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Post by solgroupie on Sept 13, 2007 10:00:04 GMT -5
i guess it is my favorite type of music. my blues and jazz cds are slowly forcing me out of my house - there's a stack in every room. the older, the better. i'm not a big fan of what i refer to as supermarket jazz - shmoove jazz - organized jazz. i like not knowing where my jazz is going to go. i guess my favorite jazz musician would be miles davis...or john coltrane...thelonious monk...lionel hampton...milt jackson, etc. favorite male blues singer is john lee hooker and missippi john hurt. john lee just gets the blues, to me. just listen to him sing tupelo. favorite female blues singer has to be bessie smith. i love her. there is a radio program on NPR i listen to every week without fail - blues before sunrise. it comes on saturday nights - well, technically sunday mornings, from 1-6am. it plays the real old stuff. my favorite part comes on at 5am, soul breakfast, which features a fusion of jazz and blues. i'm also a huge fan of almost any international music - celtic is on top of the list, but i also love french, italian, caribbean (sp?), arabian, etc. i listen to all of this more and more - i have no idea what is on any top 40 list anymore. i was huge into the whole grunge movement, but i think most alternative today just sounds like whiney boy crap. i really do not like country music at all, which is both unfortunate and ironic, since i work for a country music radio station.
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Post by Don Quixote on Sept 13, 2007 10:30:32 GMT -5
Not my favorite, but great to listen to while you're doing housework, or really any work where you're in the vicinity of a record player. I have a few jazz/blues records, and I do enjoy them, but I don't listen to them often enough to know who the artists are.
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Post by Krista on Sept 13, 2007 11:43:53 GMT -5
I like the Blues Brothers But I don't think that counts.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Sept 13, 2007 11:55:35 GMT -5
I like a lot of jazz and blues guitarists (Django Reinhardt, Charlie Byrd, Stanley Jordan, Rev. Gary Davis top the list). My standard horn/piano jazz knowledge usually goes with the big names, though. Charles Mingus, though is a personal god of mine.
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Post by Dr. Henry Krasker on Sept 13, 2007 15:43:55 GMT -5
I'm a big blues, jazz and world music fan. I have over 2200 cds. Of that, I have about 3 times as many blues, jazz and world music cds than I do rock and pop. In jazz, I love Django Reinhardt, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Mildred Bailey, Duke Elliington, Miles Davis, Dinah Washington, Chet Baker. In blues, I love John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, Muddy Waters, Son House, Alberta Hunter. For world music, I like just about everything. It's hard to narrow it down, because there is so much good music around the world. I love Palmwine and High-life from West Africa, Bollywood film music from India, Township Jive from South Africa, Gamelon from Bali, Rebetica from Greece and Turkey, you name it and I've probably got some of it.
I disagree with you on country music, though. I don't listen to modern country music for the same reason I don't listen to modern pop. It's pablum for the masses. But go back into the history of country music and you'll hear some amazing stuff. Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline. Go back even further and listen to the old time string bands who were the precursors of country music. Also listen to western swing from Bob Wills or Milton Brown. They were just as much jazz bands as they were country bands. The only people I hear still doing something worthwhile in modern country music are the old-guard singers, like the late Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Loretta Lynn (you have got to get the album she did with Jack White of the White Stripes: Van Lear Rose. Amazing. She's well into her 70s and she still rocks harder and wails more passionately than the entire Country Music Top 20 combined.) To me, the old country music is just the world music of the United States.
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Post by callipygias on Sept 13, 2007 17:07:39 GMT -5
I don't listen to it too much anymore, since they're all on cassettes, but I love the blues. I started with Muddy Waters because of all the classic rock copies of his songs. Some of my other favorites were Howlin' Wolf, Elmore Leonard, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and B.B. King. There were tons more, but I can't think of them right now. Nothing too terribly obscure. Elmore Leonard was great.
And I completely agree with what Dr. Krasker said about country music. I'd no sooner listen to modern country than I'd listen to Brittney (or whoever you kids listen to nowadays), but much of the older country music is as amazing as the voices are unique---voices like Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Hank sr., Tammy Wynette, and the great Bill Monroe.
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Post by Phantom Engineer on Sept 13, 2007 19:13:36 GMT -5
I like the Blues Brothers But I don't think that counts. Not too much. Kind of like tourist blues. I am a blues fan. Acoustic delta blues is a favorite. I have a lot of respect for jazz but I don't listen to it a lot. I love watching shows about jazz history, but I just don't choose to listen to it much.
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Post by Hoss Ragen on Sept 13, 2007 19:52:04 GMT -5
I only have only a few blues records. I never took the time to learn too much about the history and artists, but I do enjoy it when the mood is right. I cannot stand blues rock, though. I like jazz. I listen to stuff like Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder and Pharoah Sanders Thembi in my car on a regular basis. My goal is to master jazz drumming, so I like to pay attention to what session guys like Elvin Jones, Art Blakey and so forth are doing in the background. I love upright bass (Leroy Vinegar, Charles Mingus...), vibraphones and Rhodes especially. I really enjoy Cal Tjader. Afro-Cuban influenced music rules. I like "fusion" jazz, but only Mizell Brothers-like early 70s stuff. Otherwise, I hate smooth, wanky alto sax jazz. It's funny how some people can get so uptight about their preferences regarding this type of music, though.
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Post by Captain Hygiene on Sept 13, 2007 19:53:29 GMT -5
Jazz is something I enjoy live. I never really listen to recordings, though, and I know almost nothing about it. The closest thing to it that I enjoy is classical ragtime on the piano.
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Post by bobjohnson on Sept 13, 2007 20:07:52 GMT -5
Yeah I enjoy the blues but I call it "Heavy Metal" aka Speed Blues
But seriously I like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Norah Jones (who is Jazz I believe)
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Post by MonsterX on Sept 13, 2007 21:40:02 GMT -5
I love the blues! I never could get into jazz though; it just doesn’t send me. Some of my favorite bluesmen are Buddy Guy, Howlin Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters.
And where the hell are all the blues stations by the way? Its damn near never played on the radio.
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Post by solgroupie on Sept 13, 2007 21:44:50 GMT -5
i guess i could have worded my feelings on country music better. it is really never my first choice, but i do have tremendous respect for country music - the older stuff like dr. hasker so kindly pointed out. the history of country music is worth noting, pardon the pun. but i listen to top 40 country 40 hours a week and a person can only take so much shania twain - it can really do disturbing things to them. country doesn't sound like country very much anymore to me. i know it has to evolve and change like all music, but it mostly sounds like pop music to me - it all kind of sounds the same except for a few artists like reba, garth, george strait, ect. i grew up listening to the statler brothers and i still put their greatest hits cd in sometimes. i live in tennessee, so sometimes i just feel up to my eyeballs in country and it gets tiresome to me. but i admire the loyalty of the fanbase and the artists who cultivated it. and, hey - my mom once sat on conway twitty's lap whilst he sang hello darlin.' (DQ, i was going to mention this on the weird al thread when you said your mom sat on al's lap! doc krasker! i love django reinhardt! my uncle, who played the trumpet in different jazz combos for much of his life, turned me on to him. i just started listening to his music this summer and i love it. in fact, i admire (or down and out love) about every artist you listed. and who knows how many more artists i hear that i never learn the names of, on that radio program i mentioned. you mentioned africa - are you familiar with habib koite? i just happened to buy a cd of his at a yard sale a few years back and i swear i have never heard such beautiful music in my life. if you aren't familiar with him, do yourself a BIG favor and look him up. i have another cd, a putumayo collection of blues around the world, where he plays guitar in a song with bonnie rait. and captain, i wish so much i had the opportunity to listen to jazz live where i am. my choices are pretty much country or classic southern rock. what i wouldn't give for a good club that played both the blues and jazz live on a regular basis. and krasker - 2200 cds? you are my hero!
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Post by Dr. Henry Krasker on Sept 14, 2007 0:05:15 GMT -5
iand krasker - 2200 cds? you are my hero! It's good to be somebody's hero. I've never heard of Habib Koite, but I'll be sure to look him up. If you like Django Rienhardt, I'd suggest looking for a 4-cd boxset called 'Gypsy Jazz" from Proper Music. I bought it recently, and it's full of jazz made by the gypsies of Europe from the 1920s through the 1950s. I think you would love it. I can certainly understand being burned out on country music, especially if you're forced to listen to an unending stream of Top 40 country. It's drive me to hate it, too.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Sept 14, 2007 2:08:03 GMT -5
I love all forms of Blues and Jazz.
It's kind of mandatory, what with the fact that I'm a saxophone player (though my instructor never cared for either. She was a "Classical Saxophonist", which the two of us both found mildly amusing.)
I've even had the pleasure to play jazz and blues in smoky bars while in a Biggish Band. The complimentary pizza that the bar served was terrible. But the overall experience was a blast.
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Post by solgroupie on Sept 14, 2007 11:22:36 GMT -5
wow, i'm sure it was, afgncaap5 - for any fan of jazz to participate in a live performance would be surreal, to say the least. i mentioned above that my uncle played trumpet in different little combos over the years. none of them were well known outside of their community, but i still think it is so cool that he was a part of it nonetheless. i got to see him play one time at some yacht club (it wasn't as highbrow as it might sound), and he was great. one new year's eve while going to listen to a friend of his play the clarinet in a club, we both realized we were big fans of miles davis. we've been closer than ever since then. he met lionel hampton one time. a guy who played with hampton told my uncle how hard it was to play with him (hampton) once he started aging. he said that they would be playing one song and right in the middle of it, hampton would kind of forget what they were playing and go right into another song. the guy said he was hard to follow, because you never knew where he was going to go. my unc told me that when he dies he's leaving me all of his music. he's like the grouchiest guy - the epitome of cantankerous old men, but we totally connect on that one level. and i will look into that box set, doc, thanks for the suggestion. that sounds right up my alley - i love music from the 20's and 30's. since i do work in radio, i am broke pretty much all of the time, but i will put it on my list. and please do look into habib koite - his music just sends me.
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