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A brief digression ...
Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I understand that even with guys like Reinhardt and Christian, back in the day jazz was very horn-centric - and perhaps still is. Also, we may have started listening to jazz at different times and have somewhat different ideas about what jazz is. So I'm not trying to split hairs. But FWIW when I heard you say "... when I first started listening to jazz it didn't have guitars ...", the first thing that came to mind for me were the albums Julie is Her Name, originally published as Volume I (1955) and Volume II (1958). This is still some of my favorite music, and a fine lesson in comping and small ensemble work if nothing else. Volume I featured Barney Kessel on guitar and Ray Leatherwood on bass, and Volume II featured Howard Roberts on guitar with Red Mitchell on bass. At least one source says that after the success of Julie Is Her Name, "every uptown singer -- from Johnny Mathis to Chet Baker to Sarah Vaughan -- was recording with a guitar/bass duo"
BTW, Clifford Brown + Max Roach = Incredible! Their album Study in Brown is also some very fine work IMO.
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03-15-2015 01:47 PM
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Originally Posted by HighSpeedSpoon
Nice detail - i haven't heard the second of those albums - it would be a good way to get to know HR's playing i bet.
The first is a great example of kessel's peerless musicality and range.
btw i have a serious dose of guitar-love - i have an irrational obsession with the actual instrument itself - but my conception of the music has very little to do with guitar. i listen more and more to jazz guitar (peter bernstein has had a very big effect on me in the last two years) - but often that is to do with my personal project of learning to play the instrument. i do not expect e.g. piano players or horn players to listen to jazz guitar that much.
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Picked up a guitar around age 17 and began learning some folk songs like Bob Dylan. Shortly thereafter discovered Jimi Hendrix and at that point that's all I wanted to do was play like Hendrix. When I was 20 or so I went to an art school in San Francisco. While I was living there I turned on the radio one day and flipped through some radio stations and I stumbled on a jazz radio station right in the middle of an incredible jazz guitar solo. My eyes and ears widened and my jaw dropped --- I couldn't believe the amazing guitar playing I was hearing, and this stuff called "jazz" which I had never heard before. I was hooked instantly and it was my new goal in life to be able to play jazz. Did absolutely nothing but jazz for the next 4 years at which point I began studying music in college and of course had to learn all the classical stuff.
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I started taking lessons when I was 8. Did not come from a very musical family and did not have my first album till I was 13. But I was and still am dedicated to learning how to play the infernal 6 string beast.
I discovered Jazz in my 20's. I started hearing stuff being played that just blew me away. I started taking Jazz lessons in my late 20's but unfortunately was not able to pursue it until today. Now I'm trying to make up for lost time.
So to answer the question, guitar first, Jazz later and now.
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Guitar first for me....I started playing in the mid-70s, mostly folk/roots stuff. Blues, bluegrass. Still a pretty fair flatpicker... Fair-to-decent slide player.
I started fooling with jazz when I was trying to expand my horizons a bit in the mid-80s, but due to one thing and another I fell off the rails and didn't start playing seriously again till a few years ago.
I've been fooling with chord-melody arrangements for the last couple of years.
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Guitar.
Began playing guitar in 2010, realized I wanted to play jazz two years later.
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My first post here and this might be the right thread to start with.
I began playing the electric guitar in 1991 when I was 12 years old. Wanted to play hard rock and metal. My teacher introduced me to the blues and I began listening to some of that and 50's rock & roll. I grew up listening to classic country music since that's what my parents liked. Country and bluegrass has been my music since I was about 16 and that is what I've been focusing on playing the guitar. For the last 8 years I've only been playing acoustic. I always thought that knowing how to play jazz on the guitar would be a good thing since it contains a lot of theory and helps you understand the fingerboard.
I have been listening quite a lot to jazz for the last 2 years now and finally decided to go for it. Bought my first jazz guitar - a D'Angelico EXL-1 (the new ones). I am going to a teacher now and learn chords, scales and improvisation. I am very excited about the whole thing and enjoy playing and practising more than ever. I was pretty bored with my playing - G-C-D over and over again in open position in a bluegrass band. I still love the music though- just got tired of been stuck in the same genre.
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All the best EarthGoat!
Welcome to the forums. I am also new, joined a little while ago.
Jazz is great and jazz guitar is great. I think you're doing the right thing by getting a teacher. A great teacher can make all the difference in the world.
Enjoy your journey and keep us updated from time to time.
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Amen, brother. Originally Posted by pushkar000
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Definitely guitar... This is a true quote:
"I like the school, but I just f*cking hate jazz, man"
-Me, year 1 of studying music.
Yikes! Boy, how quickly we change.
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Began guitar in 1992...started listening to jazz a just a few years later, but didn't really pursue playing it until about 2002-3. It was Miles that got me into jazz, but Grant Green was the guitar player I heard where I said, "I could do that." Then I tried copping his stuff and realized I couldn't!
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I'm in ER with my 92 year old mom. Nothing too dramatic. But I have some time to expand my answer.
My father's favorite first cousin was Charies Mingus. So his music was in the house before I was born. Dad didn't play but he loved jazz and classical music and was himself kind of an artist. I remember visiting "uncle Phil" another cousin, who played tenor. I must've been 3. He had a reel to reel tape recorder and had some jazz playing and everyone was having a great time. The sound and attitude was intoxicating, even for a three year old.
Dad was a Hi-Fi enthusiast and collected music and played the stuff all the time, from Mingus, Duke, Errol Garner, Beethoven, and opera. Both mom and dad loved opera and classical music.
My father died when I was four, but he still had the high end stereo and all of that music. A stack of Mingus LPs a more than a foot wide. Mom took me to my first concert, Leontine Price in Tosca. She took me to museums, and talked to me about the aesthetics of abstract and impressionistic art. She took me to Europe. We saw plays, musicals, and many art museums. As much as she did NOT want me to be an artist and as much as she was not an artist herself, she taught me more than anyone how to be an artist.
I started painting long before I played music, though I ALWAYS wanted to be a musician. Always. I never had an inroad. She didn't play. Her sister played jazzy piano by ear, but she was too competitive with her to ever encourage me to play.
I tried. I loved jazz and melodic pop music, including Beatles and Motown. But when I heard Hendrix Electric Lady Land and All Along The Watchtower that was it. Mom got me a classical guitar and took classical lessons, but I was also learning open chords, making up folky pop stuff, but trying to jam jazz with my aunt completely by ear. She was playing tunes like Body and Soul, Stella By Starlight, Indiana, etc.
By the time i started playing Band Of Gypsies was about to be released and changed my life. Bitches Brew knocked me out. Herbie Hancock Speak Like A Child was out. Early Chick Corea - Inner Space also blew my mind, including the ARC trio and Circle. Cream had just disbanded. Mahavishnu was not in the horizon yet. Coryell was the young dude. Led Zeppelin's first was out and I was hip to them before anyone else I knew was. A Stereo Review review made me curious and I picked it up the day it came out.
I started playing and became fast very quick. I tried to play jazz and improv blues rick (Hendrix, Clapton, Page) right away and mixed it all together before there was the word fusion. There was BST and Chicago but otherwise there wasn't a lot of fusion going on. I was ahead of my time and way too young. 14-16.
When Inner Mounting Flame came out I was fully converted because I was already headed in that direction. Ralph Towner. Weather Report. But it was also Dexter Gordon. I was a regular audience member at SF Keystone Korner every week, three or four days a week for a few years. I was so regular I never paid to get in.
The fusion diversion took a long while but I eventually also got back to more bop orientated guitar. But yes, jazz came LONG BEFORE guitar for me. The subject of ART and the ARTIST did too.Last edited by henryrobinett; 03-20-2015 at 12:14 PM.
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Thanks for that interesting biopic Henry. Good luck with mom too. Nothing is routine when you're in the ER with your 92 year old mom. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Instrument first, jazz afterwards.
Growing up in Liverpool in the '60's, you couldn't avoid being into music. But whereas both my part=ents loved the Beatles ( I saw them at the Liverpool Empire in December '65, last time they ever played in Liverpool; my Dad queued for hours in the rain to get tickets), my mother listened to Glenn Miller as well and I loved that walking bass. but I always loved the Shadows and that kind of instrumental virtuosity had a big impact on a younger version of me.
My cousin played Hammond Organ in the clubs around Liverpool and so I started out trying to do that, though secretly by 1973 I wanted to be Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman. Then the rock band that I was trying to be in needed a bassist, and over night I traded in my keyboard for a bass guitar and amp. Turned out I was quite good at that; but I always liked the idea of improvising. So a guy at Probe Records in Liverpool got me listening first of all to a live Grateful Dead album (Live Dead) and then Miles Davis (Live Evil), and I began to try to play something more than just root-5th. Meanwhile I was paying close attention to Oscar Peterson's show on the BBC which featured Nils Henning-Orsted Pedersen on bass and Joe Pass on Guitar. That was great, that was the start. Then someone I knew said"if you're a bassplayer, you gotta hear this guy Pastorius". And that was that, I listened to Weather Report and the like, but always had Joe Pass in the background. I joined a jazz-rock band and we played a few festivals before University.
When I went to Uni, one of the first concerts that I saw was The Great Guitars - Kessel, Ellis, Byrd. Loved that and the sound that they made. It always stayed in my mind. And when I became a guitarist...even in my rock group of the '80's, when asked after a gig about my influences, I would say "Kessel and Pass" when people were expecting to hear "The Police and "U2".
After that band went wrong , I began to get more rootsy - into blues and then eventually to jazz full-time. I'd always convinced myself that it was going to be very tough and put off learning this stuff; but eventually, I got started - and realised that it's even tougher than I thought. However, I love it and can't let it go.
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