The First Jazz Albums We Owned

[jcam_44]

Christian Scott - Anthem

[medjuck]

3 hours ago, GA Russell said:

Joe, I thought you were from Montreal!  Did you grow up in the Eastern Townships, maybe?

Fredericton, NB.  Went to McGill in 1961 and saw a lot of great live jazz.

[danasgoodstuff]

Hang On Ramsey, assuming that was mine and not my parents.  I blame Sloopy.

[GA Russell]

2 hours ago, medjuck said:

Fredericton, NB.  Went to McGill in 1961 and saw a lot of great live jazz.

Did the kids in NB root for the Als?

[medjuck]

1 hour ago, GA Russell said:

Did the kids in NB root for the Als?

Not much interest in football there. (We only played rugby in high school.). Big decision was whether to root for Habs or Toronto.

[Dan Gould]

First owned is simple:  November, 1987, I was in my first semester in grad school at Washington University in St Louis. I found myself invited to a small gathering hosted by a friend of my older brother. There were three couples and I didn't know anybody, making my natural shyness more pronounced. I did know the record they played - Ella and Louis - which my parents owned. I enjoyed it more than I recalled enjoying it at home and within a week or two my mother called to ask for Christmas requests.

I told her I had no idea what I thought I might like but that I was starting to think I might enjoy some jazz.

The same brother secured these two LPs

https://www.discogs.com/release/4340072-Various-Columbia-Jazz-Masterpieces-Sampler-Volume-I

https://www.discogs.com/master/528035-Various-Columbia-Jazz-Masterpieces-Sampler-Volume-II

I transferred them to cassette to take with me to St Louis (no TT at the time) and the two LPs stayed at the house in CT until it was emptied in 2013 when Mom moved to Naples, FL.

First purchased - I have no idea now, though I do know that I started buying feverishly at a couple of places in U-City which were about a 5 minute walk from the apartment.

[John L]

I didn't become a real jazz fan until shortly after I graduated high school.   But I did buy two albums in high school that got me started:

Stanley Turrentine - Don't Mess With Mr. T

Grover Washington - Mr. Magic

I still love those two albums. 

[Rooster_Ties]

I mentioned my Hendrix fanaticism my last two years in high school (including a couple dozen bootlegs, and damn near every legit release I could find)…

…but then I also got into Frank Zappa quite a bit when I first got to college — and then in the year before I got into jazz, I got the first of Zappa’s live 1988 releases with his very jazz-tinged, horn-driven band (the album Broadway the Hard Way).  So that helped too.

[Teasing the Korean]

12 hours ago, medjuck said:

Does it count if they were really your parents' and your older sisters'? 

Yes, what I was really trying to get out was how those early albums influenced our taste.

10 hours ago, Milestones said:

TTK,

I'm almost amazed by the similarities of our early purchases.  I had some Brubeck in there, but not much.  I went heavy on Miles, Trane, McLaughlin, Mingus, Hancock, Wes, Monk (but different titles from yours).  I didn't discover Randy Weston, a big favorite, until about 1990--and his early stuff quite a bit later.

We are probably about the same age (I was born in 1960), or maybe you are a bit younger.  But I didn't develop my interest in jazz until my third year of college.

I am slightly younger than you.  I started buying jazz in the late 1970s.  Lots of classic stuff was out of print at that time, or just coming back into print via OJC twofer LPs.  (They weren't called OJC then, but basically Fantasy and all the labels they acquired.). There were lots of Blue Note and impulse! albums in the cutout bin also.  This trend continued into the early 80s, and helped me acquire even more jazz after high school.  I then went through a long period in the 80s during which I did not listen to jazz at all, as chronicled in my thread titled "University Jazz Nightmare Stories" or something similar.  I got back into jazz in the late 1980s, through getting into Sinatra and the Ella Songbook albums, and also driving around with my Dad, who played jazz cassettes in the car.  (This is how I first heard Doin' Alright by Dexter.)

[Steve Reynolds]

Bought 3 jazz CD’s in 1991

Kind of Blue

Mingus at Antibes

Waltz for Debby

[Rabshakeh]

50 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

…but then I also got into Frank Zappa quite a bit when I first got to college — and then in the year before I got into jazz, I got the first of Zappa’s live 1988 releases with his very jazz-tinged, horn-driven band (the album Broadway the Hard Way).  So that helped too.

Forgot Zappa. My first jazz records were definitely Hot Rats, Waka Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo. I'm not sure that I really thought about them as jazz, though.

[Jim Duckworth]

The first "Jazz" lp I purchased and dug immediately was Tribute to Jack Johnson by Miles Davis purchased when it was new and I was newish-sixteen years old.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Yes, what I was really trying to get out was how those early albums influenced our taste.

I am slightly younger than you.  I started buying jazz in the late 1970s.  Lots of classic stuff was out of print at that time, or just coming back into print via OJC twofer LPs.  (They weren't called OJC then, but basically Fantasy and all the labels they acquired.). There were lots of Blue Note and impulse! albums in the cutout bin also.  This trend continued into the early 80s, and helped me acquire even more jazz after high school.  I then went through a long period in the 80s during which I did not listen to jazz at all, as chronicled in my thread titled "University Jazz Nightmare Stories" or something similar.  I got back into jazz in the late 1980s, through getting into Sinatra and the Ella Songbook albums, and also driving around with my Dad, who played jazz cassettes in the car.  (This is how I first heard Doin' Alright by Dexter.)

I also got a Turk Murphy, or was it Lu Watters album, very early on. My rookie batting average was not too good. At least I didn't go for a Firehouse Five album.

[Teasing the Korean]

1 minute ago, Larry Kart said:

I also got a Turk Murphy, or was it Lu Watters album, very early on. My rookie batting average was not too good. At least I didn't go for a Firehouse Five album.

You're further along than I, as I am familiar with only Turk Murphy by name, and couldn't tell you anything about his music.  Don't know the other two.

[Rooster_Ties]

36 minutes ago, Jim Duckworth said:

The first "Jazz" lp I purchased and dug immediately was Tribute to Jack Johnson by Miles Davis purchased when it was new and I was newish-sixteen years old.

Wow, what a great album to start with! 

[BillF]

23 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

You're further along than I, as I am familiar with only Turk Murphy by name, and couldn't tell you anything about his music.  Don't know the other two.

Very big in my youth.

[Larry Kart]

27 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

You're further along than I, as I am familiar with only Turk Murphy by name, and couldn't tell you anything about his music.  Don't know the other two.

Trombonist bandleader in the San Francisco Cro-Magnon Trad movement of the early '40s. Pretty lame IMO.  Watters was better, in the same bag. The Fire House crew was a bunch of Disney studio guys (animators, IIRC) horsing around. They sold a lot of records.

[Teasing the Korean]

9 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Trombonist bandleader in the San Francisco Cro-Magnon Trad movement of the early '40s. Pretty lame IMO. 

I figured that anyone named Turk Murphy would be involved in Dixieland or whatever you want to call it.  During the Great Vinyl Purge of the 1990s, whenever I would dig through the collections of WWII-era guys, there would always be at least a few Dixieland albums in there, including Pete Fountain and the Dukes of Dixieland.  Even WWII guys with otherwise good taste in music would always have a few of these. 

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Yes, what I was really trying to get out was how those early albums influenced our taste.

Taste, eh, that's been ongoing. What I did learn is that you don't necessarily need a record store to find good records, and even with a record store, always check the cutouts. 

Always look, never assume.

So maybe that's how it affected my taste in music

[Jason Bivins]

When my uncle passed in 85 we took his records home. A bunch of Monk and Bill Evans, but I wasn't feeling them at the time. Couple years later, first semester in college, it was Inner Mounting Flame that turned me around. From there, a series of fusion mixtapes curated by a dearly departed friend, then Coltrane Live at Birdland and that's been all she wrote.

[Steve Reynolds]

20 hours ago, Jason Bivins said:

When my uncle passed in 85 we took his records home. A bunch of Monk and Bill Evans, but I wasn't feeling them at the time. Couple years later, first semester in college, it was Inner Mounting Flame that turned me around. From there, a series of fusion mixtapes curated by a dearly departed friend, then Coltrane Live at Birdland and that's been all she wrote.

I had Birds of Fire in college maybe in 1980 but it drove me more towards King Crimson, Gong et al. Loved Inner Mounting Flame as well. I tried some other fusion like RTF and I disliked it intensely. 

[DMP]

The first jazz album I bought with my own money was ‘Steamin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet.’  Ralph Gleason gave it a rave review in “Stereo Review” (or whatever it was named then), so I took a chance. Other early purchases were ‘Ugetsu,’ ‘Herbie Mann at the Village Gate,’ ‘Ornette on Tenor,’  Sonny Rollins’ ‘What’s New’ and ‘Ring-a-Ding Ding.’ All still in frequent rotation. 

[Niko]

On 3-9-2022 at 5:25 PM, BillF said:

I seem to think we've talked about this before, but anyway the first jazz album I bought - and the year was 1957 - was this 10" LP:

 

saw that 10in album in a store earlier today and almost bought it... might still go back to get it - but I already had so much...

[Teasing the Korean]

35 minutes ago, DMP said:

 ‘Ring-a-Ding Ding.’

Sinatra?

[Jason Bivins]

I hear that, Steve. RTF never clicked for me either.