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Jazz musicians: One name is all you need...


Rooster_Ties

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Includes one-word nicknames...

Miles

Trane

Monk

Ornette

Tolliver

Herbie

Pops

Duke

Gotta be hundreds more... Don't know where this is going, but this thought (and thread topic) occured to me as I was typing various names into the eBay search engine. I mean, you really don't ever need to type "Ornette Coleman", since there ain't gonna be no hits on "Ornette" that don't apply to the Ornette. :g

I also thought of this when my wife chided me for refering to so many jazz musicians by just their first name, as if I knew them personally. (Me: "Herbie this", and "Chick" that, and - well you get the idea.) In some ways, it's kind of like an 'insiders code', between jazz fans - when you don't need to mention full names in order to be completely understood.

Ever meet somebody for the very first time, find out that they're a jazz fan with some reasonably semi-deep knowlege of the music - and instantly start talking about common musical interests, using the shorthand names (either just the first name, or last - whichever more uniquely identifies the artist in question), that we all know and love?? And, how easy that is to do, without even giving it a second thought??

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Unfortunately, one of my personal favorites doesn't have a unique enough first or last name to do this with...

Joe Henderson (Several other Joe's and a couple Henderson's too.)

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And then there's poor, poor Bill Evans (both of them!!) - neither one of them has a unique first/last name combination!!! :( ( ;) )

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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Waller or Navarro? Diz Dizley? Dizzy Reece? Hank Crawford? Duke Pearson? Meredith Monk? Monk Montgomery? Buddy Miles?

Come on, we need some REAL distinctive names: Dusko, Sirone, Muhal, Airto, Avishai, Santi, Tootie, Olatunji, Hannibal, Patato, Cachao, Varty, NHØP, Åke, Vijay, Urbie, Paquito, Jiggs, Grady, Cedar, Muruga, Badal, Nana.....

Mike (not even close)

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The one name that came to mind that could cause confusion, which somebody mentioned, is Sonny. There's 3 that come to mind, Rollins, Stitt and Clark. Which one comes to your mind first? To me, it's Stitt, but objectively, it's probably Rollins and probably no one would think of Sonny Clark.

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