your jazz recommendations solicited

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#21

Mel,
How close are to the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, on Seventh and Lincoln?

I took for a long time there from Benny Russell, who’s a helluva bebop soprano/tenorist, plays in David Murray’s band. He’s now the head of their jazz program.

The Conservatory ain’t the cheapest, but if you sign up for lessons you get all the other stuff there FREE…improv classes, theory classes, the possibility of sitting in with various jazz ensembles…I recommend it!

(joining Mel in apologizing to all our SD pals for the digressions)

#22

Oh, and I live on the lower floors of a brownstone on Garfield Place, so unless you’re subterranean, that guy upstairs ain’t me. I hope, for your sake, he’s good?

#23

I’m going to check out lessons there - I’m pretty close. (I live in the Park Slope Ghetto - 5th Ave.) Thank you so much for the info!

The guy above is really, really good, but I haven’t mustered enough courage to go introduce myself. He can probably hear me practicing and has a good laugh every night!

#24

Vincent Herring, the very fine alto player, lives in our neighborhood. Maybe HE’S your upstairs neighbor?

In a perfect world, where good jazz musicians were paid what they were worth (and stockbrokers had to moonlight to make ends meet), Herring would be living in the arch at Grand Army Plaza!

#25

Buck Hill

#26

Hey, David Murray kicks ass!

Why has nobody mentioned Charlie Parker in this thread? (or did I just miss it?) And Dizzy. C’mon folks!

Artists already listed that I’ll give hearty, “yeah man!” too:

Theolonious (plus a couple of “outta sites”)
Trane
Miles
Mingus (try Mingus at the Bohemia)
Ornette Coleman
Here are a few more artists to try:

Horace Silver
Lee Morgan
World Sax Quartet
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
Stanley Jordan
Sonny Rollins
Sonny Stitt
Herbie Mann
Wes Montgomery
Jimmy Smith
Rashaan Roland Kirk
Eddie Harris
Freddie Hubbard
Anthony Braxton
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

To name a few…

Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.

#27

Yeah, I mentioned Bird 'n Diz in my first post, Frank. That’s the problem with my long posts…after two or three paragraphs of my writing style, most SDMBers start to nod off. Nickrz has taken me aside and spoken to me about it.

No argument with any of your suggestions as far as MY ears are concerned, but some of them might be seen as a little hardcore for somebody just trying to get started as a jazzbeau. Anthony Braxton and Rahsaan Roland Kirk might send the poor guy running out into the snow. Horace Silver…he’s one maestro I forgot when I was dropping piano names…LOVE the guy.

Damn…I owe you an e-mail about trading those tapes. Don’t let Melanie know we’re also Deadheads, though…she’ll lose all respect for us.

Uke

#28

Perhaps a tad hardcore – but maybe the avant garde is what he’s looking for. A little more input from our OP’er would be helpful. There’s a lotta difference between Roland Kirk and Harry Connick, Jr.

Also, nobody mentioned any big bands like Count Basie’s or Duke Ellington’s

#29

The One, the Only. . .Django Reinhart.

#30

come on!!!
for modern jazz (fusion) the only choice is miles davis – Bitches Brew. It set the standard.

as far as old jazz (swing style), rienhardt is great, but so is everyone else then. back then you had to be good to get a record deal, so i would suggest benny goodman, glenn miller, louis prima, or better yet a compilation.

#31

The John Coltrane Quartet, especially the lineup with McCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones on drums.
Charlie “Bird” Parker.
Miles Davis – avoid his fusion stuff; it’s vastly overrated.
Chick Corea & Return to Forever, if you like rock-flavored jazz. Also, weather report
Billie Holliday in the early years.
Anything that has Lester Young playing tenor sax.
Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, especially when accompanied by Jack Teagarden.
Duke Ellington.
Count Basie.
The big bands – I especially recommend the Dorsey Brothers, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. Many people like Stan Kenton and Les Brown.
The Modern Jazz Quartet
The Dave Brubeck Quartet when Paul Desmond is playing saxophone.
Charlie Mingus.
Sonny Rollins.
Djano Reinhardt.
Teddy Wilson.
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
Jean Harris.
Dizzy Gillespie and Ahmad Jamal (I saw them perform in concert on a double bill).
Tony Williams if you like excellent drumming.
Thelonius Monk.
Lionel Hampton.
Eric Dolphy.
Fats Navarro.

#32

go to http://www.cdnow.com

you can listen to clips from most these artist, and they even have them reviewed by people that bought them

#33

Wow… I come back to this string after 8 hours and it has over 30 messages! Thanks for all the suggestions everybody, I will definately be checking some of them out. Also thanks for the site where you can listen to snippits of things; I will look at that later this evening. Good stuff!

Satan asks:

Lesse… aside from top-40-ish stuff I tend to like but forget quickly, a random sampling might be something like this:

McLachlan, Sarah (most of her stuff)
Holst, Gustav (the planets)
Journey (most of their stuff)
Stravinski, Igor (Right of spring - a right fantastic bit of music there)
Joplin, Scott (most of his ragtimes)
Collins, Phil (in the air tonight, some others)
Chopin, Fred (most of his piano works)

There’s tons more but I have a hard time thinking of them off the top of my head.

–
peas on earth

#34

I’ll suggest:

Miles Davis: “Sketches of Spain”

Astrud Gilberto/Stan Getz: “Look to the Rainbow”

Wes Montgomery: the Verve compilation

Tim
“My hovercraft is full of eels.”

#35

If you want to listen to jazz, **learn ** the history of jazz, & sample a diversity of jazz; try
<font size=“4”>The Manhatten Transfer</font>
Trying one of their albums is an education in everything about jazz, from A To Z.

Attention C#3!The inside of your musty head is a exercise wheel;
in which two gerbils, Vanity and Credulity by
name, tussle fruitlessly over the walnut that
represents your banal & pointless existance.

#36

Here’s another big plug for “Kind of Blue.”

And another plug for Sarah Vaughn and “Lullaby of Birdland.” Woohoo!

And . . .
Other alto players, of a West Coast bent, that deserve a listen:
Sonny Criss: “This is Criss,” “I’ll Catch the Sun.”
Art Pepper: “No Limit,” “Today.”

#37

Ike, just because we have a difference of opinion doesn’t mean I have no respect for you. I’d bet you hate the Plasmatics, does that mean you have no respect for me? Even as a fellow Park Slope tenor sax player? Impossible.

I thought of another piano player who might fit in with what you already listen to. He’s fun, energetic and really easy on the ears: Bobby Short. He does more cabaret/showtune type stuff, but his backup band is all jazz.

#38

Mel, I was only teasin’. I never posted on Frank’s thread about the Dead because I saw it was turning into one of those damn shooting matches…“Phil Lesh isn’t as good as Whatzisname from Phish!”

Like Jer always said, the Dead are like licorice; Some people like it, some people don’t. I promise to never force anyone to eat licorice against their wishes. But from the above, it looks like we have plenty of music in commmon. Now…who’s the Plasmatics?

UncaStuart: Sonny Criss is GREAT! Wow! Nobody EVER mentions Sonny Criss…he’s the Dodo Marmarosa of the alto sax!

It seems the originator of this thread often sits down and listens to Longhair music. Let me respectfully submit George Russell, king of the beatnik-intellectual-white-collegeboys-in-skinny-neckties school of jazz. EZZ-THETICS (1961) is a one nifty album.

Uke

#39

Uke: Great to find someone else who finds bliss with Criss! I can’t count the number of people I’ve converted after plopping them down in front of “Cry Me A River.”

And since you brought up Sassy in the first place, I’ll expand the “woohoo” from my post to recount that in my first marriage if my wife heard “Lullaby of Birdland” on the stereo when she came in from work, she knew it was time to run for cover or run for the covers because of the aphrodisiacal effect it usually had on me. Woohoo!

And who said jazz was too cerebral?

#40

“Lullaby” is a great tune no matter which way you slice it. Someone finally re-issued Mel Torme’s LULU’S BACK IN TOWN album, on which he’s backed by the Marty Paitch Dektette (one of those nifty west-coast jazz ensembles that adds a French horn and a tuba to the mix). The “Lullaby” on that, VERY different from Sassy’s, is worth the price of the disc all by itself.

I had Criss on the box the other night, coincidentally, some of his early L.A. bop stuff from 1946-8. His sidemen included Howard McGhee on trumpet, Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards on tenors, and Dodo Marmarosa on the pee-yanner. DAMN. These guys never made it onto the frontlist in the jazz history books, but they give Bird and Diz and Stitt and Powell and the other New York boys a run for their money!