I've listened on and off to jazz music and don't pretend to have a deep knowledge of it. Some of it is kind of boring but to me, most of it's pretty entertaining.

There's a new pianist by the name of Joey Alexander. He's been making a big splash in music for at least 2 years, and since he's just 14 years old, that's remarkable.

I first heard of him on NPR and I forgot who interviewed him but he's very entertaining.

Here's him performing Over The Rainbow from a couple of years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1liUart72g&list=PLTEXyWpXw0XXaKQiZyGCmBPgz8-vaTYST

Love it!

Have a listen to Jack Kerouac reading to a jazz accompaniment.

Nice! What a kid.

Here's another one...This guy even includes the seldom played intro verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyRlvhFCEVw

I know a jazz musician and he says that jazz is the most fun to play for musicians, but not the easiest to listen to for the casual listener. For me, I have to be in the mood for it.

I love jazz. I like classical better, but classical lost its way in the 20th century and other than Britten, Shostakovich and Stravinsky few composers made great contributions.

Meanwhile jazz arose, the greatest American art form and a tribute to what the mixing of ethnicities and cultures and traditions can produce. It is complex and does require concentration, especially when it is performed and artists improvise in unpredictable ways, which is why it was eventually supplanted by Rock and other simpler forms of music. But the old Delta Blues and Latin and classical and gospel influences lived on, informing a lot of what has come since.

What has the United States given the world? Many things, but I think culturally the greatest American achievement is jazz. It stands as a monument to the best aspects of our diversity.

Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, Lottie! Gotta love the second movement scherzo.

Mike, I love classic jazz! Miles, Cannonball, Evans, Coltrane, and Ella! Sony Rollins, too!

Yup! All good stuff.

And Prokofiev did a lot of really cool music.

Love Jazz, good radio stations are hard to find, because I like real jazz. St Louis - Edwardsville Il has a very good station. They only play classic jazz. I love early jazz- hard bop. Modern jazz sounds like a bunch of noise and I don't like smooth jazz either . These are my favourites: Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins, Fats Navarro, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins,Roy Eldridge, Howard McGhee,Hank Mobley,Horace Silver, Freddie Keppard, Louie Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Benny Carter, Ben Webster,Illinois Jacquet,Johnny Hodges,Lester Young, Clifford Brown,Sonny Stitt, Woody Herman, Glenn Miller, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jay Jay Johnson- He was playing that fast on a trombone too!, I like EARLY Miles Davis , when he played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, not his later stuff, not jazz anymore, early John Coltrane, loved the way Joey Alexander played it on the link above.
I also love Blues, especially Chicago Blues

All good stuff. But you don't put the great women vocalists on your list? Ella, Billy, Sarah and the others. And there's Oscar.

There is also some very good stuff around lately, but it is hard to find. I'm thinking of a Latino performer in particular whose name escapes me.

I find that sometimes you can still find it in some bars in the States, Europe, Japan. But it is hard.

Ella in Berlin—The Ballad of Mack the Knife...just a jackknife... as only Ella can sing it!

Dave Brubeck: Time Out
Thelonius Monk: Round Midnight
Weather Report: Heavy Weather
Miles Davis: Almost Blue
George Benson: At Carnegie Hall
Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas

These are among my very favorite jazz albums. Beautiful melodies abound.

I love Billie Holiday and Ella too, especially her famous one where she forgot the words to " Mack the knife" and just improvised on the spot, without missing a beat. Jazz is all about improvising though and building up on what someone just finished.
I wish I lived during the main jazz era and had seen all the greats and the cutting contest .i just went and looked at all my CDs and wrote them down to make it faster , trying to remember everyone.

Yes. I wish I'd lived in NYC during the heyday. Or some other places during the Blues era(s).

This is very different and may strike you guys as silly, but I'm also a fan of Cole Porter. His tunes are simple but extremely polished, almost ironic, and his lyrics are often true poetry.

As you say, Jazz is about improvisation.

It is an athletic as well as intellectual endeavor, the basketball of music. The performers go in with a game plan but never follow it; they adjust and improvise and create based on the performances of others, mood, etc. No jazz piece should ever be played the same way twice.

It's good that so much of the great jazz has been recorded for us to buy and enjoy, but that process has also narrowed down the possibilities and eliminated most of the spontaneity. So we will never know what it was like in those smokey dives in the 1940s and 1950s where genius celebrated.

Wow, you feel as I do, haven't had a conversation like this in a while.

I do indeed!

Thanks for the link, mmyn! Also one of my favorite songs so really enjoyed it. I am thankful that our tv stations here at the AL, include music channels. One is called "Light Jazz", which I listen to, frequently :)



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I like jazz, and was even in the jazz band in high school. I also volunteered at the local blues festival that was hosted by the local jazz radio station for a couple of years, collecting tickets. The best part of that was that after I was done with my shift, I got to enjoy the festival.

It makes it hard when you're looking for a certain song by a certain artist. There will be different versions. That's why they always tell you when the song is through, who was on what instrument, the date too when it was recorded.
I wish I could time travel to the 20,s, and key periods in the 30s, 50s and early 50s.
I love Billie Hollidays version of " Fine and mellow ", recorded with Lester Young, Roy Eldridge ( he really hits those high notes), a few months before both she and Lester died, sad,
I loved Charlie Parker, such a sad life, great music

Bird.

Yep, Bird, yardbird, don't know if the myth about the band running over s stray chicken is true, where Charlie Parker had his land lady cook it for him.
The other myth about Bix Beiderbeckes tooth falling out, and the band members searching for it in the snow, because he supposedly couldn't play trumpet without it,

I was raised on Jazz.

I also love the Blues, Black Gospel music,

Nineties rap music. Rhythm and Blues.

I just love music, always have.

Have you seen Ken Burn's jazz series? Very good.He really does his research on his topics and I like his format

yes! I am a life long performer and aficionado of Dixieland Jazz and Stan Kenton progressive Jazz

Eric is a jazzman, too, of course.

I sometimes have to work until the late evening and I miss listening to KUER's Steve Williams playing jazz every week night. I know that KUER changed their format for the evening crowd but, now I have to stream Spotify, Pandora, or NextFM. The beauty of having Willams' show was that it was local and I kept up with upcoming gigs coming into the SLC area.

Cake

One of my favorite finds from Mr. Williams was Tom Jobim's "Tram Azul" (Blue Train). It's on YouTube and other places.

I've been a semi pro jazz musician most of my life, started listening and playing in the 60's. I'll never forget the reaction of my Logan High School English class when I played a selection from Eric Dolphy's "Out to Lunch" as part of my semester project on the Avant Garde in Jazz. They thought I was nuts.

I've had the privilege of playing with some great musicians when they came through North Carolina (Bud Shank, Shirley Scott, Harold Vick, Bobby Durham, Gary Bartz...) and I still play although it's getting physically harder to do.

TSCC has been pretty hostile toward jazz music, especially early in my playing days when I was an active member. I remember reading a quote from a GA proclaiming that jazz was the devil's music. Somehow I managed to put that one on my shelf and continue being active. Although I'm sure that members were put off by the smell of cigarette smoke on my clothes left over from my Saturday night gigs.

I taught the Gospel Doctrine class for many years and as an experiment, I brought John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" to class one Sunday. I played part of the opening track and asked for opinions of the music. Everyone thought it was "of the devil." Then I read Coltrane's poem that was part of the album without telling the class that it was from the same artist. They thought the writer was a man of God. When I told them it was the same person, most were shocked. The lesson that day: open your minds to culture outside of the church. Unfortunately, it went over their heads.

Like Rocketscientist, I play jazz semi-professionally. Being retired has given me the time to play. Last night I played with Roy Roman who toured with Fats Domino, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others. Doc Severinsen, who recently turned 90, lives up I-75 from me. He comes to Roy's home regularly for help as age has made playing the trumpet more difficult. This afternoon I am playing some with folks who have started a new group in north Georgia. I envy Rocketscientist who continued playing while a Mormon. I gave up music when I joined the corporation. How stupid was I? During the week and weekend I am on either a tenor sax, alto sax or bass clarinet. DW was a bit frustrated as I only had Tuesday free this week all day. Plus we have been dealing with my mother who has congestive heart failure. A busy week.

I have some of John Coltrane's transcripts. They are nearly impossible to play requiring hours of practice. Your playing Coltrane is impressive. Mormonism is not friendly to jazz or to many of the arts. Mormonism seems to dull the mind.

When I was in Las Vegas, Doc Severinsen brought his band to the new Smith Center one night. I remember getting a real deal on the ticket price, and this was about 5 years ago, or so. He had a big band, with a couple of really outstanding talents. He has a drummer named Stockton Helbing from Texas, and he really put on a show. He's about 35, very impressive. I follow his Instagram feed, featuring all of the shows he does, and he's been touring with Doc regularly.

Mary Wilson was on this show with him and she had about 20 minutes on her own, doing soul-type music, and some Supreme songs then came back and finished the show with Doc and the band. One of the best shows I've ever seen.

My mother told me about age 12 that I had no musical talent (she was right) so I never learned how to play anything.

I've heard it defined as a conspiracy by baby boomers. I thought that was pretty funny.

A friend of mine likes jazz. I have yet to attend a single party at his house where the collective guests didn't complain within 30 minutes to turn off the ghastly noise. It's torture to most well-hearing people.

To me, it is just another expression of pretentious postmodern deconstructionist self-loathing but YMMV if you are not a conservative like me.

That said, to each his own. I attended a great Beethoven concert yesterday (3rd piano & 7th symph). When that was first performed back in the day, Carl Maria von Weber said Beethoven should be institutionalized.

Times change.

Have so much Jazz. Old and new. For some reason I like Kenny G's 'Breathless' every Sunday morning. Coffee by the creek and Kenny.

Blues alley in Georgetown,DC
Blue Note,NYC Greenwich village
Yoshi's Jack London square Oakland CA
Bests clubs for live jazz. Need to check out gigs playing when heading those places.

Yes, very much.

I’ll be enjoying a lot of it next week in NY’s Village: Small’s, The Vanguard and at The Blue Note.

My favorite radio station is KNKX, which used. to be KPLU, Tacoma, WA...

Jazz, Blues, NPR. News.



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As rocketscientist and, to a lesser extent, wrote above, the church has never been comfortable with jazz and at times has denounced it as "of the devil." Why?

First, the church's views on music have always been narrow. I'm sure the saints enjoyed music and dance in the East and in early Utah, but to the extent that they performed and listened to serious stuff it must have been the European classical tradition. My guess is that even there they inclined towards the traditional stuff, with an emphasis perhaps on religiously inspired pieces rather than the more creative fringe. But the Mormon desire for hierarchy and order was even more limiting. I seriously doubt they approved of the more unsettling work of Stravinsky, Britten, and Shostakovitch. And then Bruce McConkie decided that Bach was "secular" and hence could not be played in LDS meetings.

Jazz had a couple of strikes against it from the beginning. It was largely a revolt against structure, order, traditional constraints. That was clear both in its impromptu nature and it its experiments with rhythm, tone, etc. I recall, personally, playing music for my daughter when she was very little. I used to ask her what particular pieces meant to her. When she listened to classical music, she generally answered with stories or emotions. When we listened to jazz, she would describe her experience with colors. At some level, at least to my uneducated mind, jazz appeals to somewhat different parts of the brain and mind and heart than classical music does. It certainly deviates from the more or less orderly and disciplined approach of classical music of the classical and romantic periods that the LDS church is most comfortable with.

The other strike against Jazz is evident if you google "great jazz musicians" and then look at "images." In the 20th century Mormonism sought to become a conservative mainstream American religion. It retained a strong racist element from all the way through the 1970s and, I believe, even today. It associated race with politics and considered the civil rights movement an extension of international communism. Jazz largely represented that leftist challenge to conservative American values.

I grew up in a Mormon community. There was no jazz in our home, no jazz in our community. Only when I went away to college was I exposed to the musical form, quickly fell in love with it, and joined my NYC friends in frequenting the dive bars where great stuff was occasionally still played.

We are all aware of the joys of life that Mormonism denies its followers--emotional, physical, temporal, financial. It is important also, I believe, to recognize the artistic and cultural cost of adherence to an overly strict and conservative religious tradition.

The dichotomy between the face of the typical jazz musician and the teachings of TSCC on race was the ultimate cog dis for me when I was a practicing Mormon. Knowing what I knew about the greatness and contribution of black musicians and the teachings that blacks were an inferior race caused me to split my brain. I just ignored the racist teachings and went on being a good Mormon.

After I was out, I met a former Duke Ellington bassist at a jazz festival where I was playing (he asked if he could use my bass--I was honored to let him). At one time, he was a member of the church and was written about in the Improvement Era. When I met him, he had dropped out of the church and was very bitter about his experience. This was in 1979, just after the "revelation." A local church official had given a newspaper his name for comment after the revelation was announced. He was pissed.

Isn't that why many of us grew disenchanted and left Mormonism? Life put us in contact with people of different races, gender identities, educational levels, cultures and religions and we found that they were in fact like us? It gets a lot harder to self-segregate when you actually meet and listen to those who are supposedly "different."

One of the most basic contradictions in Mormonism is the idea that all are children of God. If that is so, it follows that we must be equal in God's eyes and that anything that divides us is stupid--or perhaps evil.

I never heard jazz being the devil's music in church, only rock, but I've seen it mentioned on plenty of jazz documentaries. A lot of jazz musicians were clean cut, like Clifford Brown and Dave Brubeck. A lot did, then stopped, I think John Coltrane was one.
I have an interesting book called" Jazz and death" by Frederick J. Spencer, MD. He names almost every disease and ailment , and the cause of death , in alphabetical order, of all the jazz musicians.

Have a lot of people been to the Bix Beiderbecke jazz festival, every year in Davenport Iowa? I went when we lived in Illinois. It had a lot of Dixieland bands that played his music and similar music. They played in two actual venues that he played in, the Col and Danceland. They were just down the street from each other, so you could go back and forth or follow your favourite bands. They also played at the park on the waterfront, that you could walk to too
Now, they only play at the park and the arena near it.
Very toe tapping music, and head nodding , either up and down or back and forth, depending if its traditional jazz or bebop
Good music, can't believe all the jazz lovers and musicians on this site. Good taste guys!!!