“Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life” – Art Blakey
Hello all
As I have explained in the past, I am a complete novice when it comes to Jazz, did try it once a few years ago, and apart from some artists, most I just did not get on with. So I thought I would give it another go. This started with David “Fathead” Newman, who played the saxophone for Ray Charles for a number of years. I brought a 2 disc set, that contained four of his albums and started to listen to it, and this time around things are turning out better, so it looks like I will be continuing with my adventure with Jazz.
When I say I did not get on with Jazz a few years ago, there was one form, and that was female Jazz vocalist that I did, so I decided to get Diana Krall debut album Stepping Out, it was a bit jazzier than I was expecting, if that makes sense, and took me a long time to get into it, but as you may well see from the playlist below, its started to work for me.
Jazz was developed in the United States in the very early part of the 20th century. New Orleans, near the mouth of the Mississippi River. The city’s population was more diverse than anywhere else in the South, and people of African, French, Caribbean, Italian, German, Mexican, and American Indian, as well as English, descent interacted with one another.
African-American musical traditions mixed with others and gradually jazz emerged from a blend of ragtime, marches, blues, and other kinds of music. At first, jazz was mostly for dancing. After the first recordings of jazz were made in 1917, the music spread widely and developed rapidly. The evolution of jazz was led by a series of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. Jazz developed a series of different styles including traditional jazz, swing bebop, cool jazz, and jazz/rock, among others. At the same time, jazz spread from the United States to many parts of the world, and today jazz musicians–and jazz festivals–can be found in dozens of nations. Jazz is one of the United States’s greatest exports to the world.
I have also noticed the way jazz has been blended into another genre of music, Sade started as a Soul/Jazz group, I can hear it in Raggae group Groundation – Each One Teach One, and in Electronic/Downtempo of Zero 7
Below is a 10 song playlist of what Jazz I have been listening to, and hopefully in the future will more artist and type of Jazz will be added as I explore more.
I have also been putting together these playlists, I normally make up a playlist from a variety of different music genres and see if they fit together. So lately I have restricted myself to the albums I have posted about and have decided to share it with you, as we did in the old days with tapes
The only way I can think of sharing playlists these days is with something like Spotify.
I remember hearing Groundation for the first time. Gobsmacked doesn’t came close – I think it might have involved tears as well! Hebron Gate is my favourite album of theirs. Jazz is your friend – and its everywhere!
Groundation are a great band, who I really like the more I listen to them, have Hebron Gate, its in the pile to post about. Thanks again for the comment.