Your Early Parameters for Buying or Avoiding Certain Jazz Albums

[Gheorghe]

2 hours ago, BillF said:

Reading other contributions here, I realise my experience in 1957-58 was untypical as it predated the mass emergence of the 12" vinyl album. But I did see something of the later era when from 1970 I started teaching (at the age of 30) in an art college and had 17-year-old students who were avid collectors of rock albums. Jazz was very out of favour with them - they openly mocked my Love Supreme album! So I was understandably puzzled when one of them rushed in raving about Miles Davis, of all people! He'd just bought an album that looked more like one of theirs than one of mine. It was Bitches Brew.

Speaks volumes!

But many rock fans eventually became interested in jazz through jazz rock a la Miles, Headhunters, RTF, Billie Cobhan-George Duke and so on. 

I still listen often to Bitches Brew  but always wonder why it became so popular among youngsters then, since this is quite intellectual music, it´s not so "radio playing" like "On The Corner". 

It´s strange that I being a 1959 born, rock never really appealed to me, I came to rock through 70´s Miles, Hancock , and so on since this was the time. So it was the other way round. 

I still meet jazz fans of my generation, who also listen to let´s say Led Zeppelin or so and say this is more intelectual rock.

Well, my musical intellect is satisfied with jazz. If I want or must listen to something else, it´s usually "easy music" like shlagers.

[Rabshakeh]

28 minutes ago, Gheorghe said:

But many rock fans eventually became interested in jazz through jazz rock a la Miles, Headhunters, RTF, Billie Cobhan-George Duke and so on. 

John Zorn's overtures to the metal world were quite important to me in increasing the amount of jazz that I listened to. I don't listen to that stuff at all anymore, but it was important then. I have met a lot of other people who crossed over that same bridge. 

28 minutes ago, Gheorghe said:

I still listen often to Bitches Brew  but always wonder why it became so popular among youngsters then, since this is quite intellectual music, it´s not so "radio playing" like "On The Corner". 

On The Corner always struck me as the much more intimidating and 'advanced' album of the two, but I have also never understood why BB was so well received - it has none of the catchy hooks you get in other fusion hits of the time.

Looking back on it, and as I have mentioned in other threads, I remain cross at the extent to which predatory major label marketing and unchallenged jazz education assumptions held me back as a teenager in the 1990s from getting into jazz - leading my tottering first steps down paths that were never going to appeal to a 15 year old listener. There's a reason why my younger family members who grew up in the internet age are jazz fans whereas my own peer group who came of age pre-MySpace were not. 

Edited September 9, 2021 by Rabshakeh

[mjazzg]

Forever grateful for the local public library LP selection (I even ended up managing it later).  Allowed me to dip and dive amongst a wide variety of names, most often chosen on how "cool" the player on the front cover looked.  All in an attempt to find the music that was behind Tom Waits on his pre- Rain Dogs days. Ben Webster was an early hit.  Then it was Berendt's book and following names on sessions. 'A Love Supreme' and 'Kind of Blue' hit the target on first listen.  Then it was Mole Jazz, Mingus, Blue Note DMM reissues, Steve Coleman, David Murray, Anthony Braxton and continued borrowing from the library.

[BillF]

10 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Forever grateful for the local public library LP selection (I even ended up managing it later).  Allowed me to dip and dive amongst a wide variety of names, most often chosen on how "cool" the player on the front cover looked.  All in an attempt to find the music that was behind Tom Waits on his pre- Rain Dogs days. Ben Webster was an early hit.  Then it was Berendt's book and following names on sessions. 'A Love Supreme' and 'Kind of Blue' hit the target on first listen.  Then it was Mole Jazz, Mingus, Blue Note DMM reissues, Steve Coleman, David Murray, Anthony Braxton and continued borrowing from the library.

Yes, the library was very important in my jazz education, too. Leeds Public Libraries were very progressive in including jazz records in their borrowing stock as early as 1958 when I was 18. Borrowings I particularly remember included Miles Davis' Collectors' Items, the Prestige Gene Ammons jam sessions, the 3 Hampton Hawes studio albums on Contemporary, Herman from the late 40s and early 50s and the Gillespie late 40s band. Buying these was out of the question on grounds of cost. When I started university in that year, my weekly rent, including meals, was less than the cost of 2 jazz records!

No mention of Blue Note, you'll notice. They weren't available in the UK till 1962. I remember the launch with Stanley Turrentine's Look Out!, Sonny Clark's Leapin' and Lopin' and a few others.

[Rabshakeh]

Same here. Exeter University had an excellent AV section in its library, with lots of LPs. I remember my first encounters with Heliocentric Worlds and Agharta there. I often wonder who bought the LP collection when they were sold off.

[Teasing the Korean]

Inner sleeves, the ones that featured small photos of other albums on the label, were a big help.

[Ken Dryden]

When I first started collecting, I would buy Schwann catalogs occasionally and marvel at the many interesting looking LPs that weren't available in New Orleans. Then Peaches opened in an old A&P in Ft. Lauderdale and I suddenly found lots of LPs that I had only seen in small type in Schwann. I paid attention to the little diamond next to an LP in Schwann, as that meant that the item was being deleted by the label, so that often made it a priority to find. It was also a fun weekend trip to journey to Atlanta from Athens to visit the Peaches on Peachtree. As I ended up working in Atlanta after finishing my graduate degree in 1977, I continued to shop there until the chain folded in the 1980s, even meeting a young Rob Gibson (who would later be involved with Lincoln Center), home on summer break from his studies at UGA. Sadly the days of well-stocked record stores are a thing of the past in most cities.

[sidewinder]

I remember reading Philip Larkin’s book of Daily Telegraph jazz reviews back in the 70s and really enjoying it. It gave some good pointers, was a highly entertaining read and the stuff he slagged off (e.g. Miles and Coltrane) was an indication to check it out. Many of the issues were even then already deleted though.

The Max Harrison et al ‘Essential Jazz Records Vol 2’ was the go-to bible as well. Again, frustrating as much of it was deleted at the time.

Edited September 9, 2021 by sidewinder

[JSngry]

23 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Inner sleeves, the ones that featured small photos of other albums on the label, were a big help.

I never have found that Bob Hope record on Cadet.  Never even seen it.

[Teasing the Korean]

17 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I never have found that Bob Hope record on Cadet.  Never even seen it.

Or the LSD album on Capitol.

[JSngry]

I think I saw that one at one point, but it was long past the time they could have told me something that I didn't already know.

[Rooster_Ties]

I first started getting into jazz more deeply my senior year in college (1990-91), and CD's were starting to be "it" in terms of the media of choice.  But living in a small town of 30,000 on the western side of upstate Illinois (going to a really small college of 1,000) -- it was an hour's drive to any record stores of even moderate interest, and a 3-4 hour drive to St. Louis (or Chicago).  So initially I borrowed a lot of jazz from the college Music Dept's listening library (it wasn't huge, but I was really just beginning) -- and I made cassette dubs of the stuff I liked best.  I also had total access to the LP library of the college's radio station that I worked at -- and I borrowed a lot out of there too.  All the best stuff (classic Blue Notes, etc), had long been pilfered by that point, probably a decade or two earlier.  But there were a number of the brown-cover BN's (of unreleased sessions), and some LT-series titles.  And a fair number of Prestige reissues from the 70's (two-fers, with different covers, etc), plus a lot of 70's fusion.  So I sampled as much of that as I reasonably could -- taping some things, but not lots.

Far as buying goes, since I tried to go for CD's, and I was very cost-conscious, I pretty much bought any used jazz CD of classic 50's and 60's material that at least looked interesting on paper (and that came from a label with covers that looked more "thought-out" I guess I would call it).  Anything on Blue Note, but I was a  little more selective about what I got on Impulse (though I didn't come across much used Impulse stuff).  Some Prestige, but even that early on, I knew I liked 60's jazz best of all.  My very first four (4) jazz albums I ever listened to repeatedly (that I'd made cassette dubs of, and listened to on auto-reverse for days on end), were...

• KOB, backed with Nefertiti (plus "Prince of Darkness" from Sorcerer)
• Mode For Joe with "Gary's Notebook" (from Sidewinder), backed with Power To The People

And I must have listened to nothing but those two tapes the first month I made them.  I "liked" 50's hardbop, but I "LOVED" 60's jazz like the Second Great Quintet and all of Joe Henderson's run on Blue Note -- and FORTUNATELY, the college radio station had TONS of Joe's Milestone output on LP -- all of which I taped barely 6 months later.  Many of those Henderson Milestone dates I had for a full year or two before I got several key Henderson BN titles.

So right off, I knew my jazz "center of gravity" was about 1960-75, but there was a lot from the 50's I loved too -- but just as much 50's jazz I only "liked" (but didn't love).

I never really got bitten by the bug of much pre-50's jazz.  I've grown to appreciate a lot more of it, but little pre-50's jazz makes me 'swoon' (what can I say?) -- and even from the 50's, there's little I'm really "fanatical" about.  Hell, I only got bitten by the Tristano-Konitz-Marsh bug in just the last 18 months.

Early on I did buy some single-artist compilations, but I got away from that within 5 years, mostly.

[JSngry]

What I've noticed here is that most everybody not just had access to good record stores from jump, but also that your times of discovering jazz took place in a college town and/or a reasonably urban area. That was so not my experience, I lived in a small town in semi-rural East Texas. But a lot of weird stuff was in place here, time/place/people. I feel cosmically blessed that this music took root in a person who by any normal standard should have just....done something else altogether.

But, as I learned later. Many musicians of many stripes come from small towns, country folk. Didn't know that at the time, though.

[Rooster_Ties]

All thru college and my two years of post-college (still in the same small college town, working on my second degree) -- I did have 3-4x yearly pilgrimages to Euclid Records and Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis (where I was from), and I got up to Chicago once and occasionally twice a year -- and dearly remember Rose Records (later Tower, iirc), and Jazz Record Mart (which I only got to a grand total of maybe 4-5 times between 1990 and maybe about 2008.

One of my fondest memories was of finding a small box of maybe 30 cut-out Blue Note CD's near the from counter at Jazz Record Mart, maybe around 1992? -- and finding perhaps 8 titles I'd never heard before, most of which I'd never even SEEN before (or had any idea about)...

...one of which was The Prisoner, which (with Joe Henderson, and being from 1969) ticked SEVERAL boxes as something I'd probably love -- and I still remember listening to it for the very first time when I finally got back home a couple days later, and being utterly transfixed.  For MANY years, The Prisoner was my all-time favorite Herbie leader-date -- and even now, it dances back and forth between it and Speak Like a Child as being my ultimate Herbie leader-date.

I think it was then -- that very day -- that I suddenly realized there was a HUGE world of top-top-top-tier jazz (as *I* defined top-tier, mind you), that I simply had no fucking idea even existed.  Like, there was literally probably 100-200 albums out there (unknown to me) that I could easily be temped to include on a top-20 "desert island" list of music I would never want to be without -- stuff I could endlessly sing the praises of years into the future, that I simply didn't even know (or even know about) yet.

Stumbling on that CD of The Prisoner was a huge wake-up moment for me.  And the funny thing was, I did have an inking of its potential importance at the time of purchase, simply based on the line-up and recording date (and label).  I somehow knew it was gonna be something pretty damn special, and I just had to wait a few days to be able to confirm it.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Rooster_Ties

[JSngry]

You're calling 30,000 a "small town" and of course it is, but my hometown was, like 5,000. It was in the oil patch, so there were a lot of similar towns around, but not on top of each other by any stretch. And the daily high school environment...our graduating class was about 110, and it was the largest in school history.

And yet...we had an "award winning" stage band, even if we had to go to a festival in Louisiana to win those awards!

To bring this back to the original topic, I did not have any self-imposed restrictions on record-buying other than price. I literally knew nothing and did not want to miss anything, so I bought everything I could afford. Literally, everything. Because I felt that I could not afford to miss anything.

I like to use the Wayne Shorter experience as an example of not knowing any better paying dividends. In the space of about a year of jumping headfirst into this thing, I had heard Wayne Shorter on Indestructible, Miles Davis Greatest Hits, and the first Weather Report album. All I knew was that this Wayne Shorter guy always sounded good, was always focused, and played in a lot of different types of bands.

Pretty much still how I feel!

[HutchFan]

My father was an avid music fan, so I grew up listening to his records.  This was the 1970s, and he gravitated to all sorts of music: rock, pop, and soul, and jazz--usually from the contemporary/fusion end of the spectrum.  It was very eclectic, very wide-ranging.  As I got older, I could see -- in retrospect -- that there was an element of improvisation that ran through much of the music that he loved.  So I grew up hearing artists like Santana, the Allman Brothers Band, Steely Dan, The Crusaders, George Benson, and Return to Forever.  Obviously, that musical background informed my first explorations of jazz in late high school and college.  But my dad never had any interest in looking backward, music-wise.  His stuff was always hip and contemporary. 

My first self-directed musical explorations (in high school in the 1980s) focused on 1970s prog rock, bands like Genesis and Yes.  Again, retrospectively, I can see that I was following in my dad's footsteps, attracted to "instrumental music" with lots of improvisational elements.  But, unlike my dad, I had a historical bent.  I was listening to 70s music during the 80s, and I wanted to keep going backwards.  By the time I got to college, I realized that jazz was the thing behind so much of the music that was attractive to me, informing it, even if it wasn't jazz per se.  I also had a sense that there was something big there that I was missing, some sort of hidden-to-me history, and I wanted to understand it and get in on it.

Like a lot of you, the library was a HUGE resource for me -- both for records and books.  I also spent many, many hours in the basement of the UGA library looking over old copies of Downbeat, Jazz Times, and Jazz Journal International.  They were all bound in annual volumes, so I could pick any given year and pore over an entire year's worth of magazines.  Given the critical assumptions of the day, I suppose it's no surprise that I wanted to learn about "real jazz," which meant jazz performed on acoustic instruments.  My first footholds were the heavies that draw in so many of us: Miles, Coltrane, and Mingus.  After not leaving much of an impression initially, Kind of Blue, hit me like an electric shock one day.  (Specifically, it was Coltrane's solo on "Blue in Green"; an unforgettable moment.)  From there to A Love Supreme, which also took a long time to absorb.  And then Mingus at Antibes.  It hit harder in some ways than even Miles or Trane.  Mingus, yes!  But also Dolphy and Booker Ervin!

What's funny is that I didn't have much money at the time, and I was reading about many, many records that I wanted to hear so badly.  But I think it was a blessing in disguise that I didn't hear more -- because I probably couldn't have absorbed the music more quickly than I did.  More albums would have just muddied the waters.  Taking in these three albums -- Kind of Blue, A Love Supreme, and Mingus at Antibes -- and making sense of them took a LONG time.  I had to listen to them 20 times before I really began to understand what they were about.  So many of the musical assumptions were different and confusing.  After that, I did what many of you describe.  The leap-frogging thing.  From Mingus at Antibes to Booker's Freedom Book. "Oh wow!  Jaki Byard!  And Jaki's on Mingus records too!"  From one to the next and so on and so on.

What's strange (or maybe not), given my background, is that for many years I avoided electric jazz.  For example, I probably had 20 Miles Davis records before my wife bought me In a Silent Way.  Of course, that BLEW MY MIND.  Looking back on it now, that avoidance was crazy and silly.  But maybe pre-70s jazz was a way for me to stake out some musical territory of my own.  It wasn't turf that my father had already shown me.   Some time ago -- maybe 15 or 20 years ago? -- I started realizing that the eclectic 70s stuff I grew up with and Jazz (with a capital "J") didn't have to be a separate thing.  As I dug deeper into 70s jazz, I was amazed by what I was hearing.  It didn't have anywhere near the critical credibility of stuff from the 60s and before -- but it was powerful, amazing, and OVERLOOKED music.  And that's when I began to realize that the "Jazz Died in the 1970s" message that I'd heard so many times was a canard.  In fact, the more I dug, the more I felt like 1970s jazz was a relatively unexplored gold mine.  The stories that I'd heard of the 1970s jazz being an aberration were flat-out wrong.  Not coincidentally, that evolution in my tastes corresponded with the proliferation of music blogs that made nearly entire catalogs of then-obscure labels readily available again.  I dug into "Magic Purple Sunshine," and I discovered Martial Solal's MPS records.  I dug into a Muse records blog, and I found James Moody's stuff and Woody Shaw's stuff from the 70s.  Many of you on this site lived through that, were discovering this music as it was released, but that was all a looking-backwards thing for me.  It was all "new old stuff" -- aside from the few things my father had played (George Benson, A&M Gato, post-Jazz Crusaders Crusaders, etc.).

So I feel like that whole 70s Jazz thing was my SECOND discovery of jazz.  I realized that I shouldn't or couldn't necessarily trust any "critical consensus."  You have to listen for yourself and make your own determinations.  And those conclusions -- the personal ones -- are the things that matter MUCH more than any collectively-settled-upon facts or canon.  For our conceptions to be truly meaningful, it's got to be something that we assemble ourselves from the parts that make sense to us, and those things are largely subjective and contextual and personal and contingent. To use a religious metaphor, we all have to "work out our musical salvation in private."

That's one of the reasons that I love this board so much.  I'm continually reminded of the fact that other people hear things that I don't hear while simultaneously being shown that there are also many people who do hear what I hear -- and that's comforting because listening to this music often can be a lonely pursuit. 

 

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

To bring this back to the original topic, I did not have any self-imposed restrictions on record-buying other than price. I literally knew nothing and did not want to miss anything, so I bought everything I could afford. Literally, everything. Because I felt that I could not afford to miss anything.

You understood the importance of hearing things for yourself a lot sooner and more intuitively than I did.  I admire that.

I feel like it took me a long while to get past my "book learned" way of thinking about the music.  It was only when I just dove into the pool and started splashing around with less fear and discrimination that I really began to understand things on a deeper level. 

I'm thinking too of all that stuff about age and wisdom making your earlier notions of right and wrong, good and bad seem youthfully ridiculous and rigid.  At least I hope I'm moving in that direction as I age.  My body is surely stiffening up, but I hope my mind is growing more limber.   

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by HutchFan

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

You're calling 30,000 a "small town" and of course it is, but my hometown was, like 5,000. It was in the oil patch, so there were a lot of similar towns around, but not on top of each other by any stretch. And the daily high school environment...our graduating class was about 110, and it was the largest in school history.

And yet...we had an "award winning" stage band, even if we had to go to a festival in Louisiana to win those awards!

To bring this back to the original topic, I did not have any self-imposed restrictions on record-buying other than price. I literally knew nothing and did not want to miss anything, so I bought everything I could afford. Literally, everything. Because I felt that I could not afford to miss anything.

I like to use the Wayne Shorter experience as an example of not knowing any better paying dividends. In the space of about a year of jumping headfirst into this thing, I had heard Wayne Shorter on Indestructible, Miles Davis Greatest Hits, and the first Weather Report album. All I knew was that this Wayne Shorter guy always sounded good, was always focused, and played in a lot of different types of bands.

Pretty much still how I feel!

Early on, c. 1955, for some reason I can no longer recall, I refused to buy any album that featured an electric guitar player as soloist. That went away when I ran across a nice Barney Kessel album, "To Swing or Not To Swing" (Contemporary), and it never came back.

[JSngry]

30 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

You understood the importance of hearing things for yourself a lot sooner and more intuitively than I did.  I admire that.

Thanks, but it was as much a matter of personal circumstances as anything. No need for details here, but let's just say that I was adopted (less than a week old, but who knows what's in the subconscious) into a family full of simultaneously existing opposites in damn near every way. Suffice to say that "both/and" seemed both more logical and natural than "either/or". Even when it came to deciding "no thanks" to "rock" post-Beatles/Hendrix for my first years of jazz, it wasn't that I didn't like it anymore, it just seemed...unnecessary, redundant, regressive. I still feel that way, although, sure, exceptions along the way. But eliminating that teenage social-programming music freed up a LOT of space for a LOT of other things. Plus, you know, there were OTHER radio station all up and down the dial, if you know what I mean. The deeper into jazz I got, the better R&B felt, for reasons that were then intuitive and are now blatantly obvious.

Between cutouts and radio dials, the curiosity landscape was totally different than it is today. But the internet provides at least as much opportunity., even if it is too often a breeding ground for sloppiness in both thought and execution. Still, if I tell you that I got a JJ Jackson record with Dick Morrisey on it, you can find that out pretty easy. I can also tell you that it's not quite as fantastic as one would hope for, but you'll have to decide that for yourself!

My regret is that it took me too long to more fully engage with Western Composed Music...but, you know, we get where we get when we get there. The important thing is to just get there and then not fuck up the chance by listening to what you think shit is rather than listening to what it really is - meet it on its own terms, and do what you need/feel like you need to do to get there. THEN you can start thinking about maybe having some kind of an opinion. Until then, you're just going to hear more of yourself, and what you want to hear is more of other people.

[felser]

9 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Interesting that you mentioned "Time Out". 

When I was just starting to listen to jazz in the mid 70´s, my heroes were Mingus and Miles, and through them I got to Bird Diz Bud and so on, and also through Mingus to Ornette Coleman and so on. Through "electric" Miles also to that kind of early 70´s rock jazz. 

I also had a kind of names and asked someone from my class, if he knows some of them or can recommand something to me.

I had written the name "Dave Brubeck" on that list and he shouted with enthusiasm "You must get into that, he is just fantastic!". So I thought if Miles and Mingus and Bird and Ornette are "fantastic", how must be this if this guy says it is so great. And then I heard that Take Five and Blue Rondo and something like "Unsquare Dance" and it didn´t mean nothing to me. I couldn´t get that deep love for music I got from let´s say Mingus. Just impossible for me. 

I later heard some earlier stuff on Bellaphone, it must have been some live performance, it was swinging but I couldn´t stand the way Brubeck hammered on that piano, I was used to Bud, Monk, McCoy, Herbie.

So it was the wrong start for me with Brubeck. There was no vibrations for me and later I found out that the Brubeck fans is a different category of audience ......
In general, I don´t have much love for so called "West Coast" from the 50´s, though I love much later Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. 
CTI the same on me. The only two I have is Mulligan/Baker 1974 at Carnegie Hall. For the big sound of Ron Carter on  bass. 
ECM also missing in my collection with the exception of "Lookout Farm and "Drum Ode". And I had to laugh when I read Lieb´s autobio and he said that Manfred Eicher didn´t like drum ode, it was not what he liked for his label.....so....naturally I like Drum Ode since it is not typical "ECM"....

I have a lot more appreciation now for things like Brubeck and early 70's CTI than I did then, when it was all about the fire for me.   I do like those Lookout Farm albums, and the first one is in desperate need of a widely available CD issue!

9 hours ago, BillF said:

 had 17-year-old students who were avid collectors of rock albums. Jazz was very out of favour with them - they openly mocked my Love Supreme album!

Surprised to hear that, as groups like the Byrds and the Jefferson Airplane idolized Coltrane.  And it was that name recognition that caused me to listen to 'A Love Supreme', which opened up the world of jazz to me (specifically Elvin Jones' entrance on "Acknowledgement").

5 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Inner sleeves, the ones that featured small photos of other albums on the label, were a big help.

Yes, all those mysterious OOP Blue Note albums I had never otherwise heard of, like 'A Fickle Sonance'.  This was 25 years before the internet, and Schwann catalogs only showed in-print albums.

5 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

 Sadly the days of well-stocked record stores are a thing of the past in most cities.

The Sam Goody in center city Philly was a wonder in the 70's.  Could find just about anything there.

[HutchFan]

Explaining the problem of finding -- even knowing about! -- music & albums to my son (who is 27) is something that he cannot understand.  It was a different world.

Y'all have mentioned Schwanns.  I remember first seeing the All Music Guide, first in book form and then on the internet.  It was great because it listed out of print stuff. That was amazing!  Dates and write-ups!  Even if it wasn't complete, there was so much info!

Of course, the internet totally changed everything.  Nearly everything is accessible now -- and that creates new problems.  But they're very different problems than the ones that we faced pre-internet.

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

Schwanns...I remember looking at them every month for a little bit to get a list of the diamonded records that were going to be deleted and carrying that list with me out on record runs. This was later, when there were meaningful record runs to be made, like, after I moved into a metropolitan area and there were mom-and-pop stores everywhere, plus chains with independently maintained inventories. A Sound Warehouse in North Dallas would not have the same inventory as one in South Dallas, so you had to shop around. Never mind finding some little (literally) suburban mom-and-pop store that had been open since the 50s and just kept records in the stacks to give the dust a comfortable home.

You know how they got dog whisperers and horse whisperers? I swear, some people are record whisperers. although, really, I think it's as simple as not being afraid to look any damn place. They say you can't prove a negative, but I say screw that, yes you can, you can definitely prove that that placeain't got no records, but only by going inside to look around and ask questions and always be polite to cranky old people and young people with guns.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Unlike most of you, I got into jazz through R&B.

I got my first record player for Christmas 1958 and started buying singles. By the summer of '59, I looked through the 45s I'd got and decided most of them were shit. SO I looked again and picked out the ones that WEREN'T shit and got Clyde McPhatter, the Coasters, Chuck Willis, Bobby Darin, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Larry Williams. I read the labels! That stuff all came out here on the London label, with a credit to the original label, and you could identify that Atlantic and Atco were the same company, because their catalogue numbers were all HL-E, Imperial's were HL-P. But Specialty's were just HL.

Radio was bad news in 1959  and full of the shitty stuff I'd been buying. So I decided to ignore it and what my friends at school said and go by labels.

The New Musical Express published a list on Wednesdays of all the following Friday's single releases, with catalogue numbers so I decided to get anything with an HL-E number, whether I knew anything about it or, more likely, nothing whatever. As Imperial had Ricky Nelson, it was TOO dangerous to buy Imperial. The following week, out came 'There goes my baby' by the Drifters. So I took it to the record shop opposite Victoria station near my school and ordered it. When I got it home I put it on and heard the first real soul music I'd ever encountered. Phew! That was IT! But a couple of weeks later, out came Ray Charles' 'What I say'. And THAT was it, too!

So when I started buying jazz, I started with the MJQ, because THEY were on Atlantic. And that was different. But, later, David Newman's 'Fathead' came my way, when I was working in Harrods - well I DID know something about him, of course.

And during that period, I learned to avoid Columbia. And RCA Victor. And Brunswick (US Decca's label over here). And to focus on indies. I decided that indies HAD to be run by fans, and KNEW that couldn't be true of the majors. So that thought led me to Blue Note, Prestige, Pacific Jazz, Riverside and the Chess labels.

I used the same parameters when I was exploring music from Africa. It worked there, too, and Syllart is the fourth biggest label in my collection.

 

MG

[Teasing the Korean]

On 9/9/2021 at 10:17 AM, JSngry said:

What I've noticed here is that most everybody not just had access to good record stores from jump, but also that your times of discovering jazz took place in a college town and/or a reasonably urban area. 

In addition to what I learned through my parents, I had four good jazz resources in the generally suburban area where we lived:

• A weekly AM radio big band/swing show
• A community FM radio station that played jazz on weeknights Monday-Thursday
• An NPR station that played jazz after 11; I would go to sleep with this.
• Peaches Records, which had an extensive jazz LP section, including affordable twofers, and a massive cutout bin.

On 9/9/2021 at 6:21 AM, Gheorghe said:

I still listen often to Bitches Brew  but always wonder why it became so popular among youngsters then, since this is quite intellectual music, it´s not so "radio playing" like "On The Corner". 

I was listening primarily to acoustic jazz in high school, but a friend had Bitches Brew, and we used to get high to it.  At around this time, I picked up In a Silent Way, based on some things I read, and I thought it was simultaneously more interesting while also providing a good chill out vibe.  To this day, I much prefer In a Silent Way to Bitches Brew.

Either way, I think it is a safe to say that Miles has served as a jazz entry point for more listeners than any other single jazz artist.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[HutchFan]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Either way, I think it is a safe to say that Miles has served as a jazz entry point for more listeners than any other single jazz artist.

Yep, I agree 100%.

Especially today. Fifty years ago, it might have been someone like Ellington or Armstrong. But, with the passing of time, Miles' importance and reach seem far greater.

Years ago, I remember reading an article in one of the jazz magazines -- probably Downbeat or Jazz Times -- about people's entry points into jazz. Miles' name came up again and again and again. It was crazy!

As for "Why is that?", I think Miles had many things going for him. Foremost, he was a musical genius -- but it was much more than just that.  Miles' music continually evolved, so there are MANY stylistic doors through which listeners can enter: bebop, cool, hard-bop, post-bop, funk, rock, pop-jazz, and so on. He also had Big Red, Columbia Records, behind him, making sure that he wasn't going to be below ANYONE'S radar. Finally, his larger-than-life, protean persona also helped make him an icon. He's always had the cachet, the "X" factor. Brooks Brothers dapper or Prince of Darkness. Either way, Miles was --and is -- the epitome of cool.

I think it's all those factors that make Miles THE starting point for listeners coming to jazz for the first time.

Edited September 11, 2021 by HutchFan

[HutchFan]

On 9/9/2021 at 10:55 AM, Rooster_Ties said:

I think it was then -- that very day -- that I suddenly realized there was a HUGE world of top-top-top-tier jazz (as *I* defined top-tier, mind you), that I simply had no fucking idea even existed.  Like, there was literally probably 100-200 albums out there (unknown to me) that I could easily be temped to include on a top-20 "desert island" list of music I would never want to be without -- stuff I could endlessly sing the praises of years into the future, that I simply didn't even know (or even know about) yet.

Oh man! I know exactly what you're talking about!

That sense of being on the verge of finding something new and interesting that speaks directly to YOU -- undiscovered country, all of it out in front of you. It might be old music. It might be new music.  It does not matter.

That particular "I'm-on-to-something-big-here" feeling is wonderful. A new discovery! Yes!!!  I think that's our real addiction. That's why we keep buying records and keep listening. That's our real drug!