which came first for you - the jazz music or the guitar?

[Groyniad]

so what i mean is this:

did you get into jazz before - or at the same time as - getting into your instrument (say - guitar) for the first time properly

or

were you already into playing your instrument - in some other style (i.e. you played rock or folk guitar etc.) - then heard some jazz and started to get into playing jazz on your instrument

----

i hardly had anything going on with the guitar before i turned to it as a way of learning how to play jazz. i heard bud powell and oscar peterson and bill evans (then charlie parker and sonny rollins and clifford brown) - and i wanted to learn how to do what they were doing. i didn't listen to guitarists that much - until later.

i wonder how often that happens - maybe there's a typical story for the various instruments (though i bet there aren't that many jazz bassists who started as orchestral bass players). on balance i think i'm glad that i did not play e.g. rock guitar or blues guitar before getting into (trying to play) jazz guitar. but there are all sorts of problems too.

anyway - what's your story?

[Flyin' Brian]

I heard jazz first by way of my father's Harry James and other big band records and liked it. I wanted to play trumpet but had asthma so I had too much trouble just breathing.

The guitar came along after, but it was several years before I tried to play any jazz on it. My first jazz gig was playing bass in a piano trio.

[henryrobinett]

Jazz. But that's unfair. I always heard jazz. But really it was Hendrix that got me to pick up guitar. Soon after Coryell and McLaughlin.

[nick1994]

I think most people come to the guitar first because t's mostly associated with popular music, then they sort of fall into jazz. I was really into blues first and then crossed over into jazz

[NSJ]

I think most people come to the guitar first because t's mostly associated with popular music, then they sort of fall into jazz. I was really into blues first and then crossed over into jazz

not me. I've been into Jazz well before I decided to pick up guitar, I only started on guitar a few years ago, just befor I joined this website. It was simple--I love this music so much, why not try to play it myself? Got a few thousand hours to go on that 10000 hour rule. so before I picked up the guitar. I already owned thousands of jazz CDs.

Thus, I never learned to play rock, started out with only jazz. I actually wouldn't know much about playing rock. And I finally now feel somewhat comfortable playing jazz --or at least putting it somewhat all together-technique-fingerboard knowledge-sight reading-rudimentary ear training-song repertoire-an indicual appraoch to harmonizing lines and trying to play "pianistically" (no more pick, still have a few more hurdles to work out on that-cutting down on technical errors with finger independence, etc ). And most importantly-overcoming a series of serious injuries.

I have no pretentions of anything other than to gain as much enjoyment out of trying to play this music I've always loved--even if it's just for me. I even turned down a couple of inquiries about people looking for teachers. The idea seems preposterous to me--having been playing for only a few years, I would never hold myself out as a teacher or instructor. I do have to say, however, I have encountered a number of cats in (rock) bands who have been playing much longer than me, and I am shocked how little someof them know about music.

[Patrick2]

Jazz is music. For me, it's always been about the music. My musical interest started with singing. I grew up in a doo-wop invironment. Accapella on the streets of down town Jersey City. Under rail road tresles, in the coves of department store after they closeed .. . all for that sought after natural echo. The Duprees, also from the same area did the same thing. Journal Square, after hours . . deep in the recess of the ally way surrounded by windows leading the the entrance doors. Chubby Canzano's golde lead vocals on "You Belong To Me". "My Own True Love" What memories!! Some will remember this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=cpOculrWjvA


That's where the musical foundation was formed . . for me. The guitar was just a musical device I stumbled across along the way. Then, jazz was the genre that drew me into wanting to discover the guitar beyond power chords and running pents over I IV V rock and blues stuff. Glad I hung in there! IMO . . in the world of music . . . . there's nothing to compare with jazz guitar.

[snoskier63]

The guitar by a long shot. While my instructor as a kid focussed on jazz during our lessons, I never played jazz outside of those lessons. It wasn't until more than 30 years after I began studying and playing that I developed an interest in listening to and playing jazz.

I was initially influenced by groups like Chicago, Santana, Led Zeppelin, Allman Brothers, Clapton, BB King in terms of rock and blues guitar. I also listened to a ton of Motown, Funk, Soul, R&B, Pop, and much Doo Wop. I was exposed to classical, Big Band and Standards through my parents, but only slightly. Ultimately, given the large amount of music I listened to for most of my years I think I just got tired of hearing the same things over and over again. Once technology allowed I was able to go online and discover a great deal of music and artists that I was never aware of, and that made music new for me again. I still listen to and play the other stuff, but jazz is now where it's at 95% of the time.

[jasaco]

I took an unusual route. I first got into guitar when the Beatles hit in the 60's and grew up on 60's pop, then segued (via the Lovin' Spoonful) into country rock (Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Poco!), which exposed me to pedal steel. At that point (age 18), I gave up guitar entirely for pedal steel for about 40 years. Pedal steel took me from country rock into straight country, but also into western swing, which then (via Buddy Emmons, Maurice Anderson and, later, Doug Jernigan) got me into steel guitar jazz. And THAT got me back into 6-string guitar, about 6 years ago, studying with Jimmy Bruno. What a long strange trip it's been...

[Hep To The Jive]

I wanted to play guitar because I was listening to rock music. AC/DC, Iron Maiden, then Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Jimi, then some old blues... I always thought electric guitar found its true voice in rock'nroll. Plus I loved the energy, the attitude, the fun! Jazz... I was forced to study it in college, but my heart wasnt into it at the time.

How things changed... These days I only play archtops, clean sound, listening and learning jazz music. This time from sincere love for it. That being said, I still think Tony Iommy is a f$&@n genius, and I still own all AC/DC and Iron Maiden albums. I still enjoy listening to it once in a while and it still brings me the same joy. I guess, I havent really grew up much )

[Hyppolyte Bergamotte]

I received my first guitar when I was 16 y old.
I learned Several Presley songs.
Then 2 y later,my first electric guitar and learned by ear the Shadow's music.
I Stayed with rock music until the end of my thirthies.
My wife asked me Then to participante to a holiday jazz camp,cause She was boring to always hear me playing rock music louder and louder.
When I heared those guys playing,I had 2choices:throw my guitar away or seriously studying music.
I choosed the last solution
cheers
HB

[Cunamara]

I've probably told this story before, but recently have been thinking about the prequel to the incident that Got Me Into Jazz.

I was born in 1959, not long after the quartet of albums that changed jazz (Kind of Blue, The Shape of Jazz To Come, Time Out, Mingus Ah Um), and growing up in the early to mid 60s you could readily see Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, etc., on prime time TV on a regular basis. Of course, I also don't remember there not being a Beatles or the Rolling Stones. My dad was a music fan even though he himself didn't have a musical bone in his body; he really liked Nat King Cole and played a number of his albums at home, so I think my first exposure to jazz guitar was Cole's trios.

When I started learning guitar in college (1980) the instructor asked me what I wanted to play, to which I replied "the blues." So, I learned the 1st position chords, then movable chords and the blues and major scale shapes, etc. By this time I suspect my teacher was tired of I-IV-V progressions. He had a 40s L-7N and one day, after we'd covered the 4 note dominant chords, he asked "what about this" and played a Gmaj7 chord. I responded "ummm, what was *that*" and with that chord he hooked me. From there on out he taught me jazz.

He was also clever. Five of my friends were taking lessons from him and he knew we were getting together to play regularly, so he would teach us different stuff knowing that we would share it with each other between lessons. It was like we got six lessons a week- "hey, check out what Bill showed me."

I took lessons with Bill for 2 years in college and 4 years after. About five years ago I paid him a visit and we broke out the guitars to jam a little. I naively figured that we'd be closer in terms of skills. Wrong! Bill, of course, had had 20 years of his own development in the interim and he still kicked my ass!

You can't ever catch up...

[pushkar000]

Guitar for about 5-6 years, jazz a year and a half ago.

I went through all kinds of contemporary music (rock n roll, metal, blues, pop, punk, fingerstyle etc.) before I finally had enough of stumbling around, said I want to learn stuff and entered a conservatory. Just before my first lesson, my teacher sent me some Joe Pass - sounded like junk to me at first, but after a few months I was hooked. No way out for me now...

[Stevebol]

The first song I ever learned was CSNY's 'Find the Cost of Freedom' from their live album. I plucked out the melody on high e and thumbed the low e. It was probably Ritchie Havens on the Woodstock record shortly after that that I decided to practice a lot. I would play along to any record I could get my hands on.
Guess I'm a folky at heart but I chose R&B several years later when I decided to give music a shot. Jammed with anyone and everyone from about age 16-21. My first gig at around 18 was a Juneteenth Festival! War Memorial Stadium, Buffalo, NY around 78'. It was just 3 guys.

[Groyniad]

i'm enjoying reading through these responses a great deal! lots of questions - but before that i'll say something more about my own case.

i played classical flute from 12-18 quite seriously (a lot of bach and mozart)

got an acoustic guitar around 19 - didn't know what to do with it really - but i just loved the attitude towards learning and playing music i found in guitar players. (this was west wales in the late 80s - full of wonderful rock and roll and folk hippie guitar players)

with the hippies i did a lot of floaty improvising around camp fires on the flute

it wasn't until i heard bill evans and bud powell - and then charlie parker - that i turned to the guitar with a vengeance. i practiced all day every day for nearly three years. (i still think if i'd managed to make it five years or six i could really have got really have learned to play...)

i think i took up the guitar when i discovered jazz - and not the flute - for a few reasons. 1) i just couldn't hear flute as a jazz instrument (i'd spent so much time trying to make it sound totally pure and clean that jazzin' it up really did not even occur to me) 2) because i loved the sound of e.g. kenny burrell on the sermon with jimmy smith and 3) more importantly than the other two i think - because it struck me that i needed chords - i needed to get my hands on the changes to learn how to use them to invent melodies.

its really odd to play an instrument that has always been at the centre of popular music culture (i was born in 1967) when you have no desire to play popular music on it. horn players are unlikely to have this experience - because jazz is built into a saxophone/trumpet (at least in america) just like rock is built into an electric guitar.

whilst i feel like i'm just not a real guitarist because i have no interest in 'blues' or 'rock' etc. (of course i love the blues - that happens in loving jazz, its not a separate thing) - i also feel that the disconnection between me and the rock/pop world helps me avoid a lot of bad musical habits that come with classic popular electric guitar playing.

i really don't like forms of jazz that have been filtered through rock (forms that tend to feature the guitar in a much more prominent role). though i do like forms of popular music that have been filtered through jazz (funk; soul; motown...)

also - i tend to use horn players and piano players as musical models and not other guitarists. i've spent a lot of time learning solos by bird, dexter, sonny rollins, clifford brown - and almost no time learning solos by kenny burrell or wes or django or jim hall.

so its jazz that came first for me - and the guitar is the thing i use to try to learn to play jazz.

[cosmic gumbo]

I was more interested in Slim Harpo, Elmore James and Muddy when I first came to the guitar, but consider jazz to be one of the natural extensions of roots music, so jazz came later.

[mercosound]

I took a couple of guitar lessons as a kid, then along came the Beatles and everyone starting playing guitar. I went from seeing the Beach Boys at Steel Pier in Atlantic City, to taking the train into Philly a year or so later to see some guitar player - turned out to be Jimi Hendrix - at the Electric Factory. That was really an eye (ear) opener; mostly us kids in the 'burbs were listening to Cousin Brucie's show on WABC (who, by the way, is still on the air on Sirus/XM), and had never heard any hot guitar playing. There was also the 1st Grateful Dead album; I didn't have a name for it, but that was the first real improvisation I'd heard, and I really liked the musical feel of it... Of course, there was also the "folk scare" of the 60s - had to learn to finger pick (sorta) like Mississippi John Hurt...

Sometime shortly after Hendrix died, I pretty much stopped listening to rock and roll. I was taken with the playing of Doc Watson for a while, until someone turned me on to Charlie Christian and Django Rheinhart in the mid 70s, and it was mostly all jazz after that. I realized that I had heard quite a bit of the repertoire when I was very young; my mother was a pianist/singer, and she played the popular music she grew up listening to - Gershwin, Porter, etc. She wasn't a jazz player, but she did cover the Great American Songbook.

So, guitar came 1st for me; but I guess I had some vague roots in the Jazz repertoire...

[pamosmusic]

Guitar!

[HighSpeedSpoon]

When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, we heard most music over the radio. Even in New York City, where I grew up, TV had only three channels, and they were lo-fi and black and white. The music video as we know it did not yet exist, and TV productions from that era used a lot less music, especially drama. Radio on the other hand had a lot of independent stations broadcasting very different content in the NYC area alone. Rock, classical, gospel, swing, and Latin music were all on offer, as were show tunes and American Songbook standards.

So in my earliest youth, radio was still king. We listened to it a lot in my home, and we listened to a wide variety of music. One of my most grateful memories is how open minded my parents were about listening to "my music" too - this at a time when whole families watched the TV and listened to the radio together.

I would have to say then, that for me jazz - and a lot of other music - came before any instrument. Either I got into it, or it got into me (works for me either way). At any rate, by the time I took my first guitar lesson, I had searched out a jazz guitarist and began studying with the express intent of playing jazz guitar.

[brad4d8]

I started my instrumental life playing the piano. When I was about 10 years old, I was playing "Greensleeves" at our Cub Scouts Christmas party, and the church basement piano was badly out of tune and had several keys that didn't function. It was so bad that the minister actually explained to everybody that it was the condition of the piano and not my playing. Same party another Cub played a few songs on an archtop with an amp and I realized he wasn't at the mercy of piano tuners or piano condition. This was also around the time that folk music made its intrusion into the pop charts, so I was sold, although it took a few more years before I got one.
AS to jazz, that came somewhere around my last year of high school-first year of college. I became intrigued by Miles, 'Trane, etc., and soon mostly abandoned the guitar for sax and flute. Came back to the guitar when I became completely taken by classical guitar music, most of my playing for a long time. Started back on non-classical about five or six years ago.
Brad

[Paully]

When I was around 13 and taking classical guitar lessons which lasted just a couple months.
Anyway I found some old 78 rpm records in our celler.
I started listening to them and was sure that I was destined
to play jazz trumpet.
My Mother turned me on to her record collection and I'll never
Forget the first time I heard Dave Brubek's Take 5,
My Mom played it for me.
I'm a beginning guitarist but if I'm meant to make music I'll makeit jazz ☺

[destinytot]

Jazz came first.

I used to borrow jazz records from the public library as soon as I was old enough to do so. I'd seek out anything by musicians named on vinyl sleeves. My favourite album at 14 was Getz/Gilberto, and at 16 Getz's Sweet Rain. By that age, I had a part-time job and had started a vinyl collection.

My brother bought me a guitar when I went to Uni at 18, because he knew I was a huge fan of Earl Klugh. I messed about on that guitar, but several years later, when I started singing, I became interested in understanding the music as a participant and began using a keyboard and the guitar to learn harmony.

I'm in my mid-50s now, and I've listened to lots of recordings and been to a lot of gigs over the years.

Now, playing guitar comes first.

[MarkRhodes]

Guitar first, jazz later. And really, when I first started listening to jazz it didn't have guitars, so I didn't even think it was something I might do. The first jazz record that really knocked me out was an album I borrowed from a friend of my father. It was a compilation of great soloists. The lead off track was Clifford Brown (and company) playing "Cherokee." That record mesmerized me. But I didn't try to play along with it or anything.

Later, when I first heard jazz guitar, I didn't like it at all.

[vinlander]

Guitar by a long run mostly because my dad being a semi-professional guitar player in the 60s and 70s, I got introduced to the instrument early on but I got interested only really in my late teen years.
I got interested in jazz guitar only after years of listening to progressive rock then early 70s jazz rock (fusion).
Robert Fripp, Steve Howe then John McLaughlin were some of the ones responsible for it.
I love guitar first and foremost, I really do love jazz but mostly when guitar is present.

[Broyale]

Guitar, then juicy jazz.

[Groyniad]

this is great!

one huge thing is the difference between living in america and not living in america. the idea of growing up actually in the jazz-world is hard for me to get my head round.

my dad knew ALL the words to any tune frank sanatra ever sung - because of growing up with pre-war radio (in south wales) - and he made sure we watched every fred astaire movie etc. etc. when i was a kid growing up. for a lot of us in the UK it isn't quite clear until late teens what of the stuff you're consuming is from the states and what is home-grown.