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Jazz History Month

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enslaved1:



Discovered a bit late April is Jazz History Month.  Several classes are at a slow point in curriculum and we are knee deep in testing season, which throws everything out of whack, so I used opportunity to show an episode of Ken Burns: Jazz documentary and introduce these heathens to some good music from people who have talent, unlike the garbage mumble rap most of them are obsessed with.  It inspired a meme.  Enjoy.

Eupher:
So many of the great ones are now gone. Art Tatum, Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Jack Teagarden, Bill Watrous, Frank Rosolino, Bob Brookmeyer, Buddy Rich, Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Jaco Pastorius, Hubert Laws, Milt Jackson.

enslaved1:


My meme is being difficult apparently, take 2, here.


--- Quote from: Eupher on April 28, 2023, 10:49:13 AM ---So many of the great ones are now gone. Art Tatum, Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Jack Teagarden, Bill Watrous, Frank Rosolino, Bob Brookmeyer, Buddy Rich, Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Jaco Pastorius, Hubert Laws, Milt Jackson.

--- End quote ---

I love jazz and blues, but I don't know them very well.  Always happy to see lists of folks to go look up and better educate myself.   :hi5:

Eupher:

--- Quote from: enslaved1 on April 28, 2023, 11:16:37 AM ---

My meme is being difficult apparently, take 2, here.

I love jazz and blues, but I don't know them very well.  Always happy to see lists of folks to go look up and better educate myself.   :hi5:

--- End quote ---

Once upon a time, I paid a lot of attention to jazz. Blues (12 and 16-bars which is the cornerstone of jazz and much of pop music that's sane), swing, be bop, hard bop, fusion, the list goes on and on. Except it doesn't. Big bands are rarer than hen's teeth (Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band in LA being a notable exception). Count Basie wrote the book on big band blues and he will never be replicated. Trumpeters I failed to mention - Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Nat Adderley (his brother Cannonball Adderley on alto sax), Conte and Pete Candoli (who played with Doc Severinsen in the Tonight Show Band), Doc himself, though Doc is still gigging well into his 90s.

Sigh.

Thankfully, we still have Wayne Bergeron and a delightfully young and energetic trumpeter named Louis Dowdeswell, who is killin' it, and the always dapper Wynton Marsalis and his brother Branford on saxophone, usually tenor.

When I was in Berlin I went to see Dizzy, Chet Baker (about 3 months before he launched himseld out of an Amsterdam hotel room window), Count Basie (Freddie Green on guitar about 2 months before he passed), Billy Joel (who killed it though he's not a jazzer so much), Al Jarreau (OMG, a former taxi driver who just f'n crushed it), and so many more.

A good friend of mine, Chris Burnett, on saxophone, flute, and clarinet, is gigging and composing in KC and he's a monster - served with him 40+ years ago.

There are just so many I can't keep up.....

Ralph Wiggum:
Thanks for the post. I've never been into jazz music, although I know the influence it has had on other genres of music and certainly appreciate it. And of course I've heard of almost all the folks you've mentioned.

One of the more interesting college classes I took was "Music Appreciation", which was something to fill out the core curriculum. To this day I can still distinguish between Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and many more. One can notice how the classical music is still infused with our culture, albeit in subtle ways.

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