Anyone interested? Right now, I'm listening to Speak No Evil, by Wayne Shorter (who, IMHO, is one of the greatest jazz saxophonists of all time). Before that, I listened to Ballads, by Stanley Turrentine, another fantastic tenor man. And prior to that, I listened to Big Band Jazz, featuring Buddy Rich & His Big Band on tracks 1-5, and Woody Herman & his big band on tracks 6-9. I already had Speak No Evil, but the others I grabbed from my old man when my wife and I visited FLA over Thanksgiving. In addition to Turrentine, Rich, and Herman, I ripped these CDs he had to my iPod: Mercy Mercy by Buddy Rich, April In Paris by Count Basie & His Orchestra, Krupa And Rich by Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, Tenor Legacy by Joe Lavano, Every Day: The Best Of Joe Williams by Joe Williams, Hamp's Blues by Lionel Hampton, The Essence Maynard Ferguson and One More Trip to Birdland both by Maynard Ferguson, Artistry In Rhythm and At The Las Vegas Tropicana both by Stan Kenton, In Full Swing by the Tony Corbiscello Big Band, and Woody Herman Featuring Stan Getz by Woody Herman and Stan Getz. My dad has a very nice selection of jazz at home. I would've ripped a few more CDs if I had had more time to do it. Personally, my tastes run to the big band stuff he likes. Big bands from about the mid '50s up until about the mid '70s, small combos like trios, quartets or quintets, etc. As a former halfway decent tenor player, I really dig Getz, Rollins, Shorter, Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderly, Coltrane, Zoot Sims, Turrentine, Michael Brecker. Of course, I don't limit myself to just tenor. Bird, Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Eric Dolphy, Benny Carter, and countless other great saxophonists out there who helped make jazz what it is. So, who here likes jazz, and what are you into specifically?
I'm mainly in hard-bop (Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, most early to mid-sixties Blue Note) and post-bop (Coltrane Quartet, second Miles Quintet, Eric Dolphy, etc, etc)... By no means an expert, though...
Listening to Lovano's Tenor Legacy right now. The old man didn't tell me it featured TWO saxes - Lovano and Joshua Redman, who is pretty damned good too. Fantastic counter melodies and harmonies when they play together. Pretty cool bio here.
Listening to Miles right now. I Love Jazz. Big Band Jazz, Bebop, Cool jazz (no not the tripe that passes for it now) the West Coast Cool Jazz of the late 50's. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Parker, Mingus, Coltrane, Brubek, and of course Miles. I do hate fusion. Sounds like a duck having stomach spasms or colitis. Miles Bitches Brew is important, but very hard on the ears for any length of time. Say any more than 10 minutes.
Right there with ya, bro. I love Miles, but do not like his later free jazz and fusion stuff. Although I can't say I hate all fusion. I like Weather Report. I like the marriage of jazz and funk that started in the early '70s or so. BTW, aren't you Cuban-American? Some fanstastic Latin jazz out there, especially from Cuba.
I like jazz, and I especially love 'fusion'. Yes, I do. Especially Mahavishnu Orchestra. What I don't like is the 'big band' arrangements. It's better as an ensemble of no more than say, seven people. Ideally, four or five players.
For me, it's always been about Thelonious Monk. He was the first guy I heard and thought "Wow, that guy is saying something really, really, different and really, really beautiful ... and I like it." Because Monk swings. He's funky, he's funny, he can be easy and mellow, he can be soft and personal, and when he gets the right horn section playing his stuff, he can blow your head off. It took listening to Monk for me to appreciate almost everybody else. His melodies and themes were so hooky and accessible, he helped me learn how to listen to jazz and follow the themes through the solos. Plus, who could be cooler?
Have you ever played in a big band, like a 17 piece? I was first tenor in a big band when I was in high school. We had 4 bones, 4 trumpets, 5 saxes (2 alto, 2 tenor, 1 bari), keyboards, drummer, electric guitar, stand up bass, and MAN did we have a blast. When I was 18 I joined the Pennsylvania Army National 28th Division Band, which is a typical 50 or so piece military band. But we also had about a 20 piece (add one more trumpet, one more trombone and a percussionist) big band that played gigs too. I was sooo psyched when they judged me good enough to play second tenor in that band.
--- i have a good buddy who is Cubano, but i can't get him to listen to jazz. maybe you can. i'm with 655321. hard bop hooked me from the first time i heard "Moanin'" by Blakey and the JMs. when i was a kid, my mom listened to Brubeck ( Jazz Goes to College ) and i fell in love with Paul Desmond's tone, and i'm a huge fan of Coleman Hawkins. trumpet is Morgan, Booker Little, Blue Mitchell, Miles and Chet Baker, especially with Mulligan. if i had to name 3 desert island discs, though, one would be Sketches of Spain, simply because it's maybe the most "out-there", passionate music i know of in a jazz vein. the other two would be Moanin, and Far Cry, because of Dolphy
Yeah, I played trumpet in high school, in a band almost like that (it was a class for 2 peroids in the morning, and flutes and clarinets came in during the second period and we'd play more 'classical' stuff). I don't know what that has to do with anything, but for me, I prefer listening to a smaller group of musicians. You can't reall hide in a smaller group.
I caught Lovano live a couple times, although both times as a sideman. Once with the Bill Frisell Quartet back in '96 and then as part of the Paul Motian Trio in '01. Both were great. I really like his latest album, "I'm All for You", it's a great ballads collection. What do you think of those Stan Kenton albums? I've really tried to get into him, but the only stuff I like are the songs with vocals. He really did pick great singers: June Christy, Anita O'Day and Chris Connor.
Listen to some Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, or just about any of the big bands that were around from sort of the post hard bop era. When those guys get up to solo, they ain't hiding from anything.
I like getting all liquored up and listening to 'Bitches Brew'. Just picked up the essential John Coltrane about a month ago. He was one bad dude....
The New Yorker has a really good review of the new Django Reinhardt biography. I especially like the comparison between Django and Hendrix at the end of the review: The later musician he most resembles is, perhaps, not a jazzman at all but Jimi Hendrix, who is similarly central and sui generis. Hendrix, after all, stepped outside an African-American identity to embrace that of a Gypsy (one of his bands was called the Band of Gypsys), just as Django stepped outside his Gypsy identity to explore an African-American one. Even Jimi’s “Star-Spangled Banner” is anticipated by Django’s “Marseillaise,” and there is a tiny two-bar scrap at the beginning of the 1935 Decca recording of “St. Louis Blues” that sounds eerily like the famous opening stutter of “Purple Haze.” Did the young black bluesman ever hear the old Gypsy? It’s hard to think not, and there are passages of mandolin-like, chromatic glissing in Hendrix that do sound distinctively Django-ish. More important, both guitarists have a knack for floating in and out of styles and movements, because they are sound makers before they are note shapers. It is not the note-order of the solos, as it is with Armstrong, or Clapton, but the musical atmosphere that overwhelms one. Django is a “musical impressionist,” as Dregni writes, as opposed to a draftsman, and so was Hendrix. And both were essentially lyrical players too often buried by their audiences’ need for flash and speed; but listen to Django’s famous “Improvisation” and then Hendrix’s equally famous introduction to “Little Wing,” and hear the same poetry of full-bar chords up and down the neck of the guitar, and the same ringing, sighing songfulness.
Paul Desmond was such a great saxophonist. I agree his tone and sound are beautiful. I love his work in Brubek's Time Out LP. He also worked with Mulligan.
I have both Time Out and Gerry Mulligan / Paul Desmond Quartet. The Desmond/Mulligan version of Body & Soul is incredible.
As my sig can attest to, i feel the exact same way. Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Charles Mingus are pretty much the holy trinity of Jazz artists to me. Put those 3 in a room with someone like Art Blakey on drums, and...well...i really have no clue what would happen. Which is why it would be awesome.
I'll have to check it out. He's the tenor guy on the Big Band Jazz cd I mentioned above - he played with WoodyHerman's band. His solo on the last track is AMAZING. I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet, other than when I was in the car with dad. Then we were talking to each other so you really can't hear the music. I'll let ya know what I think when I've had a chance to properly check them out.
i got little of everything,,,Some Brubek, Grover, Coltrane, Rippingtons, Yellowjackets, Earl Klugh, pat metheny, the marsalis brothers(although some of their stuff is kinda wierd) some bigband like dorsey brothers, goodman, basie, calloway, buddy rich and gene krupa. I love the Rippingtons Live in LA,,,great CD, love to crank that up, one of my fav cd's,,,its a must have
Jazz makes up a pretty fair amount of my music collection. I, too, am a former player (trumpet/trombone/baritone), though I could never improv worth a damn. I listen to a lot of Maynard Ferguson, Arturo Sandoval, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove and others. I like Diz and Bird, Vince Guaraldi, Tower of Power, Tito Puente, etc. I've been getting back into Chase recently - a '70s group my dad got me into. They only put out something like three albums before they died in a plane crash (natch), but there's some great horn licks throughout.
Monk - check Mingus - check Blakey - check But to me Ornette Coleman always sounded like someone warming up rather than playing jazz. But to each his own. That's what makes jazz great. Another more "modern" band I like are Flim & the BB's. Anyone ever heard of them? This is a great release