Jazz: What made you like it ?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Yesternow, Dec 2, 2017.

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  1. Yesternow

    Yesternow Forum pResident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Portugal
    I guess Jazz wasn't your first interest in music.
    Post here what guided you there:
    An album ? Song ? Concert ? Artist ?

    What was that trigger that initiated your love on this type of music ?!

    There are so many Jazz lovers on this forum. People that know a lot about it a make it part of their life's. Wouldn't you like to know how did it start for them?!
     
  2. action pact

    action pact Music Omnivore

    Curiously, my gateway was the Style Council. Their early albums and EPs had some pseudo jazzy stuff that I thought was pretty neat, and that got me interested in exploring "real" jazz.

    I was working in a really good record store at the time (1984), and the manager gave me some invaluable guidance. He picked out and handed me my first jazz LP, Thelonious Monk's 'Brilliant Corners.' He also took me to my first jazz show, a club date by the World Saxophone Quartet in Pittsburgh. Needless to say, I jumped in with both feet and was often confounded by what I was hearing - but I liked it.

    In the mid-'80s, Fantasy Records' OJC (Original Jazz Classics) series of Riverside and Prestige reissue LPs was extremely affordable - I think list was $4.99 and we sold them for $3.99, so with my employee discount I was able to buy lots of them and explore.

    In those days, you could also buy original Blue Note LPs for not a lot of money, and the '70s pressings were dirt cheap too!
     
  3. Boswell

    Boswell Forum Resident

    Duke Ellington Time-Life set in the early 1990s and I still have it and thousands more Jazz recordings.

    People who live in the modern world and don't listen to Jazz are almost not quite getting it!
     
  4. action pact

    action pact Music Omnivore

    They just don't DIG, ya dig?
     
  5. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    To the limited degree I’m interested in it, it’s thanks to the Ken Burns Jazz series.
     
  6. SurrealCereal

    SurrealCereal Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    As far as really enjoying pure jazz, I’m still getting there. I think the first release I ever liked by a jazz artist would be Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters. I got into ‘73-‘74 era King Crimson around the same time, which could also be considered fusion.
     
  7. Zach Johnson

    Zach Johnson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario


    This is the track that really opened the door for jazz to me. I had been aware of some of the jazz fusion that bordered on prog, but this got me into Miles' other stuff, which eventually led me to all of the other jazz I currently like.
     
  8. paulmock

    paulmock Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA
    Ready for this answer? DEAN MARTIN! I was 12 yrs. old when his NBC TV show began and took off like hotcakes to be the hottest variety show on TV for several years. My mother used to stay up and watch it every Thursday night at 10PM. From Dean's varied line up of guests I got a "feel" for what I liked. He had some jazz people on and I started to like what I heard.

    It started with Dean himself and bought his records. But...bear with me now...when I put 2 + 2 together and realized he was friends with a guy named Sinatra I liked what he did as well and began buying his records.

    From then on I was hooked on jazz. Initially big band as Sinatra recorded with Basie & Ellington and I immediately began to seek their records out. I just let my curious mind explore from there on out. I now have a very large collection of all forms of jazz recordings. All because of Dino.

    Thanks, Pallie!!!!:love:

    And let me add to this the fact that while my classmates were buying and playing Woodstock and InaGada Davida (or whatever the hell it was called!) I was playing Francis A & Edward K, Sinatra- Basie, Sinatra @ the Sands, Duke Ellington's 70th Birthday Concert, etc. It made for being on the receiving end of some pretty nasty what is now called "bullying" in high school.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2017
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  9. Paul Saldana

    Paul Saldana jazz vinyl addict

    Location:
    SE USA (TN-GA-FL)
    It feels like it's always been there. I'll have to blame it on Warner Brothers "Looney Tunes", Bugs and Daffy. "Powerhouse" and the Sinatra parody where he was so skinny he disappeared behind the mic stand.

    I remember was a Benny Goodman fan before I bought any rock records.

    My parents watched Lawrence Welk when I was small. I am sure I saw all the Bing Crosby movies on tv as well.
     
  10. Trevor_Bartram

    Trevor_Bartram Senior Member

    Location:
    Boylston, MA, USA
    The route to jazz was: home recordings of Top 20 pop, progressive rock LPs, fusion LPs, classical and a few jazz discount LPs, classical and opera CDs, folk CDs, rock CDs and finally jazz CDs. With forays into punk, post punk, ska, reggae and blues along the way. No wonder I can't find any new music to buy but I've reached my storage limit too!
     
  11. LitHum05

    LitHum05 El Disco es Cultura

    Location:
    Virginia
    Still looking for a gateway. I’m hoping it may be euro film soundtracks from the 1960s and 70s (for example, Blow Up). I dig some of that stuff, although I think I dig them most because of the film concepts behind them. Are there jazz concept albums anyone recommends?
     
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  12. willy

    willy hooga hagga hooga

    Dad's records, things like Ray Anthony's Jam Session at the Tower, and Jonah Jones' I Dig Chicks. Then I discovered Time Out and Sketches of Spain.
     
  13. mesfen

    mesfen Senior Member

    Location:
    lawrence, ks usa
    I grew up hearing tommy Dorsey. During high school, it was Herbie Mann's Memphis underground and Ramsey Lewis them changes. I wore the grooves out those records. Then Bitches Brew.....
     
  14. guidedbyvoices

    guidedbyvoices Old Dan's Records

    Location:
    Alpine, TX
    Ella fitzgerald. Just before she died I worked at Barnes and noble and got the best of the songbooks cd and fell in love. So that got me into the cole porter type songs. Years after, Ken Burns Jazz when it was on got me into a lot of the stuff on the show from Armstrong and Billie up to Charlie Parker. For years that was more than enough but getting into vinyl last year got me digging deeper into 50s hard bop, blue note Miles and trane stuff.

    But the big thing was Ken Burns Jazz. It was like knowing rock and roll only from blue suede shoes. I couldn’t believe how much great stuff there was, and my local library having all the individual CDs to check out was fantastic
     
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  15. vinyl diehard

    vinyl diehard Two-Channel Forever

  16. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    I was escaping the morning inanity that was FM rock radio for my commutes to/from work. Just couldn't take the blah blah funny/shock bits and endless commercials.

    I found a soothing haven in the lower end of the FM dial that was listener supported jazz. The more I listened, the more I enjoyed the whole sonic experience of the DJs, special segments, and the artists. This triggered an interest to build a home collection. I have a modest but well varied selection of jazz artists.
     
  17. Jackson

    Jackson Senior Member

    Location:
    MA, USA
    Hearing “Take 5” did it for me,
     
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  18. Zack

    Zack Senior Member

    Location:
    Easton, MD
    Early Miles.
     
  19. detroit muscle

    detroit muscle MIA

    Location:
    UK
    I grew up hearing pop on the radio, but jazz (mostly big band/ swing) in my house. Equal billing in my young years.
     
  20. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    I got Joni Mitchell's Mingus and Weather Report's 8:30 from the library in the early 80's. Liked them enough that I looked up info about Weather Report in a rock book and found that some of them had played on Bitches Brew. So I got that, and some older Miles Davis albums, from the library too. And so on from there.
     
  21. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I liked jazz for many years as a teenager but it was a kind of side interest -- I listened to Bird and Monk and Armstrong and Davis. When I was in college I listened to more and more of it and saw more and more of it live, saw a lot of Sun Ra, caught cats like Lee Konitz at a little bar in Manhattan, etc. But it was when I was in my early 20s and I found a box of library discarded records on the street in Greenwich Village that included a copy of The Shape of Jazz to Come that jazz really began to open up to me. I had heard Free Jazz in high school because my girlfriend's dad owned a copy, but I never connected with it then. But when I heard that bass thrum on "Lonely Woman" and the double time Billy Higgins cymbal figure pulling against it like cross currents in a giant river, and then that aching melody, it was a shafts-of-light, choir-of-angels-singing moment for me. That was, I dunno, in the mid 1980s. From that point forward jazz became really the sort of music I listen to most, I delved deeply into its history, and I've spend at lot of time at concert halls and clubs like the Village Vanguard seeing the greats young and old. But I can really trace my jump from casual jazz liker to jazz aficionado to finding a copy of The Shape of Jazz to Come on the street. (The box of records also contained a copy of Miles Smile.)
     
  22. ATR

    ATR Senior Member

    Location:
    Baystate
    I never disliked it. I've never been the same since Bitches Brew opened my ears and my mind when I was in high school listening to Cream, Mothers of Invention, Jimi Hendrix, etc.
     
  23. vinylontubes

    vinylontubes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Katy, TX
    I'm not genre kind of guy. If it well done, I will probably listen to it. There wasn't anything that go me into Jazz.

    There is a discussion of Jazz in the Amazon series Good Girls revolt when the main character discusses Jazz with her boss. This is close to how I feel about Jazz.

    "I don't get jazz.

    You don't get... You don't get jazz?

    No. [chuckles]

    I don't really think it's a question of getting it or not, I... I... It's more a question of how it feels when it washes over you.

    I... I'm just looking for a lyric or a melody or something to hold onto.

    Yeah, no, no holding on. Look, this music's not trying to take you someplace, it's, uh... It's trying to find you. Down deep where you already live."
     
  24. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    It was the jazz elements in Hendrix and Santana that opened me up to jazz.
    Then came fusion albums from Jeff Beck, Return To Forever, Weather Report and Isotope which led me to Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
     
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  25. RudolphS

    RudolphS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rio de Janeiro
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