Peter Friedman

He made important contributions to the jazz world. R.I.P.

Beethoven - String Quartet Op.135 and Mozart - Piano Concerto No.17, K.453

Ben Webster - Stormy Weather

My entry to jazz was via Rhythm & Blues. Growing up in Detroit, R&B was all over the radio in the 50's. Over a couple of years my ears became focused on the often exciting tenor sax solos that I heard in the middle of the record. That led me to look for recordings featuring wild tenor players such as Big Jay McNeely. From there it was on to the tenor sax battles on JATP records by Illinois Jacquet and Flip Phillips. Detroit had a number of excellent record stores some of which were heavily devoted to jazz. One such record shop seemed to have every new jazz record as soon as it was released. The shop was willing to plays small parts of an LP that I was considering. The person behind the counter was very hip and would recommend things to me that were almost always in my area of interest. I would hang out in that record shop at least once a week, and usually came home with a couple of LPs. At the same time I discovered 3 or 4 discount stores that has bins filled with cutout jazz outs dirt cheap. I would try to make the rounds of all these shops each week and my collection grew and grew. Over 4 or 5 years my taste widened and I was listening entirely to Hard Bop, Bebop, & West Coast Jazz. It took another few years before I began to appreciate the Swing Era jazz, and even go further back to Traditional Jazz .

Tchaikovsky - String Quartet No.2 and Mozart - Symphony No.35, K.385 "Haffner"

Anyone deciding to not buy any recordings from prior to 1956 leaves out a huge amount of amazing music. Bird, Pres, Bean, Louis Armstrong, and many early 50's great jazz from Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Jackie McLean, etc.