Recordings that grabbed you and directed your life plan

[Chuck Nessa]

I obsessed over these 2 records in 1962/64 while in school, and they nudged me into the recorded music biz.

Thank yoy Esmond Edwards.

[BFrank]

Good start!

[Rabshakeh]

This is a great idea for a thread. 

Does it need to be one's professional life? If it is professional life then for me it is not a record but rather Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. 

Records that sent me into a serious spin, however, are Statesboro Blues by Blind Willie McTell (I am a cliché), Harry Smith's Anthology and Roscoe Mitchell's Sound. 

Prior to that my teenaged listening had been dominated by clues received from by Sleep's Holy Mountain, Darkthrone, Frank Zappa and, later on, Anton Webern and John Zorn, but the records I just mentioned cleared away that teenaged mist and had a 'fear and trembling' effect on me, equivalent to a moment of religious conversion.

[Joe]

Probably the first record I remember putting on repeat. Well, asking my parents to put on repeat... I was 4 or 5 at the time.

Bought a gold label copy for 4 bucks at a DFW record show based on something I'd read about it. Hearing it and falling in love with became the thing that decisively separated my musical tastes from my siblings', particualrly my older brother: child #1, so he typically controlled the radio and TV.

I'd been "investigating" jazz up until the point I auditioned this. (It must have been a used CD I came across.) I knew Joe Henderson from Tyner's THE REAL MCCOY and Richard Davis from OUT TO LUNCH. Hill I knew nothing about, not Haynes really. This is when I became obsessed with Blue Note and following all the threads between leaders, sidemen, etc. Which obsession soon spilled over to the other great independent labels of that era (Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary).

[Gheorghe]

Some of them: 

Miles Davis "Steamin´" as my first LP, and "The Great Concert of Mingus" as my second LP (3 LPs!) changed my live and made me want to become a jazz musician. And when I already did play a little, the stuff "One Night at Birdland" (Bird/Fats/Bud 1950 ) completly determined me to be able to play on that level. It was the first time I heard about Bud and remained my high mark. 
To  become able to play more demanding stuff than the usual amateur bandbooks with "Stella By Starlight", "Tenor Madness" "Misty" and so on, to develope my own tehnique, tricky changes, song forms other than 12 oder 32 bars , and if needed, at a speed like some of the tracks on "One Night at Birdland" at least when I am in good form ... which is important). 

[Dan Gould]

This seems like a very limited topic that would be easy or relatively easy to tick off the people who had "recordings" grab and direct their life plan. Let's see:

Michael Weiss

David Weiss

Sangrey

Alexander Hawkins

I know I am missing a few but not many.

 

 

 

[jlhoots]

Miles Davis: 'Round About Midnight (Columbia - 1957)

[Dan Gould]

3 minutes ago, jlhoots said:

Miles Davis: 'Round About Midnight (Columbia - 1957)

Which life plan was directed by this recording?

[Chuck Nessa]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

This seems like a very limited topic that would be easy or relatively easy to tick off the people who had "recordings" grab and direct their life plan. Let's see:

Michael Weiss

David Weiss

Sangrey

Alexander Hawkins

I know I am missing a few but not many.

 

 

 

Not my intention. Collecting large quantities of recordings, posting regularly on music boards, researching musicians lives and habits, etc. qualify as elements of a "life plan".

[Rooster_Ties]

Discovering Jimi Hendrix my sophomore year of high school in 1984 did it for me. No single album, as I think I bought all 3 of the studio albums released during his lifetime within the same month or so.

And then within 18-months I had every posthumous live and studio album/collection that had been released up until that point — along with a couple dozen(!) bootleg LP’s by the end of my senior year (and too many of his pre-fame Curtis Knight stuff too) — sometime like 40 releases (legal and otherwise).

Anyway, nothing could have better prepared me to get into jazz 3-4 short years later — especially electric-era Miles and Milestone-era Joe Henderson, etc.

Many of my favorite live Jimi songs had long-ish solo sections over vamps and pedal-point bass, or alternating chords — a bit like lots of 60’s hard bop, and 70’s-era Mal Waldron.

The seeds of my love of jazz were all planted in those 3 years that I listened to tons and tons, and TONS of Jimi — probably well over half(!) my entire listening for a 2 years there was Jimi.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Rooster_Ties

[gvopedz]

25 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Collecting large quantities of recordings, posting regularly on music boards, researching musicians lives and habits, etc. qualify as elements of a "life plan".

I would add:  visiting the gravesite of the musician

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Not my intention. Collecting large quantities of recordings, posting regularly on music boards, researching musicians lives and habits, etc. qualify as elements of a "life plan".

O.K., explanation understood.
So although I for the life of it cannot remember which recordings/artists it exactly were that combined to shape and define my music preferences at the age of 14 or so and thereby got me on the track of both (real, i.e. 50s) rock'n'roll (and rockabilly) on the one hand and jazz (at first primarily swing and some classic/oldtime jazz) on the other, all this DID change my life plan. Because thanks to my contacts with and presence in these subcultures I not only got into collecting of "large quantities of records" (oh yeah ... ), researching musicians and the music etc. (plus getting a feel for contemporary history and historical research in general), and meeting extremely interesting people but also eventually met my future wife in the rockabilly scene (though she admittedly wasn't as deeply into this as I was). So yes - this music exposure did "direct my life plan" in a bigger way than it would have seemed at first glance.
 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Not my intention. Collecting large quantities of recordings, posting regularly on music boards, researching musicians lives and habits, etc. qualify as elements of a "life plan".

Gotcha. Sort of a new way to express the old "what got you started on your jazz journey" threads.

So what I could contribute is that this recording is what led to my ongoing efforts to raise Percy France's profile in jazz. The discovery of unissued material that featured Percy France led me to ask the seemingly innocent question, "how hard would it be to acquire and arrange every known Percy France recording chronologically?"

Simple question that led me down many paths and ultimately to creating www.percyfrance.info.

[jazzbo]

 

 

 

 

These three LPs got me started on a teenage through adulthood jazz journey. When my father was the first Director of the Peace Corps program in Swaziland (now Eswatini) Atlantic Records sent a care package to the 80 or so volunteers of varied records from their catalog, predominantly mono pressings. One volunteer showed up with a box at our house one day with a dozen records and asked we kids if we wanted any of them. I chose these three LPs, my brother chose three blues and R and B titles, my sister and my youngest brother were not really interested. (My brother who chose LPs says that he remembers the volunteer as Chris Matthews, the journalist, who was among the volunteers my father directed, but I don't remember him ever coming over to the house).

I played these records over and over on the Grundig big tabletop radio/record player we had bought in Ethiopia and then moved to Swaziland with us; I still have these LPs and won't part with them, still playable. Each one of these is a wonderful recording and the Leo Wright might be my favorite as each side had a different instrumentalist in the front line with Leo. I was fascinated with these and they prepared me for the jazz obsession to come when we returned to the US.

Edited October 31, 2023 by jazzbo

[mikeweil]

This EP with the Modern Jazz Quartet's first four tracks on Prestige was in the collection of my older brother's finacée, who jobbed at a record shop at the time. I didn't understand a note, but it grabbed my attention. Their music still fascinates me after all these years, culminating in a discography research project. John Lewis' perfect balance - IMHO - of composition and improvisation formed my own esthetics about jazz.

Hearing this music and seeing the band perform in 1974 was a revelatory experience, percussionist Bill Summers inspired me to take up percussion seriously, his complete approach including ethnomusicology was my ideal. He was delighted to hear that when I introduced myself to him at a Hancock concert during the Dis Is Da Drum tour. And I learned so much from Herbie as far as rhythmic aspects of improvisation is concerned, the Mwandishi band albums being extremely important. 

Then there is Mongo Santamaria and Cal Tjader, my idol on conga drums and inspiring me to reasearch and publish their discographies.

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by mikeweil

[Teasing the Korean]

For me, it happened late, in my late 20s.  The album was Les Baxter's Tamboo.  I remember thinking to myself, "I have been looking for this music all my life, and didn't even know it!"  It was as if I willed the album into existence. I was lost in the percussion and impressionistic orchestration.  This led me to down an obsessive path to grab every exotica, space-age bachelor pad, crime/spy jazz, outer space, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, Moog and sitar album I could find.   It helped that no one wanted these albums at the time, and I could find them for 50 cents a throw. Those were the days!

[John L]

My father took me to see Albert King on his Born Under a Bad Sign tour when I was 9 years old.  I was blown away and immersed myself in the blues LPs in my father's collection.  This one especially hit me.  I listened to it every day for a while.   It made me know that I had to play the blues.  

[JSngry]

 

 

[Eric]

I was deep into punk rock/new wave and what we now call classic rock, circa 1981.  And then I heard this, courtesy of a guy I played sports with in high school.  Game over 🤩

 

[felser]

And I'm far from alone on both counts:

Edited October 31, 2023 by felser

[HutchFan]

These two albums were my gateway to jazz:  

   

First KoB and then Mingus at Antibes.  I discovered both during my sophomore year in college.

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by HutchFan

[sgcim]

12 hours ago, Joe said:

Probably the first record I remember putting on repeat. Well, asking my parents to put on repeat... I was 4 or 5 at the time.

Bought a gold label copy for 4 bucks at a DFW record show based on something I'd read about it. Hearing it and falling in love with became the thing that decisively separated my musical tastes from my siblings', particualrly my older brother: child #1, so he typically controlled the radio and TV.

I'd been "investigating" jazz up until the point I auditioned this. (It must have been a used CD I came across.) I knew Joe Henderson from Tyner's THE REAL MCCOY and Richard Davis from OUT TO LUNCH. Hill I knew nothing about, not Haynes really. This is when I became obsessed with Blue Note and following all the threads between leaders, sidemen, etc. Which obsession soon spilled over to the other great independent labels of that era (Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary).

I saw Arthur Lee live at Town Hall perform  the entire FC album  His band, Baby Lemonade, did a superb job, and they were augmented by a string trio and trumpet player.

David Angel was hired by Elektra to do the arrangements for FG, and he had an amazing career as a jazz saxophonist, ghost arranger for Woody Herman, Art Pepper and others, wrote music for TV shows, and led his own big band that played his own pieces. He worked with AL every day for a few weeks at the piano for FC, and said that AL was a genius, and could've become a great composer if he learned how write music.

[Joe]

1 hour ago, sgcim said:

I saw Arthur Lee live at Town Hall perform  the entire FC album  His band, Baby Lemonade, did a superb job, and they were augmented by a string trio and trumpet player.

David Angel was hired by Elektra to do the arrangements for FG, and he had an amazing career as a jazz saxophonist, ghost arranger for Woody Herman, Art Pepper and others, wrote music for TV shows, and led his own big band that played his own pieces. He worked with AL every day for a few weeks at the piano for FC, and said that AL was a genius, and could've become a great composer if he learned how write music.

Thanks for sharing that! I recently discovered this recording by David Angel and have enjoyed it very much.

https://vsoprecords.bandcamp.com/album/v-s-o-p-127-cd-the-david-angel-big-band-camshafts-and-butterflies

Arthur Lee didn't often help himself, but he also got a pretty raw deal on that "third strike" offense that sent him to prison for almost 6 years. But he got his flowers at last not long after.

 

[JSngry]

Is that Bill Perkins on alto? 

[felser]

3 hours ago, sgcim said:

I saw Arthur Lee live at Town Hall perform  the entire FC album  His band, Baby Lemonade, did a superb job, and they were augmented by a string trio and trumpet player.

David Angel was hired by Elektra to do the arrangements for FG, and he had an amazing career as a jazz saxophonist, ghost arranger for Woody Herman, Art Pepper and others, wrote music for TV shows, and led his own big band that played his own pieces. He worked with AL every day for a few weeks at the piano for FC, and said that AL was a genius, and could've become a great composer if he learned how write music.

I have a DVD of a performance from that tour, and it's nothing short of miraculous.