When Did You First Fall In Love With Jazz?

[crawjo]

I don't mean naming a year, but rather, how did you first realize that you loved this artform?

For me, there are really two recordings that stick out as having a profound impact on my appreciation for the music. The first was Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain," which is no longer among my favorite Miles albums. But the first time I heard it, man! Today I was going through some old email files looking for something and I saw that when I first heard this album, I sent out a batch of emails to friends, letting them know about it. I had never heard anything like it at all. In fact, growing up as I did on pop music and classic rock, I don't even think that I realized that music could be that interesting and dynamic and expressive.

The second album that affected me in a similar way was Dexter Gordon's "Our Man In Paris." On a whim I ordered it from BMG, and I remember listening to it while driving in the car with my wife. I remember the tune was the first one, "Scrapple from the Apple," and as I was listening to it I suddenly turned to my wife and I said, "You know, I really like the way a tenor saxophone sounds." Of course, this was a rather naive and silly statement. Really what I meant was that I liked the way Gordon played the saxophone. But again, I had spent the first x number of years of my life listening to music that usually consisted of a singer, electric guitar, drums, and bass guitar, and that was about it. My experience of listening to instruments more typically associated with jazz basically consisted of being dragged by my parents as a child to listen to the Navy Band play old Glenn Miller tunes. Irrespective of the quality of the musicians in Navy Bands that play Glenn Miller tunes, this is not exactly the ideal way to teach a kid about jazz.

Since Sketches of Spain and Our Man in Paris I've bought so many jazz albums, that much of this initial euphoria has been obscured as my jazz collection has grown. But today for some reason I thought of it again. I think sometimes I focus so much on getting the albums that I should have, that I have lost track of the basic, fundamental beauty that the music conveys. And I think I probably take Dexter Gordon's playing on "Our Man In Paris" for granted. At the time I first listened to it, I was amazed that such music existed. I wish I could bring that same sense of amazement and gratitude to every jazz recording I listen to.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

I was fourteen years old. An older cousin gave me Dave Brubeck's "Time Out". He said he was going to throw it out. I told him I would take it. He also gave me a Patsy Cline album. The rest is history. Thanks, Roland.......

[john williams]

Crawjo: The epiphany came for me with John Coltrane's original single disk version of Live at the Village Vanguard, but specifically Eric Dolphy's bass clarinet solo on Spiritual. I didn't 'get it' straight away though. Then I discovered Afro-Blue from the Birdland disk - A Love Supreme - First Meditations - Sun Ship. I then moved on to earlier Trane, then to Miles. There soon followed a mad explosion of purchasing for a few years going back to Armstrong's H5/H7s and Ellington and forward to the avant garde/free music from Taylor and Coleman, Evan Parker etc.. However, I haven't heard anything that gave me that first feeling of discovery and amazement you refer to in your post in Jazz. There have been a few 20th century classical works that have though (Ligeti in particular, Feldman and Shostakovich).

The VV epiphany occurred about 10 years ago.

Later thought: I bought the Village Vanguard album because Dolphy was on it. It was on sale at my university campus CD shop. I knew of Dolphy through the Zappa song, The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue, from Weasels Ripped My Flesh. I still mintain the view that this is the best Zappa album and one of the essential albums from the era. Dolphy was also included on a list of 'people who inspired' on the cover of Freak Out.

[stonemonkts]

I was driving one morning from NJ to Mass. stuck in traffic on I-95 when I casually flipped through radio stations to find one with quiet music. Incredibly enough the one I found just started playing "So What". Long story short, they played the entire KOB from start to finish without interruption. I was absolutely mesmerized, and exhilarated. I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever heard in my life.

When I arrived in the town I was traveling to, the first thing I did was find a mall with a record shop. I ambled into a Borders and within thirty minutes or so I had a bag full of CDs. I remember what they were:

KOB, of course
Workin'
Miles Ahead
Sketches of Spain
Aura
Ballads and Blues (Miles on Blue Note)
Django Reinhardt - Verve Jazz masters
Coltrane - The Gentle Side of

I went for all of those because they were either by Miles Davis or were on sale, or both. Those were more than enough to get me started.

The following month I discovered Monk and Mingus. That was as exciting as the morning in the car with KOB. I was completely knocked out.

[Jon Abbey]

college, junior year, my friends dragged me down to see some guy I'd never heard of perform in Central Park. well, that was Sun Ra, we sat right in front of the stage, it was incredible, and I was off and running.

[Steve Reynolds]

around 1991 or 1992 -

bought Mingus at Antibes, Kind of Blue and Monk's Music

loved Mingus, initially thought KOB was boring

"Well You Needn't" was the tune and performance that did it

the opening piano solo after the theme remains my favorite Monk or piano solo ever

"Coltrane!, Coltrane!......"

[bostontricky]

I couldn't have been much older than two and a half, dancing like a whirling dervish to "A Banda" off my father's copy of Herb Alpert's Ninth. He'd spin it during cocktail parties after I was in bed, but the song would have me out of bed in a flash and greatly amusing all the grownups.

When I was old enough and allowed to handle LPs, wound up listening to a lot of stuff he picked up, probably from a Columbia record club when he was in the service - Count Basie from the 1940s, Armstrong's "Ambassador Satch" (I can still sing most of the solos note for note off this one), Phil Napoleon and his Memphis Five, Nancy Wilson with Cannonball Adderley, Sketches of Spain...

[Steve Reynolds]

and after listening to the music for about 6-7 years in a vacuum, finding friends here to share my love for the music intensified my love for the music

my friends here probably saved my life from an emotional standpoint when things were tough - here is where good people loved me whenmy thoughts and statements were pretty radical, petty or even mean spirited at times - what I thoughtI can't wait for the spring when I really get back on my feet - my goal is that the Vison week and months of May and June of 2005 will be vert special for me

one person I miss deeply who meant as much or more to thatn any other poster is the late, great Randy Oliver - he and I had different thoughts about music - but we exchanged tapes (I made a cecil Taylor compilation that he never quite did understand!) and listened to what each other had to say. I spoke to him twice, once only days before his passing and it was joyous loving conversation until we heard the devastating news


another loss was my friend Gene Kalbacher who I knew from Crazy Rythyms in Montclair

It's now been about 5 years since they both left us

[likewise]

In the early 80's. Temporarily fed up with rock music clichés, walking into a new record store in need of "something else", I picked up - had to pick up! -
Ornette's Something Else. An epiphany. Have kept moving back & forth through jazz history ever since. Mostly forth in recent years, after stumbling on
the Stockholm free scene in the mid-90's. - The love for the Velvets and Beefheart is still there, but nothing beats the freedom & challenge inherent in
topnotch "jazz" (Armstrong, Young, Parker, Monk, Mingus, Coltrane, Coleman and the free & flat out improvised stuff).

[Mark of Cenla]

It was the late 70s; disco reigned. I was a music lover, and I was going to Indiana University. I HATED disco, and there was lots of jazz to be heard. I do not remember what my first jazz records were. They were probably Dexter Gordon or Sonny Rollins. Peace.

[Jason Bivins]

Age 17, "Afro Blue" from Trane's Birdland album. The soprano tone grabbed me right away, the incredible Jones/Tyner momentum pulled me along, and when Coltrane began to solo my brain just sizzled. That and Mahavishnu's "Inner Mounting Flame" - which, with the aid of a generous amount of pharmaceuticals (hey, I went to Oberlin), made me dizzy - flipped the switch forever. Intensity, intensity, intensity.

[Steve Reynolds]

I heard Mahavishnu's "Birds of Fire" (and The Inner Mounting Flame) when I was 20 or so (1980 or so) - loved them both at the time, but for some reason, I never went to the sources

[Jason Bivins]

Those are pretty much the only decent records - and I think McLaughlin has stunk since the mid-70s. But that shit was big for me as a listener, and McLaughlin's work from "In a Silent Way" to the first Shakti record is huge for me as a guitar player too. "Live Evil," baby!!!

[crawjo]

Thanks for sharing the stories, guys.

Reynolds, yesterday I was in Borders and I bought my first Joe Maneri disc. I bought it mostly because it was there and I could: Going to Church. Thought of you while I was standing in line waiting to pay. Haven't had the chance to listen to it yet.

[mikeos]

As a fourteen year old schoolboy, used to bunk out of school mid-day to go to the local record shop. Remember buying "Jeru" and "Godchild" by the Miles Davis Nonet. Also big at the time (1952) was "Intermission Riff" by the Kenton mob.

We were also big Stan Getz fans in my class.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

My mother sang swing, my uncle played trumpet with the Dorsey Brothers, and my dad mixed in a bit of jazz with his non-stop classical home programming, so jazz was always there in my world. Household favorites were Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington.

My parents weren't into bop, so when I discovered Dizzy (first through 'Night in Tunisia' on a great supermarket set on 10" records) he was ALL MINE! And then, a bit later, my friends and I discovered Art Blakey ('Moanin') and started to going to jazz as well as rock concerts. And we soon all discovered and shared Miles.

In college, my best friend Kenny was a session player on bass, and enlightened me and others to Trane & Mingus.

I suppose the next Big Bang was hearing CT's "Indent" in the mid-70s -- I've never been as shocked and awed by a piece of music!

And maybe the biggest bang after that was joining this place, and discovering -- as I had with 'Moanin'' many years before -- that jazz was not an historic artifact, but was as alive and vital and exciting as it had ever been. I can't recall all the new discoveries I made then that ignited my passion for contemporary jazz, but among them were the Billy Bang (+Sun Ra) tribute to Stuff Smith (Stuff himself was a longtime special favorite, and remains so), John Lindberg's Bounce, and the Vienna Art Orchestra's 'Concerto Piccolo.'

[Richardo Caerleoni]

Good thread!

My brother is ten years older than me and was in in the M. Navy.

He went to the States and brought back a stack of records (this was the mid/late 50s)...one of which was a Fats Domino LP...wonderful tenor and alto sax solos and another was a Charle Parker LP with Monk and Dizzy...and Buddy Rich on drums...yes well!...BR didn't "fit" but Bird sounded like the guys on the Fats records (Lee Allan/Herman Hardesley)...at least to me at aged about 9!

So that was it....and then I spent a summer in Paris c. 1960 as part of a school exchange...and heard Bud P, Dexter, Griffin, Lucky T, Zoot, Ray Charles and just about everyone who played Antibes...so that was IT!

The one record was Art B's JMs with Jackie Mclean and Bill Hardman..."HARD BOP"..."Sam you made the bridge too long"...(now called "Sam's Tune"?) ....blew me away...after that I took up alto...not to any great heights..but I was hooked...So, I owe it all to Fats Domino, Bird and Jackie Mac!

RC.

[Gary Sisco]

35 years ago, age 15. I'd always heard and been interested in jazz on the radio and so forth, but I originally flipped over live jazz from a crew of "local" musicians. Then I bought my first jazz lp -- Miles, "Relaxin'. That was it. It's still my favorite record. And I've been a dedicated jazz fan as my main music interest, ever since.

[hans]

I think the first time I have been exposed to jazz in a more or less serious way was when I bought "Programmed" by Carl Craig's Innerzone Orchestra, released in 1999 so I was 19. On this disc some detroit-based jazz musicians (incl. Francisco Mora Catlett, Craig Taborn, Rodney Whitaker) play on compositions by techno producer Carl Craig, of which I was a die-hard fan at that time. Listening to this album, which let all of my friends completely indifferent (because too weird), for quite some time, I decided to dig into one of Carl's heroes Miles Davis.



I have noticed that keyboardist Craig Taborn has made some fame among some members on this board.

Also Frisell's Unspeakable reminds me of my past interests in a refreshing way, by means of its electronic beats, which I avoided for quite some time now due to my interest in merely acoustic jazz.

[Brian Olewnick]

Spring 1972 (age 17). Read an interview in Rolling Stone with Don Van Vliet, whose music I was very much into. He was asked to name his favorite musician. He replied: Ornette Coleman. Went to the local record store, picked up "Science Fiction", which Columbia was promoting somewhat at the time. Liked it immediately, took me about two years, I think, before I understood it. I think the second jazz album I bought was Jarrett's 'Expectations' due to the presence of Haden and Redman.

[chuckyd4]

The same week when I was 15, on spring break my sophomore year in high school.... first of all, I had a leftover Christmas gift certificate, took it to the local Streetside, decided I needed something other than the usual rock stuff I'd been listening to. Wandered into the jazz aisle, I guess cause it had some kind of "cool" factor in my mind. Somewhere in the overstock displays saw the cover for the Quintet at Massey Hall album. Parker, Gillespie, Roach, Mingus, etc... these were names I knew, so I went for it. First time I heard it, I dug it, but more for the general "lo-fi" (to my ears) coolness of it, than actually appreciating music.

Later that week, I was working on some big research paper they had assigned over Spring Break, and was down in the basement where I'd set up a little work space. My mom's turntable, and whatever records we'd been able to salvage from previous flooding were both down there as well. I was doing a paper on Allen Ginsberg (typical - sophomore in high school, you know), and in this one recording I had of him reading, there was jazz playing in the background. Again, I dug the cool "lo-fi" aesthetic, and wanted to be hip like that. So I flipped through the boxes of records. Found one by some Thelonious Monk, "Live at the Five Spot with Johnny Griffin".... coolest name I'd ever heard, so I put it on. At some point those chords that lead off "Blue Monk" came on, and I "got it" immediately. This wasn't cause it seemed cool anymore, this was the music I had been waiting for. I never quite recovered, even if I've since branched out to all different eras and styles of "jazz." Still one of my favorite tracks of all time.

[Enforcer]

I grew up with parents who both liked jazz. My old man played the tenor saxophone and my mother really had an ear for vocals. I remember her always pointing out the sound of a great singer's voice, telling me how I should appreciate it. She taught me that a jazz vocalist was like another instrument in the band, and how difficult it is to nail the notes and intervals that a jazz singer sings.

As a young drummer, I was first struck by Max Roach with Clifford Brown. That was kind of my entry point to the music. I loved how Max would play a drum solo that implied the melody of the head of the tune. That was a profound influence on me and opened my mind to the possibilities of the instrument. I spent a lot of time listening to the music of Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong, Duke, Basie, Lester Young and Ben Webster. Then I got deep into bebop. Monk was huge for me, as were Bird, Dizzy, Bud, Stitt and a couple hundred others.

Later, I fell in love with the music of Miles Davis. That led me to John Coltrane. A Love Supreme was my favorite Trane, and that hipped me to check out Ornette, who I was fortunate enough to see live around that time. Then I got deep into Ayler and Cecil Taylor. I also checked out Mahavishnu and Return To Forever around that time. Once I had tasted all those things, it was an all encompassing passion for me. Playing and listening to the music so much literally became too much of an obsession for me and I had to take a break from it for a while. I am capable of enjoying music in moderation now.

Kind of.

[Jazzzoline]

Early 80's, summer festival here in Québec city. We were walking aorund Carré d'Youville during the afternoon, when I heard that music UZEB played. There was a small crowd even if UZEb won prizes around the world. I remember thinking "It's like every one of them don't play the same tune".

Later, mid 90's, I started to go to Montréal Jazz fest. I tried to understand what it was about and started to dig the music more. Then there were musicians I liked more, and started to buy tickets and cds. Then, the music I used to listen to wasn't the same.

[Noj]

Around '91 or '92, when I was 15 or 16, a friend's dad gave him a huge record collection and I heard Coltrane's Africa Brass and Giant Steps, and later Horace Silver's Song For My Father. Song For My Father sealed the deal, I knew I had found my favorite music.

[HLJ]

My freshman year at Marquette went with some friends to dig Les McCann and Eddie Harris heard them play "Compare To What" and was blown away.Back in the dorm chilling with a classmate who was a drummer smoking some killer chronic and listening to this graveyard jock name Ron Kusner who had the coolest voice I have EVER heard on radio playing some of the most fantastic music.Went out bought Weather Report's "Sweetnighter" been jammin for over 30yrs.Peace and all that.

[jazzfiend]

At the age of 14(55), my drummer buddy, Klook, turned me on to Dave Brubeck's "Jazz Goes to College". The sound of Paul Desmond's alto sax turned me around. Shortly thereafter, I heard Miles' Blue Haze (Bluenote) and Clifford Brown's Joy Spring. Things would never be the same after that.

[kedoane]

My mom had Mahalia Jackson and a big band compliation, along with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby in her record collection and I heard those when I was a child. The first jazz record that I bought was a 1950's vinyl copy of Dave Brubeck's "Time Out" from Big Al's Record Barn. I bought that in 1985. I have added other albums from Pat Metheny as well. It was through the jazz appreciation classes that I had to take in community college to expand me out further with me loving Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. This was further expanded when I joined KSJS in 1994 and started DJing my own shows. This allowed me to experiment with other forms of jazz and got me further into the other forms of jazz.

[AlexV]

Senior year of high school. I was starting to drift from blues-based rock to blues. I was in the kitchen, about to feed the dogs, and was flipping the dial to 90.3 FM to listen to the Friday night blues program. Well, I overshot and wound up at 89.9, where John Lewis' four bar beginning interlude on "Parker's Mood" was just ending. Needless to say, the dogs had to wait a few extra minutes for their dinner, and I was hooked.

[Dibble]

I dont know if I am in love or not yet!

Havent heard enough though

My parents loved Swing, Ella, MJQ, Fats Waller, Nellie Lutcher, Anita Oday, Andrews Sisters, Miles Davis, -and can remember as a child being allowed to stay up late to watch Oscar Peterson on the TV on Friday nights

I I think I appreciate technical ability in musicians..jazz being its ultimate expression imho

Im here to learn

I have always liked soul music..great singers and great musicians..but dont have a definiting moment..although..my first memory of a record is Miles Davis -Summertime

[mjb]

In 1964 or so a friend played me the MJQ's Pyramid. It was probably the first jazz I had heard and I fell for it immediately ... for its swing and melodies and the overall affect it had on me.

I went to Doug Dobell's record shop on Charing Cross Road to buy it. In there I heard Guiseppe Logan's ESP album and was blown away. I had no idea that one music could be so diverse. I got them both.

I dabbled with jazz and pop until the summer of 1967. I had just got an advance copy of Pepper and we were playing it on the stereo on the roof of our flat in Earls Court Road. A neighbour came over to listen and he was carrying a copy of KoB. Kafuckingboom!