I Need the Help of ILM Jazz Fans

david, a common thing people might say here is the stuff about following the chord changes etc. during soloing, but I wonder if you could just focus on the rhythm section, listen to how they play off of one another, and how it fits in with the horns. kind of like listening to hip-hop or house or something.

you might try whistling or humming or singing along with the horns, sometimes the feel of how their parts work that way makes things click for me.

but if you were to say listen to a rolling stones album or something, and you didn't like it, that would by no means mean rock music wasn't for you. so I don't see why your not taking to a single jazz album would mean jazz wasn't for you. you could just poke around and see if there's something else that does it for you.

along the same lines, it could take a lot of listening to get into jazz, not because it's hard or anything, but just the normal getting familiar, even past liking a handful of albums even.

blue train - yeah, that's a good one. ask yourself as you listen, "is this real down-home blues in another form, like bobby bland mixing blues with rock, or hendrix mixing blues with psychedelia? or is this just bluesy? just dark?

if you don't like it at first, but want to, then the best way is simply to put it on as background music about once a week, until you start humming along without thinking about it, or in some other way start to loosely memorize it.

easiest points of entry, for coltrane

if you hate jazz but like pretty music: ellington meets coltrane
spacy, very relaxed: miles-kind of blue
if you are looking for some free jazz: love supreme
if you are looking for something sort of weird yet familiar: one of his comps that includes "my favorite things"
totally catchy, very abstract yet more upbeat than kind of blue: giant steps

When first listening to jazz, paricularly a band with a true "frontman" type leader who showcases his own playing like John, you may be best served to at the beginning of each song try to locate the theme..the centerpiece lick of the song...that the soloist will be playing around with kinda like a classical sonata.

but if you were to say listen to a rolling stones album or something, and you didn't like it, that would by no means mean rock music wasn't for you. so I don't see why your not taking to a single jazz album would mean jazz wasn't for you. you could just poke around and see if there's something else that does it for you.

Josh, yeah, that's why I said to ignore that stupid part of my last question. I know it was dumb, for the very reasons you state here. Then again, there's scott:

but then again, mebbe you do just hate jazz, cuz blue train is just so fucking beautiful and not really that hard to grasp.

See? Now I'm just confused. Maybe if I listen to it like blues with more rhythmic variation?

But all of this is helping, even (especially?) the contradictory stuff. Thanks, ILM ;-)

why do you want to get into coltrane first, and not someone more slightly less abstract, like monk-round midnight, mingus ah um, etc.

It was just an impulse buy at a rural flea market. It was in among the old Cult records, etc., and it caught my eye as I've been wondering for a while now why I haven't given jazz a better opportunity in my music-loving life, you know?

(x post: thanks to M Matos, too. I'll look out for those -- money's tight, which is why I jumped at a four dollar CD in the first place, but I imagine the Roots of Jazz Funk CDs are pretty ubiquitous, no?)

Thanks for your tips, by the way.

See, I think that's exactly the kind of advice he doesn't need. Jazz and pretty music are NOT mutually exclusive. Jazz can grow on you, and as you learn more about it and understand the language you can learn to appreciate more and more complex stuff, but there's no reason the jazz neophyte should be shy about liking things that are pretty. (See the Lee Konitz thread. He's very pretty.)

My favorite Coltrane albums are the ones that hit me the first time I heard them. I can dig the wilder Impulse! stuff, the stuff that's just, like, a time signature and nothing else, but it's the stuff that hits me in the gut that keeps me coming back.

Maybe Coltrane won't hit you in the gut, but don't give up yet. I think Blue Train might be a bad place to start. It's obstinately dark and bluesy. Crescent was a good recommendation -- "Wise One" is a beautiful song.

My pick? Coltrane's Sound. Recorded during the same session as My Favorite Things, which is my second pick. When he's hot, he's hot, but not insane. And when he's mellow, he's like a new lover. Check out "Central Park West" and then tell me great jazz can't be pretty.

also, and this one's really, almost painfully obvious, but A Love Supreme is one of the most immediately great things I've ever heard ever, in any category.

Listen to the melody played at the beginning of the tunes. The musicians keep improvising on that melody and the chords underneath it for the rest of the tune. Take the title track...it's a 12 bar blues, played twice in the head. The band keeps playing those 12 bars of chords over and over...try singing the melody repeatedly during the solo section, it might make it easier to hear how the solos are relating to it.

Listen to the bassline and try to hear the chords changing. The bass usually plays the roots of the chords on beat 1 of the bar, just listen to the bass to hear the turnarounds, the tensions and resolutions of the chords.

Listen to how the drums. Listen to the feel of the ride cymbal pattern. Listen to how Philly Joe Jones supports and influence what the soloists do, how he 'comments' on their phrases with the snare drum. Listen to how in 'Blue Train' he plays the hi-hat double time in the middle so that it feels like the tune is in two tempos at once, and how that affects how the soloists play.

Listen to the phrasing of the soloists. Think about the wide-open possibility of being able to play anything at any moment, and how great it is that Lee Morgan plays THAT right THERE (or whatever happens to catch your ear).

Oh! that record. GodDAMN. Have you ever heard such swing? Such sweat? Such... oh, there's aren't the words. It's like a punch in the face, it's so hard. It's fucking amazing.

I also think it's useful to think of jazz from the perspective of playing popular music that swung and used some improvisation on the melody, i.e. New Orleans jazz, and everything that came after just extended and loosened these parameters, from bebop to free improv.

But keep it coming. I'm scribbling notes here.

I heart ILM.

Also on the other hand, I think for people who are into rock or electronic music it's almost better to start with more far-out stuff and work backwards. I pretty much started with 70s Miles and now I can dig 30s big-band stuff.

So pick up Ascension. Just kidding. You might never listen to Coltrane again. No, pick up a Love Supreme. Or download the track Chasin' the Trane. You can't really miss what you're supposed to be hearing on that stuff, whether you like it or not.

That's exactly the one I meant when I said "just a time signature."

Mingus is good because he has such a strong blues and New Orleans and big band sensibility, he's always about the gut and the melody and the big picture rather than individual solos.

1. listen to bitches brew. pretend it is an electronic record
2. go backwards through miles's catalog until you get to the first quintet
3. buy records by the sidemen from miles' band that you like

There is a wonderful version of it on the new Roy Haynes album, which is really wonderful in general, believe it or not. One of the things about jazz that's cool is that 72 year olds can make great records.

if you're interested in a good, well-written album guide, the recent Ben Ratliff/New York Times 100 Essential Jazz Albums thingy is a good place to start

Another neophyte question, I'm sure, but most of the bass I hear is plucked, yet earlier I swear I could hear bowed bass. Is that common in jazz?

(I warned you I was a jazz virgin)

Oh, and Josh, I'm on a limited budget here, dude. I can occasionally download, but even that is limited (shared computer -- my usual computer is an older Mac without CD-R).

If they live that long.

My first Coltrane purchase. I can't recommend it enough.

haha jess, some people never love 20 albums in any one genre. or they do but only in one!

But, yeah, this is I Love Music, not I Love Jazz. And it's not like loving jazz is some prerequisite for acceptance into the human race or anything. Is it?

This is a bit offtopic, but some of that tokenism is due to ignorance, too. I'm only speaking for myself, but I have a ton of gaps in my musical, um, exposure (for want of a better word), and it used to be that filling in those gaps was hard -- but with ILM, we can just ask a question and sit back and watch as they start to fill in. you know, that's fucking amazing, really?

Heh. Coltrane just gave way in my CD tray to a Neko Case record. Now what the fuck do I do? ;-)

(x post, irt = in regard to?)

Yeah, 99% of all jazz bass playing is plucked, but Paul Chambers would take solos with a bow sometimes. I love Slam Stewart's bow playing, when he would sing his phrases an octave up, and Richard Davis's.

I will also take this opportunity to say--Booker Ervin!!

(just looked at the track listing for that and it doesn't include 'Naima', one of my favorite tunes in any genre)

Elvin Jones is unholy. The first 3 minutes of this track are impressive, and the next three preternatural, particularly at the end of the Tyner piano break where he turns big, lush chords into bludgeoning instruments, and then Jones begins hitting the bass drum with an urgency that would make Alex van Halen go pale and leave the room, and then Coltrane comes in screaming. It's a cinematic moment, a fight scene, or a race war maybe.

But it's in the remaining six minutes of the track that Jones becomes godlike, or more accurately, Satanlike. His intensity takes on an odd new character through its sheer persistence. The rest of the band plays on, and eventually even wind down, but not Jones. He's man on a bloody mission. He becomes sinister. His motives become questionable -- why is he playing this hard? Is he posessed? Does he want to hurt us?

Thrilling.

Gentle Coltrane makes less sense without hot Coltrane. The give-and-take of the albums is essential to understanding.

Thanks all.

If you are trying to get a taste for jazz I'd recommend some mainly modal albums like:

Blues and the Abstract Truth - Oliver Nelson
The Real McCoy - McCoy Tyner
Something Else - Cannonball Adderley (a Miles Davis record in all but name, and his most accessible work).
Maiden Voyage - Herbie Hancock
Speak No Evil - Wayne Shorter
My Favourite Things - Coltrane

These are all accessible but also classics that will stand repeated listening for years to come. Alternatively you could start with some more recent trio jazz with more of a rock sensibility in the rhythm section - "These Are the Vistas" by The Bad Plus or "Stange Place for Snow" by Esbjorn Svensson. These get dissed as jazz for people who don't like jazz but Reid Anderson (bassist and main composer for TBP) and ES are both major jazz talents IMO so ignore the snobs and give them a listen. If you like it you will want to go deeper.

i think jazz is far too big and old a music for there to be a one-size-fits-all entry point*: pick something you're enjoying listening to and stay with it (if yr baffled but like it, no problem; if you hate it go elsewhere for the moment)

just take pot luck also though: and be willing to set your own feelings and responses against "official" and "orthodox" judgments, don't be too quick to overvalue either

*eg if you start historically, with king oliver, louis armstrong and jellyroll morton say, you may never even want to reach coltrane; if you start with a present-day titan (cecil taylor say), you'll almost certainly teach yrself initially to hear things in bud powell that someone who started with morton will miss and even dislike — AND VICE VERSA!!

''It took me much longer to appreciate these albums than the modal stuff Coltrane did later, in fact I think they are less immediately accessible than reputedly more "difficult" music like early Ornette Coleman or Peter Brotzmann.''

thank you ben and arf arf. 'Free' is not incredibly difficult or anything. start with something like Albert Ayler's 'Spiritual unity' and try and look up some of beefheart's 'trout mask' if you haven't already done so as it is in between a lot of this stuff and will get to appreciate diff rhythms and structures (but it has a blues context so it won't 'scare' you so much).

w.possibly any jazz record ever, you could probably start an argument drawing a line between a GOOD tradition — the noble true-creative depths of the music that made it — that it is declaring respect for and a BAD tradition (the mannered industry-imposed degraded cliches blah blah) that it is declaring war on

(eg you can still find oldster-tradster ultras who will angrily tell you that KING OLIVER SOLD OUT when he started using a SAXOPHONE in 1921 *spits*)

(I have not gone much further beyond my own starting point, btw!)

also,that's a good point about the taxi driver score

A further suggestion: 'Undercurrent' by Bill Evans and Jim Hall

I wld've thought that someone's enjoyment of 'Blue Train' depends v. much on how well they know/like 'the blues' in general (Dave, from what you're saying I get the impression that you don't listen to a lotta blues in general...)

I love Mark's point abt jazz history working forwards AND backwards - whenever I hear Ellington play the piano I invariably hear little traces/hints of Cecil T - tho' I'm not so sure that a lot of Euro improvvers totally managed to shake off the influence (gulp)/example of American jazz in their music - I mean, I can still hear a LOT of Coltrane in Evan Parker

Andrew L, I don't listen to a lot of blues, but I like it and feel "comfortable" in it (for want of a better word). Jazz, I have less bearings within. Although far more now, thanks to the ILM massive.

"are there many contemporary jazz musicians that are worth seeing live?"

I think if you live in a good sized city, there is at least one or two local groups that are probably worth going to hear. Most jazz is a good music to go check out at a bar, as if you go with someone else it usually isn't so loud that you couldn't have a conversation during the show.

If there is a club that has a latin jazz night, you will get why some people really like the music, as people will dancing.

Usually early in the week, alot of jazz clubs have open jam nights with a small cover, this is a way to usually hear some people coming to play some standards. This is a mixed bag, but sometimes can be suprising.

Jazz is a live music and hearing it that environment is where many people learn to appreciate the music.

Try Uri Caine, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brotzmann, John Zorn, Ellery Eskelin, Henry Threadgill, Matthew Shipp, David S. Ware, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Evan Parker, Michael Moore, Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, Myra Melford, Dave Douglas, Cecil Taylor, etc...

It is certainly possible to hear the spontaneity on the records, and I think this partly comes from experience listening to the music, but the spontaneity may not be as apparent on records as it is when experienced live. There is a different quality to a live performance - it's just part of being there - something ineffable that's not in the music itself. Seeing someone stand up to take a solo; watching the way the players listen to, watch, and react to each other; the smell of adrenaline; the crowd reaction -- there is a different sensation than you get from just listening to a record.

I can't really recommend them because I didn't enjoy their music enough, but I was nevertheless impressed with the sort of interplay I saw in ther performances of Steve Lacy and Andrew Hill's ensembles (respectively). It's not just a matter of their having chops. Even though I didn't love the performances, I had a lot of respect for the way they worked together.

I'm not sure about the business of dancing to Latin jazz. Yes, I have seen it. Yes, some Latin jazz can be danced to, but it's also a place where Latin musicians stretch out and stop worrying about being danceable. Maybe dancing to Latin jazz is more common than I think. I haven't seen what goes on in New York, for instance.

Try Uri Caine, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brotzmann, John Zorn, Ellery Eskelin, Henry Threadgill, Matthew Shipp, David S. Ware, the Sun Ra Arkestra,Evan Parker, Michael Moore, Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, Myra Melford, Dave Douglas, Cecil Taylor, etc...

-- o. nate (syne_wav...), July 7th, 2003. (later)

"(obviously there are,i think what i mean is that for someone into coltrane,mingus,etc,is modern jazz not completely different,unless you see a specifically "classic" jazz band")

does this not apply?

Try Uri Caine, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brotzmann, John Zorn, Ellery Eskelin, Henry Threadgill, Matthew Shipp, David S. Ware, the Sun Ra Arkestra,Evan Parker, Michael Moore, Steve Lacy, Sonny Rollins, Myra Melford, Dave Douglas, Cecil Taylor, etc...

-- o. nate (syne_wav...), July 7th, 2003. (later)

"(obviously there are,i think what i mean is that for someone into coltrane,mingus,etc,is modern jazz not completely different,unless you see a specifically "classic" jazz band")

does this not apply?
i don't know a lot of the artists mentioned,but from what i've heard about them is it not a different story altogether?

"Modern jazz is not so different. If you go and see your typical local jazz group or jam session, the tunes and everyone is expected to know are out of
the 50s & 60s bag mostly (standards, some Bird tunes, some Wayne Shorter, etc. etc.). There are lots of original groups of course, but the vernacular
of 'modern jazz' is largely informed by 60s and prior jazz.

-- Jordan (jordancohe...), July 7th, 2003. (later)"

but is this not the jazz equivalent of going to see ocean colour scene or jurrasic five?
or am i fool for trying to apply one genre to another?

I wouldn't say that modern jazz is completely different. Most artists have some continuities with earlier styles to a greater or lesser extent. For instance, to take one example, Myra Melford's music can sound like Mingus one minute and then sound like Cecil Taylor the next. There are many passages in her music that would be quite accessible to someone who appreciates the "modal" pieces of Coltrane or Miles Davis. This is true of most contemporary jazz musicians, with the possible exception of the most adventurous "out" players.

Exactly. After seeing this kind of thing in person, I think it transforms how you listen to the records, as some of the nuances become more appearant.

For three years, I lived a block away from a jazz club in Indianapolis (don't laugh...Wes Montogomery, JJ Johnson & Freddie Hubbard were/are from Indy) and seeing alot of jazz live really changed how I heard to the records. They had a latin jazz night once a week that ended up packed quite often and shook out some people who really liked the music and would get down.

I think a good way to approach it would be to consider what you like about jazz from what you've heard so far. If you can't get into Trane's playing (which really is intense and does take time), do you like the piano playing? Do you like the way the bass walks, or the cymbals, or short solos, etc? If you told me what you like about Blue Train I could probably tell you what you might like more. The problem with "jazz" is that it's so vast and means many things to many people. There are a hundred starting points that are all equally valid and realistic.

And some mentioned guides -- the Penguin Guide to Jazz on cd is a pretty perfect way to explore. You have to accept the entries with a certain degree of caution -- the writers are two Brits with very distinctive prejudices (for instance they love the the '20s and earlier, and so give a lot of early records high marks) but 90 percent of the time they're highly entertaining and spot-on. I don't think I could live without it.

The comparison isn't totally off-base, but I think it works a lot differently in jazz. There can be guys who are playing the 'classic' styles very competently and being boring and unoriginal (not that the bands you mentioned are necessarily), but jazz is really a method of doing things and a vehicle to express one's own voice, and a way to open up interaction with other musicians as much as possible. As long as the musicians are playing in the moment and taking chances and being themselves, I don't think the tunes or the style matter too much as long as it's exciting and vital.

My experience is similar although both percentages would be higher. At least 85% of concerts I go to are jazz.

Jazz is perfect live music because of the way that it sets up expectations and plays with them. The "genre rules" mean you understand the skeleton of what's going on. The improvisational element alternatively confirms your expectations of what is possible in a particular harmonic/rhythmic context or surprises you by transcending your own musical imagination. Obviously the better the players the more likely they are to play music that is both surprising and musically satisfying. But when listening to jazz played at a very high level there is a constant dynamic interplay between the more-or-less-predictable and the astonishing.

Other styles of music are much more likely to fall into the trap of not familiar enough ("I'd need to hear it a couple of times to really decide if I liked it" or too familiar ("I'd have been just as well staying at home and listening to the record").

it can even be tangenital "social history" type stuff

hmmm I don't think I've ever heard this Haitian Fight Song...