What brought you into Jazz's warming glowing warming glow? Was the influence parental in nature, or was it the friend of yours with the weird music taste? What was the artist that changed your view?

For me it was the discovering groups like King Crimson and Gentle Giant that brought me to a new level from the metal scene. Then Allan Holdsworth's blazing lines that kinda bumped me into Mahavishnu and John McLaughlin.

The most important influence for me was the local CD store. We had a great local store that was conducive to people hanging out and talking about music. It promoted and stocked good music and the employees actually knew their stuff. They would take the time to pay attention to what you bought and made recommendations accordingly. That is where I found Thelonius Monk.

I was 9 and broke off Hendrix's Voodoo Chile on my Great-Grandfather. He broke off a 78 of Louis Armstrong's West End Blues and followed it up with Coltrane's Mars.


I traded him a few of my Rock records for some of his Jazz.



The rest as they say is history.

Like mpittman, I was getting off on prog rock and John Mclaughlin and Santana's forays into rocked up jazzy instrumentals. I think the key stone for me was the electric Miles Davis. From there my appreciation for jazz started to condense at a fast rate. I still look at my old old Boots Randolph album, 'Boots with Strings' and think about how simple life was to me way back when.

I have to give a tip of the cap to all the college radio stations who provided me my entry to the world of jazz (and prog).

Mainly, faces on the wall at the place where I take saxophone and drums lessons. My drums teacher kept telling me how great Buddy Rich was, so I borrowed some CDs from my saxophone teacher. Buddy's stuff didn't do much for me, I gave them back and said it wasn't really my kind of music. About a year later, I decided to give it another shot. This time, I picked up on what I had somehow missed the first time, which was that Buddy had some serious skillz on the drums. So really, my first foray into jazz was just to listen to the great drumming.
Then, a couple months later, I downloaded an album that had ranked pretty high on Rolling Stone's Top 500 albums (at that point, it was about nine months old) for an album I'd never heard of: Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. I liked it because of the mood, the first time I listened to it I was up late reading, it fit the atmosphere pretty well. So, from there, I started exploring the faces on the walls at the music store: Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Benny Goodman, etc. I don't know how they chose the artists that they put up there, they didn't all represent the key figures of jazz, but they provided good jumping-off points for me.
About a year after that, I joined here, and several months after I joined, my jazz interest kind of took off in all directions.

Ok, I can understand not digging Buddy's music, but how do you miss the man had skillz on the drums? It's the first thing most notice, afterall.

I dunno. I guess I wasn't really listening. Doesn't make sense to me, either, but I know they didn't really catch my eye until that second shot. I don't really remember noticing anything the first time, that's why I gave the CDs back after just listening to part of the first one. Didn't do a thing for me.

Translation:



I put the Buddy Rich cd on and than an episode of Power Rangers came on....Power Rangers, Baby!


You have to keep in mind, those were my younger years. Now excuse me, while I go read some Pynchon....hopefully he believes that....now where is that Power Rangers DVD.

I should also mention it was my Great-Grandfather & Great-Uncle who dropped DA BLUES on Satchmo.


I played them some Zeppelin, and they proceeded to tell me each of the "borrowed" songs and who they were borrowed from.

i got into jazz through flea.

i can't think of any worthwhile interview i've ever read with him where he didn't talk at least a little about jazz and drop a few names, and the one that always stood out the most was eric dolphy. it wasn't until a few years later that i finally started getting into the music but the initial seed was most definitely planted back when i still considered the coda to 'sir psycho sexy' to be one of the best pieces of music i'd ever heard hehehehe.

I'm still on the way, if I'm on the way