Topic: What Jazz Music Do You Enjoy?

[mississippijohnhurt1928]

Some of my favorites are:

Pre-War
King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, The Original Dixieland "Jass" Band, Count Basie Etc.

Post-War
John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock,
Ornette Coleman, Etc.



How about you?

[CF]

I think I like 1920s era Jazz about as much as I like prewar country & blues. Ellington's '20s recordings are just about the best music ever made in my opinion. 'The Mooche', 'Creole's Love Call', ' Shout 'em Aunt Tillie', 'It Don't Mean A Thing' (w/ Ivie Anderson) & 'Mood Indigo' are probably some of the most beautifully written & performed pieces of music in American recording history. I love Jelly, louis, Billie & etc. but I think the Ellington execution & band performance & song writing is near untouchable. Anyone remember those great Giants Of Jazz (Time- Life?)record collections from the '70s was it? Big 4-5 record collections with booklets & exhaustive notes & personnel . . . I cut my teeth on those babies.

[waxwing]

Bix!

Among many others, of course.

All for now,
John C.

[Michael Kuehn]

Billie Holiday, Coltrane, Parker, McCoy Tyner, Ellington, Roscoe Mitchell, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Pat Metheny, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Christian, Basie, Dexter Gordon, Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, and many more.

Mike

[Rivers]

All of it, especially where there's a crossover, at least in my mind, to fingerpicked guitar. Which means I tend to like older jazz more than, say, the wilder excursions of bebop, of which I have no clue how to even attempt to play. I listen to a lot of Coltrane and Miles though it's divorced from my own playing.

Of the jazz guitarists I like Wes Montgomery, favorites are Smoking At The Half Note (reissued!) and The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of... I like Martin Taylor particularly his tribute album to Art Tatum, Charlie Christian complete, Freddie Green for his comping. Lenny Breau is inspiring for his sheer brilliance and musicality. Django of course but I done OD'd on Django...

Bix Beiderbecke of course, Lang / Venuti. Ellington/ Strayhorn, Louis Armstrong's Hot 5's and 7's, you name it, I even like the Paul Whiteman Orchestras. Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter & Ray Bryant, selected Benny Goodman, a whole lot of stuff.

[mississippijohnhurt1928]

Oh, and of course, Django Reinhardt is great too!

[banjochris]

I like most jazz before they took the melody out. Favorites include Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Eddie Lang, Roy Smeck, 6 and 7/8 String Band, Django, Benny Goodman, Count Basie just to name a few.

Morton's first Victor recordings are some of my favorites of any genre of music, as is the Roy Smeck Yazoo album.
Chris

[Bricktown Bob]

I recently acquired a CD of Wynton Marsalis doing a bunch of Jelly Roll Morton tunes.  Excellent.  One cut (Tom Cat Blues) they recorded acoustically, on wax cylinder, at the Edison laboratory in West Orange, I suppose to get the flavor of primitive recordings -- god knows why.

[CF]

Speakin' of Jazz pickers . . . Lonnie Johnson doesn't get the credit he deserves for his early Jazz playing with Louis' & the Duke's bands & especially his duo work with Lang. Those instrumentals are great & a big part of it is Lonnie's technique & feel . . . Lonnie should be more famous than he is, it's almost kinda strange that he isn't more of an obvious 'guitar-god' or what have you.
I like all Jelly Roll Morton's music. I have two words. 'Jungle Blues'. 

[eagle rockin daddy]

Miles playing ballads.

Mike

[Richard]

I guess you can tell I'm not a guitarist, I'm actually a jazz drummer by "trade" so this a tricky one! Unlike many who started with rock and worked backwards I started on the dreaded George Lewis "roll and thump" as it's called in the trade and worked upwards... I've done and loved doing acres of the early Oliver, Morton, Bix small band stuff. Also, years of  the pre-war Basie\Ellington big bands one of the highlights was a long stint in a 20s big band doing a lot of the Ellington\Henderson pad............ then there was all the mainstream and later stuff.......

Firey players like Shavers, Eldridge, Edison et al that are yum  so the answer is I don't know, it depends on the mood!

Possibly if I am honest I am probably in a 1920 - 1970ish timewarp     

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Just because there has been so much great Jazz in the past and there's a tendency to think that there's nothing worthwhile happening right now, I'll confine myself to people working today who haven't been mentioned so far, and were not around prior to the '60s.
  * There are a lot of great pianists.  For Mainstream stuff, Bill Charlap is super.  Marc Copland is venturing into new harmonic territory that is really beautiful, and Brad Meldau is a superb pianist who just explodes sometimes.   My favorite is the young Italian pianist, Stefano Bollani, who is absolute gold standard, appears to be able do whatever he wants and still has tons in reserve.
   * I grew up playing clarinet, and love it, and it has been great to see a resurgence of super clarinet players after it's relative disappearance from Jazz in the post-Swing Era.  Some of the top players out there now are Chris Speed, who doubles on tenor sax, long-time expatriate Amsterdam resident, Michael Moore, who doubles on alto sax, the Frenchman Louis Sclavis, and from Italy, Gianluigi Trovesi. 
   * There are lots of strong trumpet players out there, too:  Ryan Kisor, Dave Douglas and Ron Miles, King of Tone.
   * Dino Saluzzi, a Berlin resident originally from Argentina is both a great player of and writer for the bandoneon, the big chromatic accordion used for Tango that was popularized in recent years by Astor Piazzola. 

There are tons of great players out there still, and if you think the working prospects for a Country Blues player are tough, try making a living playing Jazz.  One of the tough things about the musical marketplace is that it tends to be about fashion, as does the visual art world.  You can be fantastic, but if you are not working in a style that is currently "hot", you are out of luck in terms of making a living.  Oh well, there's nothing new under the sun.
all best,
Johnm   

[Michael Kuehn]

Johnm,
Since you bring him up, I saw Brad Mehldau with Pat Metheny a few months ago -- amazing show. I have tickets for Stefon Harris, brilliant vibes player, early next month. In the last year I've been able to see Terence Blanchard, Ahmad Jamal, Branford Marsalis, James Carter, Medeski and Scofield -- there are a lot of great jazz musicians currently touring.

Mike

[Johnm]

That's great, Mike.  I noticed among your earlier picks was Carla Bley--good on you!  What a great writer she is.  There is a terrific 2-CD set from 1961 on ECM of Jimmy Giuffre on clarinet, Steve Swallow on bass and Paul Bley on piano playing a program comprised primarily of Carla Bley's tunes, which are just wonderful.  I read a great quote from her once, to the effect that she likes to write tunes with lush chords and then pare away the voices that make the chords lush.  All I can say is that for her it definitely works.
All best,
Johnm

[Stuart]

I caught the 60 Minutes piece on Alan Greenspan last night. They mentioned his stint as a jazz saxophonist in his younger days and I believe that he was holding a clarinet in one part of the interview. Great minds think alike Johnm, so perhaps there's a seat on the Federal Reserve Board in your future!