What Artist/LP/CD Got You Hooked On Jazz

[mrjazzman]

For me it was Trane's Live At Birdland, the cuts Afro Blue and The Promise. I was approx 15 at the time...........

Edited May 20, 2012 by mrjazzman

[mikeweil]

For me it was the Modern Jazz Quartet, a Metronome EP with the four tracks from their first Prestige session, Vendome, La Ronde, Rose of the Rio Grande ...

How old was I? Fourteen? Can't remember - the disc was in my brother's collection, or rather something his wife-to-be brought along, who was jobbing in a record shop at the time.

[PHILLYQ]

Mahavishnu Orchestra, 'The Inner Mounting Flame'(I was 16). It got me to 'Live/Evil' which got me to everybody else.

[A Lark Ascending]

King Crimson - 'Lizard' - Keith Tippett, Nick Evans, Harry Miller, March Charig as guests. At first it was 'What?' And then I got intrigued.

Though I was also partial to the jazz trio bit at the end of Buffalo Springfield's 'Expecting to Fly'. If I'd known then what I know know I would have tried to impress my friends by declaiming 'Man, this really swings!' (or, maybe, 'Play that Thing!'].

[kh1958]

Three of my earliest jazz LP purchases (around 1973-74) that hooked me were anthologies:

The Best of John Coltrane (Atlantic)

Miles Davis, Basic Miles (Columbia), and

The Best of Cannonball Adderley (Capitol).

[HolgerFreimutSchrick]

For me it was the Welcome album of Carlos Santana in 1973. So I heard of John Coltrane the first time

[Larry Kart]

Maybe the Roy Eldridge quartet album on Clef from c. 1955 -- heard it when it came out, the one with "Stormy Weather," "Sweethearts on Parade," etc. So much soul and personality so directly, or so it seemed, plus all kinds and amounts of artistry. I felt I knew the man. By the time I got to Roy and Prez on "Jazz Giants '56," I was one permanently gone guy.

[jeffcrom]

When I was about 14, in the early 1970's, my grandmother gave me a box of 78s. It included all kinds of stuff, including a fair amount of instrumental swing. I still have "Pardon Me, Pretty Baby"/"Somebody Loves Me" by Benny Carter, "I Ain't Got Nobody"/"Lost In a Fog" by Coleman Hawkins and "Chop Chop"/Hamp's Boogie Woogie" by Lionel Hampton.

Slightly later I read Ralph Berton's book Remembering Bix, and was so fascinated that I went out and bought the Milestone two-fer Bix Beiderbecke and the Chicago Cornets. By the second cut, "Jazz Me Blues," I "heard" Bix's message. I think my second jazz LP purchase was a Charlie Parker collection on Verve. I learned jazz more or less chronologically.

[JSngry]

The first of a lot of things that would come in rapid succession (although there had probably been a lot of others before, this was the one that consciously "took" as being actual jazz and not something else going on in the background)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=golkh97IWN0

[mrjazzman]

I love reading your responses, facinating.........

[Pete C]

For me it was a 10-lp set on Roulette that had a bunch of stuff from the Roulette and Roost catalogues. It was in the family collection and I discovered it when I was maybe 10 or 11. I remember Bird's Crazeology being one of the tracks that floored me. For a while my brother worked a menial job at Columbia Records and would get Columbia Special Products versions of what I believe were then out of print LPs (we're talking ca. 1967. I remember Miles at the Blackhawk and Mingus Dynasty, which sold me on Mingus.

Miles Davis, Basic Miles (Columbia)

I bought that one specifically for Green Dolphin Street, which I believe Hal Jackson (or was it Frankie Crocker) used to play a lot on WBLS. I wrote a review of it for my Freshman Comp class in '73.

[CraigP]

I heard Dexter Gordon's Blues a la Suisse via Willis Conover and VOA when I was 14. My dad had recently bought me a shortwave radio for my birthday. I bought that album and never looked back.

[BillF]

In 1956 when I was 16 and listening to Bill Haley and his Comets an older boy (who must have been all of 17) took me aside and said I should be listening to something more worthwhile. He lent me an EP of Sidney Bechet with Claude Luter's band. The lender has now passed on, but his heritage remains.

[Big Beat Steve]

Slightly later I read Ralph Berton's book Remembering Bix, and was so fascinated that I went out and bought the Milestone two-fer Bix Beiderbecke and the Chicago Cornets. By the second cut, "Jazz Me Blues," I "heard" Bix's message. I think my second jazz LP purchase was a Charlie Parker collection on Verve. I learned jazz more or less chronologically.

While for the life of it I cannot recall which was my very FIRST jazz record ever bought, among those that I bought very, very early on (after having listened to a good deal of jazz radio shows - featuring mostly late 20s classic jazz and 30s swing) when I started buying records at 14 1/2 in early 1975 there were these:

- ODJB (RCA 2-fer)

- Fats Waller piano rolls (early to mid-20s),

- Muggsy Spanier's Ragtime Band,

- Count Basie 1937-38 (live at the Meadowbrook, Cedar Grove N.J.)

- Artie Shaw RCA 2-fer with his classic big band sessions

As I did quite a bit of reading on jazz at the same time (including Berendt's Jazz Book as well as Keepnews/Grauer's Pictorial History of Jazz) I became aware of more jazz names pretty fast and within less than a year I cautiously approached modern jazz, starting with the Diz/Bird twofer on Prestige featuring the 1945-50 Guild/Manor recordings. Yes, I really worked myself into jazz chronologically too ...

For me it was the Modern Jazz Quartet, a Metronome EP with the four tracks from their first Prestige session, Vendome, La Ronde, Rose of the Rio Grande ...

Strangely, this had exactly the opposite effect on me at the time. My mother - though only a very casual jazz listener - had had that very EP (plus other MJQ records such as Fontessa) since the 50s. To me, however, these recordings initially sounded thin, lifeless and rather unswinging. Of course, compared to 40s Diz, Bird and other bebop heroes (I remember Dexter Gordon's Storyville LP with his Dial sessions was another of my early bebop purchases) they invariably appeared thin. It took me quite a while before I could see what the MJQ was all about.

[flat5]

I had already been playing clarinet for two years when I discovered early jazz on the fm radio in Los Angeles.

I started to play along with the radio and read about jazz. I was attracted by the freedom the clarinet role had.

or so I thought :-)

[Shawn]

The usual suspects. Kind Of Blue, Blue Train, Time Out, The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery and Mobley's Soul Station.

[BeBop]

Hooked? Not me. I can quit anytime I want.

My gateway was playing: junior high school stage band. Hefti/Basie charts.

Edited May 20, 2012 by BeBop

[John Tapscott]

When I was around 16 and a high school trombonist, I began exploring jazz by listening to quite a bit of jazz on the radio (thanks to Ted O'Reilly). I enjoyed most of it but I recall three specific sounds that stopped me dead in my tracks - the trombone section of the Stan Kenton Orchestra, JJ Johnson's trombone solos, and McCoy Tyner's piano playing on the Enlightenment LP.

[jeffcrom]

As I did quite a bit of reading on jazz at the same time (including Berendt's Jazz Book as well as Keepnews/Grauer's Pictorial History of Jazz) I became aware of more jazz names pretty fast and within less than a year I cautiously approached modern jazz, starting with the Diz/Bird twofer on Prestige featuring the 1945-50 Guild/Manor recordings. Yes, I really worked myself into jazz chronologically too ...

The Keepnews/Grauer book, full of flaws and poorly-reproduced photographs, was extremely important to me. I checked it of my local library over and over again, wondering what those fascinating musicians sounded like.

[Big Beat Steve]

The Keepnews/Grauer book, full of flaws and poorly-reproduced photographs, was extremely important to me. I checked it of my local library over and over again, wondering what those fascinating musicians sounded like.

Same here. Exactly the same. I checked it out countless times through the years at the local library and marveled at those period photographs for hours. Of course it was a revelation to me as there simply was nothing to compare to it for visual impact (never mind the historical flaws that became apparent later) and browsing through those pages did lead me to take the plunge on quite a few artists whom I had not heard before anywhere (and I was very rarely disappointed).

As for those poorly reproduced photographs, actually my initiation rites went through two different issues of that book. The first one I checked out several times at the library was an early 60s edition "printed in Czechoslovakia" which did apear visually OK to me by the standards of the time. But when I went back (after a spell of absence) to check it out again it was gone and an earlier (first?) edition (which ended with the "Artistry in Rhythm" chapter instead of the later "Now's The Time" chapter) had replaced it (a really old book which could only have been brought in secondhand by the time it appeared on the shelves there - late 70s/early 80s - for whatever reason). The small print said "printed in Yugoslavia" and the photograph reproduction in that edition really did appear poorer to me too (blacked out, blotchier etc.). And yet its impact on me remained intact at that time when that book really was without par over here.

[A Lark Ascending]

My two bibles in 1977 and 1978.

I recall slavering over the colour sleeve pictures in the latter, of LPs that could only be dreamed of in Mansfield, mid-Nottinghamshire.

Edited May 20, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[GA Russell]

I always preferred the instrumental pop and rock on the radio. I feel that hearing those records was more important than any one jazz album.

When I was fifteen I bought my first jazz record, the Ramsey Lewis Trio's Hang On Ramsey. That was a big step for me because I always found the liner notes of jazz albums to be intimidating. I probably would have been content to listen to that level of music had nothing else come along.

Four months later I bought my first hard core jazz album, Groove Holmes' Soul Message, on the strength of his hit single Misty. That one is still one of my very favorite albums, and it released any fear of intimidation.

Edited May 20, 2012 by GA Russell

[Rooster_Ties]

Two 90-minute cassettes I made in college, and played to death round about my Junior year (circa 1989)...

Side 1: Kind Of Blue

Side 2: Nefertiti + the individual track "Prince of Darkness" (from The Sorcerer)

Side 1: Mode For Joe + the individual track "Gary's Notebook" iirc (from The Sidewinder)

Side 2: Power To The People

And to this day, Nefertiti and Power To The People remain my very favorite Miles and Joe Henderson albums...

Edited May 20, 2012 by Rooster_Ties

[Jim R]

Bev, I had (and still have) the Britt book, and nearly wore it out.

Like B.B. Steve, I'm really not sure what my first jazz LP was. In the early 70's, I was starting to buy all kinds of records from different genres, and had friends who were doing the same. These were probably among the first that got my attention:

Les McCann & Eddie Harris - Swiss Movement

The Crusaders - Crusaders 1

A few years later, and older brother started hipping me to the heavyweights. He gave me some essentials by Bird, Monk, Miles, etc etc, and I remember this LP being an early favorite that I could digest readily:

Jimmy Smith - At The Organ, Vol. 1

[paul secor]

When I was 16, I saw a documentary on The Dave Brubeck Quartet on television. I liked what I heard, even though I didn't really know what I was hearing, and decided I wanted to hear more and find out more.