My Journey to Jazz

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Late 1940s aged 5-10: radio pops included "Open the Door, Richard", "Woody Woodpecker's Song" and Nelly Lutcher's "Hurry on Down".

My earliest memory is singing along with my Mum to "Open the door, Richard". But I was only three. Old man

What did you think of early fifties pop music - "Bimbo", "How much is that doggie", and those Guy Mitchell songs? At 8/9 I thought they were absolutely dire.

MG

[kenny weir]

The Bob Wills above was my first introduction to his music. I now have the Bear Family set which is magnificent.

Ditto for me - in both cases.

[Jazzjet]

1959 aged 19: local record library opened, introducing me to Gillespie 40s big band, 40s and 50s Herman, Prestige catalog including Gene Ammons, Contemporary issues including Hampton Hawes, etc, etc. Saw package of Dizzy quintet, Buck Clayton All Stars and Brubeck quartet. Had little time for then mass following for Brubeck and MJQ.

Where would we have been without public record libraries? An undervalued resource and largely disappeared now, at least in their original form. All you needed was someone on the staff who was tuned into jazz, blues and folk and then some great records would start turning up in the racks. Particularly when you were young and broke, this was practically the only way to hear this stuff, at least in the UK. I remember my local library - in Southwark, South London - used to have a card in the sleeve to mark any scratches on the LPs. How they used to know what was on the card before you took the record out and whether you had inked in a scratch yourself, I never knew.

[carnivore]

Late 1940s aged 5-10: radio pops included "Open the Door, Richard", "Woody Woodpecker's Song" and Nelly Lutcher's "Hurry on Down".

My earliest memory is singing along with my Mum to "Open the door, Richard". But I was only three. Old man

What did you think of early fifties pop music - "Bimbo", "How much is that doggie", and those Guy Mitchell songs? At 8/9 I thought they were absolutely dire.

MG

Absolutely dreadful - but the dirty little secret is,once the personnel on many of those records is revealed, the number of players noted normally for their jazz reputations turned up on the dates! (A gig's a gig and the rent is due...and you never turn down a contractor)

[Neal Pomea]

Django Reinhardt, or, as my wife called him the other day, Ringo Jinehart.

Bill Evans.

Jelly Roll Morton.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Late 1940s aged 5-10: radio pops included "Open the Door, Richard", "Woody Woodpecker's Song" and Nelly Lutcher's "Hurry on Down".

My earliest memory is singing along with my Mum to "Open the door, Richard". But I was only three. Old man

What did you think of early fifties pop music - "Bimbo", "How much is that doggie", and those Guy Mitchell songs? At 8/9 I thought they were absolutely dire.

MG

Absolutely dreadful - but the dirty little secret is,once the personnel on many of those records is revealed, the number of players noted normally for their jazz reputations turned up on the dates! (A gig's a gig and the rent is due...and you never turn down a contractor)

Undoubtedly - and that's still true. I bet Ronnie Scott played on loads of those Spice Girls records

MG

[BillF]

Django Reinhardt, or, as my wife called him the other day, Ringo Jinehart.

Is that the one who used to play with Fat Swallow and The Loneliest Monk?

[BillF]

Late 1940s aged 5-10: radio pops included "Open the Door, Richard", "Woody Woodpecker's Song" and Nelly Lutcher's "Hurry on Down".

My earliest memory is singing along with my Mum to "Open the door, Richard". But I was only three. Old man

MG

Not as old as some still diggin' the sounds! A couple of months ago at a Basie tribute concert, I heard a guy in the row behind me say, "In 1953 I went to Ireland to hear Kenton. The British musicians' union wouldn't let him in here."

[BillF]

What did you think of early fifties pop music - "Bimbo", "How much is that doggie", and those Guy Mitchell songs? At 8/9 I thought they were absolutely dire.

MG

Hated 'em!

[A Lark Ascending]

Where would we have been without public record libraries? An undervalued resource and largely disappeared now, at least in their original form. All you needed was someone on the staff who was tuned into jazz, blues and folk and then some great records would start turning up in the racks. Particularly when you were young and broke, this was practically the only way to hear this stuff, at least in the UK. I remember my local library - in Southwark, South London - used to have a card in the sleeve to mark any scratches on the LPs. How they used to know what was on the card before you took the record out and whether you had inked in a scratch yourself, I never knew.

Very true. I spent six months unemployed in Norwich at the end of '77 and relied on the library there first heard Mingus Ah-Um, Eberhard Weber's 'Yellow Fields' and an Eric Dolphy Prestige twofer there.

Even more important for classical music for me - allowed me to follow my curiosity about the lesser known British 20thC composers at a time (late 70s/early 80s) when they were hard to track down.

[Guest Bill Barton]

It's always interesting to hear other peoples' stories on this subject. Goes to show you that there are as many paths to get "here" as there are individual personalities and circumstances.

I grew up in a small New Hampshire town (Cornish, probably "best-known" as the home of J.D. Salinger) and was surrounded by church music and Country Western (the dominant "pop" music in that area at the time - probably still is) as a child. The first live music in a performance setting I ever heard was C&W and Bluegrass.

Around age 10 or 11 (circa 1960-1961) I began taking guitar lessons and Chet Atkins was my hero. I bought a bunch of Chet's albums and there were some versions of vintage jazz/big band tunes on a couple of those LPs ("Tuxedo Junction" sticks in my memory as one of them, probably an Ellington piece or two also.) I thought: "Wow, that's different, what is that?"

So, from there I hit the library, started researching stuff, and began acquiring albums by guitarists such as Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell. The first "almost jazz" album I can remember purchasing was Montgomery's A Day In the Life. Then came Burrell's Blues - The Common Ground and it was all over. I was hooked. And I have a beautiful memory of hearing a very young Lenny Breau playing guitar with his parents - Hal "Lone" Pine and Betty Cody - at an outdoor concert in Southern New Hampshire. It was "hillbilly" music but Lenny - probably around 14 or 15 at the time - was playing very jazz-oriented stuff already.

For me, it was a reverse chronological order journey for the most part. I subscribed to Down Beat, read everything about jazz that I could get my hands on, and drove my parents crazy by playing lots and lots of music that was totally foreign to them. I can imagine what they must of thought when I played Shock Treatment by the Don Ellis Orchestra at full volume on the hi-fi! That record, Bitches Brew and King Kong (Jean-Luc Ponty playing Zappa) were notable "turning point" records for me as my teen years wound down.

When I was in the Army in 1970-1971 I started making friends with guys from very different cultural backgrounds because of my interest in jazz. That's when the whole Blue Note thing, hard bop, Lee Morgan, The Jazz Crusaders, Art Blakey, Cal Tjader, et al. came into the picture. I recall that there was a particularly hip Sgt. who was a bit amazed that this skinny little white kid from N.H. - of all places - owned an Art Farmer album.

While stationed in Vietnam, Coltrane, Shepp and dozens of others entered my world. I wore out two copies of that Atlantic "Best Of" Trane album. I'd have probably gone totally bonkers if it hadn't been for multiple listens to "My Favorite Things" on headphones - over and over and over...

I guess that it's pretty obvious why and how my interest in always exploring the new, the adventurous, the cutting-edge developed when you figure that electric Miles and Don Ellis were among the defining recordings of my late teens and early twenties...

[kenny weir]

I have a beautiful memory of hearing a very young Lenny Breau playing guitar with his parents - Hal "Lone" Pine and Betty Cody - at an outdoor concert in Southern New Hampshire. It was "hillbilly" music but Lenny - probably around 14 or 15 at the time - was playing very jazz-oriented stuff already.

Very cool!

Kenny, moving in the other direction and who bought a Hal "Lone" Pine/Betty Cody reissue last year.

[Brad]

When I was a kid, listened to a lot of my parents broadway musical albums and tin pan alley stuff. Listened to a lot of rock of course, particularly the Stones and didn't know it at the time but that's when I started to like the Blues. Gravitated to a lot of Blues, particularly in the 80s, which eventually led to Jazz. I started listening to some Duke, more classical trad stuff and then one day I decided to get bolder and picked up the RVG of Moanin. It was like my brain exploded. Had never heard anything like that more and started exploring, broadening my horizons, found the old BN Forum and here we are