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What Artist/LP/CD Got You Hooked On Jazz


mrjazzman

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I could not appreciate or enjoy acoustic jazz until I heard McCoy Tyner's Trident album. During my first listen to Side One of Trident, the doors flew open.

I had a similar experience with Jarrett's 'Death and the Flower' c. 1975. I'd heard all sorts of contemporary spins on jazz (and some of Jarrett's solo ruminations) but this was the first time I was gripped by an acoustic quartet with lengthy soloing. I recall deciding that this was something worth following up.

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As a young trumpet player in the early 70's who knew NOTHING about jazz, two things happened:

-my new band director played Maynard Ferguson's 'MF Horn II' for me

-my mother, bless her heart, who knew nothing about jazz, knew that I played trumpet and was getting interested in it (via the Maynard incident above) so she

bought me an album from her Columbia Record Club subscription -- Freddie Hubbard's 'First Light', still one of my favorite albums. Yeah, it's 'produced', but

the production and playing are excellent and Freddie just plays his ass off on it.

bigtiny

There were other factors too....the above mentioned band director got me into jazz band, sent me to my first live jazz concert (Stan Kenton 1972), which just killed me, and basically

introduced me to the world of jazz. The next year, I moved onto high school and got a new band director -- he had played bass for Duke Ellington for six years and taught a host

of young players including Stanley Clarke and Jon Lee. His name is John Lamb. After the jump start I'd gotten the previous year, hanging out with Mr. Lamb and hearing stories about

playing with Ellington and life on the road.....well, I was a goner, let's put it that way =:-)

bigtiny

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after many years of listening to rock music from my late teens through my 30th birthday (from Credence, Traffic, Steely Dan, Zeppelin, Cream/Clapton, Dead, Allmans, Hendrix, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Gong, Gentle Giant, Eno, Roxy Music, etc. and espceially througout my college years, the band that had it all for me - King Crimoson - especially that amazing 73-74 band that produced Larks Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black, Red and that incredible live LP - USA

I had always somehow knew about jazz - I had a shortterm friend in College in 1978-79 - my freshman year - who had a Coltrane or Freddie Hubbard LP that he played a couple of times - and maybe there was something - and I alwayes remembered a day in January 1979 when I heard about a guy named Charles Mingus who had just died of ALS (to me Lou Gehrig's disease). I had also during those years picked up Birds of Fire and The Inner Mounting Flame which had me try a later McLaughlin LP which did nothing for me and I left it at that...

then after falling out of touch a bit with music despite having some interest in REM, Little Feat, maybe Husker Du and The Replacements in the later 80's, I had lost most of my passion for sound/music etc.

But I always heard about some crazy band/man named Captain Beefheart - and so on impulse I bought a cassette of an album called Trout Mask Replica - probably bought it around 1990 when I was 30 - and I HATED it but I would not and then could not stop listening to it - it prompted me to buy a CD player as I had to hear ALL of it - I discovered something to care about in music again and reading about him - he mentioned two names Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman - I wasn't going there yet - but I woke up one day in 1991 or 1992 and bought 4 CD's:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Bill Evans - Waltz for Debby

Charles Mingus - Live @ Antibes

Thelonious Monk - Monk's Music

liekd them - missed the rock beat but kept listening and THEN - I really heard "Well You Needn't" and it was over

until....

I used to visit Crazy Rhythms in Montclair, NJ and I bought lots of stuff there - but then I heard a few more things and I heard Evan Parker on the radio for his 50th birthday on WKCR and it was HORRIBLE - but I would listen again - and I searched and read and found modern jazz where GIANTS walked this earth and STILL do.

Subsequent listening showed me that it isn't just a historic music which is what I gather from so many who still listen to much of the same/similar version of our initial passion - I discovered Parker - Stitt - McLean - Lyons - Osbourne - Chapin - Darius Jones, etc -

or Hawkins - Mobley - Gordon - Coltrane - Shepp - Ayler - Parker - Mitchell - Malaby - Dunmall and all in between - what I blessing to learn to listen

Monday I see Paul Dunmall/Mark Dresser live among others and Tuesday I see Hamid Drake/Darius Jones/William Parker/Cooper-Moore among others and I am blessed to love this music, old and new and I thankful that I opened my ears to all of iit as I knew already that Don Van Vliet said "if you got ears you gotta listen"

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Not that it is important to anyone but me, I want to add Monk's Music. This is probably the first jazz record memorized. Monk, Hawk, Coltrane, Ware, Blakey - whooooo Jack!

Monk's astonishing solo on Well you needn't, there's a moment's pause, Monk shouts "Coltrane, Coltrane", Art Blakey plays a bloody great press roll, Trane steps up to the mike and starts wailing. Magic... Not my first experience but an important early one.

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I'm 14 years old, it's the day after Christmas, in 1969 in suburban central NJ. I'm hanging out with my next door neighbour, exchanging news on what presents we'd received. My neighbour has a set of stereo headphones (a rarity in those days). The record on the turntable (one of his older brother's) is Miles Davis, who is just a vague name to me. To save us the trouble of finding another LP to put on, he drops the needle onto the first track. It's The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, and within about 20 seconds I'm hooked: the time feel of the rhythm section (not that I would have known what that meant) and the sound of Miles' harmon muted trumpet (not that I knew what a harmon mute was). The next day I go to the local Korvette's and buy Round About Midnight (they don't have the Prestige album with The Surrey), and that's the start.

BTW, Keith Tippett has said that it was Jimmy Cobb's cymbal crash at the end of the intro to So What that got him into jazz. I like the specificity of the moment as catalyst...

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there's a moment's pause, Monk shouts "Coltrane, Coltrane",

One rumor is that Coltrane was nodding out, Monk called his name, and he sprung to consciousness and played a great solo, but I've also seen this account questioned.

I always assumed that there was confusion about whether Hawk or Trane was to go next, but who knows. Also, as I recall Monk displaces the rhythm of the tune at the end of his solo and that may have caused a moment's confusion. The other thing that really grabbed me on that track was the way that Gigi starts his solo with a little two note lick which Monk immediately copies and then persists with like a dog with a bone. It gives you just a little sympathy with Miles wanting Monk to lay out when he soloed. I suspect you needed a steady nerve to keep your line going with such strong comping.

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I could not appreciate or enjoy acoustic jazz until I heard McCoy Tyner's Trident album. During my first listen to Side One of Trident, the doors flew open.

Nine out of ten dentists recommend that Tyner album to their patients who chew gum.

That is very funny!

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there's a moment's pause, Monk shouts "Coltrane, Coltrane",

One rumor is that Coltrane was nodding out, Monk called his name, and he sprung to consciousness and played a great solo, but I've also seen this account questioned.

I always assumed that there was confusion about whether Hawk or Trane was to go next, but who knows. Also, as I recall Monk displaces the rhythm of the tune at the end of his solo and that may have caused a moment's confusion. The other thing that really grabbed me on that track was the way that Gigi starts his solo with a little two note lick which Monk immediately copies and then persists with like a dog with a bone. It gives you just a little sympathy with Miles wanting Monk to lay out when he soloed. I suspect you needed a steady nerve to keep your line going with such strong comping.

The issue is extensively discussed in Robin R D Kelley's biography of Monk. Kelley denies that Monk "comps" at all - rather he plays counter melodies to the soloist's efforts. He says Monk does nothing to show the soloist the way and quotes Charlie Rouse who says that if you don't already have a firm grasp of the changes when playing with Monk you're lost.

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Mingus - Tijuana Moods. This was '89-'93. I could recite the whole path/web from there.... Getting a few Mosaic sets helped, as became eager to sponge up the written perspectives. Read Swing to Bop. And I was a car (reverse) commuter, driving 60-90 min each way listening to Schaap, Gribetz. And I liked going to clubs while my ears were getting big. Best night was Blackwell's group at the Vanguard.

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[The other thing that really grabbed me on that track was the way that Gigi starts his solo with a little two note lick which Monk immediately copies and then persists with like a dog with a bone. It gives you just a little sympathy with Miles wanting Monk to lay out when he soloed. I suspect you needed a steady nerve to keep your line going with such strong comping.

I did a few gigs with Joel Forrester, and one of the things he must have learned from Monk was how to throw curveballs to put you off balance. Thank heaven for the steady Dave Hofstra. There's that line in "Round Midnight" where Dexter tells Lonette McKee, "Listen to the bass player." In some situations, truer words were never spoken.

And I was a car (reverse) commuter, driving 60-90 min each way listening to Schaap, Gribetz.

You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to listen to Gribetz. Does he still have that spot? (IIRC, Tuesdays at 5AM). I first met Sid in the late '70s, pre-KCR, when he was running a poetry reading series at the West End.

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You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to listen to Gribetz. Does he still have that spot? (IIRC, Tuesdays at 5AM). I first met Sid in the late '70s, pre-KCR, when he was running a poetry reading series at the West End.

I catch him occasionally on WKCR online. Great! That NYC voice is something the BBC jazz presenters can't match! :D

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I catch him occasionally on WKCR online. Great! That NYC voice is something the BBC jazz presenters can't match! :D

For you he's on at a reasonable hour. Sid's got that classic New York Jew delivery.

Some of those WKCR guys have been on air for about 40 years, like Schaap and Sharif Abdul Salaam (whom I first knew of as Ed Michael). When I started listening to WKCR DJs included Fred Seibert, who was with MTV from the beginning, and Rich Scheinin, who started Oblivion Records and now writes for San Jose Mercury News. I think I first became aware of WKCR in 1970 during the Coltrane marathon, and I did lots of all-nighters in August of 1973 listening to the Bird marathon, just before starting college.

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I catch him occasionally on WKCR online. Great! That NYC voice is something the BBC jazz presenters can't match! :D

For you he's on at a reasonable hour. Sid's got that classic New York Jew delivery.

Some of those WKCR guys have been on air for about 40 years, like Schaap and Sharif Abdul Salaam (whom I first knew of as Ed Michael). When I started listening to WKCR DJs included Fred Seibert, who was with MTV from the beginning, and Rich Scheinin, who started Oblivion Records and now writes for San Jose Mercury News. I think I first became aware of WKCR in 1970 during the Coltrane marathon, and I did lots of all-nighters in August of 1973 listening to the Bird marathon, just before starting college.

Not to forget Tom Pomposello, who did a good blues show. And then there was Ashley Kahn, who did a less good blues show. I'd like to forget him.

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Not to forget Tom Pomposello, who did a good blues show. And then there was Ashley Kahn, who did a less good blues show. I'd like to forget him.

Yes, I remember "Honest Tom" Pomposello. I believe Oblivion records did an album of his. He died fairly young. Did you also listen to Cowboy Joe's Radio Ranch (Paul Aaron)? Is that the same Ashley Kahn who writes the books about famous jazz albums?

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Not to forget Tom Pomposello, who did a good blues show. And then there was Ashley Kahn, who did a less good blues show. I'd like to forget him.

Yes, I remember "Honest Tom" Pomposello. I believe Oblivion records did an album of his. He died fairly young. Did you also listen to Cowboy Joe's Radio Ranch (Paul Aaron)? Is that the same Ashley Kahn who writes the books about famous jazz albums?

Yes - same Kahn.

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When I was about 16, a friend was given his dad's record collection. One of the first jazz albums that caught my ear was John Coltrane's Africa/Brass. Another song caught my ear but I didn't catch the artist and title. I went to the music store to buy Africa/Brass but they didn't have it, so I bought Giant Steps.

Later through sheer luck I found the song that caught my ear on a Best Of Blue Note compilation. It was Horace Silver "Song For My Father." Then I bought multiple compilations on Blue Note, Verve, Impulse, etc. including a Wes Montgomery comp. Grant Green's Alive and a Miles Davis Best Of on Blue Note were also among my first jazz CDs.

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probably Borboletta-Santana in HS. Early college favs were Intensity-Charles Earland and the Crusaders' albums. Pat Metheny as well. Stan Kenton's big band at an outdoor festial before his accident made a monster impression on me as a freshman.

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