Jazz - What made you come to it?

[Guest]

I wonder how you all came to Jazz. In my case it was a boyfriend who had an amazing collection, it was nothing but Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Boy Lemon and blind anyone he had then other Delta Bluesmen and Bo Carter, Buddy Moss, and how about Lucille Brogan and Blue Lou Parker? Bessie Smith of course. Then, later, Etta James.

I have no idea why he had all the vinyl, his mother had run for Wales, his father had boxed ditto and his uncle played for Wales and he played cricket for the County, so he was really Kosher. Anyway, he went off to Loughborough Uni and I never saw him again. I still have, in my memory, his toothy grin and his auburn hair.

This may explain why, when it comes to jazz, I am rooted into the Delta rather than improv. So, what’s your history? What prompted you to listen, and why?

[Little Rootie Tootie]

Are you the same Anna that used to on the other board until someone was fairly offensive and then stopped contributing?

I used to known as Blind Drunk LRT when I was a blues singer.

My dad had a few records but not because he was jazz enthusiast but he liked having a good time and I cannot remember not being aware of jazz. I used to like blues a great deal but have almost completely lost interest but for the odd burst of Charlie Patten or somesuch now and again.

These Taffic activities do not suggest Jewishness. his toothy hair and his auburn grin.

[PatrickOD]

Anna, I wasn't going to resond, but when I found this ( 'the worst jazz record ever made', Humph)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrhT3ZB-vsI

it all came back to me.

As a primary school final year pupil I used to sit in on a local brass and reed band practice. My mate played the clarinet. After practice he tried playing the above solo, over and over. Myself and another lad provided trumpet and trombone parts - vocally, you understand. Enough said. Even so, I had got a feel for the three front instruments and I soon came to recognise the sound of dixieland whenever I head it. When trad jazz took hold in our parts, I got a trombone and formed a band - the MCJ. (Pee Wee Hunt was better known.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqf--EGeIPA

[Quarky]

In my case, I had an Uncle and Aunt with a Jazz collection, which they perhaps unwisely allowed me to have on semi-permanent loan. They had got into Jazz, living in North London and frequenting the Jazz clubs, in the post-war era.

My favourite record of that collection was Sing a Song of Basie by Lambert Hendricks and Ross, which I knew off by heart, and to this day I still have a predeliction for singers such as Mark Murphy, Mel Torme, and others that put words to a Jazz solo. Then Duke Ellington, Bird, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. Never had any time for the Beatles that came on the scene at that time.

Very interested in Jazz at University, but with the advent of Free Jazz in the late 60's , and with a difficult job, I lost interest in Jazz.

Over the past couple of years, largely through the efforts of the Jazz presenters on R3, my interest in Jazz has been reawakened, and was pleasantly surprised that Jazz is still going strong despite the roof falling in in the 70's/ 80's.

However now being an old boy, I don't have the fire and attachment that would leave me lost for days in the latest recording by a current hero.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...... i can't quite remember how i got here but if i could find a way out .......

i think i was born into a jazz, certainly swing, loving family and it was always there .... i just liked it more then than anything else ..... it is very hard for a male adolescent with an interest in something to resist going too far and getting lost believing as they do in their immortality and complete rightness of being .... and it was hip eh .... altogether irresistible and then i got the bass and accelerated my deviant path ......

never was a real blues fan except loved Jimmy Witherspoon [saw him at Scotts] and Ray Charles
eg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpEJt1xP704

but who needed anything else when there was stuff like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0D62CGa9gY

and movies like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ4l4oRkh_8

...and at the school i went to jazz was taken seriously enough to have concerts by the likes of Shake Keane and Michael Garrick, and we were allowed to play first

and we could see the Harriott Quintet!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0VQEU24nXQ

it wasn't hard to get into, not hard at all ......

this for example inspired us to a series of evenings with the young ladies from the distaff school, reading and boppin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFPE1n4aiKs

[rauschwerk]

My uncle made his living as a pianist and when I was young I would certainly have heard him playing, if not true jazz, then in a jazzy style (he used to play on the transatlantic liners). The first jazz record that interested me was probably Humphrey Lyttelton's Bad Penny Blues which made the charts in 1955. I leant to play the piano choruses by ear. In about 1960 my school music master played his O level class a track from a Dave Brubeck album - Some day my prince will come from Dave Digs Disney. It was the sound of Desmond's sax that really hooked me at once!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

My brother was in the merc navy in the mid '50s and brought an early Fats Domino LP back from the States - the saxes in Fat's band REALLY got me (Lee Allan etc.) and from there it was a short step to Ray Charles (with David Newman) who truly opened the door. I remember "posing" with Ray's "At Newport" album around town. As you did....
...In Newport. (South Wales).

BN.

[Anna]

Are you the same Anna that used to on the other board until someone was fairly offensive and then stopped contributing?

That was indeed me! I cannot now remember the offence, I do remember the Jazz Bored was pretty macho territory though and there certainly were some insults traded. I do miss King Kenny. I don't even think he has his blog anymore, The Japanese Knotwood Appreciation Society, it was brilliant and his artwork out of this world. Does anyone remember his brllliant pastiches of Corkys Cats in the back of the transit van on the way to gigs?

Anyway, to get back on topic, thanks for the replies (I have no idea why suddenly that toothy boyfriend sprung to mind) but, although we have a fairly healthy jazz scene down here, mainly improv and Norwegian it must be said, I don't find anyone into Blues, it's considered so old fashioned I think.

[Tenor Freak]

...yes, it was the wide availability of cocaine among the UK's rock and pop musicians in the mid-1980s which led indirectly to my getting interested in jazz. That, and a liking for black music in general (or at least what I heard on the radio - Stevie Wonder, The Crusaders, various other things).

"Street Life" by Randy Crawford and the Crusaders was, in retrospect, a seminal record for me. That tenor solo is still one of my favourites.

[Byas'd Opinion]

My father had a few jazz records - Ella, Louis, Duke, Joe Pass, Chris Barber - so I'd always heard it and sort of liked it. Then in the mid-70s, when rock and pop music were at their immediately pre-punk nadir, I went to uni in a town where some of the record shops had decent jazz selections. So I decided to experiment. It just took the first few notes of "A Love Supreme" and I was hooked. It was the start of a long expensive habit. Saxophones - just say no!

[Alain Bashung]

Ah yes, I remember it well...

The blues, naturally, made strange notes and tones sound very interesting. Then John Mayall had a brass section. Then there was Jazz 625 on BBC2. Then I found a book (by Nat Hentoff?) about the jazz scene, and drugs were mentioned, so clearly it was a pretty cool scene. Then somebody gave me a Louis Armstrong Hot Five EP. Then I heard Chris McGregor on the John Peel Show. Then, much much later, my first gig was Sam Rivers with Dave Holland(?) and somebody fantastic on drums. And the rest is history...

I like improv in the main, but other bits and pieces, too. Monk is THE man. But only if I'm forced to choose.

[burning dog]

That book by Nat Hentoff is really good if its the one where he's at recording sessions with Louis Armstrong and Davis/Evans. It's good to hear talk of Mingus Monk and Miles before they were the hip jazz icons of the CD era. The drummer with Rivers was possibly Thurman Barker but might not have been if you are talking of a UK gig.

My parents were jazz fans and my Grandad had an interest but it was more in the old left idea that trad was the voice of the Black Prolatariat which sounds a bit simplistic now but was believed by people a lot wiser and cleverer than me.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

your last point is well described in Gennari's excellent book:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dcxlWTZPK-AC&pg=PA219&dq=jazz+blowing+hot+and+cool&hl=en&ei=8QJMTYCcA86ahQen6JSXDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=jazz%20blowing%20hot%20and%20cool&f=false

[Rcartes]

I was introduced to jazz at school in the 1950s by a friend who had some Humphrey Lyttelton records. We listed to the radio a lot, not Radio 3 (which had very little jazz and that spoiled at the time by the unctuous, oleaginous Steve Race) but French Radio on long wave, especially Sim Copans' Pour Ce Qui Aime Le Jazz, which introduced us to Charlie Parker et al. So we missed an entire generation of (pre-1940) jazz, thinking of it as old-fashioned; it was only 10 years later that I discovered Armstrong, Hawkins, Ellington and The Master, Lester Young.

I still liked Miles' stuff - at least until he started playing that awful electro-crap; that and the whole fusion scene drove me out - until I came across Keith Jarrett. I struggle on with current jazz, but there isn't a great deal that I can tolerate.

[burning dog]

Miles electro-crap features my favourite Jarrett apart from the occasional standard where he deigns to swing and fails to sound like a pissed Rachmaninov. I think fusion was indeed terrible when is aimed at posh white kids who dressed as wizards (Romantic Warrior) or headbangers with an O level (Birds of Fire) When in a more purist mood I picket bands that feature a string bass and a saxophone.