These days you canāt read a website or pick up a newspaper without being told that jazz has suddenly started to become popular among 18-25 year-olds. Strange, right? Like being told that grime is now the go-to music of choice of octogenarians. But there it is. Data doesnāt lie. Which means in real terms that more Miles Davis albums are being sold than they have for a decade. There is even a āJazz For People Who Donāt Like Jazzā playlist on Spotify, even though there are more jazz playlists on Spotify than ever before.
Fifteen years ago, something similar happened to me, as, having watched Ken Burnsā masterful jazz miniseries (inspiringly called Jazz), I developed an intense curiosity for the genre and for six months immersed myself in a world I had previously only flirted with. 칓ģ§ė øģ¬ģ“ķø
So there I was, in the large HMV near Selfridges on London’s Oxford Street, sometime in April 2003, around 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Iād just dropped about Ā£80 ā on Elephant by The White Stripes, Blurās Think Tank, a second copy of the Strokesā first album, a new Marmalade compilation (their āI See The Rainā had recently been used in a Gap ad), plus The Last Waltz and The Wicker Man on DVD. On top of all this I had, uncharacteristically, also spent another Ā£40 on three jazz CDs: one fairly useless acid jazz compilation that I would never play again and two of the greatest records Iād heard for over a year: John Coltraneās Steps and Duke Ellingtonās Far East Suite. I bought both at the suggestion of friends, having just started to watch Jazz. Both were suggestions that almost changed my life.
And for weeks afterwards I went back for more, building up a jazz library that threatened to dwarf everything else in my collection. Having kept jazz pretty much at armās length for the best part of my life, I found myself embracing it as an estranged father might embrace his long-lost kin. Getting into jazz is like suddenly discovering you have an extended family you knew nothing about, although the family in question runs to thousands of members. Like turning the world upside down and finding another one underneath, a world where they only ever listen to jazz.
Soon, jazz started to replace every other form of music in my life. If I were on Desert Island Discs, I thought to myself rather conceitedly, what would be the point of bringing your eight favourite records with you? Wouldnāt it be better to take eight things you didnāt know, eight records you could grow to love just by dint of listening to them ad infinitum? What would be point of taking your favourite Aphex Twin, Coldplay and Earth Wind & Fire records if youāre going to hear them day in, day out for the rest of your life? How many times could you listen to the first side of Van Morrisonās Moondance before it began to pale? Why not take a load of jazz records you didnāt know instead? ģģ ķ칓ģ§ė øģ¬ģ“ķø
After my road-to-Damascus experiences, I became a man possessed. I only had to meet someone for five minutes before I asked them what their favourite jazz record was. Experts were eager to please; friends couldnāt stop suggesting things. One introduced me to lots of (very good) jazz guitarists, not knowing that I have a natural aversion to anyone sporting a mullet, which ruled out Pat Metheny, Mike Stern and Frank Gambale. I also developed an aversion to āsoft jazzā and forswore the likes of Spyro Gyra, David Sanborn and the kind of soporific stuff you always seem to hear on Jazz FM.
Not a week went by without me adding to my CD library. In my obsession I even resorted to buying some of those 100 Greatest Jazz Hits CD compilations you find in petrol stations, the kind compiled by people who think Al Jarreau and Glenn Miller are cut from the same cloth.
Soon I began compiling an imaginary list of the best jazz records of all time, a list that started to occupy my every waking thought. Iād be in a meeting at work, trying to figure out a way to squeeze a piece about the Angolan civil war into six pages (difficult, but not impossible), and Iād begin comparing the respective voices of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. (Was āLullaby Of Birdlandā better than “Evāry Time We Say Goodbyeā? Who Knew?) Iād be halfway through a client pitch and begin wondering if Dexter Gordonās āGetting Aroundā was more impressive than his popular āOur Man In Parisā. If youāve ever made lists of your favourite rock songs about California, your favourite punk singles, disco 12 inches, songs with the name of your girlfriend or wife in them; if you read High Fidelity and thought Nick Hornbyās lists were rather pedestrian (didnāt you think heād be more eclectic?); if youāre still reluctant to give up the clandestine obsession of your youth, by which I mean being unable to stop yourself from trawling through vintage record shop racks, mentally totting up the vinyl youāve already got⦠If youāre ever done any of these things, then youāll know what Iām talking about.
So how do you build a collection? What do you do once youāve wandered off into the jazz section. What do you buy? Not only is there just so much⦠stuff, but itās an ever-expanding world. I mean, even if you knew everything there was to know about jazz, how could you possibly own it all? There are nearly as many jazz albums as there are women in the world and how could you sleep with all of them? As with any other type of music, there are some classic records youād be mad to ignore, but with jazz you really have to plough your own furrow. The jazz police are a proscriptive lot ā look to them for recommendations and theyāll tell you that Norah Jones and Stan Getz arenāt jazz, that Blue Note shouldnāt have signed St Germain and that Dave Brubeckās āTake Fiveā is only ever good for paint commercials. However, these are probably the same people who, 40 years ago, would have told you that Abba donāt make good pop music or that punk was a flash in the pan. 칓ģ§ė øģ¬ģ“ķø ģ¶ģ²
And there were some things I just didnāt get. Ornette Coleman was one. At the same time Miles Davis was breaking through with modal jazz forms, Coleman invented free jazz with The Shape Of Jazz To Come. Over half a century after the event it is difficult to recapture the shock that greeted the arrival of this record, but it just gave me a headache. Coleman played a white plastic saxophone that looked like a toy, he dressed like a spiv and was a master of the one-liner, the āZen Zingerā (stuff like, āWhen the band is playing with the drummer, it’s rockānāroll, but when the drummer is playing with the band, itās jazzā), so I really wanted to like his music. But I couldnāt. No matter how much I tried. As far as I was concerned he was improvising up his own sphincter.
And what is jazz anyway? Is it Koopās Waltz For Koop, a Swedish approximation of loungecore jazz, or is it Terry Callierās Turn You To Love, which is almost deep soul but is released on Elektraās āclassic jazzā label. The truth is, jazz is a bit of everything, something that isnāt so surprising when you consider it was born out of marching bands, the blues, minstrel music and New Orleans creole. Jazz is Dixieland, swing fusion, jazz funk, jazz rock, R&B, bossa nova, bebop, hard bop, hip hop, cool jazz, hot jazz, free jazz, trad jazz, modern cheroot-smoking Sta-Prest-sporting jazz, the lot. Some people now even call it the new chillout.
But not everyone I asked was as enthusiastic as I was. There are some people who will never like it, as the Daily Telegraphās Martin Gayford wrote: āYou can tell there must be something good about modern art just by considering the people who hate it ā and the same is true of jazz.ā
“Jazz is for people who donāt like music,ā says GQās Deputy Editor; it must be fun to play, he says, because it sure aināt fun to listen to. (āI remember this tune,ā heāll say, āwhich is more than the guy playing it does.ā) It is, in the words of some forgotten Eighties comedian, six guys on stage playing different tunes. GQ even ran a joke about it a few years ago: āQ: Why do some people instantly hate jazz?ā āA: It saves time in the long run.ā Even my youngest daughter hated it at the time. Aged five, after being subjected to hours of Charlie Parker in the car one weekend, she said, āI donāt like this music. There are no songs for me to sing to.ā (The only jazz tune she liked is āEverybody Want To Be A Cat” from Disneyās The Aristocats.) Unbeknown to her, she was echoing John Lennonās little-known jibe: āJazz never does anything.ā
Some peopleās innate hatred of jazz is simply the result of an unfortunate experience, but then anyone whoās witnessed Art Blakey performing a three-and-a-half hour drum solo is entitled to feel a little peeved (and I speak as someone who has seen one at close quarters). On top of this, some people just donāt get it. Like the later work of James Joyce, the films of Tarkovsky and ātax harmonisationā, the fact that some things will always lie just beyond the common understanding is something jazz enthusiasts must learn to live with.
Also, jazz has often been victim to the vagaries of fashion, destined to be revived at the most inappropriate moments. The last time jazz was really in the limelight was back in the mid-Eighties, when it became the soundtrack du jour in thousands of matt-black bachelor flats all over designer Britain and when every style magazine and beer ad seemed to look like a Blue Note album cover. Jazz went from being a visceral, corporeal music to a lifestyle soundtrack. This was the age of Style Council, of Absolute Beginners⦠of Sting. Buying into jazz was meant to lend your life a patina of exotic sophistication and was used to sell everything from Filofaxes and coffee machines to designer jeans and sports cars.
In his excellent book, Jazz 101: A Complete Guide To Learning And Loving Jazz, John F Szwed writes: āThe life and look of the black jazz musician offered a double attraction, that of the alienations of both artist and colour. Whatever jazz might have been as an actual occupation, the jazz musician offered one of the first truly nonmechanical metaphors of the 20th century. Now, whether one has heard of Charlie Parker or not, we inherit a motion of cool, an idea of well-etched individuality, a certain angle of descent.ā
If jazz started life as a subversive sexual extension of ragtime, blues, boogie-woogie and the New Orleans sound, by the end of the century it had become the soundtrack of accomplishment, a way of upstairs acknowledging downstairs in the manner of nostalgie de la boue.
But what about the music? In many ways, and for many people, jazz ended in the early Sixties, when Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor suddenly became the avant-garde; in fact, almost everything that has happened to jazz in the last 50 years could be called āpost-Coltraneā in much the same way that people use āpostmodernā. Obviously, jazz was āfreeā and difficult (mad-looking Belgians with crazy hair, billowing luminescent smocks and angular, clarinet-looking instruments) or else it was nostalgic (Harry Connick Jr et al). Ironically, for a type of music so obsessed with modern and the ānowā, jazz has always been preoccupied with the past, so much so that during the Eighties and Nineties it became less and less able to reflect modern culture. Everyone wanted to sound like Miles or Dizzy; either that or they went fusion mad and ended up sounding and looking like Frank Zappa on steroids.
And so, after six long months I arrived at my final selection, the 100 best jazz CDs money can buy. The selections here arenāt necessarily all benchmarks, theyāre simply the best records to listen to, the ones that will give you the most pleasure. For a while it seemed like my mission was simply to collect as many versions of āA Night In Tunisiaā as I could (and I did), although I eventually branched out into all areas of jazz, from New York stride piano to the Third Stream stuff (the classical/jazz crossover). There is very little trad, not much fusion and rather a lot of stuff from the golden age of modern jazz, from 1955 to 1965. Oh, and nine albums by Miles Davis.
Before I embarked on my quest I could never have pictured myself wearing a metaphorical beret and nodding along to seemingly random trumpet sounds in the comfort of my own home. But there I was, imagining myself looking out over Los Angeles from Case Study House No22, with an Avo Classic Robusto in one hand and a large glass of amarone in the other. And all I could hear was Freddie Hubbard. Mmmm, jazz. Nice.