imeanyou

How I got jazz:

I was born and grew up in a typical English county town. I've been a committed listener to all kinds of music since I can remember. My parents were big fans of Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Nat 'King' Cole, Roy Orbison, 'Fats' Domino, Doris Troy and Anita O'Day. My father is Jamaican so we had lots of Ska and Blue Beat going on as well so I was aware of the influence of American R&B on Jamaican music as it evolved into reggae.

I picked up my Dad's Glenn Miller compilation one day and got a liking for that brassy big band sound at an early age. I was in an Anglican church choir from the age of 8 to 14 so I also received exposure to the European sacred music tradition, particularly Bach, Handel, Haydn and Purcell. I lived in a small Yorkshire mining town as a teenager and got sidetracked for a couple of years by prog rock and Pink Floyd although I maintained a passion for Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind and Fire. I think EWF's jazz leanings had a profound effect on me, they operated at a far higher level of musicianship than anything I had heard in rock, were funky and had great melodic sense and could swing.

I was an avid reader of New Musical Express in the 80's and through the writings of Richard Cook in particular developed a curiosity for jazz and blues. I heard Robert Wyatt's version of Round About Midnight and bought Monk's solo Paris performance (Vogue), heard 'Reflections' and that was it. I followed that up with an Atlantic records compilation 'The Blues in Modern Jazz' (Atlantic 1337) the perfect intro to Monk and Art Blakey, Dizzy, Tristano, Mingus, MJQ etc. That was nearly 25 years ago. I've done nearly all my jazz listening in the CD era, consequently my collection of about 2000 titles is almost exclusively on CD format so I have little time for vinyl snobs.I just wasn't able to access Blue Note or Impulse or Riverside, Prestige etc on vinyl. Jazz is very much a minority interest in the UK so I had few sources of info or people to hip me to the good stuff. I'm pretty catholic in my tastes though I don't have much that precedes the Bop era and I'm not that turned on by the more esoteric offerings of European 'free' jazz.