someone here must know stuff about jazz!

i have two miles davis albums, Bitches Brew and Kind of Blue. this makes me feel like a loser. could someone gimme say like a JAZZ 101 so i could get some context to build upon?? i will report back with findings. all those knowledgeable enough to participate, commence circ jerk

also if anyone here likes jazz talk about it. not too many topics to bump down anyway SO!







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Kind of blue really is a good place to start. Dont feel like a loser it really is one of the best. If you like bitches brews style check out some of Miles' other fusion stuff like Tribute to Jack Johnson.

What other kind of jazz do you like? It's a really broad genre. Big Band jazz is completely opposite from say like Cool Jazz. What kind of stuff are you looking for?

yeah this is fantastically huge and if we weren't out of topics pretty much I'd scold you but instead I will say someone found the original recording of Bitches Brew on this forum I go to and I'm struggling with whether or not to get it.

I mean I'm a fan but then this means I will actually have an opinion on recordings of jazz and do you...do you come back from that...

but yeah goddam man this topic has the potential to go anywhere, point the gun.

ok let's see here.

i'm a big kind of blue fan so how about anything in that vain? not sure how to describe it though. slower, atmospheric? idk THESE SONGS FEEL LIKE SEASONS seems like the best way to describe it if that makes any sense

but yeah anything before that that was an influence or after that was then influenced would rock

influence!

and i know the topic is shit but did you see how modern lit started :P

Kind of Blue is categorized as a Modal Jazz album, and it's really the only one the Miles did like that (actually that's not entirely true. you'd probably like his sketches of spain and seven steps to heaven (not so much the same but still pretty has a pretty cool atmosphere as well) also some of his 60's stuff like Miles Smiles might interest you). If you like kind of blue check out some albums by Bill Evans, like Everybody Digs Bill Evans. He played piano on Kind of Blue. Also some of John Coltranes albums like Giant Steps and My Favorite Things, he played tenor on KoB.

You really could get into almost every style of jazz post-bebop just from miles davis. a good thing to do is just take a jazz album you like, find out who plays on it and get albums from them from around the same period (either before or after) and expand that way.

john coltrane, thelonius monk, charlie parker, bill evans are all really obvious artists you should check out/know about who played with miles.

there's so many varieties of jazz though. i assume you like combo jazz more than big band stuff like count basie???

anyways the artists i listed i believe have all played with miles so that could be a start if you don't know them already.

Rightyo. I'm hardly a jazz aficianado or anything, and I haven't gone through a jazz phase in a few years. The first jazz record I ever got was Kind of Blue and like others have said, it's not a bad place to start. It's such a classic - Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on sax, Bill Evans on piano, and of course Miles. Baring in mind my limited knowledge, here are a few of my favourites and some good places to start:

Miles Davis - On the Corner (this is the most out-there I've heard Miles, and my favourite of his records. incredible!)
Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um (this one is a must, shufflin' beboppin' awesomeness)
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (fucking cannon)
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (as far as I'm aware, one of the first records to mix jazz and funk. this is absolutely brilliant.)
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (jazz-fusion. A good starting place for both Zappa and jazz, though not really representative of either)

I haven't listened to them in years and years, but I used to really dig The Mahavishnu Orchestra. They kinda sound like a decent Mars Volta. There are a collective of London jazz musicians making music at the moment, seemingly strung together by a drummer with amazing hair named Seb Rochford. The 2 most well known bands from this group are Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland. Well worth checking out. Oh god, and what about Louis Armstrong? Thelonius Monk? Duke Ellington? Ornette Coleman? Sun Ra? Dave Brubeck Quartet? 70s stuff like Jaco Pastorius and Weather Report (i've personally gone off this now, but they're held in very high regard).

gaah....gonna go dig out some jazz now. I'm really just throwing names at you, it's been a while, and like I said, I know next to nothing about the genre.

well fuck where did what.cd go

I have also been getting slowly into jazz lately. I'm listening to it mostly to learn how to play it properly and getting in the minds of those musicians. Beasly, check out A Love Suprene by John Coltrane that album is pretty damn good.

Can anyone possibly recommend me something that's big band like Gene Krupa?

you dont want to listen to that kind of jazz cause its soulless garbage. gene krupa style jazz is like.. lawrence welk. if you want to listen to stuffy stiff white people music from the 50s then go right ahead but it has less musical merit in my opinion than most smooth jazz and muzak

but yeah I fucking love jazz. however lately I've been getting more into jazz from africa so I dont know what to recommend to people but I've always found my favorite accessable jazz to be from the 50s and then after that basically jazz fusion so like a list of great musicians to check out (look out here comes a big namedrop of a bunch of not obscure people)

Cannonball Adderley
Joe Zawinul
Chet Baker
Paul Desmond
Count Basie
Art Blakey
Stan Getz
Miles
Ornette Coleman
Herbie Hancock
Dizzy Gillespie
Chick Corea
Stanley Clarke
Dave Holland
Wayne Shorter
Thelonious Monk
Sun Ra

basically with jazz what you do is when you find a cd you really like you look up all the musicians on the album and see if you can find other albums with them on it and thats how you branch out. so one thing I would recommend is if you like bitches brew, look up the crew from there, cause there are some great fucking musicians on that album, gary burton, keith jarrett, airto moreira, and of course all the ones listed above (miles, herbie, holland, zawinul) all of whom have made some really groovy ass music over the years and they're not big ticket names you know.

edit: damnit didnt see sweet heads post lol. he said the most important things already

Django Reinhardt and Eddie Lang are the sheeit if you're looking for jazz guitarists and George Gershwin was pretty much one of the greatest american musicians.

This is an awfully WHITE bunch right here, so ill throw in a holla to dizzy gillespie and thelonious monk too

django is gypsy jazz tho and I can't describe him as BLUESY. now we're getting into stuff i'm not sure he wanted.

EVERYONE HOLLA AT BIRD PARKER true story miles davis was in a limo with bird and he said he had one hand in a girl's vagina and the other eating fried chicken and he switched them a lot and miles davis wanted to barf.

Just dropping in to chuck in my two cents (not sure if anyone mentioned this yet), but you should definitely absolutely check out Weather Report. They're fantastic.

django is gypsy jazz tho and I can't describe him as BLUESY.

Have you listened to any of his records? There's a ton of blues in there.

Early jazz guitarists didn't really stray too far from the blues.

"django's blues" is one of his best songs IMO

ugh what the fuck is wrong with me, i was like BLUES=DEPRESSING SOUNDS. no you are 100% right.

Swing jazz should be called "happy blues"

django is my guitar idol. i wish i could say this means i play like him but i don't. but he has fucked up fingers too and more importantly he has so much fun on his guitar. i would throw away all of clapton/CLIFFS OF DOVER whatever kind of skill just to be able to play the guitar with that sort of joie de vivre.

aaaand i just typed joie de vivre in all seriousness WELP.