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What Jazz Are You Listening To Now?

703K views 7K replies 266 participants last post by  tortkis 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I'm going to test this out here. I see quite a few members have been posting a solid bit of great Jazz listenings… So, I figured it'd be pretty cool if we could have a thread entirely dedicated to all things Jazz. And I mean anything - From the early beginnings of the late 19th century, to Bebop/Hard-Bop, to Avant-Garde, and on to the Moon.

Post whatever you want... videos, pictures, news… This is a free-range.

I've been in a Bebop/Hard-Bop dig lately, so I'll impart this cool little documentary where Bob Cranshaw talks about his time with Lee Morgan.


:cool:
 
#3 ·
@ Vesuvius, What a great idea for a thread! I've been on something of a Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy "kick" lately. I shall definitely have some YouTube and or Spotify contributions to make in future. Lee Morgan also happens to be one of my favorites as well. Good find. :cheers:
Excellent. I've seen you make a lot of healthy jazz contributions. Post whatever you want! This thread is really just an open bag, or "hole," so anyone who's into Jazz can throw in or check out what's here.
 
#6 ·
Speaking of jazz, Charles Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was the album which left a HUGE impression on me in college (along with Coltrane's A Love Supreme). I guess these two have to be at the top of best albums in jazz history. Anyway, here is a track from Mingus' album that absolutely blew me to the wall every time I blasted it from my speakers... (to my friends' chagrin, those with really conservative or non-existent musical tastes)

:tiphat:

 
#10 ·
Great idea for a thread, thanks Vesuvius.

What do you all understand by the term 'hard bop'? How does it differ from 'bebop'?

I pick up more variety in the later hard bop, ie use of earlier styles, plus elements like Latin, but I have to say I'm a bit vague as to the distinctions between the two.
 
#12 ·
Bebop was the foundation that Hard-bop extended from.

-Bop-
Also known as bebop, Bop was a radical new music that developed gradually in the early '40s and exploded in 1945. The main difference between bop and swing is that the soloists engaged in chordal (rather than melodic) improvisation, often discarding the melody altogether after the first chorus and using the chords as the basis for the solo. Ensembles tended to be unisons, most jazz groups were under seven pieces, and the soloist was free to get as adventurous as possible as long as the overall improvisation fit into the chord structure.

Since the virtuoso musicians were getting away from using the melodies as the basis for their solos (leading some listeners to ask "Where's the melody?") and some of the tempos were very fast, bop divorced itself from popular music and a dancing audience, uplifting jazz to an art music but cutting deeply into its potential commercial success. Ironically the once-radical bebop style has become the foundation for all of the innovations that followed and now can be almost thought of as establishment music. Among its key innovators were altoist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell, drummer Max Roach, and pianist/composer Thelonious Monk.

-Hard-Bop-
Although some history books claim that Hard Bop arose as a reaction to the softer sounds featured in cool jazz, it was actually an extension of bop that largely ignored West Coast jazz. The main differences between hard bop and bop are that the melodies tend to be simpler and often more "soulful"; the rhythm section is usually looser, with the bassist not as tightly confined to playing four-beats-to-the-bar as in bop; a gospel influence is felt in some of the music; and quite often, the saxophonists and pianists sound as if they were quite familiar with early rhythm & blues.

Since the prime time period of hard bop (1955-70) was a decade later than bop, these differences were a logical evolution and one can think of hard bop as bop of the '50s and '60s. By the second half of the 1960s, the influence of the avant garde was being felt and some of the more adventurous performances of the hard bop stylists (such as Jackie McLean and Lee Morgan) fell somewhere between the two styles. With the rise of fusion and the sale of Blue Note (hard bop's top label) in the late '60s, the style fell on hard times although it was revived to a certain extent in the 1980s. Much of the music performed by the so-called Young Lions during the latter decade (due to other influences altering their style) was considered modern mainstream, although some groups (such as the Harper Brothers and T.S. Monk's sextet) have kept the 1960s' idiom alive.

By the way, great posts fellas. :tiphat:
 
#11 ·
Bill Evans with Marian McPartland | a conversation & demonstrations

Vesuvius, I love this thread! Tear me away from baroque and the romantics, and I'll listen to a couple of hours of jazz.

Here are four half-hour videos of a conversation between Evans and McPartland, who demonstrated how players create together to produce jazz. I suppose I'll be forever fascinated by sounds of jazz and the spontaneous intuitive recall of inventiveness during rehearsals and performances!

 
#13 · (Edited)
Vesuvius, Great idea for a thead. I had in mind something similiar. I first began listening to jazz in the late 60s, and I have been following developments pretty intensely for the last 20 years.

As a teacher, I've tried to find creative ways to introduce my students to jazz, to give them some sense both of its enormously rich history and of its wide-ranging and very creative contemporary practitioners. One of the techniques I've been working on in recent years is creating sets of playlists, given that most of my students listen to things on their iPods / iPhones. In creating these playlists, I've put some tough restrictions on my selections, namely, to make sure any given playlist would fit on a single CD and thus be under 80 minutes. I've deliberately chosen a wide spread of things (generally no more than one track per record -- though a few exceptions), but tried to sequence them so that there is a good flow from track to track. While I do try to give a range of artists and albums, I'm concerned less with completeness and more with capturing my students' attention, so that they'll begin to pursue things on their own initiative. I've tried to set out the history of jazz over the last 50 or so years (56 to be precise), keeping it limited to 6 playlists that are the equivalent of 6 CDs. So I post this in hopes that it might prove useful to newcomers who happen to explore this realm of the forum. I don't want to overload this post. So I'll distribute the 6 playlists over 3 postings.

Playlist #1: Miles Davis

1. So What (9:25) (from Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, 1959)
2. Flamenco Sketches (9:26) (from Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, 1959)
3. Milestones (5:46) (from Miles Davis, Milestones, 1958)
4. Summertime (3:21) (from Miles Davis, Porgy & Bess, 1958)
5. Joshua (7:00) (from Miles Davis, Seven Steps to Heaven, 1963)
6. Eighty-One (6:18) (from Miles Davis, E.S.P., 1965)
7. Masqualero (8:54) (from Miles Davis, Sorcerer, 1967)
8. Pharaoh's Dance (20:07) (from Miles Davis, Bitches Brew, 1969)
9. Black Satin (5:20) (from Miles Davis, On the Corner, 1972)
10. Time After Time (3:41) (from Miles Davis, Essential Miles Davis, 1986)

Playlist #2: John Coltrane

1. Blue Train (10:44) (from John Coltrane, Blue Train, 1957)
2. Giant Steps (4:47) (from John Coltrane, Giant Steps, 1960)
3. Naima (4:25) (from John Coltrane, Giant Steps, 1960)
4. Impressions (6:32) (from John Coltrane, Coltrane (Impulse!), 1962)
5. Wise One (9:04) (from John Coltrane, Crescent, 1964)
6. Afro Blue (10:53) (from John Coltrane, Live at Birdland, 1963)
7. In a Sentimental Mood (4:17) (from Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, 1962)
8. Africa (16:29) (from John Coltrane, Africa / Brass Sessions, 1961)
9. Acknowledgement (7:43) (from John Coltrane, A Love Supreme, 1964)
 
#25 · (Edited)
Vesuvius, Great idea for a thead. I had in mind something similiar. I first began listening to jazz in the late 60s, and I have been following developments pretty intensely for the last 20 years.

As a teacher, I've tried to find creative ways to introduce my students to jazz, to give them some sense both of its enormously rich history and of its wide-ranging and very creative contemporary practitioners. One of the techniques I've been working on in recent years is creating sets of playlists, given that most of my students listen to things on their iPods / iPhones. In creating these playlists, I've put some tough restrictions on my selections, namely, to make sure any given playlist would fit on a single CD and thus be under 80 minutes. I've deliberately chosen a wide spread of things (generally no more than one track per record -- though a few exceptions), but tried to sequence them so that there is a good flow from track to track. While I do try to give a range of artists and albums, I'm concerned less with completeness and more with capturing my students' attention, so that they'll begin to pursue things on their own initiative. I've tried to set out the history of jazz over the last 50 or so years (56 to be precise), keeping it limited to 6 playlists that are the equivalent of 6 CDs. So I post this in hopes that it might prove useful to newcomers who happen to explore this realm of the forum. I don't want to overload this post. So I'll distribute the 6 playlists over 3 postings.
I think this is a very bad compilation for students. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the songs you included but it's extremely biased. I suspect it's because of your personal taste. I'll sum up my problems for you.

- No Sonny Rollins at all, arguably the greatest Tenor Saxophone player that has ever lived.

- No Charlie Parker, without a doubt the greatest Saxophone player that has ever lived and certainly the most influential.

- No Bud Powell, No Clifford Brown, No Max Roach, No Dexter Gordon, No Thelonious Monk.

- No East Coast Jazz at all, not even Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker or Dave Brubeck.

- No Louis Armstrong, one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century who turned Jazz into a soloist art.

- No swing, you can't just skip over 20 years of jazz history. Count Basie and Duke Ellington should be included in that list with their own music, not just with Coltrane.

You are giving your students an example of the jazz you like, the blue note list really makes that obvious because most of the songs you included there are performed by the same artists.

I apologize if this comes across as a bit aggressive, that is not my intention.
 
#14 ·
(Continuation of above). Here's two more playlists

Playlist #3: The Blue Note Era (1960s)

1. Stolen Moments (8:47) (from Oliver Nelson, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, 1961)
2. Song for My Father (7:18) (from Horace Silver, Song for My Father, 1964)
3. Lazy Afternoon (5:35) (from Pete La Roca [& Joe Henderson], Basra, 1965)
4. The Sidewinder (10:25) (from Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder, 1963)
5. Midnight Blue (4:02) (from Kenny Burrell, Midnight Blue, 1963)
6. Maiden Voyage (7:57) (from Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage, 1965)
7. Speak No Evil (8:24) (from Wayne Shorter, Speak No Evil, 1966)
8. Footprints (7:30) (from Wayne Shorter, Adam's Apple, 1966)
9. If 6:42 (6:47) (from Larry Young, Unity, 1966)
10. Free for All (11:09) (from Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Free for All, 1964)

Playlist #4: The Fusion Years (1970s)

1. Watermelon Man (6:32) (from Herbie Hancock, Head Hunters, 1973)
2. Tell Me a Bedtime Story (5:05) (from Herbie Hancock, Mwandishi, 1971)
3. Meeting of the Spirits (6:54) (from Mahavishnu Orchestra, Inner Mounting Flame, 1971)
4. Hope (2:00) (from Mahavishnu Orchestra, Birds of Fire, 1973)
5. Vulcan Worlds (7:54) (from Return to Forever, Where Have I Known You Before, 1974 / reissue: Anthology, 2008)
6. Black Market (6:34) (from Weather Report, Black Market, 1976 / reissue: Forecast: Tomorrow, 2006)
7. Birdland (5:58) (from Weather Report, Heavy Weather, 1977 / reissue: Forecast: Tomorrow, 2006)
8. Bright Size Life (4:46) (from Pat Metheny, Bright Size Life, 1975)
9. Conference of the Birds (4:42) (from Dave Holland, Conference of the Birds, 1973)
10. Waterwheel (9:21) (from Ralph Towner, Batik, 1978 / 2008)
11. Timeless (11:59) (from John Abercrombie, Timeless, 1974)
12. Part IIC (5:36) (from Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert, 1975)
 
#15 ·
Playlist #5: Post-Modern Postbop (1990-2005)

1. Blue Heaven (6:23) (from Dave Douglas, Soul on Soul, 1999)
2. Sweet Sorrow (8:43) (from Joshua Redman, Mood Swing, 1994)
3. Lotus Flower (5:52) (from Steve Turre, Lotus Flower, 1999)
4. Prime Directive (7:46) (from Dave Holland Quintet, Prime Directive, 1999)
5. Upswing (6:56) (from Dave Holland Big Band, What Goes Around, 2001)
6. Blues Dream (2:32) (from Bill Frisell, Blues Dream, 2001)
7. Shenandoah (6:11) (from Bill Frisell, Good Dog, Happy Man, 1999)
8. The Persistence of Memory (4:40) (from Dave Douglas, In Our Lifetime, 1994)
9. Gevurah (6:52) (from John Zorn / Bar Kokhba, The Circle Maker, 1998)
10. Harvesting Dance (11:43) (from Terence Blanchard, Flow, 2005)
11. River Man (9:00) (from Brad Mehldau, Live in Tokyo, 2003)


 
#17 · (Edited)
Playlist #6: The Latest (2006-2014)

1. A Night Away (8:01) (from Brad Mehldau & Pat Metheny, Quartet, 2007)
2. Roll Credits (6:10) (from Ben Allison, Little Things Run the World, 2008)
3. Signing (7:56) (from Joe Locke / Geoffrey Keezer Group, Signing, 2012)
4. Nengueleru (5:04) (from David Sánchez / Stefon Harris, Ninety Miles, 2011)
5. Vignette (8:08) (from Marcin Wasilewski, January, 2008)
6. Amish Pinxtos (5:03) (from Medeski, Martin & Wood, Radiolarians II, 2009)
7. Jackalope (6:35) (from Gary Burton, Guided Tour, 2013)
8. The Clutch (6:30) (from Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, Deluxe, 2010)
9. African Sunset (8:04) (from John Moulder, The Eleventh Hour: Live at the Green Mill, 2012)
10. Canales' Cabeza (4:26) (from Nel Cline Singers, Macroscope, 2014)
11. Galang (2:41) (from Vijay Iyer, Historicity, 2009)
12. Transit (7:02) (from Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Infernal Machines, 2009)


 
#6,715 ·
Playlist #6: The Latest (2006-2014)

1. A Night Away (8:01) (from Brad Mehldau & Pat Metheny, Quartet, 2007)
2. Roll Credits (6:10) (from Ben Allison, Little Things Run the World, 2008)
3. Signing (7:56) (from Joe Locke / Geoffrey Keezer Group, Signing, 2012)
4. Nengueleru (5:04) (from David Sánchez / Stefon Harris, Ninety Miles, 2011)
5. Vignette (8:08) (from Marcin Wasilewski, January, 2008)
6. Amish Pinxtos (5:03) (from Medeski, Martin & Wood, Radiolarians II, 2009)
7. Jackalope (6:35) (from Gary Burton, Guided Tour, 2013)
8. The Clutch (6:30) (from Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth, Deluxe, 2010)
9. African Sunset (8:04) (from John Moulder, The Eleventh Hour: Live at the Green Mill, 2012)
10. Canales' Cabeza (4:26) (from Nel Cline Singers, Macroscope, 2014)
11. Galang (2:41) (from Vijay Iyer, Historicity, 2009)
12. Transit (7:02) (from Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Infernal Machines, 2009)


Whilst I’m “familiar” with playlists 1-5, I know none of the tracks (nor most of the artists) on playlist 6. I’ve just put them all onto a YouTube playlist. I’ll get back to you! Many thanks 🙏
 
#20 ·
Here's something nice by Art Pepper and Warne Marsh.

Warne Marsh was a great improviser. Here he has a Lester Young sound, but his way with the chords is more advanced. On the surface, his solo sounds a little strange, but closer listening reveals his grasp of extended scalar and chordal ideas.
I was just thinking about him, having just found out he died on the bandstand, playing, still high on marijuana offered by his bandmate. That's a strange way to go.

Back in the day, Art Pepper was invited to play with my college band. He had just come out of rehab and looked terrible, but he still could cook. I wish I knew what happened to that tape.

 
#72 · (Edited)
charles lloyd quartet - caroline no.

anyone who happens to be looking through this thread do yourself a big big favour-watch this-i too came across this on you tube-last summer it was-the intro is stunning!

LOOKS LIKE I HAVE MADE A MESS OF THIS -JUST GO TO YOU TUBE-CHARLES LLOYD,LIVE VERSION OF CAROLINE NO!
 
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#23 ·
Early jazz up until bebop is woefully underexposed, more talked about than listened to. If you look at people's jazz ratings on some music site it's all relatively loose, soupy stuff from the 50s and beyond. I wish I heard Louis Armstrong's Hot Five/Hot Seven recordings sooner. That's a pretty good base to gauge all jazz afterward. Earl Hines should be mentioned in the same breath as Duke Ellington.
 
#24 ·
Taste vary, for sure. Maybe it's because I'm from New Orleans… but everyone and their grandma knows about Armstrong, so that's not considered some 'elite' knowledge. I dig it all, man. He wasn't the first, and certainly not the last.
 
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