posted
I have always liked jazz, but have never really known much about it or have had the intelligence to take the time to look into it. I really only know one song, which may or may not actually be called jazz by some people, which I listen to over and over again. It's the original "Shake, Rattle and Roll" by Big Joe Turner, and is raunchy and wild enought to make the much more famed version look like a children's rhyme.
There is one song I heard on the radio the other day, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of it. I think it was "April in Paris?" Not sure.
If anyone can verify this, or has any good suggestions for jazz, I'd appreciate it.
EDIT: Upon doing the slightest bit of research, I've found that the name was indeed April in Paris. Any other recommendations would still be great.
[ March 14, 2005, 05:50 PM: Message edited by: Book ]
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posted
April in Paris is a classic Big Band song, one of my favorites. Songs with a similar feel would include String of Pearls, Serenade In Blue, Call Me Darling, September Song, Lover Man... ooooh, I Could Write a Book is a great one.
If you like rock-ish jazz like Shake, Rattle & Roll I highly reccommend you try some Zydeco music, should be right up your alley. I heard Marsha Ball and her band last night, they were fabulous, and several songs had that kind of feel. Modern swing music by Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Brian Setzer Orchastra, or Swingerhead also could fit the bill. There's a great Various Artists CD called Swing This, Baby! that'll give you a good taste.
Pick up best of compilations of Sarah Vaughan, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Les Brown, Dinah Washington, or Count Basie... for some excellent standards. There's a "Best of The Songbooks" CD by Ella Fitzgerald that's a great place to start. Stan Kenton was an incredibly talented piano player and composer, not as well-known so harder to just grab at any record store, but well worth listening to.
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Oh, hey! Come to dkw & Bob's wedding! They're having a swing band at the reception, you'll hear a lot of classics and standards, and I'll teach you to dance if you don't already know how.
Of course, I think everyone should come regardless, this is just an added bonus reason.
(Be sure to refer to them as Bird and Miles, for extra cool jazzness)
I also really like Ratdog, which is Bob Weir's side-band(Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead) Very jazzy and cool.
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quote:. There's a great Various Artists CD called Swing This, Baby! that'll give you a good taste.
I like those CD's, they are a great way to hear a bunch of bands without having to buy a whole CD of music you may or may not like.
Also, if you REALLY want to learn about Jazz, I would HIGHLY recommend the Ken Burn's DVD, Jazz, and the soundtrack to it. It goes way back to the roots of Jazz, and gives a great overview or the sound. I have see a little bit (not nearly enough) of it, and it is great.
posted
Buying old jazz CDs can be really tricky. See, we get used to living in a time where recording media are ubiquitous. Most bands get a reputation when they come out with a really good album. A certain recording is what made them great, and you can listen to that very recording to get an appreciation for their talent. If you want to get into The Beatles, go pick up Sgt. Pepper or the White Album. But things were not always so.
Way back in the day, a lot of the great old jazz musicians got their reputations for playing live, or for writing pieces that became "standards". If you went to a club where Duke Ellington or Count Basie were playing, you'd get a great show and probably become a big fan. Unfortunately, we can't go to these clubs today; we must rely on records. There were recording media available in those days, but they were used in different ways. These people didn't sit down and plan out an album. They'd maybe have some of their shows recorded, or maybe they'd go into a studio and do some random sessions. There wasn't an emphasis on an album dropping, and many of these recordings would vary in quality. Some of them are brilliant, and some of them are crap.
The danger is that most albums you find of legendary jazz musicians are compilations. Someone will come across some recordings of Duke or Benny Goodman or someone, and put them together. Maybe they were great sessions. Maybe they were shows where the band was drunk or sessions that the performer laid down to get a quick check. The people that are putting together the CD don't care, they just want you to see a CD with the name of a great musician on it and shell out ten bucks. So when you're buying jazz, particularly old jazz, you really have to be careful. I bought several CDs and records by Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and some other of the greatest musicians of all time, and I occasionally got lucky but most of them were terrible. I didn't know if I was too stupid to hear how great they were, or if they were all overrated. Fortunately, it wasn't really either.
Of course, as you approach the present, there's less of the session collection type albums and more of the modern thought-out artistic statement type of albums that we're used to. Once you get to the time period of Kind of Blue, Time Out, A Love Supreme, and pieces like that, the artists had a clear idea of what they were trying to accomplish and you start being able to hear the very compositions and performances that made them great. However, even well past those days jazz is a genre rife with chaff that must be sifted though to find the wheat.
Fortunately, we live in the information age. There are tools to help us. One of the most useful tools I've found (particularly for beginners) is on Amazon, particularly here and here. The first link will lead you to some great works in various jazz styles, and if you want to check out some of the musicians that you've heard about specifically, you'll find most of them on the second link. For example, if you want to see what's great in Fusion or Bebop, you can find them in the first link. If you hear about Charles Mingus or Charlie Parker and want to see what their best recordings are, click on their names in the second link. There's some info on each album, what they sound like and why they're great, so that you can pick the things that you would be interested in.
Anyway, don't let me discourage you. Jazz is a fantastic genre... America's only truly unique art form, it's been said. There's nothing better than discovering a really great jazz album. In fact, I may come back later and give you a few places to start (although I have so many jazz albums that I'm truly attached to I'd have a hard time narrowing it down. And I've hardly scratched the surface myself, so I'll just let you explore and maybe you can find something great that you can recommend to me). Meanwhile, choose wisely and don't get discouraged if you pick up the occasional stinker. Good luck and bon voyage.
posted
I overdosed on Dave Grusin/Lee Ritenour stuff back in the 80s when it was some of the first music being recorded direct to digital. Now it just sounds like session musicians turning out factory music. No soul. No life.
I used to think Spyro Gyra was pretty cool too. But not after several crap CDs in a row.
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posted
Yeah, although GRP has signed some of the best musicians alive (among others), a lot of the stuff on Grusin's label is a little too close to "smooth jazz" to make me comfortable.
Nevertheless, I still think The Gershwin Connection has some of the best bits of modern jazz I've heard. Much of it is thanks to Eddie Daniels, my favorite living clarinetist. So I've got to give it up to Grusin for that one.
posted
Kurt Elling is a good current, but not very well known jazz singer. He's awesome. I've always been a sucker for male jazz singers though (Give me Frank Sinatra or Harry Connick, Jr. any day and I'll melt).
Edit to add link to Kurt Elling's website. I have his CD, "This Time it's Love".
posted
Okay, before I go to bed I'm going to give you a couple of my favorite jazz albums to maybe give you some ideas about where to start. But let me give you a disclaimer first: I tend to personally gravitate toward cool jazz and fusion. I know a lot of people that prefer swing jazz and bebop. I like those too, but they're not quite as likely to make it onto my personal list of top favorites. So take these couple of recommendations with a grain or ten of salt.
Pat Metheny: Secret Story. I have more albums by Pat Metheny in my collection than any other single artist or group of any genre. Nearly everything he makes is worth its weight in gold. But if I were forced to choose one desert island disc of his, this would be it. It's got all of his unmistakable guitar wizardry, but it's wrapped in the most seamless tapestry of diverse influences I can imagine. It's also one of the most evocative and emotive pieces of music I own. One of those pieces that tells a story without words. It's like the greatest soundtrack ever to a movie that's never been made.
Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto: Getz/Gilberto. A landmark in Bossa Nova, the mixture of cool jazz and samba, this showcases an American master and a Brazilian master at the top of their respective games. It's where the song The Girl from Ipanema is from. It's also just about the most chilled-out lounge music ever. Jazz Samba by Getz and Charlie Byrd is another fantastic work in this genre.
John Coltrane: My Favorite Things. I've got several Coltrane albums, and they're all great. But although this album may not be as groundbreaking or influential as, say, "A Love Supreme" or "Blue Train" (which are excellent albums), it's a heck of a lot more fun, and it gets played more than anything else of his that I own. The whole album is just four rather well-known songs that Coltrane interpreted for jazz. It's really cool listening to him jam to the title track (yes, the one from The Sound of Music) or the Gershwin tunes. In fact, it's the album that inspired The Doors to write Light My Fire. They said that although everyone thought they were breaking new ground in extended psychedelic experementation, they were just trying to jam like Coltrane did on this album.
Bill Evans: Waltz for Debby. This is one of two albums that were made out of the same concert. The other one, Sunday at the Village Vanguard, is supposedly at least as good if not better, but I haven't heard it yet. All I know is how good this album is. It's the essential stripped-down cool jazz trio sound. Just a piano, a bass and drums, no frills, but some of the most solid virtuoso playing you'll ever hear. Stunning.
Stanley Clarke and Friends: Live at the Greek. Stanley Clarke is one of the most viscerally exciting bassists ever to pick up the instrument. On this album, he joins up with some of the biggest names in jazz fusion (most notably for me, drummer Billy Cobham and guitarist Larry Carlton) to give a lesson in what Fusion is all about. They do some fantastic original numbers, and even do some of the best-known pieces of cool jazz (All Blues) and hard bop (Good Bye Pork-Pie Hat), fusion style. One of the best concert albums I've ever heard.
Rabih Abou-Khalil: Blue Camel Anouar Brahem: Barzakh. One of my favorite things about jazz is how universal it has become. I love hearing it adapted by other cultures. Abou-Khalil is from Lebanon, and Brahem is from Tunisia. They incorporate their native folk music into jazz, making a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. I've had both of these albums for years (along with other albums by the same artists) and I'm still in awe whenever I hear them.
Like I said, I've got lots more albums that I hate to leave out. And I've barely scratched the surface of this limitless genre myself. But these are some of my favorites, and you could do a lot worse than starting with any of these.
posted
I'll have to get that Stanley Clarke album. I'm a Billy Cobham fan too.
I still like Pat Metheny's Quartet best of all his albums. I like the intimate, acoustic sound. But all his stuff is good...accessible to the masses, while remaining true to his roots.
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posted
Wow, Speed, the Middle Eastern jazz sounds fabulous. I shall have to find some of those albums.
Does anyone have any favorite jazz streams? I have to listen to low-key stuff at work, and I've pretty much exhausted my own playlist several times over. I prefer vocal to instrumental; something about pure piano jazz puts me to sleep. Any recommendations?
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posted
I agree with Speed that certain jazz is a live thing. Oh, for the tapers I know to be able to go back in time!
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posted
For extra jazz coolness: refer to Billie Holliday as "Lady Day". Lurrrrrv Lady Day. Her story is especially tragic and makes her songs all the more poignant. There was a film about her (starring...Diana Ross? I forget) called "Lady Sings the Blues". Never saw it, but have read books and many articles.
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My son's guitar teacher was in a really hot band, sort of funky jazz. The lead singer, Kim Zombik, left to play Billie Holiday in a play in Japan. i don't think it ever made it here, though, Jexx.
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posted
I've been listening to Charlie Hunter recently. He plays a 7 or 8 string guitar with bass and guitar strings on it. He has 3 albums available for free download (including artwork) here on his site. It's all live stuff and sounds really good so far.
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