Historical or Contemporary?

[Jim R]

I think I'm a "both" person (a type a/b) also. Maybe a/B, because once I heard the recordings of Jimmy Smith, Miles, Bird, Monk (etc) in the 70's, I pretty much put The Crusaders, George Benson, Return To Forever, etc on the back burner for a LONG time. I still love the Crusaders, though (and their incarnation as The Jazz Crusaders, which I discovered later).

[ejp626]

Definitely b)

My parents had a few Brubeck LPs, and then in the late 80s I started listening to Mingus, Monk and Miles (his work from the 60s).

[A Lark Ascending]

Thanks for all the replies.

I'm really surprised. I expected most people to say they started at a) and then either shifted to b) or kept a) and b) in balance.

But it seems a lot of you were listening historically from the off.

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. That's how most (though not all) gain access to classical music.

[Big Beat Steve]

Bev, perhaps you will understand better if you look at it like this:

a) Jazz (or what is commonly lumped in under jazz today) is so fragmented and covers such a wide stylistic spectrum today that you can hardly expect all that many to embrace it all. Just like it is not very likely that, say, a rock listener who is into Wave and Goth music will also go for rap, although both are filed under "pop" today. Or to narrow it down further into "rock", not all that many Goth or Heavy Metal fans will realy be diehard Southern country rock fans too.

A far cry from jazz listening habits? I don't know .... If you listen to your music really in-depth, there is only so much diversity you will want to take in really deeply. So what may be jazz to one may be totally undiscutable to another.

b) Unless you have a really blooming and accessible club, concert and festival secne in the jazz field in your own area you are not likely to be able to become acquainted with all that many younger (!!) "contemporary" jazz artists through live gigs. And even then, stylistic preferences will play a major role too. If you have to rely on "canned" music only you might as well rely on "historical" music if that is what meets your tastes best.

c) As for "historical" jazz, the musicians may be gone but as long as their music is still around it will continue to live. Just like in your very fitting example of classical music. And after all - there is no obligation at all to base your musical tastes on the "living or dead/active or retired" criteria, or else all that hullaballoo about those Beatles box reissues that has been going on even on THIS (jazz!) forum (to an extent that really had me baffled) would have been totally off the mark and inappropriate too.

d) What many may call "historical" jazz is far from all dead. There are enough today's "mainstream" jazz (or jazz-related) artists around who keep the flame alive. Some may sneer at them as being copycats or "recreators" but IMHO very often there is a lot more to it. Nothing wrong with playing in a chosen "historically inspired" idiom if you manage to add a new twist to it. If, historically speaking, I am into Django Reinhardt, for example, I can just as well appreciate a recent CD by the Hot Club of Cowtown or by the Sweet Hollywaiians (so incessantly plugged by our friend Durium here ) and find something quite new there that suits my tastes. I do not have to go into some (to my tastes) atonally free noise or some world-music-cum-you-name-it mishmash in order to prove I am into "contemporary" jazz artists (this last sentence may sound derogatory; it is not meant that way, it just is intended to reflect ANY listener's reaction to what may be totally off-base to his personal musical tastes).

Edited January 31, 2010 by Big Beat Steve

[sidewinder]

I put it down to enjoying John Dankworth's theme to 'Tomorrows World' when a wee sprog watching 1960s TV (I think Kenny Wheeler was doing the flugel bit)

[A Lark Ascending]

I'm not making any judgments on what is the 'right' way to listen, BBS. I'm very much in the 'laissez-faire' "follow your own nose and don't worry about those who tell you what you ought to be listening to" camp.

Maybe it's different where you are, Steve, but in Britain, even with the limited airtime jazz gets, there is (and always has been) a lot of contemporary jazz broadcast (either 'cutting edge' or 'in the tradition'). When I started listening I heard the history via Jazz Record Requests and Jazz on 2; the contemporary via Jazz Today and also Jazz on 2. Today JRR and Jazz Library cover the former, Jazz on 3 the latter (with Jazz Line-up working in both camps, favouring the less extreme end of things).

I hardly went to a jazz concert for the first four or five years of my jazz listening (I lived in a jazz-free north Midlands town and I did not have a car!) yet I was still very aware of the new music appearing at the time. There's a vibrant young scene here surrounding the varied likes of Polar Bear, Empirical, Led Bib, Portico Quartet and many others which are picking up an audience of younger listeners (I don't want to overstate that - I doubt if the kids I teach have heard of any of them, but when I've been to their gigs the student age crowd usually outnumber we old crusties...which is not the norm at a jazz event).

The other thing that sticks in my memory is just how foreign anything from before the 50s sounded to me until 20 years into my jazz listening (and I still don't completely 'get' a lot of the 50s/early 60s UK jazz that people who were young when it happened dearly love). The idea of an 18 year old hearing Louis Armstrong and experiencing a Damascus moment in 2010 seems hard to believe...but maybe I'm just extrapolating from my own difficulty in getting back to those early years 35 or so years ago (when, it has to be said, the sound quality of the transfers I had often left a lot to be desired).

I'd expected some posters who grew up in houses full of jazz or who had studied it via school to make their entrance that way. I suppose I just expected more to have clicked in to their own time and then worked backwards (perhaps deciding that what went before had more meaning for them and more or less giving up on the contemporary).

You live and learn.

Edited January 31, 2010 by Bev Stapleton

[Big Beat Steve]

With jazz and its ongoing history and evolution, maybe, it is more of a prerequisite (more than in the case of all the facets of rock music, for exmaple) to appreciate the "old masters" at least to some degree in order to REALLY understand where your more recent or contemporary heroes came from. Or to put it another way, you can very well and comfortably occupy and move around in, say, the first 4 or 5 floors of a high-rise whereas, if you only move around on the top floor of a skyscaper you might lose touch with the ground and the air might become a bit thin in time ...

Overall, as with ALL music you enjoy, I guess, it all depends on what music you like in the first place so there is no set rule.

It would be futile to try to embrace some music "just because you need to understand it" if actually that particular style of music just goes against your grain. Especially if you prefer to enjoy your music in a more gutsy way instead of academically dissecting it every time a platter is given a spin on your turntable.

In my case, getting into "older" jazz from your point of depart b) perhaps is also explained by the fact that from that early age I was very much into the 50s and everything in the entire realm of "popular culture" that went with it (hence my early interest in R'n'R and R&B too). This point of departure makes it much easier for you to look even further back beyond the 50s, including music-wise. Others may have been drooling about Elvis all day long but to me, for example, once I had gotten into bebop and beyond, the coolness of Shorty Rogers, Chet Baker or Bud Shank just as much exuded the atmosphere of those times to me as Elvis or Fats Domino would to others.

Romantisicism? Maybe, but only at the very first moment. If the music doesn't click with you in the long run (and a LOT of 40s/50s/60s music does NOT click with me), it will go out the window. You have to appreciate it on its own merits if you are to really enjoy it in the long run.

Another aspect of why I subconsciously never embraced then- (or now-) "contemporary" jazz artists to the same degree I appreciate "the old masters" is this:

I remember for a time artists like Michel Petrucciani were fairly often on German TV and I did take them in with interest, yet most of them never struck a chord with me to the extent that I'd actively go out and search their records. Quite a bit later I accidentally discovered the likely reason ... One day I had finally got a copy of Harold Land-Red Mitchell's "Hear Ye" album, and somehow listening to the piano player (Frank Strazzeri) on that album reminded me of many of those "modern mainstream" (post-bop?) jazz broadcasts I had caught on TV. Ah, so those typical piano comping licks that then-current acts like Petrucciani and his ilk would turn out on TV in the 80s and 90s had already been done 30 years earlier by an "also-ran" (by "jazz giant" stature) in the history of jazz!

And once I had listened closer to John Coltrane's "Blue Train" album, that also made me aware how often THAT particular sound and group interplay had been carbon-copied by all those "post-bop" (or however you bill it) pickup bands you would see on late-night jazz festival broadcasts.

I realize that to those who dissect their jazz this is a very superficial comparison but the bottom line just is that to me there was not all that much really earth-shaking new and therefore essential in more recent developments of my preferred styles of jazz. (I am not counting the more radical jazz streams of more recent decades because they are not my cup of tea anyhow - see above, if it goes against your grain, why force it, etc. ... )

Now does this make me a latter-day "moldy fig"? Maybe, but who cares?

Edited January 31, 2010 by Big Beat Steve

[kenny weir]

I suppose I just expected more to have clicked in to their own time and then worked backwards

Yes, some interesting responses here.

Remember, too, Bev that some of folks - including myself - "ticked" both boxes.

At the moment, the past - be it jazz, country, blues, whatever - definitely holds sway in my world.

Each to his own.

I do get a bit bemused when friends suggest that I am somehow a traitor by not doing more to support contemporary artists.

The obvious rejoinder to that, it seems to me, is the alarm I feel that so many brilliant performers from the past seem to be literally dropping off the radar. Likely for good ...

Or to put it another way, you can very well and comfortably occupy and move around in, say, the first 4 or 5 floors of a high-rise whereas, if you only move around on the top floor of a skyscaper you might lose touch with the ground and the air might become a bit thin in time ...

This also resonates with me.

So many Gram Parsons fans who have never really LISTENED to Hag.

Worse yet - so very many fans of Michael "The Bubble Boy" Buble who have never even HEARD Bing Crosby.

Edited January 31, 2010 by kenny weir

[Big Beat Steve]

I do get a bit bemused when friends suggest that I am somehow a traitor by not doing more to support contemporary artists.

The only answer I have to that is that jazz is so fragmented today you cannot possibly take in all and everything without straining your own musical preferences waaaay beyond all limits. And even if today's artist XXX in all his artistic sincerity would be worthy of every bit of support he can muster and would be the only living exponent of what is considered jazz today but happens to follow a musical path that is nowhere near what I would ever prefer to listen to in jazz in all its varieties that suit my PERSONAL tastes, then - sorry, no go. It's for others closer to his music to provide that support, not me ...

Or to put it another way, you can very well and comfortably occupy and move around in, say, the first 4 or 5 floors of a high-rise whereas, if you only move around on the top floor of a skyscaper you might lose touch with the ground and the air might become a bit thin in time ...

Worse yet - so very many fans of Michael "The Bubble Boy" Buble who have never even HEARD Bing Crosby.

Nice example. But I was not only referring to those who listen to copies of the real thing instead of the original but rather to those who really are oblivious of what went on beyond before the times of their preferred artists. Can you really appreciate and understand Trane to the fullest if Bird is old hat to you, for example?

[A Lark Ascending]

No imperative at all to listen to contemporary (in my view)...or the history, for that matter.

What was contemporary for me? Well it wasn't just jazz rock. In the 70s and early 80s in the UK alone it was the likes of Kenny Wheeler, Keith Tippett, Mike Osborne, John Surman, Mike Westbrook, John Taylor, Stan Sulzmann, Stan Tracey etc (neither 'Trad' nor 'fusion', making feshly minted music). By the mid-80s there was the Loose Tubes thing which was very exciting and the Jazz Warriors side of things (which I followed less). In the last ten years a whole new generation has matured - I automatically snap up releases by Phil Robson, Julian Siegel, Ingrid Laubrock, Liam Noble (not to mention slightly older musicians like Mark Lockheart or Julian Arguelles). And then there are the bands that have flowed out of Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland and the F-IRE collective. I'll admit to having misgivings about some of this - I don't warm to too much electronica or the punkish 'noise' approaches of some of these bands. But I like to listen and normally get a recharge of enthusiasm at the early summer festivals.

These all seem to me to be logical developments from what preceded rather than new forms that have detached themselves from the source. And I could multiply examples from listening to music from Scandinavia, Italy or Australia.

I can see why it might be hard to hear this sort of thing or the equivalent in your own area; or even just not care for it when there is such a wealth of treasure in the past.

But I'd hazzard a guess that bulk of new interest in jazz in this country (and there really does seem to be an endless flow of new young players in every style imaginable) starts with the contemporary. It can be fickle...The Portico Quartet/Bojan Z concert I attended last year where the place was packed with a young audience for the Porticos, but left with the greyhairs for the unknown-outside-the-jazz-world Bojan Z (who, ironically, produced a far motre edgy set than the rather mild Porticos). I suspect it was ever thus - wonder how many people in the Filmore stayed for the Miles set after (or before) the hippy bands? Some clearly did and became the jazz fans of the next few years (much like I went to rock gigs at Uni but also turned up for Nucleus and Lol Coxhill!).

A funny little example of how this still works for me. I've been playing a lot of West Coast-ish 50s jazz over the last couple of weeks. Why? By becoming absorbed by a very contemporary disc by Liam Noble, refashioning Brubeck tunes. Very 'now' music but made me want to hear the source material. And it has ever been thus for me. I got into Ellington, not by hearing the man himself but by hearing the likes of Stan Tracey, Mike Westbrook, Steely Dan play versions of Ellington. I wanted to know where it came from.

Thanks for all the responses. It really has been interesting - and instructive - to see how differently we react. As Steve points out, jazz is a very fragmented world today, so that's only to be expected).

[kenny weir]

But I was not only referring to those who listen to copies of the real thing instead of the original but rather to those who really are oblivious of what went on beyond before the times of their preferred artists. Can you really appreciate and understand Trane to the fullest if Bird is old hat to you, for example?

I hear you.

I remember, a few years back, being quite startled when a local trombonist listed Lawrence Brown as being among her then daily listening. Startling if only because I'm sure that is quite unusual for a young musician.

As for Trane, is he pretty much ground zero for saxophone these days?

[JSngry]

It was actually pretty easy to be "both" in the early 70s. A lot of people were still alive & playing. Hell, Louis Armstrong (of whom I had been aware all my life, although not as a Seminal 20th Century Musical Fountainhead) died my freshamn year n high school & Duke Ellington - of whom I had been aware in the same sense I had Armstrong) didn't die until my last day of high school, by which time I had become familiar with a whole bunch of his work, point being that I had four full years of him being alive and kicking as a Living Jazz Giant before he went of and became a Dead Legend. And he was far from the only one...it really didn't seem odd to look at "jazz" as a lot of different "styles" of the same basic "messages", simply because the old cats and the young cats were coexisting on the planet at the same time and creating output alongside each other, so...yeah, it was easy to get a grip on Lockjaw Davis & Pharoah Sanders, and it didn't seem odd at all...they were both out there doing it, ya' know?

And hell, look at Miles. I got into jazz in 1970, and look at all the different types Miles records you could buy in 1970! And Trane...Trane had dies in 1967, which...when you first come to a guy who's already dead, even if he died just yesterday, if you've never heard of him until after he's dead, a day seems like a year and three years seems like a lifetime, but same thing with Trane - in 1970, I bought Coltrane records just becuase they were Coltrane records, right? I saw Dizzy live a few times in the early/mid 70s & he had electicguitars and basses, and nobody bitched that he was playing R&B grooves as well as bebop & Afro. What was there to bitch about? Same thing w/Cannonball, one record you'd get Bill Evans, another one George Duke. Same thing with a lot of people.

It was a lot easier then. It was only difficult if you made it difficult, had an attitude about generational significance and all that, which, you know, a white suburban kid confronting this massive mostly Black legacy, who am I to bitch about - or even consider the possibility of - Roy Eldridge being "past tense", relative to Freddie Hubbard and Lester Bowie, eh?. Now that there's so much "history" that really is history, it's not so easy. Now you have no choice but to confront "then" vs "now". But the, so much of "then" was also "now".

And shit - Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and Lester Bowie - five people I once knew as living, functioning Working Jazz Artists, are all Dead Historical figures now.

As for Trane, is he pretty much ground zero for saxophone these days?

Would that it were so...try Brecker, Liebman/Grossman, and, increasingly, Chis Potter & Joe Lovano. Cats still "study" Trane, but not as a role model as much as the God of the Old Testament.

[JSngry]

And ok, if you were into the horn bands of the turn of the decade (60s into 70s), it wouldn't hard to go from hearing Bill Chase here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yev4UNQzxTg to finding him here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMDsk2nojd0 and then somebody tells you about Maynard Ferguson doing stuff like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZIfgW2jOEo so you go out and buy a Maynard record and get this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL1Fj7LJHDA

Never mind the ease with which Hendrix led to Ayler, Ayler to Bechet, Bechet to Tinkers, Tinkers to Evers to Chance, inning over, but that was just the bottom of the first and we got a double-header today, ok? In fact, let's play two every day!

It seemed like it was all good, mostly because it was, even if it wasn't.

[.:.impossible]

It was actually pretty easy to be "both" in the early 70s. A lot of people were still alive & playing. Hell, Louis Armstrong (of whom I had been aware all my life, although not as a Seminal 20th Century Musical Fountainhead) died my freshamn year n high school & Duke Ellington - of whom I had been aware in the same sense I had Armstrong) didn't die until my last day of high school, by which time I had become familiar with a whole bunch of his work, point being that I had four full years of him being alive and kicking as a Living Jazz Giant before he went of and became a Dead Legend. And he was far from the only one...it really didn't seem odd to look at "jazz" as a lot of different "styles" of the same basic "messages", simply because the old cats and the young cats were coexisting on the planet at the same time and creating output alongside each other, so...yeah, it was easy to get a grip on Lockjaw Davis & Pharoah Sanders, and it didn't seem odd at all...they were both out there doing it, ya' know?

And hell, look at Miles. I got into jazz in 1970, and look at all the different types Miles records you could buy in 1970! And Trane...Trane had dies in 1967, which...when you first come to a guy who's already dead, even if he died just yesterday, if you've never heard of him until after he's dead, a day seems like a year and three years seems like a lifetime, but same thing with Trane - in 1970, I bought Coltrane records just becuase they were Coltrane records, right? I saw Dizzy live a few times in the early/mid 70s & he had electicguitars and basses, and nobody bitched that he was playing R&B grooves as well as bebop & Afro. What was there to bitch about? Same thing w/Cannonball, one record you'd get Bill Evans, another one George Duke. Same thing with a lot of people.

It was a lot easier then. It was only difficult if you made it difficult, had an attitude about generational significance and all that, which, you know, a white suburban kid confronting this massive mostly Black legacy, who am I to bitch about - or even consider the possibility of - Roy Eldridge being "past tense", relative to Freddie Hubbard and Lester Bowie, eh?. Now that there's so much "history" that really is history, it's not so easy. Now you have no choice but to confront "then" vs "now". But the, so much of "then" was also "now".

And shit - Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, and Lester Bowie - five people I once knew as living, functioning Working Jazz Artists, are all Dead Historical figures now.

As for Trane, is he pretty much ground zero for saxophone these days?

Would that it were so...try Brecker, Liebman/Grossman, and, increasingly, Chis Potter & Joe Lovano. Cats still "study" Trane, but not as a role model as much as the God of the Old Testament.

Off the top of my head, I don't know of any players who look at any of those guys as ground zero. I do know guys who intensely study Dolphy, Marsh, and Coltrane though. None of them are over 35.

[kenny weir]

It was actually pretty easy to be "both" in the early 70s.

Hellyes!

Even then-culturally-isolated NZ, I got to see and often meet heaps of giants - Muddy Waters, BB King, Fats Domino, Dizzy with electric bass etc. And there was no sense of any of it being from a museum or such like. Once I got to the US, 1977, I was like a kid in a candy store. Actually, I WAS a kid.

[JSngry]

As for Trane, is he pretty much ground zero for saxophone these days?

Would that it were so...try Brecker, Liebman/Grossman, and, increasingly, Chis Potter & Joe Lovano. Cats still "study" Trane, but not as a role model as much as the God of the Old Testament.

Off the top of my head, I don't know of any players who look at any of those guys as ground zero. I do know guys who intensely study Dolphy, Marsh, and Coltrane though. None of them are over 35.

[manfred]

i´m an a

and here is my way to jazz:

Cream - Blood, Sweat & Tears - Chicago - Colosseum - Volker Kriegel (Missing Link) - Dave Pike Set - Don ´Sugar Cane´ Harris - Violin Summit -

The German All Stars - Joachim Kühn - Hans Koller Free Sound - Archie Shepp (live at Donaueschingen) - Sun Ra (live at Donaueschingen -

Globe Unity Orchestra/Peter Brötzmann/Paul Lovens/Alex Schlippenbach.....and than nothing else could astonish and frighten me ;-)

Edited February 21, 2010 by manfred

[A Lark Ascending]

Hi Manfred!

Nice to see you!