First Jazz you ever listened to?

[Neal Pomea]

Junior in high school, I was recovering from the flu and searching the radio dial when I came across Django Reinhardt et le Quintette du Hot Club de France. Wow! Never heard anything like it before and I vowed to seek it out when I got older.

[colinmce]

When I was pretty young, my mom had a few jazz albums around. She preferred Kenny G, David Sanborn, John Klemmer, et al at the time, but I stole away a few others: Blossom Dearie on Verve and a Miles Best Of with material from BOTC and Blue Note. My grandparents came of age in the swing era and loved Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, so I heard a good deal of that as a kid, too (and liked it). Later on I picked up a few things here and there that I mentioned in another thread: some Coltrane, Ornette, Mingus, Ayler, Don Cherry. At that point I felt like rock-based music was getting to be a dead-end, that I'd heard all I wanted to hear. I spent several months only listening to instrumental music before committing to jazz. That was 7 years ago and it's consumed every day since!

[A Lark Ascending]

Early 70s. I suspect there was more jazz on TV/radio then than now but I don't remember much (Oscar Peterson always seemed to be there on a programme with Cleo Laine or James Galway). My exposure came via record and then tuning regularly into Jazz Record Requests and Peter Clayton's late Sunday jazz programme; and, by 1977, Charles Fox's more contemporary based radio programme.

It may not have happened this way but this is how I remember my gradual exposure by record...

(1970-5) Rock records with bits on them that perked my ears up to this thing called jazz (or by musicians who constantly name dropped Coltrane, Miles etc):

• Chicago II and III
• King Crimson - Lizard, Islands
• Soft Machine Third (the whole Canterbury thing too)
• Keith Tippett's Centipede - Septober Energy
• Mahavishnu - Inner Mounting Flame/Birds of Fire
• Kevin Ayers - Shooting at the Moon
• Santana - Caravanserai
• Henry Cow - first 4 albums

(1975) The turning point...reading a review of Keith Jarrett in the rock press:

• In the Light (a false start!)
• Facing You
• Bremen Lausanne

(1975-7) Records then bought with the intention of buying a jazz record:

• John McLaughlin - Extrapolation
• Keith Jarrett - Death and the Flower
• Carla Bley - Escalator Over the Hill
• Ralph Towner - Solstice
• Mike Westbrook - Love/Dream Variations
• Stan Tracey - Under Milk Wood (the 1976 rerecording with readings).
• Skidmore Osborne Surman - SOS
• Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
• Elton Dean Quartet - They All Be On This Old Road
• Harry Miller's Isipingo - Family Affair
• Eberhard Weber - Yellow Fields

(1977) Records then bought to delve into the history/established canon, much guided by Joachim Berendt's 'The Jazz Book':

• MJQ - The Last Concert
• Dave Brubeck - a twofer of 50s jazz at college discs
• Charles Mingus - Ah Um
• John Coltrane - My Favourite Things and Afro-Blue Impressions
• Dexter Gordon - Homecoming

(1978) And then I bought...

• Kind of Blue

That sealed it.

Edited October 15, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[TedR]

(1970-5) Rock records with bits on them that perked my ears up to this thing called jazz (or by musicians who constantly name dropped Coltrane, Miles etc):

My example of this is from a Blood , Sweat and Tears album.......the song was Something Coming On and in the middle of the tune there is an abrupt tenor sax break. On first hearing I thought it ruined the song. Then I began to love the solo and subsequently became a fan of those with the skill to improvise. I still like that tune. And, as a young trumpet player, I wanted to play like Lew Soloff.

Edited to say that the start of this post is a copy/paste from Lark's post above.

Edited October 15, 2013 by TedR

[A Lark Ascending]

One I should have included was Buffalo Springfield's 'Broken Arrow' off the 'Retrospective' compilation. Heard that in early 1973 and was always taken by the jazzy bit at the end, thinking 'I want to hear music like that!' The jazzy bit in the middle of Joni Mitchell's 'Harry's House' on 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns' had the same impact. Joni, David Crosby and John Martyn probably laid the harmonic foundations to later preferences too.

Keith Emerson also did nice jazzy bits, especially in the live recordings by The Nice. Nice!

Edited October 15, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[Jerry_L]

Might have been this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1XVxb3mmWc

or this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKIQSo7JbKQ

Edited October 15, 2013 by Jerry_L

[Big Beat Steve]

Must have been an odd kid myself at 15 in 1975, compared to what I read here from others from those years:

Apart from getting seriously into 50s rock'n'roll and rockabilly as well as blues (20s to 50s) at about the same time I started listening to about equal doses of 20s classic jazz and swing on the radio. We had a few weekly half-hour classic jazz radio shows as well as a Saturday noon 2-hour "swing nostalgia" show where collectors were invited into the studio to present their 78rpm treasures (which must have given me my first serious tastes of swing and big band jazz, along with the "Fitch Bandwagon" radio show on AFN).

The one specific TRACK that I recall that stuck in my ears from my pre-record buying days was the George Lewis recording of "Ice Cream" (yeah, predictable, I know - but at least it was George Lewis and not Chris Barber! ). Another one (semi-jazz) was Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" (from the "The sting" movie score).

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I can imagine the 2 hour presentations by collectors must have been enthusiastic, if rather halting, in terms of patter. But good for the station for opening the airwaves to amateurs.

MG

[Big Beat Steve]

Yes, i remember dashin home from school as fast as possible on those Saturdays so I'd catch at least 1 1/2 out of the 2 hours. It did give me an introduction to a lot of names such as Miller, Basie, Ellington, Shaw, etc. as well as more specialist fare such as Luis Russell and Bennie Moten. And I remember a few stories that made me wonder (a bit ...) then but that I got to find to be soooo true before too long, like the show when a diehard Billie Holiday collector was interviewed and mentioned that in order to complete his collection he just HAD to buy this or that LP although he already had 15 out of the 16 tracks on that LP! (That stuck in my memory .... wonder why ... )

Edited October 15, 2013 by Big Beat Steve