Jazz - What made you come to it?

[Flyposter]

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.

The drummer was most probably Steve Ellington. I remember that tour very well. One of Southampton's best ever gigs

[burning dog]

The drummer was most probably Steve Ellington. I remember that tour very well. One of Southampton's best ever gigs

Could well be. I was thinking of the band around 79/80

[Flyposter]

Just dug out the programme. Rivers/Holland/Ellington trio did a CMN tour in Spring 1981

[hackneyvi]

What made me come to it?

Looking at the other posts on this thread, I am unsure if there has been very much in the last 30 or more years to prefigure a recent epiphany. At 17, I got to know a lad who lived round the corner from me called Dave Baillie and Dave had Miles Davis records (only Sketches of Spain touched me enough to buy and it was music of 'remote coolness' to me, even so). He had Charlie Haden and Jan Garbarek - Folk Songs - whose haunted noise was hard to hear and impossible to ignore. A friend of his had Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert but that music, though heard, never knowingly registered with me. I found Bessie Smith somehow on my own. Michael Tippett's music came a decade later and provided some lovely prompts and jaunts in jazz - the 3rd symphony, 1st piano sonata.

Over the years, I've heard some of what I know are the 'greats' via record libraries but rarely been vanquished by them. However, I have and love John Coltrane, My Favourite Things; from an Eddie Lang CD (why did I have that?!), I discovered the unearthly Mahoganny Hall Stomp by Louis Armstrong, every bit as much an angelic mystery as Palestrina but with something bottomless about it when it settles into its strange, hypnotising second half; a Thelonius Monk compilation; Fred Astaire (don't laugh!); Ellington at Newport and his recordings with Ella Fitzgerald - I know they're not supposed to be the finest hour of either but the tumultuous, roaring/flawed Rockin' in Rhythm could blow me out of any gloom of any depth, the small combo Cottontail and serene, sole guitar-accompanied Solitude are inestimable perfection. Fats Waller playing Twelfth Street Rag is a record for my Desert Island.

But whatever else I may have heard, I can't call it back to mind.

Just recently what 'made me' was a space in life which started me looking at other musics, specifically modern orchestral. But Calum's mention of Craig Taborn and link to samples of Taborn's recent solo piano album started a larger something. Living in Dalston, a few days later, I had what may prove to be a life-changing experience when I heard Taborn play at The Vortex. Because it was utterly unfamiliar music of complexity and sophistication, it was impossible to hope to remember a note. But because it was jazz, I'd never have another chance to hear it because it would never be played the same way again. Consequently, I tried to find and jot a few words to record my impressions of the music as it passed.

At about the same time, I had encountered Wallace Stevens' poetry and the few words and phrases scrawled on a scrap of paper at the Taborn gig somehow fused with the experience of reading Stevens and grew to be several of pages over the next few days. They continue to grow as a long poem that may yet fragment and break into several, shorter ones. Other poems in other styles and on other subjects have followed this.

Since then, I've begun to struggle with listening to the modern jazz on Radio 3 and follow some leads from Calum, Serial Apologist and others. You all know how significant music can be and therefore perhaps appreciate how significant a break through into so vast a field as contemporary, LIVING! jazz might yet be to me. Each new name and piece is a blizzard and struggle of incomprehension, doubt and effort against my natural resistance to the new. My nature is fundamentally conservative, I think, and therefore what I don't already know can be greatly difficult to appreciate. But I think I may - as Serial Apologist has suggested he does - have found in jazz the rich, sophisticated, spirited, living music I had hoped and generally failed to find in the contemporary 'classical' world.



A future may have started and develop through for3 and when I offer thanks for information, names, interpretation and patience, I really do mean it.

[Jazzrook]

I first heard the LP 'The Best of Muddy Waters'(PYE R&B Series) during the 'blues boom' of the early '60s. Then came across Charles Mingus's 'Oh Yeah'(recorded 50 years ago this year) which blew me away. It still does today.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Mary Lou Williams on her Mother's knee .....

and at the piano

[hackneyvi]

... from an Eddie Lang CD (why did I have that?!), I discovered the unearthly Mahoganny Hall Stomp by Louis Armstrong, every bit as much an angelic mystery as Palestrina but with something bottomless about it when it settles into its strange, hypnotising second half ...

Didn't realise there were so many versions. I mean May 1929.

[Rumbaba]

My BiL was a big jazz fan and gave me some tapes, classic stuff like 'Kind of Blue', 'Somethin' else', 'Out to lunch', 'Eye of the hurricane'. It was the time when it looked like jazz was going to be the 'next big thing' and I went to see young players like The Jazz Warriors, Loose Tubes, Andy Sheppard, Courtney Pine, Tommy Smith, who were in the vanguard of the resurgence. There were a lot of real icons touring too and I went to see people like Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Freddie Hubbard, either in Croydon or on the Southbank. The Capital Jazz festival was good too. Worst gig ever was Miles though, at the Capital JF. I only saw him once and he was seriously past it and died not long after. Miles hardly played any trumpet, just doodled at the side of the stage on a little keyboard and was generally pretty rude. Played with his back to the audience, demanded applause, which was lukewarm when he did solo and never spoke to the audience.

Anyway, my BiL lives in Cheltenham and I am invited down every year for the Jazz festival there. In T. Wells, where I live, there is a free jazz on the Pantiles season, July / August. I go to Ronnie's a couple of times a year - last was Joe Lovano and check out the London Jazz festival. I used to go the the Greenwich beer and jazz est every year but there isn't one this year :( I like lots of other music too, blues, soul, rhythm and blues (not what is now called RnB), some folk, country, rock n roll, classical. Anything that's good: I'm not a purist :)

[Tom Audustus]

My parents always listened to swing. I loved prog rock - my teenage years were the 70s (but hated punk and everything it stood for). Learned to play the guitar.

Started going to the local weekly jazz club in a pub and organised by our school's Head of Music. Most weeks consisted of the locals jamming on standards, but once a month or so they'd get in a professional band. What was particularly good was that the early evening would be the opportunity for us newbies to get up an play before the main crowd arrived. Making beginner mistakes infront of just a couple of people at the bar is the way to learn !

[Old Grumpy]

Andy Sheppard and Sphere, Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia - in the Solent Suite (underneath the Civic Centre) in Southampton as a student in the latter part of the seventies.

Never looked back really.

In fact jazz led me into exploration of Early Music when Jan Garbarek/Hilliard Ensemble brought out the first Officium CD in 19whenever.