Mix tapes

[Hardbopjazz]

Did anyone create mix tapes of jazz music back in the 1980’s?  If yes, what did you include?

Edited March 15, 2021 by Hardbopjazz

[EKE BBB]

I never did that for jazz. However, I loved to create mixed tapes for rock. Origins of ‘playlists’. 😊

[Dan Gould]

Not quite in the 80s but very early 90s. I transferred a lot of LPs to cassette for car listening and then I started wanting to program excellent comps to keep the pleasure-level high. I also brought these tapes into the tennis shop I was working at in 91-93 or so, to keep the work day swinging. 

I tossed those tapes before the last move to our current home but I would say, especially given the time period and where I was at in collecting, that the cassettes very heavy on hard bop. 

(At the time my mother had a side-business promoting antique shows and she thought it would be a nice touch to play jazz over the PA system of the Field House during buying hours. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to program 3-4 90 minute cassettes for her, but this only lasted a couple of hours on the first day of that show, as apparently the sound of drums coming from overhead led multiple dealers to think that their merchandise was falling off the shelves and to complain to her about it.)

 

[JSngry]

The Organissimo Blindfold Test is nothing if not a mix tape.

[Dub Modal]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

The Organissimo Blindfold Test is nothing if not a mix tape.

 hell yeah

I've only been into jazz for a few years so my mixtape days were all other genres. I still have a few. It's now a funny memory of carrying around a big tape case in my car. What a relic of a bygone age. After that it was CD cases and now - an iPod (and I'm still old school with that thing!). 

[Rabshakeh]

I was generation minidisc, and only had a few tapes.

I loved my mixes, and spent hours drawing colourful labels etc., but it was all metal, east coast hip hop, dub and hardcore.

Then and now I have always preferred enjoying jazz as an album-length artform, not on a song by song basis. The sole exception being classic bebop, where there's not much choice. 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Rabshakeh

[Milestones]

Maybe not the 80s, but certainly the 90s.  I know that a couple were a mix of ballads, while most of them were artist features: Miles, Monk, Coltrane, Sonny, etc.  Does a true mixtape have to mix the artists?

 

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Milestones

[Big Beat Steve]

6 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Not quite in the 80s but very early 90s. I transferred a lot of LPs to cassette for car listening and then I started wanting to program excellent comps to keep the pleasure-level high.

Same here, but earlier and later. I started doing mix tapes some time in the early 80s as on-the-road listening entertainment for the car player in my 50s classic car(s) and have kept this up until some years ago. I still have quite a few of the tapes (some have become entangled or torn or otherwise unplayable). But the cassette players in my old cars now one after other giving up their ghost after s30 to 35+ years of faithful service. So I may make the move to CD-Rs at last.
I usually program the tapes the way I'd program them for DJ sets at record hops (with maybe a shade more up-uptempo flagwavers, though ). The majority of my mix tapes were (real 50s) Rock'n'Roll, Rockabilly, Northern Band sound et al. tapes but as for JAZZ mix tapes, I did quite a lot of R&B tapes, often "theme tapes" such as several danceable jump blues mixes as well as "honkin' sax" compilations (though I've found that as I've advanced in years I've found I am less and less in the mood to work myself into a frenzy while at the wheel ). I also did lots of Western Swing (cum-Hillbilly boogie) mix tapes and several of these remain my all-time favorites for listening pleasure while driving. Some jazz mixes may appear oddball to some but they were/are highly entertaining. E.g. one that included all my versions of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" strung together, and another with all versions of "Rag Mop". Lately I've been thinking that I ought to do a mix tape or CD-R of all the versions of "Perdido" that I have, BTW. They all have that certain groove to me.

Edited March 16, 2021 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Do you have this one?

 

[Dan Gould]

BBS reminds me of a CDR-only mix I once made, and shared by request with a member of the board, inspired by Cuscuna's description of "sons of Sidewinder" tunes that had to be included on subsequent recordings:

Sidewinder and Sons

 

[mjzee]

When I attended college in the mid-70's, our radio station was true free-form: whatever you wanted to play.  Jocks were allotted slots based on defined categories (rock, jazz, classical, soul, oldies), but you could really play whatever you wanted.  There were no playlists, no preferred songs, no limitations on track time...really, our only restriction was no obscenities, per the FCC requirement.  It was a wonderful time for music, and we regularly mixed genres, eras, themes.

I still make "mix tapes," only now they're CD-Rs.  I swap a mix once a month with a good friend of mine.  It's a great creative outlet for me.  My most recent disc included Gerry Mulligan, John Scofield, Larry Young, Sun Ra, B.B. King, Count Basie with Billie Holiday, Jimmy Smith, Ry Cooder, Casey Bill Weldon, T-Bone Burnett, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Chicago, Captain Beefheart, Iggy Pop, Ramones, Hot Tuna, Deep Purple, Bob Marley, and The Wailing Souls.

[Big Beat Steve]

24 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Do you have this one?

 

Actually no, but that IS a nice one. Thanks for the hint!

[Pim]

Not really mixtapes but more mix cd-r's: my father burned met two cd's called Jazz voor Pim vol.1 en vol. 2. It mostly was a mix of his jazz collection with stuff by Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. I was around 8 years old then. Have listened to them lots of time in those years and those cd's definitely got me more into jazz. 

[mjazzg]

2 hours ago, Pim said:

Not really mixtapes but more mix cd-r's: my father burned met two cd's called Jazz voor Pim vol.1 en vol. 2. It mostly was a mix of his jazz collection with stuff by Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. I was around 8 years old then. Have listened to them lots of time in those years and those cd's definitely got me more into jazz. 

That's a lovely story. I'm just surprised to read that there wasn't any Mal on either volume!

[Pim]

6 hours ago, mjazzg said:

That's a lovely story. I'm just surprised to read that there wasn't any Mal on either volume!

Haha believe it or not: my father doesn’t own a single album by him. In fact I don’t think he even knows who he is. He is a real jazz fan but his collection was always pretty limited. I think he has about 150 jazz cd’s but he spinned them from my birth until I left the house on a daily base. I am pretty sure I could easily drop every artist name from his collection. To give an idea: Art Tatum, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Michel Petrucciani, Modern Jazz Quartet, Oscar Peterson, Paul Desmond, Stan Getz. Something like that. There’s not even a single Blue Note record! It’s not that he doesn’t like it, he just never really got in touch with it. 
 

Its funny to see how big that influence could be on your own musical taste. Some of his albums are still among my favorites while they are not necessarily counted among the artists milestones. Like The Genius of Coleman Hawkins, god I love that record. I’m also still a huge Oscar Peterson fan while I am aware he isn’t the most popular on places like this board. It really is the sound of my youth.

From that musical fundament I started exploring the world of jazz from the age of 15. I remember playing John Coltrane’s Giant Steps endlessly during boring French lessons on my IPod Shuffle  that was my dads only Coltrane recording.