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I started loving jazz in my parent's house, when they would play swing music and dance around the living room to Duke Ellington, or when my mother's dusky voice would start singing "Mood Indigo" as she did the dishes.
The Smithsonian Museum site says that the museum "...launched JAM in 2001 as an annual event that pays tribute to jazz both as a historic and living American art form. It has since grown to include celebrations in all 50 states and 40 countries."
As a day-dreamy kid, I'd watch music in the movies on our black and white television set. I loved seeing Lena Horne, who was so glamorous and sultry as she sang "Stormy Weather", loved listening to "Satchmo" Louis Armstrong who always seemed to be like such wonderful company. I'd laugh with Kay Kaiser and his "College of Musical Knowledge". The big bands brought me to the feet of jazz.
Then, somewhere in my 20s, long after this period was past in music, bebop got me. It spun me around and left me gasping. I started to listen to players like Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Dizzy Gillespie with his astonishing cheeks, Dexter Gordon, and John Coltrane. If I cited the whole list, I would be typing for a week. Here is a piece about Coltrane that speaks to the carryover of emotion into the music. It describes part of the process of a great jazz musician. (Tip of the mouse to fellow CE, Gena, for the link.)
Then, in my 30's I started a whole polyglot collection of jazz ear candy. By then I had wakened to jazz vocalists like Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald, women whose soaring vocal riffs sounded like instruments. Cleo Lane would even scat-sing like a brass instrument.
I loved the width of jazz, the broad playfulness. I loved the little musical jokes tucked inside solos, the odd references here and there to other pieces. It seemed wonderfully fair that everyone got some solo time. I liked listening to the bass player solo apart from everyone else. It helped my ear understand him.
There is lots of joy in jazz, in its sweeping arc of sound, its interplay with itself. Yet, when you have the blues, there is nothing as to-the-point as some good wine-glass-half-full-in-a dusky-club-kind-of-jazz-sound in a tune like "'Round Midnight". Here is Sarah Vaughn singing it like it is:
Or, here is the same tune by the smooth Modern Jazz Quartet:
Jazz is there for every mood.
Lately I find I have been listening to the old classics like Sonny Rollins who is always near, but with some newer voices - the deep and raspy yet smooth articulation of Rebecca Parrisalways pleases. Anne Hampton Callaway is a singer's singer, hitting an astonishing range of notes with no lack of subtlety. Then the plaintive sound of Holly Cole or the stylish vocals of Australian Kate Ceberano.
There are literally hundreds of other names I'd love to tell you about, songs I would love to share, tunes you just "have to hear". If you are a jazz fan, you know what I mean. It is impossible to cull out just a few. If you are new to jazz, I hope some of the links have shown you the breadth of music that is possible under the heading "jazz".
Jazz, the great gift of an American voice started in the African American communities of the Southern US. Now it belongs to the world, getting added nuances, as the hearts and souls of musicians and singers around the globe send their sounds out to the world.
Are you a jazz fan? If you had to be on that famous desert island with the music of only 5 jazz artists, whom would you choose? April is Jazz Appreciation Month, how will you celebrate?
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ADDED RESOURCES:
The Archive of Women in Jazz offers information on almost 800 women in jazz.
Listener-supported fine streaming jazz from WBGO includes archived interviews with jazz greats such as McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Hendricks and Ross and on and on.
~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also jazzes right along at Time's Fool
