seymour's record store, ancestor of Jazz Record Mart.

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I worked as a barback/busboy in a club when I was 14 & 15 called Duffy's Backstage. The first night I worked the band playing was Miles' with Wayne and Tony and I guess Herbie and Ron ( don't recall exactly). I was emergency extra help because of the crowds during that run and stayed on from then. It might of been that the next band that worked there after that was Cannonball ( and quickly after that BB King).

Those bands that played there were a major impact on me, not only because of the music and the energy level, but also the musicians themselves with their personalities/ lifestyle.

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When I was a kid, someone gave me a sampler "the story of jazz". Most of it was "oldtime" or "traditional" and I didn´t like it that much. Then it sounded to me like music from a comics strip. But the last two tracks on it where Miles Davis "Milestones" and a said "wow", the greatest music I ever heard. And some Mingus from 1959 from "Mingus Ah Um"....those two tracks changed my live forever. I spent my whole money to get as much Miles and Mingus as I could. From those two great musicians I was able to go back to bop and Bird etc. and to the New Thing Ornette etc. .

But I´d say Miles and Mingus were the first musicians who made me think in a serious manner about jazz.....

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This one. Technically my dad's property, but I'm taking good care of it! In fact, after I took this picture, I decided to put it on the record player, and I'm happy to say listening to the opening track even today still gives me the same thrill as it did when I first heard it in 1987!

post-113-0-44292200-1337576947_thumb.jpg

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There's a generation gap here. ... The South Bend record stores / departments had listening booths where I could pretend to be a customer and hear 45s - Bessie Smith, JRM, Armstrong Hot 5 reissues. Al Smith's Record Bar ("The House of Jazz" IIRC) was downtown and even advertised in Down Beat.

Yes I guess there is. Record stores like this - including listening booths - just weren't around anymore (least of all over here) by the time most of us "young(ish) uns" got into jazz. ;)

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Edited by Big Beat Steve
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When I first bought records in 1956 it was listening booths and 78s. (I don't expect that overlap existed for many years.) I remember being chased out of Dobell's for occupying the listening booth too long with 78s by the likes of Meade Lux Lewis and Pinetop Smith. :lol:

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First ones that really caught my ear were 'Gerry Mulligan Meets The Sax Giants Vol 2' on UK Verve reissue LP, Buddy Rich's 'Mercy Mercy Mercy' (UK Liberty) and CBBB 'More Smiles' (MPS BASF).

Other than that, I was digging 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep' :lol:

Edited by sidewinder
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My parents had Brubeck's Time Out, and I enjoyed that quite a bit. I think the first jazz I bought was a cassette of Miles Davis Sketches of Spain (maybe backed with In a Silent Way) and a bit later Bitches Brew on 2 cassettes.

It was pretty early in college when I started buying CDs and I focused on Monk and Mingus. I don't really recall why I gravitated to them rather than other, perhaps more popular artists. Oh, actually it just came to me. My parents got me the Smithsonian History of Jazz (on cassette), so I did have a bit of background fairly early on to guide my later purchases. While I still like Miles and Brubeck, it really was Monk and Mingus that were the most responsible for my falling hard for jazz and its dissolute ways.

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As a teenager in the mid-fifties I flirted with trad, big bands after I'd tired of rock. But when I bought an Esquire EP with two tracks from Donald Byrd's Byrd's Eye View and heard 'Hank's Other Tune' I was knocked out and that's how it started. Fifty plus years later I'm still listening to the same stuff.

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As a teenager in the mid-fifties I flirted with trad, big bands after I'd tired of rock.

Just for curiosity's sake and without wanting to sidetrack this topic unduly: What ROCK (i.e. NOT pre-rock pop ballad crooners and chirps) could there have been in Britain in sizable portions that you already would have tired of in the MID-fifties (like you wrote)? ;)

Did the UK really catch on to U.S. Rock(n'roll) to THAT extent that early?

Pete Frame's book "The Restless Generation" (great read for those interested in popular music of that era and the culture that goes with it, BTW) doesn't quite sound like it.

Just wondering ... ;)

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in my late teens I was listening to a lot of Tom Waits (pre-Swordfishtrombone) and came to the realistaion that I wanted to hear some music akin to his backing band...I knew this was what people called 'Jazz' but had no other clue as where to start. Off I wnet to Southampton's Central Music Library and borrowed some Jazz LPs chosen solely on the cover photos! To this end I have to thank Ben Webster for looking cool in a hat and holding a saxophone for my first Jazz listening. From there it was the Berendt book and Miles, Coltrane and lots of Mingus, especially "at Monterey" which was an early purchase.

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As a teenager in the mid-fifties I flirted with trad, big bands after I'd tired of rock.

Just for curiosity's sake and without wanting to sidetrack this topic unduly: What ROCK (i.e. NOT pre-rock pop ballad crooners and chirps) could there have been in Britain in sizable portions that you already would have tired of in the MID-fifties (like you wrote)? ;)

Did the UK really catch on to U.S. Rock(n'roll) to THAT extent that early?

Pete Frame's book "The Restless Generation" (great read for those interested in popular music of that era and the culture that goes with it, BTW) doesn't quite sound like it.

Just wondering ... ;)

If we take mid-50s to mean 1954-57, within that period in the UK we had massive sales of discs by Bill Haley, Elvis, Fats Domino and homegrown rock 'n rollers like Tommy Steele, together with rock 'n roll riots! :excited: (See my post #13 above.)

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I´m aware that many people have been turned on to jazz by Dave Brubecks "Time Out".

Well here´s my personal aproach to it: When I was a kid and just got a few names, I used to write them down and ask people what they think about those artists.

Brubeck was on the list, though I didn´t even know what instrument he plays, just figured out it might be from the same generation like those I already admired: Miles, Mingus, Monk, Bird.....

Someone saw my "list" and said "hey kid, get some Brubeck, he´s the greatest. Naive as I was I thought well if he´s the greatest, it might be hot stuff like Mingus, Miles, Bird all together, cookin´like mad.

When I finally heard some of it, it didn´t work out for me. Pardon, I´m sure Brubeck was and still is an exceptional musician/composer and all you want, but somehow I couldn´t and still can´t connect...

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Someone saw my "list" and said "hey kid, get some Brubeck, he´s the greatest. Naive as I was I thought well if he´s the greatest, it might be hot stuff like Mingus, Miles, Bird all together, cookin´like mad.

When I finally heard some of it, it didn´t work out for me. Pardon, I´m sure Brubeck was and still is an exceptional musician/composer and all you want, but somehow I couldn´t and still can´t connect...

You'd just discovered the incredibly wide range of substyles in jazz. :lol:

Reminds me of how I initially felt when I was first confronted with the MJQ when I had been used to all-out swing (both big band and small groups) as my favorite dish as well as some initial taste of Dizzy, Bird and other early bebop heroes.

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For me, getting hooked on jazz wasn't like flipping a switch after hearing a certain recording. I was conditioned over the course of years. As a kid, hearing Vince Guaraldi in the Charlie Brown cartoons. I also seem to remember a Droopy cartoon where he had a group of fleas that performed Dixieland jazz. As a teen, I liked a lot of jazzish/horn related stuff like Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, Steely Dan and Tower of Power. Through friends who were in band I was exposed to Maynard Ferguson and the Crusaders. The Crusaders were probably my true gateway into jazz, but only after about 2 decades past the time I really listened to them regularly. I was cleaning out some old boxes and found an old Crusaders cassette, gave it a listen and wondered why I haven't been listening to them over the years. That lead to pursuing their older, more jazz-based Jazz Crusaders stuff. That lead to Brubeck's "Time Out" which was OK, not really getting my attention though I thought Paul Desmond was the attraction in that group. With Vince Guaraldi in the back of my mind, I wanted to try even a smaller sound and went with a piano trio, Oscar Peterson's "Night Train". That too was nice but the recording that really set the hook was "Lester Young With The Oscar Peterson Trio". That was the sound I was looking for and the flood gates opened.

Edited by mikelz777
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I remember that Grover Washington (Mr. Magic) and Stanley Turrentine (CTI recordings) got me interested enough in jazz to start looking in the back catalog.

Maybe the most important single record was Louis Armstrong July 4, 1990/July 6, 1971 (A 2-LP collection of RCA recordings).

The first Armstrong record that I bought was advertized as being "his greatest recording confirmed by Satchmo himself, bla, bla, bla." It turned out to be just the opposite - one of his weakest recordings live with the All Stars in the latter 60s in poor sound with very little trumpet. I felt disappointed, but fortunately didn't give up and bought another one: the RCA recordings. I still remember the shivers that went down my spine the first time that I heard Pops blow on those 1932 RCAs. There was no certainly turning back from there.

Edited by John L
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Same with me as with Mike - slowly, over the years. Other recordings I remember include Miles' "Amandla" (which, I mentioned it before, my mom loved), several by Ella (most notably "Ella Swings Lightly" with a great band directed by Marty Paich - another one mom loved). Then there were some of my dad's LPs, such as "This Here is Bobby Timmons" and Art Blakey's glorious "Free for All" (which remains to this day my Blakey favorite). I don't quite remember which (very few) jazz titles the local library had (back then a village of around 8000 inhabitants, it grew a bit, library must have made some advances, too), but one they had was a cheapo bootleg of The Giants of Jazz live somewhere in Scandinavia (at least the disc said so ... it was on that label with the dotted covers, Jazz Up or something). I didn't get that. Then dad bought Diana Krall's second disc, which quickly took permanent residence in my room. .. I loved her Nat homage and the follow-up "Love Scenes" when in highschool, but by then I went in all kinds of directions, checking out stuff from Miles ("Workin'" and "Kind of Blue" were the titles at the library) to Coltrane (my dad's LP of "A Love Supreme", the library's "Master Works of Coltrane", which took me a long time to get). Around that time I started collecting, got the Atlantic Trane box for x-mas when I was out fairly new, then soon ordered my first Mosaic (the TKM set about which I'd read a very favorable review in some newspaper, and I just had to get that one, no matter what a nuisance it was, back in the days of money order and slow but cheaper surface shipping). Anyway, when I was 17 or 18 I had plenty of Mingus (1955-1964), Miles (all eras), Coltrane (most of the OJCCDs, lots of Impulses), Monk (the Blue Notes, several prestige and Riversides), Bill Evans (several Riversides), Cannonball (several Riversides, Somethin' Else, the Landmark LP edition of "In Europe"), Dolphy, plenty of classic Blue Note (JOS, Blakey, Mobley, Morgan ...), and more than a dozen Mosaic boxes, too - and from there I just went on and on :)

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There's a generation gap here. ... The South Bend record stores / departments had listening booths where I could pretend to be a customer and hear 45s - Bessie Smith, JRM, Armstrong Hot 5 reissues. Al Smith's Record Bar ("The House of Jazz" IIRC) was downtown and even advertised in Down Beat.

Yes I guess there is. Record stores like this - including listening booths - just weren't around anymore (least of all over here) by the time most of us "young(ish) uns" got into jazz. ;)

mYdhqTxsZA.JPG

7rGQqWebzr.JPG

Speaking of listening booths, they were before my time, but a friend of mine's father opened a store in 1946 that sold books, records, and prints. The listening booths in the store were set up by Avery Fisher - later of Fisher Electronics and Avery Fisher Hall - who was an army buddy of my friend's father. The store is still in existence in a different location and run by the son, though it hasn't sold records for years. Just a bit of local history.

Edited by paul secor
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