For jazz lovers.

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Is there anyone into jazz? I'd like to know you, because I'm crazy about jazz. So much.

I'm not the craziest, but I do really enjoy it and study how to play it.

I'd be crazier about it if I had the money - I'd have a much larger catalogue. As it stands, I don't have that many albums and am only at the Bebop/Bop and Big Band eras.

What kinds? It's a pretty wide genre!

For starting, what kind of jazz do you like?

I like smooth jazz, especially the ones with piano. My fav of all time is Bill Evans.

jazz is proof that god loves us.
i like all forms of jazz up until bebop and cool [west coast] jazz. all types after that leave me a bit cold.

vince guaraldi [wrote the music for the original charlie brown tv specials] was an utterly unique jazz pianist. his jazz playing reminded me a bit of claude debussy [the children's corner], in that there was definitely an impressionist touch, in little flashes, in his playing, especially on charlie brown. the firehouse five+2 always puts a smile on my face. accordionist mat mathews and harpist gene bianco playing cool jazz together, is [was] simply sublime. earl hines [to me] sounded like a cross between ellington and james p. johnson- a delicious combination of jazz threads. chick webb played jazz on the drumset like ali boxed - he also floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. he was utterly unique as a drummer. 2 drummers who came along a few years after him, were too aggressive for my tastes, namely buddy rich and gene krupa, though the latter did swing. a former big band drummer, hal blaine also swings jazzy-like in many later rock recordings, though not with chick webb's finesse. tommy dorsey was the greatest living jazz trombone player, IMHO. nobody could swing and croon simultaneously like he did, and do it as effortlessly yet error-free as he did. fats waller was one of the early adopters of the hammond organ for jazz, but he originally played jazz on the wurlitzer theatrical pipe organ like nobody's business. his 1938 recordings at HMV studios [what is now abbey road studios] are definitive organ jazz and soul. count basie also got his start as a theatrical organist, taught by fats waller himself. the count was one of the earliest big band jazz artists who incorporated rock and roll into his style, via the "atomic band."
there is so much good older jazz of all different styles, i don't know where to get off the glory train. but for newer stuff, i can't say the same thing. weather report [to me], is unpleasantly angular and noisy. they didn't swing in the least, and they had no perceptible backbeat, just the same nasty anapestic rhythm which has taken over the lions's share of popular music in the last 30 years.
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just my 2-cents' worth, adjusted for inflation

Last edited by auntblabby on 05 Nov 2010, 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bill Evans is one of the reasons that Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue is so amazing.

I love jazz. I love Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, Hard Bop, Post Bop, Avant-garde Jazz and Jazztronica. My favorite jazz musicans are John Coltrane, early Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn, Max Roach, Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstong, Count Basie, Art Tatum, Bud Powell,, and current musicians like William Parker, David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp.

JAZZ FANS WOOOOO!! ! I can never find anyone IRL who loves jazz! I'm obsessed with Bill Evans and have been since I was about 13. Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Art Tatum, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson, Bud Powell, Jaco Pastorius, and Charles Mingus are a sampling of my other favorites...

I could go on forever about jazz. I love it. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at playing it. I don't think I really have the ear for improvisation.

Jazz is amazing, if I had enought time and money I would be more immerse into Jazz right now (Progressive Rock has most of my attention these days , it has a very long list of bands and subgenres, just like jazz).

My favorite Miles Davis album:



Im seeing that nobody mention gypsy jazz. There's no Django Reinhardt fans here?

Great album cover (and album!)

I'm a huge fan of Django.

Some avant garde is a bit much.
But am a fan of many of the branches of the Jazz family tree.
Meynard Fergusun, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderly, the swingle singers, to name a few.

For mellow romantic exotic latin moods you cant get enough of the bossa nova movement greats like Charlie Byrd, Laurindo Almeida, and Stan Getz.

On another musical planet in the same sixties decade was the Blue Note Label.


Blue Note greats like guitarists Grant Green, Organist Reuben Wilson, and pianist Horace Silver, were frequently rediscovered and sampled by rappers in the Nineties (like US3).
Take the 90's rap and throw it in the trash. Just listen to the Blue Note artists that they sampled.
Imagine if Mozart were Black and had a funky groove! Thats kinda what blue note jazz is like. It improves your mind and keeps you on your feet and moving. ( I apologize for mentioning race- but- hey white folks just cant play like Grant Green).

I like the jazz that is on the edge of progressive rock: Billy Cobham, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis (in the 70s), Frank Zappa (early 70s).

Art Tatum was the greatest musical instrumentalist ever.
Here's one of my favorites of his:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ciyjQVydLc[/youtube]

I love jazz, especially bebop. For some reason, I don't like vocal jazz much. I can play jazz a bit, too, but only usually on bass, since there are almost no opportunities for me to play jazz viola (but I did just do a mini jazz strings improv workshop at my school.)

He was, without question, a genius. One of my jazz insructors loved to tell stories about Art. One story was how he often played solo because he had a hard time finding other musicians who could keep up with him. Once my instructor anaylzed his recording of "Willow Weep for Me"to show us why that was--Art could improve chord changes, not just melodies, and his grasp of harmonic theory as applied to jazz was about 20 years ahead of his time. What he was doing was over the head of most other jazz musicians of his day. Jazz wouldn't see another improvisationists with that advanced sense of harmony until Soultrane-era John Coltrane in the late 50's and and the avante-garde jazz of Eric Dolphy in the early 60's.

I would love to hear some jazz viola! I think its alto range and warmer tone wold be great for jazz.

I grew up around vocal jazz, becuase my mother loves that stuff, but I didn't get into jazz untill I started listening to instrumental jazz. It took me many years to really appreciate any vocal jazz. I'm still very, very finicky about it.