Your favorite jazz blues heads?

[TimPeak]

Bird blues, I-IV-V, minor blues. Whatever.

I'd like to learn as many blues heads as I can to use and tweak as language.

Just curious...what are your favorites?

[MarkRhodes]

My favorite Bird blues head is "Freight Trane"

[Tomcat]

John Coltrane - Mr. P.C. as much as like the head I love Trane's soloing in "Bach" style here

[christianm77]

I like Sonny Moon For Two. No one ever gets the phrasing right. Another example of Rollins being simple in the notes and super hip in the rhythm.

Of Bop heads? I like Chi Chi and Au Privave.

[MarkRhodes]

A favorite Bb blues head, "Bloomdido."

[TimPeak]

Great!!! Keep em comin'.

[cosmic gumbo]

Footprints
Stolen Moments

[pkirk]

too many great ones to mention. Here's the latest one I learned:

[citizenk74]

"Straight No Chaser".

[Binyomin]

Birks' Works

[Rob MacKillop]

My Way, sung by Sinatra. Not a Blues? All I can say is that it gave me the Blues when I watched the news last night....

[jockster]

..And now the end is near

[Vladan]

"Straight No Chaser".

Ha, thank yoy!
I was reading this thread, thinking Billy's Bounce was the only one I ever knew, but you reminded me I've actually learned Straight No Chaser for the purpose of some thread on this forum. Now I have to check if I still can play it..

Billies Bounce is still my favourite.

VladanMovies BlogSpot

[silverfoxx]

Opus de Funk or Sen^or Blues
Horace Silver

[goldenwave77]

"Things Ain't What they Used to Be"--Mingus, and covered many times.

"Blues in the Night"...maybe technically not a blues, but it does sound bluesy, in the good way. Recorded separately by Woody Herman, Jimmy Lunceford, Cab Calloway, and Dinah Shore, and each time it was a Top Ten hit.

[snailspace]

any excuse to bring up Ed Bickert is a good thing

I agree!

[MarkRhodes]

"Blues in the Night"...maybe technically not a blues, but it does sound bluesy, in the good way. Recorded separately by Woody Herman, Jimmy Lunceford, Cab Calloway, and Dinah Shore, and each time it was a Top Ten hit.

That's a great tune. Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, right? I'm sure Johnny wrote the lyric and the tune sounds like Harold. Here's Peggy Lee doing it with Benny Goodman.

Herb Ellis recorded "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" a few times.

[FuseHead]

My favorite blues guitar players were / are Robin Trower and Frank Marino. To me it is all about creativity, straight blues songs hold no interest for me and never have. I always feel like they indicate laziness on the part of the "Composer". Out of respect for blues artists in general I will not name names.

[John A.]

In addition to most of the ones mentioned upthread, these are all in the rotation for me:

Blues for Pat (Joshua Redman)
Turnaround (Ornette; I have the Metheny version)
SKJ (Milt Jackson; it's on "Bags meets Wes")
West Coast Blues (Wes)
Blue Monk (uh, Monk)
Equinox (Trane)
Blue Train (Trane)
Freddie Freeloader (Miles)
All Blues (Miles)
Back at the Chicken Shack (Jimmy Smith)
Watermelon Man (Herbie Hancock)
Wave (Jobim, it's a reharm D blues)

John

[ragman1]

Nice 12-bar chords.

I like this guy, he's so... detached :-)

[mrcee]

My favorite blues guitar players were / are Robin Trower and Frank Marino. To me it is all about creativity, straight blues songs hold no interest for me and never have. I always feel like they indicate laziness on the part of the "Composer". Out of respect for blues artists in general I will not name names.

I never have been able to figure out why so many people go ga ga for some old primitive 12 bar blues but completely dismiss a lot of classic country music lots of which is extremely bluesy.

[goldenwave77]

mrcee corrects a misconception which is extremely common. Jimmy Rogers was a white guy whose father was a railroad overseer, and foreman to train laboring crews, so he spent a lot of time around black work crews. It is impossible to listen to Jimmy Rogers, probably the first great country star, and not hear blues influence.

Similarly, Hank Williams spent a lot of time out on the street, and learned to play guitar from a black blues musician, while is mother was inside working. Again, it is impossible to listen to Hank Williams' vocal swoops, and not hear bluesy influence.

Charlie Christian, Barney Kessel, and Herb Ellis all came from Oklahoma, and Western Swing Bands also have blues influences.

[mrcee]

mrcee corrects a misconception which is extremely common. Jimmy Rogers was a white guy whose father was a railroad overseer, and foreman to train laboring crews, so he spent a lot of time around black work crews. It is impossible to listen to Jimmy Rogers, probably the first great country star, and not hear blues influence.

Similarly, Hank Williams spent a lot of time out on the street, and learned to play guitar from a black blues musician, while is mother was inside working. Again, it is impossible to listen to Hank Williams' vocal swoops, and not hear bluesy influence.

Charlie Christian, Barney Kessel, and Herb Ellis all came from Oklahoma, and Western Swing Bands also have blues influences.

Thank's for mentioning Jimmy Rogers a huge influence on American popular music and possibly deserving of his own thread even on a jazz guitar forum. This side should be in a time capsule. When he died, in NYC i believe, they carried him in his casket back down south by train. Both sides of the tracks for the whole trip were filled with well wishers standing shoulder to shoulder, without too much exaggeration.

[goldenwave77]

I also think the influence of slide instruments---blues slide guitar, whether knife-edge, or bottles or what have you, and steel guitar, on jazz is not properly appreciated.

The first electric guitars were the Rickenbacker frying pans. And the vocal nature of the tones slipping into each other, 2, sharp 2, 3 is a country cliché, and the sharp 4 is just all over the place.

Miles Davis' grandfather owned a good-sized farm in Missouri, and he spent time there, milking cows, riding horses, and doing farm stuff, and while he became a big-city dandy, that was not his entire upbringing.

[mrcee]

And of course Charlie Parker was a huge country music fan a fact which most of his cohorts couldn't fathom.