Take Five..

This picture is taken from a Patrick Nagel artbook of mine. I first came across his art, in the latter half of the 1970s, in a gentlemen's periodical... If you read it too, then you know which publication I'm referring to. :)

His style is very reminiscent of Art Deco of the 1920s and '30s, which are also the beginning years of jazz. I have a deep fondness for both these artforms.

Visit patricknagel.com to see more of his art on a beautifully put together website.

Dedication: To Russell Brinkmann, whose kindness in sending answers to a stranger formed the genesis of this page. To Dave Baranyi, whose enthusiasm and generosity in sharing his knowledge contributed much to my anime, jazz and fishing interests. :)  Annnd.. to my sister Shirley, for the Keiko Matsui CD which introduced me to a new beautiful world, commemorating our shared birthday. As it happens, Dave's birthday is just three days away from ours, and we're all celebrating the big "...-Oh". (I'll leave you all to do the maths. :)   So this page is going up on the 1st of November, All Saints Day, for all of us. Just because I can... ;)

How did you get into this..?

I forced myself into it, because I was bored with the crap that the rock/pop industry was churning out. I started with big band stuff which was the only jazz palatable at the time, then just kinda worked my way into more hard core stuff an artist at a time.

Plus, I've found that you kinda need the earlier stuff to make the later stuff make sense. This is why I didn't want to just blanketly recommend anything. For example, when I first heard Miles Davis, I thought it was crap, and now he's one of my favorites. Currently Mingus is growing on me. Bird still leaves me in the dust. It's wierd, even the stuff I don't like right now, I can tell, that there's something there, and I don't like it, just because I don't "get it" yet.

Anyway, if you're just starting out, I'd recommend just about anything big band or swing: early Duke Ellington, Count Basie, the Dorsey brothers, Glenn Miller, and of course "Pops" (Louie Armstrong) - all that stuff. Maybe just get a few compilation disks.

Also Most of the female jazz divas: Sarah Vaughn, Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald have very wide acceptance.

Some of Herbie Hancock's early stuff is also very palatable.

You might try Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, or 'Round Midnight - both a early works and pretty tame.

Hmmm. I needed to ease into it, I'm simply assuming that most other people would too.
An understading of the history of it definetly helps. Perfect example (for me) would be John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things". If you'd never heard the original (or something true to the original), you'd probably think that Coltrane was blowing random notes. However, if you'd heard the song before, you can pick out the melody, and all of a sudden it's like listening to a completely different song.

Jazz is like Classical music, in that it often requires the listener to participate - to keep track of things, and follow the changes.

I've posted much more moronic comments on the web. Post what ever you want.

It's almost hard to say, or remember when I started to like jazz. I was probably first influenced by latin music and latin jazz. My favorite movie when I was a kid was "Three Cabaleros" - the old Donald Duck movie about his travels around South America. My mother had always liked latin music, and had seen the movie when it first came out in the early 40's, so when it was re-released when I was a kid in the late-50's, she took me to it and I was hooked.

Also, we used to have a family routine around the same time where on Saturday nights, if there wasn't a hockey game on, my parents and I would sit in the kitchen, play cards and listen to the radio, which my mother would tune into latin jazz broadcasts from New York City. ( We lived in Niagara Fall, NY at the time. )

Then we moved to Southern California in 1961 and I got exposed to more jazz from some of my parent's friends, and as well, I was entranced by the Dave Brubeck hit "Take 5", which was actually on the pop charts for a while. I used to fall asleep to radio every night, and I either set the radio to a classical channel or a jazz channel. ( I've always considered jazz to be the "classical music" of the 20th Century. )

I started collecting jazz records in the mid-60's when I was in high school - Cal Tjader, Wes Montgomery, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Lalo Shiffrin ( before he made his fortune in movie and TV music ) and the like. I wasn't big on older jazz - I tended to like contemporary jazz. And I still do - although I still have all of my hundreds of albums from the 60's, 70's and 80's, as well as CD's from the 90's onwards - I don't spend a lot of time listening to the older stuff - there is too much interesting new stuff out there.

While in university in SoCal in the early 70's, I was finally able to get out to the local jazz clubs and hear people live like Cal Tjader, Les McCann, Ramsey Lewis and Gabor Szabo. UC Irvine, where I went, also occassionally had jazz concerts, but they weren't that popular so they were money losers and not run frequently. I even occasionally tried bringing dates to the jazz clubs, but other than the "novelty factor", it wasn't that successful. People either like jazz or they don't - it's hard to "educate" anyone into it. <L>

Then I moved back to Canada and to graduate school in McGill University in Montreal. At first I went into "culture shock" of sorts, because jazz was not popular at all in Canada at time - there were few clubs, they were really expensive, and they tended to only bring in "classic" groups. So I became dependent upon buying albums to stay current.

After graduation from McGill I moved to the Toronto area for more years of "culture shock". The local radio stations played some jazz at funny hours in the day or night, but there was a bias towards the really old stuff. Too many of the dj's had the sort of attitude that jazz had "died" in 1947 or something like that. But I persevered and my collection continued to grow. Some interesting Canadian jazz groups also developed, such as "Manteca" who started out sort of as a Spyro Gyra "tribute band" but ended up being very entertaining on their own.

Nowadays there is a "smooth jazz" channel in Hamilton that I listen too - but so much of what they play isn't jazz it irritates me at times. ( Celine Dion isn't a jazz singer, no matter how nice her voice is. ) But the Internet has helped a lot - nowadays I have several on-line jazz channels set on the "Real Audio" player on my PC at work. And the most critical part of my car is the CD player! It's the first place and most frequent place where I play my jazz CDs.

For the past 5 years, however, my favorite way to hear new jazz is through the sampler discs that come with my subscription to "Jazziz" magazine every month. As I hear things that I like, I look up the artists, sample more of their work on-line, then add them to my CD buying lists. My tastes still lean toward latin jazz, with a certain amount of "world jazz" mixed in (Keiko Matsui, for instance ). I occasionally fall prey to the temptation to buy a re-issue of an old favorite album or artist from the 60's, but of course, it is never the same. So I continue to look to the future. I just found out that there is some sort of jazz festival or something like in two weeks in Toronto - I'll have to check it out and see if I can't get down to catch a few sets.

 

 

Dewa mata -

Dave Baranyi

 

Dave, indulging in his other great passion. No, it's not landscape portraiture. Look closely at the photo... click on the photo for the full picture and it shall be revealed. ;)

Just the other day, a friend was playing a cd she'd just bought. "..because I know you like jazz" she said. It was a collection with performances from Incognito, Stan Getz, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole and Miles Davis, among others. It was the kind of jazz she likes, she remarked, she didn't much go for old jazz or 'the blues'. Momentarily fazed, I tentatively mentioned that some of the jazz on the cd was from a while ago, then recovering, I concurred (it's a girl thing) with her that modern jazz is easier to enjoy. Um, whatever modern jazz might be...

Nevermind all the quibbling over what is classic, old or modern jazz - what is jazz anyway? Gathering a few people together and asking that question always makes for interesting observations (and new enemies or allies ;). As for me, I'd rather listen to music (jazz or not) than debate it, and will reward questioners with the vaguest of answers. I find that most of the people who ask already have their own opinion of what jazz is and just want agreement. Those who already know don't usually ask. (Why should they? <G>)

There was always music when my dad was around. My grandmother said he spent every cent of his first pay cheque on a new (bigger, better) sound system and what was left over on records. The ground floor neighbours used to tell me they could hear dad playing his Beethoven LPs. We lived on the 10th floor. I thought my dad was the greatest ever because he let me play along to "Take Five" with chopsticks and metal tins. If ever was love that was, because my dad has a very good ear and rhythm and I have neither. ^_^ I could only choose one song (mum would have walked), but dad often played it several times in a day. No, I have no idea if the neighbours ever said anything about that.

So there was Beethoven, Brubeck, Barry, musicians down through the alphabet - I grew up listening to just about every kind of music. As that then aspiring drummer of four years of age, my favourite singers were Joan Sutherland and Jeanine Deckers. Now at forty, I have added a few more interesting women, but the music that has always been my main choice was what people called jazz. Not all the same people, and not all the same music, but.. well.. I usually name the performer or composer rather than use the music term. At least I get to listen to the correct piece. :)

Take Spyro Gyra. When they first appeared, they were labelled: jazz, contemporary, pop, world, or in one instance 'superficial rubbish'. That last hurt coming from a close friend of mine (who has since recanted ;). Spyro Gyra was my favourite music at that time. I thought they were innovative, had a distinctive sound and style while playing music that could be quite different from track to track. Of course, now we know that they are 'fusion'. Are they? I don't much bother, just let me listen to them please. In their album "Morning Dance" there are warm, sunny pieces, followed by curious phrases searching for a distant horizon, then lively sophistication, and there were funky beats that turned into melodic elergies. It was just incidental that they were great accompaniment for modern dance practice. Really.

Right now, I'm listening to Charles Lloyd's "The Water is Wide". (Yes, *I* don't know if it's jazz, but you can find it in most music shops under that section. <G>) Not much like, possibly nothing like Spyro Gyra, but then that's the wonder of this music. Sometimes lively, sometimes pensive, always quirky and enthralling. You can play it at any volume you like (you know that rock isn't rock unless it's LOUD), there's always something for every mood you fall into. As the musicians interact with one another as they play, so one is also drawn into this intimacy. Your very being responding, improvising along. Listen.. and you will hear another's soul...

I visit the library every fortnight, and I always borrow a couple of cds. I seldom buy anything (of anything) unless I utterly desire it. (Yes, I know it's amazing what women find desirable :) My collection is very small: Dave Brubeck (still :), the fore-mentioned Charles Lloyd and Spyro Gyra, Ella Fitzgerald, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Stan Getz, Grover Washington Jr, Earl Klugh, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Bob James, Casiopea... I would love to have more, but in the meanwhile the library is near enough for me to pretend I own their collection too. *laugh*

-Nikkou, Nov 2002.

Why Don't People Like Jazz?
http://www.marxmusic.com/rc_jazz_forum.html
I don't want to comment on this because my bias (and arrogance over the sheeple <G>) will show, but it's a fair (as in extent, not justice :) representation of jazz lovers' views.

So You Wanna Learn About Jazz?
http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/syws/jazz/jazz.html
A good (and concise!) intro to jazz.

New to Jazz?
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/threads/intro.htm
Read about how others were introduced to jazz, and suggestions on how to ease friends into this music form. Don't take them too much to heart, these are just opinions, not directives! The main site from which this page is taken, All About Jazz, is worth browsing thru to find out what jazz music there is on CD with reviews on both new and old recordings.

Jazz Quotes
http://www.bnote.nl/index.php?item=445
What some jazz musicians have said..

PBS - JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/
This series has been deemed to have introduced jazz to a generation weaned on MTV. I haven't seen it myself, but the website is quite impressive. :) You can find out if it's still showing on TV where you are (in the USA, I guess...)

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