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.

it can even be tangenital "social history" type stuff

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