So for Quarantine movie night at our home we watched Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago. Michael K Williams' plays a jazz trumpet man. My kids, who normally tease me about Jazz being boring, were stunned into silence, after he (Wynton & friends) plays Blues Walk in a jazz bar scene. You still think Jazz is boring? They had nothing to say, lol. That was followed up with Thom Yorke's Daily Battles. Great scene and music. I'm not going to link that scene from YT here so as not to spoil the movie - you can find it if you like. I highly recommend you watch the movie, though.
Pittsburgh-born Ahmed Jamal. Here's Johnny Hartman, singing the classic "Lush Life," which was written by another Pittsburgh born legend, Billy Strayhorn (when he was still in ********ing HIGH SCHOOL!!!) And a more famous version, Hartman backed by Coltrane and his classic quartet... Seriously: a ********ing high school kid wrote that! He was a genius, but still...
Every jazz aficionado I know never seems to know Roy Ayers yet he's one of the most sampled artists in hip hop. Everybody Loves The Sunshine is classic.
And this thread is missing Herbie Hancock, I mean, the guy played for Miles Davis and has done everything!
This year's festival will consist entirely of invisible musicians playing John Cage's 4'33" on an endless loop.
It's said that Strayhorn wrote stuff in his sleep that most other composers couldn't touch when they were wide awake. I heard a story about him getting into a cab with some manuscript, and getting out with two fresh tunes... I don't know if I believe it, but dude was absolutely a genius. Some of the aficionados don't know, but the musicians they listen to know Roy. Best believe that. The coolest live version of this tune was on YT and then one day it wasn't. I hate it when stuff gets pulled. I was in middle school when ELTS dropped. Somebody's older brother bought the album and was playing it while we were over at his house. I don't know what happened, but I heard it only twice. And then one day about 10-12 years ago, I was running Pandora or something and it came up. I had literally forgotten about the song, and then, BAM! I was like, "wow... just... wow." I don't really call this jazz, but I'm-a post it here because this tune kind of hits me the same way Sunshine does. I still can't wrap my brain around how these guys went from the abso********inglute roll one and chill brilliance of Summer Madness to Joanna and Cherish The Night and Celebration. Someone on FB started a thread a few days ago asking which was Kool & The Gang's best song- Jungle Boogie, Ladies' Night, Get Down on It or Funky Stuff. I almost unfriended dude on the spot, but Jungle Boogie was cool, and saved him.
Roy Ayers has a few albums I go to and realize that this guy always gets overlooked. Same with Alice Coltrane, and she had Pharoah Sanders on one of her albums. I first heard Summertime Madness on Grand Theft Auto Vice City. The creators of the games, the Housers, used to be A&R guys so they had an ear for good music. Vice City had the best radio stations around. The 80s funk and rap station in that game, god damn. Funny enough, the Red Hot Chili Peppers introduced me to a bunch of funk bands. I discovered the Meters and Bootsy Collins because of them. I've said on here that I didn't want to be Jimmy Page, but Eddie Hazel and Prince. Zappa and McLaughlin doing jazz also hit me that way because it was so different from the sound that's been copied over and over. There's another funk/jazz type artist around named Gary Davis. Every time I hear this track it makes me think of sunsets near the water.
Here's a group that studied jazz, but also love hip hop with the greatest name ever. BadBadNotGood, covering a Tribe Called Quest song, that sampled a Ronnie Foster song called Mystic Brew.
My mind is blowing up reading some of these posts and I have to say I never considered Funk to be such a close off-shoot from Jazz... To be fair it wasn't a dozen years back when I listened to Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunter" that I realized he was far deeper than just the song "Rockit".
My favorite Herbie song is this, which really needs to be repressed. I also kind of want this artwork hanging up in my home. The greatest thing I've loved about the internet is that it's opened up a lot of avenues that you'd never be able to venture otherwise. Herbie's a genius and done just about everything. And perfect funk is jazz as George Clinton once said.
Wow hadn't heard some of those in a long time. Herbie Hancock, George Clinton... what about Grover Washington Jr.? Roy Ayers.... you can also draw a direct line from Roy to acid jazz acts like jamiroquai, zero7 and others. Thanks, gonna listen to some of those oldies in the next few days.
Pffffttt!! You guys ain't heard nuthin till you've heard Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft do Sweet Georgia Brown......in Polish! https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...=6SiBS2kqgYM&usg=AOvVaw1MvqNmnBVutKMhFS8P7Nhh