What Got You Into West Coast Jazz?

[Leeway]

My point of access; Art Pepper

[Teasing the Korean]

... I happened to see an advertisement for a couple Shorty Rogers arrangements in Down Beat, "Morpo" and "Pirouette." I bought them and then bought the recording, a 45RPM album titled Shorty Rogers and His Giants. Yep. still have the charts, still have the recording.

In an effort to learn more about Shorty's arranging techniques, I reversed-engineered the parts and made a concert-pitch score. So that started me on a track of arranging....

Cool story! I love Shorty's stuff from the period you describe. Curious, are there any specific techniques you could describe from either of those two scores that made a particular impression on you?

[clifford_thornton]

Not sure what the first qualified "WCJ" album I bought was, but I can say that like many things, it was at the influential behest of people on this board.

[king ubu]

as it's been mentioned in this thread, finally the re-print of Tercinet's book seems to really happen now:

amazon.fr has some pages for preview:

http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/2863646656

 

[Larry Kart]

Probably the Mulligan-Baker Quartet. It was in the air when I was a freshman in H.S. in 1956.

[Big Beat Steve]

Thanks for the info. I've just checked and compared most of the sample pages. Pictures have been changed, it seems, and some minor revisions to the text (more thoroughly revised in the case of the Kenton sample page, though from this smal sample I cannot tell in what direction). At any rate, some serious revision would have been required anyway since at the time the book was first published the Fresh Sound LP reissue program was in full swing and made a LOT of hitherto unobtainable music available again, particularly to the interested listener. Today's availability would require updating the references to a lot of source material (records), though.

[mikelz777]

This is a revived older thread but it got me to thinking about what my gateway to west coast jazz was. My gateway to west coast jazz was The Crusaders. I got on board with the group with their "Southern Comfort" album. I continued to follow them with each release afterwards but pretty much lost interest in their sound with the exit of Wayne Henderson and the recording "Free As The Wind" and everything that followed. Rather than give up on the group, I went backwards in their discography to their Jazz Crusader days.  I read about their start with Richard Bock and Pacific Jazz and I liked their sound so much, I began to look into what other artists recorded with Pacific Jazz. That lead to Chet Baker with Russ Freeman. That lead to Chet Baker with Gerry Mulligan and as I searched for more of that cool, west coast sound, I came across the usual cast of characters, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, Howard Rumsey, Gerald Wilson, Stan Getz, Shelly Manne, etc. 

[JSngry]

Apart from previously mentionet HS Band Director kismet, there was also the equally kismetic circumstance of the local Treasure City being chock-full of Liberty catalog deletions, which apart form some really insane Blu Note items also contained a buttload full of Pacific Jazz/World Pacific (Jazz) items, old and new alike, including choice Mulligan & Chico sides from the Jazz Milestones Series, still tresaured items for me today, not just for the music, but for the cover art, already a "modern nostalgia" thing going on for WCJ in the late 1960s.

and this one, colors brighter than this, looks nothing like mulligan, but those colors pretty much represent how in my mind "West Coast Jazz" sounded then, and to a large extent, still does.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

-being on w. coast

-wcj specific weekly radio show

-art farmer/frank morgan at a  central ave. arts facility playing six ft in front of me

[gvopedz]

Jimmy Giuffre

[sidewinder]

Another very early West Coast intro for me were those Wardell Gray tracks with Sonny Criss and Teddy Charles. Interesting to compare those with Prince Lasha/Sonny Simmons 'Firebirds'.

[aparxa]

10-15 years ago:

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - First definitions (SF sessions from 1951 and 1952)

 

Gerry Mulligan Quartet with  Chet Baker - Soft Shoes (LA sessions from 1952 and 1953)

 

And among my very first purchases and still favorites:

Thelonious alone in San Francisco

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco

 

 

[danasgoodstuff]

 Thelonious alone in San Francisco, how is this WCJ - does he play differently because the ocean's on the other side?

[aparxa]

Just a vague digression...