Sunday mornings are perfect for making a big, lazy breakfast while jazz plays in the background and people wander into the kitchen to graze on bacon and pastries. Picking just the right jazz album for that particular morning is, in itself, a pleasure.
However, there was a time not all that long ago when I did not know a single thing about Jazz (with a capital "J"). However, despite the fact that I considered myself fairly well-traveled musically (at least from a rock / pop standpoint), jazz scared the crap out of me.
Not only was I completely ignorant but I also had no idea how to attack the genre - who do you buy first? What is accessible but not terrible? Should I really buy an album with 2 songs of 25 minutes each? Which instruments will I like - guitar, piano, sax, vibraphone? What the hell is a vibraphone, anyway? What era of jazz? What style will I like - bop, acid, funk, dixieland, etc. etc.
After much vacillating, I gave up and asked my father-in-law, who happened to have a lifetime of jazz-listening behind him. For Christmas one year I asked him to get me started and he did and I've never looked back. Here are some of the albums he has sent my way over the years, in case you are interested in jumping into the jazz-end of the pool - these are all still in my top-10:
Starting with any or all three of these will get you off in the right direction. Enjoy your Sunday!
Jazz lovers have their favorite jazz eras. It's a function of age. Generally speaking, anything before 1950 sounds a little simplistic to the modern ear, but not to an 80-year-old. The jazz of the 60's through the 80's or 90's is still accessible and enjoyable to the modern ear. In that era, jazz musicians would take a tune, state it, then improvise on it using the tune's chord structure. More recently, jazz musicians seem to have taken to ignoring chord structures, playing notes at random to display their technical proficiency but without producing anything recognizable.
ReplyDeleteSo focusing on the 50's to 80's era, different kinds of jazz are appropriate for different occasions. Anyone who has spent an hour in the elegance of the Ritz Carlton cocktail lounge with a glass of wine and a piano playing low key jazz in the background will recognize that the two go together like ham and eggs – sort of. That's fine for a fairly quiet place. In your own home, with half a dozen school buddies you haven't seen in a while, something more assertive is required. Here's where Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane and their ilk fit in, played just loud enough to be heard. But fifty minutes of fast sax music, even at moderate levels, can grate on one's nerves - not good for a friendly old-buddies atmosphere. Furthermore, sax players have a tendency to get carried away with themselves, sometimes improvising frantically without a break for ten minutes before allowing a piano, guitar or bass 16 bars, then resuming for another ten minutes. So some variety is in order. The solution is to throw in some cool trumpeting by Miles Davis or Chet Baker and maybe some of Russell Malone's upbeat guitar as a breather. A happy drinking hour is guaranteed.
"Dinner music" can be jazz, too, but of a different kind - something that does not interfere with dinner table discussions but provides a relaxing background. Piano music by Oscar Peterson or Andre Previn or maybe some sax by Stan Getz, each in one of their moderate moods, is perfect would fill the bill.
Then there is "listening" jazz, the kind that is best heard without a lot of distractions. This kind is so artfully constructed that it requires more than casual attention to be appreciated. It works while jogging, driving, even leafing through the newspaper. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, some of Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet are a few that belong in this category.
Everyone who enjoys jazz has his or her favorite musicians and tunes and will fit them into the appropriate occasion without having to think about it much. That there is something for almost any occasion speaks well for the jazz genre.