Which Album Hooked You in, made you GET IT??

[Kalo]

Inspired by a previous thread (and perhaps redundant because of it).

I'm not looking for your all-time pick by any particular artist, but instead the album that made you fall in love with a particular artist. The one that made you GET IT. Often it's the first record you heard that made the impression, whether it was the critically approved choice or not. Usually, this album remains a sentimental favorite.

For instance, the first Monk I bought was the self-titled album on Columbia. But the record that hooked me into Monk forever was the relatively neglected solo outing on Vogue, recorded on June 7, 1954.

These tracks have been reissued numerous times. The first I ever heard was on bargain-bin Everest Records when I was in college. The current version I own is the Mosaic LP. I still love this above all other solo Monk. It strikes a magnificent balance between the rhythmic momentum of his band sides and the rubato ruminations of his later solo stuff. In a way, to me, it's "pure" Monk. Distilled, direct, yet artfully elaborated; perfectly balancing the craggy and the liquid; magnificent in its canny improvisational expansion of his elemental compositions; startling in its idiosyncratic technical displays; ever eccentric and ever swinging; for me, the definitive encapsulation of his special amalgam of saloon piano, classic stride, and advanced harmony, spanning the centuries and predicting the jazz future. Essential, at least to me. This is where I truly GOT Monk, and I'll always love this record for that reason.

THAT's what I'm looking for. THAT record.

Others, for me, include the expected as well as the idiosyncratic:

EXPECTED:

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (Columbia)

Charles Mingus: Ah Um (Columbia)

Sonny Clark: Cool Struttin' (Blue Note)

IDIOSYNCRATIC:

Steve Lacy: Troubles (Soul Note)

Dexter Gordon: Dexter Blows Hot and Cool (Dootone)

Sonny Rollins: Contemporary Alternate Takes (Contemporary)

And I'm looking for details, folks. Not just a list, though those are welcome, but WHY you responded, just what it was that HOOKED YOU.

I hope that this will be fun.

Thanks in advance.

Edited May 15, 2005 by Kalo

[Alexander Hawkins]

Actually, I think I could pinpoint this one as the album that made me 'get' creative music full-stop: Art Tatum and Ben Webster (Pablo).

[Kalo]

Art Tatum and Ben Webster!

Good call, Red!

What an amazing record! Those guys were so opposite in so many ways, yet each floridly romantic in his own way: Art with his rococo runs and Ben with that TONE. I'd have to say that this might be the record that tipped me over for BOTH of them.

Edited May 18, 2005 by Kalo

[chris olivarez]

Miles Davis-"Bitches Brew". It's hard to analyze in depth. All I can say is that it's dark and funky vibe just resonated with me.

[Brad]

That's easy. For me, it was the record that contained Koko. Made me fall in love with Bird.

[wesbed]

Brubeck's TIME OUT is the one that got me into the music. Before Brubeck, I was listening to Chuck Mangione and Spyro Gyra. Something about this recording captivated me to no end and made me dig deeper into jazz. Much deeper than I'd ever thought I'd go. I used to play this album during the summer months and it would remind me of Christmas.

[Kalo]

Time Out was certainly one of my "gateway" records into the world of jazz.

Though I was never a trained musician, I had a lot of friends in the band in high school, and they turned me on to Brubeck (as well as the three Ms: Miles and Monk and Mingus--along with Brubeck, interestingly enough, all Columbia artists, thus readily available at retail outlets).

I pored over Time Out's liner notes as I listened, and learned a lot.

I still like this record. Great band and excellent compositions.

It's funny, but Brubeck is simultaneously in the running for most overrated AND most underrated figure in jazz.

[Kalo]

On the other hand, it took me YEARS to get Bird's "Koko."

(Not to mention Bitches Brew.)

Sometimes listening to Bird is like staring into the sun: too much brilliance.

Of course, I love him now, but when I first got into jazz I had a hard time with him, partly because of the thin sound on the Savoy LP reissues of that day. The Denon mini-LP CD remasters that I have now, however, sound like you're in the damn recording studio with Bird! Incredible sound and incredible music.

[DTMX]

Great Guitars by Charlie Byrd, Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis. Not sure why I bought it, but coming from a rock background I must have thought three guitarists would be tearing it up in a live set. Might have been a review in Guitar Player magazine. Who knows? I never was exposed to jazz growing up so I had little appreciation or familiarity with it.

But when I heard Charlie's Blues (essentially the same song as Byrd's Blues for Night People) I couldn't let it go. I must have played that track twenty times before I flipped the record over to listen to side two.

Then I heard Herb Ellis' solo on Benny's Bugle and I was hooked. I played these tracks for all my guitarist, bassist and drummer friends - some got it, most didn't. So I left them to their Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot and struck out on my own - never looked back.

[GregK]

for me it was a gradual shift from the more "complex" (or at least less simple) rock music to jazz. The final leap I would say was from Frank Zappa to Miles Davis. So, no one album for me.

[clifford_thornton]

I would say the same thing, though probably Dolphy and Andrew Hill helped me get a little closer to 'getting' what it is the music is getting at.

[Kalo]

Looks like this is turning into a "what album got you into jazz" thread, instead of "what album tipped you over on a particular artist," which is what I intended.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

As for the last two posts. It's interesting to me how many guys (and gals?) who come from a "rock" background (which is probably most of us under the age of 55), got into jazz initially through some pretty "avant" music (I'm assuming GregK is referring to early electric Miles).

Among my first 20 or so jazz LPs, when I was making my transition, were Coltrane's

Ascension, The Art Ensemble's Nice Guys, and James "Blood" Ulmer's Are You Glad to Be in America?

It seems that a lot of young kids today are also entering the jazz realm through the likes of Vandermark, Shipp, or even Ayler. (Is this Thurston Moore's influence?)

I guess that certain types of young folks really dig it when an artist gets all galvanic on their asses.

[jbs-tom]

... for me it was *ray charles*... this man got it all for what i am looking for since then: jazz, soul, groove and blues records ! - thanks ray

[BruceH]

Among my first 20 or so jazz LPs, when I was making my transition, were Coltrane's

Ascension, The Art Ensemble's  Nice Guys, and James "Blood" Ulmer's Are You Glad to Be in America?

←

One of my transition albums into jazz (at that crucial age of 18-22) was also Nice Guys. Others were Kind of Blue (yes, I'm just that boring), and the Columbia LP reissues of Armstrong's Hot Five and Seven sides.

To veer over to punk, I finally got into The Ramones (rather late, 1982 or so) through one particular song, "Rockaway Beach." I heard it on an anthology, and finally "got" why some people swore by them... Since "Rockaway Beach" was on Rocket To Russia, that was the first album I purchased by The Ramones.

[Rosco]

I didn't get into music at all until about the age of 11. When I was about 12 I started to hear the jazz-funk end of things; Grover Washington, The Crusaders, Herbie Hancock's 'disco' era, that kind of thing.

At that time my local library had an extensive LP collection (sadly, funding cutbacks mean this is no longer the case)... Over the next couple of years I checked out as much stuff as I could... More Herbie (Headhunters), Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Billy Cobham....

Of course, the name that kept coming up in connection with these people was Miles Davis. The library never seemed to have any of his stuff; it was ALWAYS checked out...

Then one day, when I was 15, an older friend of mine mentioned he had a Miles LP, 'Bitches Brew' and he lent it to me.

The first thing that hits you about that album is the sleeve. An African couple staring out at a stormy ocean... flowers bursting into flames... mysterious shrouded figures... tribal masks... black and white hands with fingers entwined, stretching out into faces, one black oozing beads of sweat, one white oozing blood... Even the cover made me think 'What the hell is *this*?!'

The second thing that hit me was the length of the tracks. A double LP with *six* tracks, the first two taking up entire sides of a disc. then there were ralph j gleason's capital letter free liner notes. But nothing- NOTHING- prepared me for actually *listening* to this thing.

Those deceptive lightly tapping drums that start 'Pharoah's Dance' leading into those eerie keyboard figures and that creepy bass clarinet... God knows what went through my mind. Even listening to it now, it sounds soooo *alien*... I know I listened to all four sides straight through. I know I got lost in the barrage of fuzzy electric pianos, drummers, percussionists and the constant ghostly presence of Bennie Maupin's bass clarinet (I don't think I had ever heard that instrument before but it started a love affair that continues to this day- I now play it myself)... I didn't know what to make of it all. I just had no frame of reference. It was SO different, SO completely unlike anything I had ever heard. And yet I was fascinated by it. I remember getting to the end of side 4, and putting the first side on again straight away. And I think I did that for about a month. Didn't listen to anything else. I didn't even know if I LIKED it. But it intrigued me, confused me... actually, it frightened the hell out of me! There was no way I could listen to this with the lights out!

But the more I listened the more it made sense. It was like someone turning a lightbulb on in my head. I suddenly had a whole new world of possibility opened up to me. It started to change how I thought about music, how I listened and- having just started to play bass guitar- what I wanted to do as a musician. Anything seemed possible. The idea of improvisation to create beautiful, meaningful, challenging music seemed to make so much more sense...

And that was the start of my Miles obsession. A little later I found a copy of Kind Of Blue, which also blew me away for completely different reasons. Then In a Silent Way, ESP, Jack Johnson... and on and on....

I now have a huge collection of Miles (probably around 150 albums) and I must have heard Bitches Brew (literally) hundreds of times. And it *still* gets me! Still thrills me, confuses me and intrigues me. And sometimes I'm filled with the same sense of wonderment I had a 15 year old.

Except these days, I can listen to it with the lights out...

[jazzbo]

"Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy" was the lp that got me caught up in the world of traditional jazz. I found that lp in a Chicago area record bin my first year in college and it slowly worked its magic on me, and made me a Pops fan for LIFE. Maybe for post life too.

The one that made me move from being a blues-rock and blues fan to a fusion and then jazz fan was "Filles de Kilamanjaro". . . . Freshly returned to the states from Swaziland, very lonely and blue in a small rural Ohio town, I found this in the library and it opened up my ears! It had a little bit of Africa in there, which helped. I borrowed it and listened to it for several weeks. Then went into Cleveland and found a copy of "Miles Davis at Fillmore." I was from those weeks forward an electric Miles fan, and then from that artist forward I began to follow sidemen and discover the world of acoustic jazz. . . .

[Jazz Kat]

Brubeck's TIME OUT is the one that got me into the music. Before Brubeck, I was listening to Chuck Mangione and Spyro Gyra.

You can listen to both..

[Jazz Kat]

I can only think of one. The Modern Jazz Quartet, In a Crowd. It was my second MJQ purchase. I bought The Early Recordings, didn't like it... I think I was too little to appreciate it, but then I got the more swinging, In a Crowd album, and loved it. This was around the summer of 2000, I bought Pyarimd, Concorde, Last Concert, Blues on Bach, Fontessa, and some more soon after.

[Jazz Kat]

Here's another one. Kind of weird. Bought Breezin' by George Benson, fell in love with it, wanted to buy every George Benson album I could find, but then I heard his new album. I wanted to cry.

[PHILLYQ]

Mine was Mahavishnu Orchestra, "The Inner Mounting Flame". Prior to that I was a rock & blues fan, but someone in the Village Voice voted it as album of the year, so I got it. That led to Miles, then everybody else. 30+ years later I still love the music.

[Alexander]

I'd been listening to jazz on and off (mostly off) for about a year or so. My friend Henry was trying to turn me on to jazz (which he was just discovering), and while I liked what I heard, it just wasn't clicking with me. Most jazz tunes were too long for my attention span of the time (reared as I was on 3 minute singles), and I had a hard time getting with instrumental music (to me "instrumentals" were the boring cuts on soundtrack albums). Things I know I'd heard and liked up until this point: "Stan Getz and Bill Evans," "Kind of Blue," "ESP," "My Favorite Things," "Page One," etc. As I said, I liked all of these albums (had a harder time with "Bitches Brew" and post-1965 Trane), but they just didn't inspire me to sit down and LISTEN to jazz when I could be listening to something else. During this period, I had a horrible temp job doing data entry which enabled me to listen to music on my walkman all day long (the only good part of that job). One day, bored with the Hendrix and Elvis Presley which I'd been listening to everyday, I brought in a copy of "Horace Silver's Greatest Hits, Vol. 2." I popped in the tape, and from the first few notes of "Song for My Father," I was hooked. That was the moment when I GOT it. I started going out and buying as many jazz CDs as I could. I'm STILL at it more than a decade later...

[Big Deal]

I started my love affair with Jazz with Miles Davis. I ordered Kind of Blue from

BMG along with my "regular" rock stuff and, well nothing. I liked it and bought a

few more things over the years, McCoy Tyner, Joe Pass and a few others, but I didn't delve into it very far. My purchases of rock dropped off, nothing was really getting me going. Then I heard Jimmy Smith and liked that B-3 organ sound!

I was hooked! Eventually I started reading the liner notes and realized that many of the sidemen were actually leaders in there own right and I could check them out as well. Once I started seeing Organissimo and talking to the guys, and then

I started reading the posts here, well lets just say my retirement date gets farther away with each CD purchase. But damn its just so much fun!

[Eric]

Wes Montgomery - Small Group Recordings - Verve compilation lp (mostly Smokin' at the Half Note)

[Alon Marcus]

Here's another one. Kind of weird. Bought Breezin' by George Benson, fell in love with it, wanted to buy every George Benson album I could find, but then I heard his new album. I wanted to cry.

←

Exactly my feelings - the difference between catchy jazz made by talented musician and worthless smooth sellout.

[B. Goren.]

This one: