are there jazz enthusiasts here?

[Michael]

Thanks for the info, Joy. The Youtube was brilliant, Chris.

[dice45]

provided the Jazz is good ...

i like it very much ... about half of my record collection is Jazz. I am quite into collective improvisation. Chicago and Dixieland style has it in spades -- what a loss when the style called "Swing" got rid of it and it was not re-acquired before the Free Jazz era.
Most of my stuff is Charlie Parker or later, however. My most preferred musicians are Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk.

[Roehre]

My interest in Jazz is mostly concentrated on Bebop and Free Jazz,
most listened to artists i.a. Miles Davies, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk.
the Instant Composers Pool (around Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink), Joe Zawinul.

[dice45]

Free Jazz was the entry door for me ....

to serious music listening. Eddy Gomez' and Jeremy Steig's "Outlaws" to be specific. Structure coming out of chaos ... fascinating! I still listen to that, it hasn's worn off yet.
What also struck me like a lighning: hearing Charlie Parker playing "Ornithology" at a 10th class school exam, me being requested to tell style.

Back then, the so-called classical music did not touch me so much as as a schoolboy, i had no access to very good performances. One does probably not get encharmed by Beethoven if Karajan is conducting or Alfred Brendel is playing the piano. Or if some fool is playing Mozart like romantic music or is killing his subtleties with his bearpaw touch on the piano. Or is messing up the rhythmics. Haydn from my schoolboy perspective was pop music without depth ... i did not like pop music at all (and continue to do so with some rare exceptions).


None of school buddies had Charlie Parker within his reach back then, but more Modern Jazz was around and i got hooked on that "Outlaws" record.
With Charlie Parker it was easy during the following years: simply buy any record within reach and you have 93% hit rate (the other 7% were producer's errors or Bird being too stoned on that recording date)

I got more adventurous in my Jazz listening, tried to find out about the real good recordings. This was not easy in Germany as those guys knowledgeable in Jazz would not dream of indroducing a neophyte ... no way!! So i bought books about Jazz ... same attitude: Mister Professor is not enlightening the student, instead he points out to the student how smart and knowledgable the professor and how stupid the student is. Very German and utterly loathable !! But a professor has to make references about what he is talking about (even if the references are obscure) and so i learned about the recordings those authors considered to be epoche-making, school-forming, history-writing. Then i stumbled over a series of books describing the life of Mingus, Monk, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and giving detailed reviews of every recording in the reach of the authors. This was the Mother Lode! Providing all the necessary info, all the required buzzwords. So i could go back to the Jazz experts asking for specific records and using the opportunity to tickle additional hints out of them

I worked my way backwards from Free Jazz thru the essential Jazz stuff and there was a lot of stuff i could not grasp at 1st listening. But when a recording was considered essential by experts, i listened to it many times without grasping or liking it -- until the lightning of insight struck. I used the "billions of flies can't be wrong"-approach: something in this shit must be valuable!! To Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" album i listened 17 times, OTOH his '"Shape of Jazz to come" was immediately accessible to me.

As a young man, i disliked Hardbob and Cool Jazz. Jazz had to burn like hell for me and when i got acquainted with Coltrane's music, this was love on 1st sight ... and it has stayed that way. It was his sound which struck me. Today i have most of his albums and frequently listen to them. My favourite John Coltrane albums: "Coltrane" (Prestige 7105), "Blue Train", "Giant Steps", "My Favourite Things", "Olé", "coltrane plays the blues", "Africa Brass", "A Love Supreme", "Kulu Se Mama", "Ascension" (both editions), "Expression".

Thelonious Monk is my second love on 1st sight. I 1st heared about him by help of a Chick Corea album ("Trio music -- The music of Thelonious Monk"). Of course, experts would snort at it but it got me interested. And when i finally convinced the local expert (the Jazz record shop owner) to play a Monk record of his choice to me (usually he would play what he felt like and responding to customer requests was anathema to him ! ... several times i had observed that he stopped playing records when other costumers asked for a record being played). He played the ""Brilliant Corners" album, he played both sides, several customers left annoyed but i stayed ... it was like a drug for me . Today, i have all his recordings on the Blue Note and Riverside label and many of the earlier Columbia albums. And i do not get tired of listening to it.

To explain why Thelonious Monk could annoy people with a classical music background: Quite a few consider him to be a manually unskilled anti-pianist as his touch is very percussive and considered by them to have no finesse at all. The opposite is true: he could imitate Fats Waller or Art Tatum when he wanted; he intentionally developed this touch (he is hitting the keys with straight, stiff fingers) to suit his musical intentions; today i do not know another pianist oozing blues feeling like Monk does. Pianist play on a pre-tuned instrument, he cannot vary the tone pitch like a horn player or reed player or string player can do in order to produce "blue notes". Nevertheless, Monk's play conveys blues feeling, just he lets the dirty notes develop in the time domain, by his percussivity and his timing. Jazz musicians often play off-beat but noone does it as pronouncedly as Monk does. Combined with his advanced harmonics he often sounds like crushed ice cubes frozen together again but (to my ears) always making perfect sense. And as exceptional his solos are, his accompanying another soloist is even better, to me he is the best accompanying pianist ever (provided the soloist can stand / make sense of his harmonics sounding like crushed ice cubes ). On his album "Monk's Music" one can hear the young John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Gigi Gryce and Ray Copeland. accompanied by Monk in their solos. Gryce's solo on the opening tune isolatedly judged by itself would probably not appeal to most seasoned Jazz lovers: too patterned, too predictable, too deja-vu, definitely not original. But the chords Monk feeds under those inanities enhances the solo by several quality levels and turns it into a gem. Same with the other soloists, just their solos have way more substance to start with .... the interplay between Monk and Coleman Hawkins is just magic.
Another example is the famous Xmas recordings session 1954: please listen to the interplay between Milt Jackson and Monk on the two albums "Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants" (Prestige 7150) and "Bag's Groove" (Prestige 7109). Most outstanding sample is the second take of "The Man I Love". By the way. Miles Davis was one of those who could not stand Monks chord feeding; he asked Monk to stall during his solos and plays unaccompied.

Clifford Brown was a musician i had to learn to love -- slowly. To my youthful ears he was too perfect, too polished, too shiny. But as stupid youngsters often do, i based my judgement on too few samples; i did not know all his recordings. Today, i prefer Clifford Brown to Charlie Parker. I am not disputing Parkers qualities as a musician, as THE musician from whom all in post1945 Jazz is derived to some extent. But Parker was an evil genius and today, i do not sense his spirit as healthy for me.
Clifford Brown is an angel genius and i can feel it. He lived too short to deliver a large count of recordings but among those we have, almost all are crown jewels IMO. I grew into liking Clifford Brown the same way i grew into Joseph Haydn: I slowly discovered there is no shallowness in them and their spirit is pure medicine