Hello and welcome to Pitch Please! It’s a show where I give you a guided tour of a rabbit hole you might not have fallen down…yet. Today we are talking about Americas original art form, Jazz.
So I know what you’re thinking,
"Jazz? Isn’t that just for old men? I mean I knew you were old but not that old. I thought you were a punk."
You’re right. I am old. Thanks for bringing that up. And I am a punk, but I, like anyone interesting, like and listen to a WIDE variety of music. There’s 1500 records here. If they were all punk records, it’d get dull pretty fast.
I got into jazz in the 6th grade when, after a story too dark for the internet, I first discovered music as more than just something to have on in the background. It was really the first time I consciously decided to really get into something. And I figured, if I was gonna be a music obsessive, I should start at the beginning and the beginning of modern music for me was jazz.
Now obviously there was music being made in America before jazz. There was ragtime, classical, blues, folk, etc. But jazz came about just as the technology to record music was invented and the LP, which is a format we still have today, was popularized which meant it spread far and fast for the time. That plus the touring vaudeville shows and being born in the port city of New Orleans meant it became Americas first cultural export. By taking European classical music that these early jazz pioneers had been trained in and mixing it with musical traditions born of the slave trade, (of course it goes back to slavery. This is an AMERICAN art form after all) these black musicians (love to burst any of the racist bubbles out there but yes, jazz was created by black folks. So was rock n roll and hip hop and techno and really almost everything else worth talking about in American culture. They made it and folks that look like me stole it, which seems to be our legacy. But I digress) created a new form of music that could not be created anywhere but here. Best of all, it was party music.
When I worked midnights at 7-11 (something I’m sure I’ll bring up too much on this channel) I used to play music all night trough a shitty set of speakers in the corner. I’d plug in my iPod and try to drown out the infinitely idiotic general public as they shambled in throughout the night. In the morning was when the crowd switched from drunks and junkies to folks coming in for their morning coffee. One morning, one of my regulars (a woman who got an extra large French vanilla coffee, two packs of Pall Mall red shorts, a paper and had a son with a heroin problem) came in and heard me listening to jazz. She made the mistake of saying that all jazz sounded the same. (This seems to be a common sentiment seeing as I also was in a band briefly with a drummer who said all jazz used the same drum beat. He didn’t last long. In the band or in life if I recall after taking one too many percosets and driving off a bridge) Seeing this as an educational opportunity, for the next few weeks, I played a different type of jazz every morning at work. It made for some interesting mornings.
The fact that there are so many ways to play jazz is why it caught fire across the globe. It was a truly NEW music. Completely new things RARELY happen. Imagine turning on the radio and the DJ plays a song that sounds like absolutely nothing that came before. It’s a whole new approach to arranged sound. And most importantly, it gets you fucking moving. You’d flip out too. The last time that might of happened was when people started making music with computers. This variety is one of the things that attracts me to jazz. You can always go deeper and find something new to love. There is a subgenre of jazz for every occasion. Rainy night, feeling lonely? Cool jazz. Looking to freak out? Free jazz. Wanna dance? Dixieland or swing. Cocktail party or anime about a space bounty hunter? Bebop. There’s always something new around the corner.
That playability that allows jazz to be shaped and morphed into new and exciting things make it, along with the blues, the root of all the music I love that comes after it. The improvisational nature of the guitar solo or jam band wouldn’t exist without jazz. You can draw a direct line from Louie Armstrong to The Stooges and from there, all of punk rock (Louie Armstrong to Miles Davis to Coltrane to The Stooges for those of you who want me to show my work).
A few years after I became a music nerd, I also started down a path to become a musician. This is also around the time YouTube came into existence. (Again, yes, I know, I’m old) Let me tell you, I would spend hours watching jazz drummers like Buddy Rich and Max Roach and just thinking to myself, I am never gonna be this good. Jazz musicians have an UNREAL amount of talent. The complex timings, the inventive song structures, and the improv skills! They’re unmatched in any other music genre. Honestly, if you’re just starting out making music like I was, it might be best to brace yourself or risk being discouraged. It’s probably almost as discouraging as seeing a child prodigy that’s leagues better than you when you’ve been playing for multiple decades.
So if I’ve convinced you to give jazz a shot, great. I’m gonna give you some record recommendations in a second but first I’m gonna give you some advice on HOW to listen to jazz. Because that variety, while amazing, can also make jazz seem daunting and impenetrable. People will hear something labeled jazz and assume, like my former customer and former bandmate, that it all sounds like that so they must not like it. What’s important to do, not just with jazz by the way but any art you trying to get into, is to find what you like about what you’re listening to and, just as importantly, what you don’t like. With all that in mind, let’s go through some tentpole albums and artist and from there you’ll be able to drill down into the subgenres you like.
At the forefront of almost all movements in jazz you’ll find one artist that is out there pushing the boundary. We are talking about, of course, Miles Davis. Miles Davis started off in the 40’s in a group led by the great Charlie Parker (someone else you should listen to), he quickly struck out on his own and started pioneering new evolutions in jazz. I’m gonna recommend two very different albums here to highlight the breath of his output. The first being his first outing as a bandleader, and probably my favorite jazz album?, The Birth of Cool. It helped spawn cool jazz (go figure) and just kinda has everything you want from jazz. It’s got fast numbers and drum solos, slow songs to be romantic to, and just a great warm production that falls just perfectly between early rough recordings that are tin-y and harsh and more modern production that can be too surgical and sterile. The last song, Darn That Dream, is one of my personal favorites and was on many a mix CD I made for high school crushes.
On the other side of the Miles Davis spectrum, we have the 1970 album Bitches Brew which is a landmark piece in jazz fusion. A four sided, 93 minute sprawling freakout, Bitches Brew is music that makes me wish I did drugs. I mean, the dude puts his trumpet through a wah pedal. It’s a journey but a fun and freaky one so hit the lights and just go with it.
Next up, we have a member of Miles Davis’ band, John Coltrane who pioneered his own evolutions in jazz which I’m sure Miles was perfectly fine to share the spotlight for. (Only one of them was worshiped as a god though, sooo…) Coltrane was one of the greatest in hard bop and this is really exemplified on Giant Steps. Almost all of the pieces on this album have become jazz standards. You know it’s good when people have to learn it in school, right? Polyphonic has a video explaining why the title track alone is so revolutionary and he explains it much better than I could. What I will say is it’s a great record for a summer backyard hang. From Giant Steps we have the evolution of Coltrane himself into a post bop era with A Love Supreme. If Giant Steps is a backyard summer hang, this is a midnight deep conversation hang. It’s cool and confident and just feels like a record from a man trying to shine his light for all to see.
Coltrane for me though is at his coolest when he’s pioneering free jazz. Which is why I’m gonna recommend the record Interstellar Space. Another chaotic album full of long tracks made to be put on as a soundtrack to your own inward exploration. This record opens you up to a tempo-less soundscape made by artist pushing their instruments to do things they were not deigned to do. Plus it’s the only time I’ve ever like sleigh bells.
There are countless jazz musicians I could recommend further like Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday (who is one of a handful of artist that if you don’t enjoy I think there might be something medically wrong with you), and on and on. Honestly all of them worthy of having their own dedicated video. Luckily, with jazz, all these artist were constantly playing with each other. So if you find someone you like, you can follow them around and you most likely bump into the rest. But I’d like to leave you with someone very special to me, Thelonious Monk.
Thelonious Sphere Monk was a composer and pianist unlike any other. His improvisations were confounding, his compositions eclectic. You never knew where on the keys he was going and that is thrilling. And yet, the result is soothing and inviting. So much so that a lot of his original works have become jazz standards. It’s music that as you hear it, makes you want to know the mind that could think like this. A mind that could compose like this and take two seemingly disjointed ideas and fit them together so beautifully. All this makes Monk one of my favorite musicians of all time. Plus, he’s got such a cool name. Thelonious Sphere Monk? Come on!
There are two records I’d recommend if you’re looking to get into Monk. First is Solo Monk. I’m a sucker for simplicity. Just an artist, their instrument and their song. No fancy production tricks, no band to hide behind. Just them and their composition, straight down the barrel of a microphone. That is exactly what you get with this record. And also with this record by Art Tatum. Recorded secretly at a party. No frills. Just a great artist doing what he does best. Perfect for a rainy day or late night.
On the other end of the Monk spectrum is this record, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Remember him? I told you they all bump into each other). What’s great about Monk playing in a group is his ability to play in the spaces where the other members aren’t. He plays almost against the others, filling in the gaps in a way that teeters on discordant in a way that makes his playing stand out but never tipping into complete noise. He’s still playing with the band but doing it while playing where they’re not. It’s something I try to keep in mind whenever I’m playing with anyone (Even though I play a very different type of music). How can I play something unique while elevating the song and everyone else playing? It’s a very hard thing to do but always does it with style and here’s he’s doing it with another giant of the jazz world. What a treat.
And with that I think we’ve come to the end of the first episode of Pitch Please. I hope this is just your first step on a journey of loving jazz. If you’re already a jazz freak, let me know some of your favorite records down in the comments. Do all the normal YouTube, social media things of course. If you are interested in reading this rant instead of having to stare at my ugly mug, I’m gonna post this script as a blog with embedded songs so you can hear what I’m talking about without me getting a copyright strike. I’ll link it in the notes below. Stay tuned for more as I record them, and as always, death to the algorithm.
