Who/what got you hooked on jazz?

[AmirBagachelles]

1) grateful dead, 1975-

2) my future wife's love of Clifford Brown and Sarah Vaughan, 1988-

3) Mingus was the first jazz music I explored on my own, 1989-

4) Miles Davis, 1969Miles, I got this disc in '97 or '98 and I have had almost no rock relapses since, save good ole GD '68-'74

[brownie]

When I was growing up, the 78RPM playing at home were songs by Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, les Compagnons de la Chanson and other French favorites of the time (early '5Os). Then my older brother got interested in jazz. Started playing Basie, Armsrong, Bechet records. I caught the bug at once. By the time I was 12, I had bought my first record a 10-in LP with New Orleans Function by the Louis Armstrong All Stars.

It took years for my brother to lose interest. I lost interest in French singers (most of them) but I was hooked on jazz for life...

[vibes]

My parents only had an effect on me in the sense that they exposed me to different kinds of music when I was young. I heard everything from Led Zeppelin to Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles to ABBA to Tchaikovsky and so on. Jazz and country were about the only genres that they didn't actively listen to (although, they did have a couple of Wynton and Ellis Marsalis CD's). Anyway, I think that being exposed to different kinds of music made me more open-minded. I found jazz completely on my own, about 6 years ago or so. My first jazz CD was a Lionel Hampton/Oscar Peterson comp, and I loved it from the minute I put it in the CD player. To this day, I have no friends that like jazz and my taste in music is regarded as "weird" by my peers. My age probably has something to do with that.

[patricia]

My parents only had an effect on me in the sense that they exposed me to different kinds of music when I was young. I heard everything from Led Zeppelin to Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles to ABBA to Tchaikovsky and so on. Jazz and country were about the only genres that they didn't actively listen to (although, they did have a couple of Wynton and Ellis Marsalis CD's). Anyway, I think that being exposed to different kinds of music made me more open-minded. I found jazz completely on my own, about 6 years ago or so. My first jazz CD was a Lionel Hampton/Oscar Peterson comp, and I loved it from the minute I put it in the CD player. To this day, I have no friends that like jazz and my taste in music is regarded as "weird" by my peers. My age probably has something to do with that.

Vibes, I know I shouldn't ask a gentleman his age, but...........how old are you??

I ask because you mentioned in passing, that you had no friends who listen to jazz.

[vibes]

No problem - I'm 27.

[patricia]

No problem - I'm 27.

I didn't mean to be nosey,, but I found that as my circle of friends expanded and I had a chance to hang with people who shared my taste in jazz, it wasn't so hard to find kindred spirits. Have you jazz clubs in your town, or any other venue in which jazzers congregate?? I live in big-hat, pointy boot country and it was a good two years before I found my niche. It's so much easier if you can share your love of jazz.

[vibes]

No problem. I live in Minneapolis, so there are definitely jazz clubs and the like, but live music is something of a problem for me. When faced with the choice of seeing live music or buying CD's, I will choose CD's 99 times out of 100. Also, I have trouble sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time (I have a very strong need to multitask). I went to a jazz festival last year and thought I was going to go insane, and don't know if I'll ever go back to one, it was so difficult for me. Getting in my car and leaving was, sad as it may be, a major relief, even though I heard great music by people like Andrew Hill and Fred Anderson. I'm going to a Herbie Hancock show (Christmas present from my wife) next month, so we'll see how I do with it.

The jazz club idea makes me a little uncomfortable too, to be honest.

[TedR]

I played trumpet from junior high through college, so I liked brass. Had conservative taste as a kid listening to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana brass. This was followed by Chicago and B,S,&T. I much preferred the songs and groups that left room for the players to "stretch out" and solo. Two turning points: 1. B,S,&T's version of "Something Coming On" had an abrupt, jarring break in the song with a walking bass and tenor sax improv. At first I thought they ruined this exciting pop tune......soon I loved the arrangement (still love it).

2. Around the same time (early 70's), hearing a live recording of Miles Davis (possibly from My Funny Valentine) on the radio. My ears opened up and my education started.

[Dmitry]

I see a lot of people were influenced by their fathers. My dad played trombone in a big band for 30 years, but I never was really into jazz as much as rock.

When I was 28 my girlfriend was listening to Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Kenny Burrell, Clifford Brown, some Blue Note stuff. After a month or two of lurking I joined the Blue Note board in July of 99 and was reading what guys like Lon and Kevin[remember him?] and Morgan Fanatic and other were discussing. At that time I was beginning my painful journey into hi-fi and just put together my first decent stereo set-up. So we went to Tower and got some new rvgs and connoisseurs, Sidewinder, Life Time [didn't go well at the time], Ike Quebec's Bossa Nova Soul Samba. She had a very good taste and ear for music.

Someone I was seeing a few months later used to date a well-known New York bass player, so we went to clubs a lot. She was a bohemian and a bit of a jazz groupie, not as much a lover of music, but she also happened to have some good cds, so I continued to grow musically.

[TranesHuman]

I grew up without jazz. I wasn't exposed to jazz until about three years ago when my best friend finally got me to check out some jazz albums. He had been working on me awhile, but for some reason I had been a little resistant. I picked up John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and Jimmy Smith's "The Sermon" at his recommendation. I was hooked. I caught a video of Miles Davis and Coltrane blowing on "So What" and ran out and picked up "Kind of Blue" that very day. I found a couple of discs by Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie in a pawn shop. I'm just sick about all the years that I missed out on listening to jazz. If someone had exposed me to Coltrane's music when I was younger, I might not have given up the saxophone. Still, I'm thankful that I did discover what I was missing. In a short time, I've managed to see Arturo Sandoval, Wayne Shorter Quartet, Roy Haynes' Birds of a Feather Quintet and the Dave Brubeck Quartet live! Now, the homeless guys, where I work, call me the Jazz Man because that's what I'm always playing while I'm working in the dayshelter.

Edited March 6, 2004 by TranesHuman

[tjobbe]

my exposure to Jazz was my father having a lot of Dixie, Brubeck and Miller/Goodman in his collection and also taking me to some sunday morning Dixie sessions in Bonn during 1972/73 summer ... result was: in school I was the only one who liked the Steely Dan more than the "GlitterRock" and it never changed...

I guess similar like Deus I got the RTF , BreckerBros (my favourite:HeavyMetalBeBop), Steve Morse early Dixie Dregs, and got in touch with Pat Metheny and other ECM/MPS fusion stuff in '76/77/78 while I was 15.... ok the Metheny 80/81 afterwards was a little shock similar to following some Jazz guides saying that the Bitches Brew would be Fusion ( which caused me a lot of resistance against anything with the Miles DAvis Sticker on it until I got there again via my Gil Evans period assuming that he -Gil Evans- would have had some good influence onMiles) but with the CD coming in stores and a lot of Verve, Pablo and Impulse got in print around 85 I started going backward in time listening more to Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans.....

At the end it led to a point where roughly 90% of all Rock/Pop sounds o boaring that Jazz seems to be the only alternative to listen to (beside some orchestra stuff like Berlioz, Stravinsky, Tschaikovsky, Smetana and more... the so call old time jazzer of the 19th century)

Cheers, Tjobbe

Edited March 6, 2004 by tjobbe

[Brad]

I wasn't really exposed to jazz when I was a kid but my parents loved to listen to show tunes and all the kind of music that serves as the basis for a lot of jazz. I used to love to listen to Gershwin, for example. I gravitated to the blues and eventually to jazz. The guy who really made love jazz was Art Blakey with Moanin'. It was like something went off in my head. The guy who cemented it was Bird, however. Incomparable. Bop is what makes me love jazz.

I'm sort of like Philly Q and so is my son. The only thing he loves is video games. But when I was a kid you couldn't have foretold that I'd love jazz, so who knows? Maybe there's hope. He certainly knows and listens to jazz more than most kids or people. Osmosis

[chris olivarez]

I was turned on to it by a friend who exposed me to the music of Wes Montgomery,Jimmy Smith and Chico Hamilton. It really didn't take hold until I heard electric Miles and Pharoah Sanders and then it took off for me.

[LAL]

Never heard a note of jazz until college years when I started exploring all styles of music - 60s pop/rock/prog rock/classical/metal. My first exposure to jazz was a 1950s EMI compilation transferred to 3 CDs. Next up was the Duke Ellington Small Groups Vol.2 set - intimate, sensual and swinging music and couldn't get enough of it. Next, heard samples of Bird and Diz, more wonderful music, but all these still did not seal it. It took another 5 years, when I had proper income, before I started to really explore jazz. First jazz craze - anything by Wes Montgomery, including his late and very commercial Verve sides. Now this was the start of my passion for jazz.

[paul secor]

I never had any real exposure to jazz growing up. Probably the closest I came to any exposure was hearing my father's Jackie Gleason records with Bobby Hackett (not that I had a clue who Bobby Hackett was). I guess what initially turned me on to the music was seeing two television documentaries in 1962, when I was in high school. One was on the Brubeck Quartet, and the other was on Paul Horn's Quintet. (Both recorded for Columbia at the time, so I assume that the programs were on CBS, but perhaps that's just backwards looking cynicism on my part.) Anyway, I heard something that was different and more challenging and interesting than the top 40 radio and commercial folk music I'd been listening to previously, and I was hooked.

[neveronfriday]

[...] Anyway, I heard something that was different and more challenging and interesting [...].

I think that it was this aspect, really, that finally turned me around after about 30 years of eclectic listening. I love music, all kinds of music, but in jazz I find both groove/fun and more challenging things, all depending on my mood. I used to be able to find that in all kinds of music, but for quite some time now, I have more often than not returned to jazz for extended and concentrated listening ... or just for blowing my neighbours away.

Cheers!

[mikeweil]

That is the main point for me: It has to be challenging. Which makes it a problem when my wife wants to dance with me because I only feel an urge to move when the music is rhythmically challenging, I am not inspired by 4 hits on the bass drum on every beat of the bar ...

When I grew up, my father was out of the house working all day, and never listened to music in his spare time, although he told he had been playing cornet in a brass band in his youth (born 1907). My mother (b. 1919) had all Schubert and Beethoven symphonies on LP and loved to play them on Sunday afternoons at coffee time, she had mostly classical music on the radio and got into arguments with my brother (b. 1941) who switched to AFN to listen to Elvis Presley ... This was the very early 1960's (I was born in 1954, the very day Art Blakey recorded his live Blue Note LP at Birdland with Clifford Brown, so that may have set the destination) and I discovered music only to make an impression on my schoolmates, as I learned English pretty fast and was able to understand and write down the names of bands and titles from the radio and bring the latest hit parade listings to school. I listened to the Beatles, but somehow "black music" attracted me more, the rhythms caught my ear. My first LP was by Paul Revere & The Raiders - an unlikely choice for a young German ca. 1968, followed by Cream's Disraeli Gears and the first Pink Floyd LP with that free impro piece, Interstellar Overdrive, which fascinated me. My parents thought that music was crazy, driving me all the more to it. (When I had bought that my alternate choice was a Frank Zappa LP, so I wonder what would have happened, had I changed my mind and bought the Zappa?) At the same time I "inherited" a bunch of singles and EP's from my brother and his wife, who had just married - she had been working in a record shop for a while and brought some things, among them a Dixieland EP, two Parisian Lionel Hampton Trio tracks, and - most importantly - a Metronome EP with the first four Prestige titles by the Modern Jazz Quartet. I listened to that for hours, found that contrapuntal playing so fascinating.

Still I was haunted by the Buffalo Springfield, Stephen Stills pieces I still like very much, got into James Brown riffs, but what turned me off was the emotional overdrive of people like Jimi Hinedrix, Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison. Jazz was cooler - I was a shy guy and could not deal with the sexual overtones an all. Soon I discovered a cutout bin at the record shop behind the bus stop where I had to change busses, and bought Herbie Mann's Do The Bossa Nova, Cannonball's Bossa Nova, The MJQ European Concert - that's what got me started.

For a while I had the ambition to acquire a representative jazz collection, but gave up on this many years later, due to lack of funds and space, and keep only records that I really dig or think to be really important.

I was turned off by sloppy local jazz players for a while, and sytematically explored the history of European classical music with my partner at the time, along with the blossoming of period instruments performance, which I prefer to this day.

I always had a friend or two to exchange records, listen together of conduct Blindfold Tests ...

Today I listen to jazz as much as classical of all periods, latin music, ethnic music from around the planet ...

But the improvisatory freedom of jazz, if it is balanced by an awreness for structure and composition, remains at the core of my musical heart.

[ScreaminJayHawkins]

the music in the movies of Woody Allen at first I believe. Then, someone making me listen to a John Coltrane album (Giant Steps).

[marcoliv]

my father exposed me to classical & jazz music since i was born. i do respect classical music but it doesn't inspire me as jazz does.

the curious thing is that my father loves jazz but never had any records of Miles, Monk, Trane or BN records except for Moanin'.

i don't think really that this exposure is responsible for my passion as my sister hates it and my mom too.

none of my friends likes jazz at all so you guys from this board are my only source for jazz friends!

i can't imagine my life without jazz music...

Marcus Oliveira

[Jazzmoose]

none of my friends likes jazz at all so you guys from this board are my only source for jazz friends!

Same here. I've run in to exactly ONE person who was into jazz in "real life", a guy who was sent to our store for me to train for one day. Best day of work I've ever had. We spent all day in my office with KCSM blaring out, talking about every artist we could think of...didn't get much training done!

[patricia]

the music in the movies of Woody Allen at first I believe. Then, someone making me listen to a John Coltrane album (Giant Steps).

Hey SJH!!

You mentioned Woody Allen's use of jazz in his films. I think you might want to rent "Wild Man Blues", which is a documentary about Woody's jazz tour some years ago. He plays a fairly decent clarinet, but it gave me a rather interesting window into his personality. I don't know if he still does, but he used to not attend the Oscars, even when his films were nominated, because he sat in at a club in New York on Mondays, which was the night on which the Oscar ceremonies used to be held. My kind of guy.

I watch Woody's films more often than I might do if he didn't have great jazz on most of his soundtracks.

Edited March 10, 2004 by patricia

[ADR]

I came to jazz by a round-about and circuitous path.

Growing up I listened to the usual mix of pop and rock. I also liked the film score music of John Williams which led me to an appreciation of classical music (Beethover, Bach, Mozart, the usual suspects.....).

In college, one of my best friends and an incredibly cool guy would occassionally have a Miles tape or cd playing in his dorm room and I remember thinking "That sounds pretty cool".

In graduate school I remembered how much I liked the sound of those Miles albums and decided to pick out a few cds to get my feet wet. Unfortunately, this was before I was hooked into the internet and so I really had no guidance or idea what I was doing. I got the UA/Blue Note "Best of" Miles Davis compilation cd, the Blue Note "Best of Thelonious Monk" cd - because I was fairly certain that he was an important jazz figure, and "Live at Blues Alley" by Wynton. None of these cds really did it for me at that time.

Fortunately, I didn't give up and years later after I had settled down and gotten married I did some research on jazz on the internet and tackled jazz again with the "Miles Davis and his sidemen" entry approach. I picked up "Kind of Blue", "Round About Midnight", "Blue Train", "Sunday at the Village Vanguard", "Waltz for Debby", and "Somethin' Esle". From there, I was off and running and 600 and some odd jazz cds and countless hours of audio nirvana later - I haven't looked back

ADR

[Free For All]

I remember hearing jazz at a very early age- this would have been mid-sixties. My dad (RIP) was a fan and used to play records on a local radio show he had. I remember specific titles- Time Out (Brubeck), Monster (Jimmy Smith), Goin' Out Of My Head (Wes Montgomery), Quincy's Got A Brand New Bag (Quincy Jones) and various Kenton sides. Not exactly hard-core jazz, but it planted a seed in my head that would be cultivated later on. It wasn't all jazz- there was the odd Mitch Miller "Sing Along With Mitch" debacle here and there. At the time, though, I dug it all! I'd lie on my back on the carpet, close my eyes and really listen. I didn't understand what was going on in the music like I do now, and sometimes I miss being able to listen with that naive youthful fascination. Now I automatically "analyze" and sometimes that's really a drag.

I also remember the ambience that accompanied the listening sessions- low room light, some colored lights (red-blue-green) and some adult beverage (not for me of course- that also would come later ). A real 60s/70s attempt at a perceived "jazz club" vibe. I even remember the hip blue light emanating from my dad's Marantz amp. At that point of my life I wasn't really connecting with the music specifically, but I liked the general vibe of the hang. Also very important- focused listening, no talking allowed.

When I started to play trombone (fifth grade) I wasn't really into it all that much until high school jazz band. That pulled me in (forevermore) and I for the first time in my life became a self-motivated student of music. It's funny, later on in my life I bought pretty much all of the stuff my dad had played in those early years- it is definitely comfort music to me. Not so much for the musical content, but more for the memories those sides reveal.

These are the most vivid memories I have- these listening sessions ultimately pointed me towards what I seemed destined to eventually do and be. Doo-be-doo-be-doo.

Edited March 12, 2004 by Free For All

[Swinger]

I only listened to Iron Maiden,Metallica and similar metal bands until in 1991 a friend of mine got Art Tatum's The Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces as a birthday present.

He invited me to listen to "some fantastic piano player who really ´blew his socks off" as he put it .

So I went to his apartment and for the next 3 months we listened randomly any of those 7 cds 1-2 times through and I was sold.I didn't buy any jazz cds until 1997 and my first cd was Mingus' The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady.Not a bad start, eh?

My jazz collection is still rather small (under 50 cds) but I intend to collect them until the day I die.