Jazz Odyssey

Trying to think of a new way to relax, I decided I should listen to music more. I always had, but since house and children in the early 2000s I haven’t really listened to much of anything. Yeah, some Hendrix now and then, some stuff from my youth, classical here and there, lately old Genesis, but nothing on a daily basis.

I have close to a hundred CDs at home. (Had a box of 200+ that was stolen during the move from apartment to house, but I forgive you thief.) And to be honest, I just don’t get the whole smartphone thing. I’d rather just listen to my CDs. So the girls bought me a Walkman CD player (and no doubt were embarrassed the entire duration of the selection and purchase) for Christmas. The first thing I listened to was a Charles Mingus CD of my father-in-law’s.

That was chased by Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue.

That invisible bulb flared o’erhead. Why not explore jazz? I’m a curious fellow, and it’s one area of music I’m not too fluent with. Yeah, I did a cursory survey around 2000, 2001, but it’s still new turf to me.

Over the past three weeks, I borrowed the following CDs from my local library, three at a time:

Charlie Parker – The Legendary Charlie Parker

Django Reinhardt – The Essential Django Reinhardt

Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um

Herbie Hancock – Thrust

Wes Montgomery – The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery

Sun Ra and his Arkestra – The Definitive 45s Collection

Miles Davis – Birth of the Cool

Chick Correa, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White – Forever

Thelonious Monk – The Blue Note Years

To date I’ve listened to a third of the total music on these CDs.

I’ve also streamed in WBGO at work (I have the privacy of an office with a door that closes), just about every day since January 1.

Conclusions?

I not a fan of big band. I don’t like the Harry Connick horns-a-blarin’ sound. I don’t like poor recordings, say, pre-1950. Though I appreciate the musicianship, my body just doesn’t relish the mono, the prehistoric mic tech. On the other side of the time spectrum, anything after the 70s – especially “cool jazz” “lite jazz” or “jazz FM” – does nothing for me.

The trumpet doesn’t do much for my nerves; I much prefer the sax – warmer, fatter, more soothing in tone. And, of course, I prefer the guitar most of all, in all phases and sound, though I do dig keyboards, both natural and electronic.

So far I enjoy the guitars / keyboards / saxophones mashups of the 70s, “fusion,” meaning a fusion of rock with jazz, though I feel it leans more towards the latter than the former. Which is okay with me. Three chords over 4/4 can only go so far, and I passed that point sometime in the mid-80s. My focus going forward will probably be in that region, fusion, though I am enthusiastic for the “classics” of jazz – the revolutionary stuff of the 50s and 60s, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Mingus, Monk, and their contemporaries. Probably won’t be listening to earlier Duke Ellington or Jelly Roll Morton or Louis Armstrong, though on occasion I may dip my toes in those (hopefully remastered) waters.

Favorites so far? Recommendations, if you will?

Well …

“West Coast Blues” by Wes Montgomery (my unrelated-at-all-to-Disney Disney theme, cuz that’s where I first heard it)

The entire Thrust album by Herbie Hancock

Most of Davis’ Birth of the Cool (which I like better than “Kind of Blue,” a CD I’ve had for twenty years and listened to about a hundred times)

“Rocket Ship #9” by Sun Ra (not for the faint-hearted)

though I still have to dig deep into a lot more of those nine CDs, and dozens more as yet unsampled …