Rock 'n roll got a fifteen-year head start on you in my house. And you could never make up that ground as long as pop would remain my default setting. I'd only visit the Jazz section of the record store after having thoroughly combed the Pop bins.
But you were never an afterthought. You were always there, just over the horizon, beckoning, reminding me that if I truly was the music lover I imagined myself to be, I'd need to broaden my horizons.
I was one of those very serious teenagers. At least as annoying as the Zeppelin-loving potheads. I had to prove to my parents - but mostly myself - that "rock music" was as good as, or better than, any other kind of music, So I pulled away from anything simplistic or hedonistic, preferring the Allman Brothers and the Dead, probably because I could point to their virtuosity as proof of their superiority.
I also dabbled in prog rock. It's harder to play so it must be "better" right?
Luckily, for me, rock had a way of flipping the script. As I got older that very serious-sounding prog rock began to come off as a bit pompous and silly, whereas unpretentious records like "Louie Louie" became a source of joy.
All it really took was a sense of humor. Once I got one of those I embraced the joy wherever I could find it while still shunning the downright stupid.
Once I found my way, it opened up whole new vistas and old ones I had previously dismissed. And as long as I kept exploring things would never have time to get stale. And while rock is the greatest thing, it's not the only thing. Eventually, I'd make my way outside of rock altogether.
The most obvious places to go were Classical and Jazz, the latter being more welcoming because it had - scoff if you will - some similarities to rock music. Melodies, rhythm, passion, and blues, to name a few. So there was a way in.
But Jazz, you could still be work. Your songs came from the pre-Beatles era, and your chords were rarely just major or minor, thus your solos were for a time unfathomable. Also, your sound quality really didn't get good until the 1950s, which is why I latched onto small combos (like the Beatles, Jaybee?) rather than big bands. It wasn't simple, but I persisted.
Okay, I'll stop talking to Jazz at this point. (He/she never does answer.)
Perhaps I needed to convey that my expertise in Jazz is very limited (Not that I can be trusted with Pop, where my taste tends to skew weird. What till I tell you about that Galaxie 500 record I just got...) so it takes me a while to get my head around most Jazz records.
Add to that my propensity to deep dive where I barely have the right to dip my toe, and it can take forever. I have a long, meandering unpublished post on three multi-album collections (Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk) adding up to, oh, 28 f*cking albums.
But very occasionally I slow down and focus. I'll get less voluminous collections and actually pay attention to them.
Ella Fitzgerald: Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
A while back, Mrs. Jaybee picked up the Ella Fitzgerald 75th Birthday Celebration to teach her students about scat singing. While it's a perfectly good collection, I was already completely obsessed with the Magnetic Fields' 3-CD 69 Love Songs which we got at the same time. So there goes Pop shoving Jazz out of the way again.
Years passed and I felt no compunction to get anything more from Ella Fitzgerald. I'd gotten her best of, didn't I?
But whenever I'd peruse various GOAT Jazz Album lists, there she'd be with her Cole Porter songbook. I only knew Porter from what I heard on Red Hot and Blue. No need for more, right? Right?
Duke Ellington: At Newport 1956 Complete
In a case of deja vu all over again, I'd gotten the very fine 3-CD DE Centennial Edition (1927-1973) which should have been enough, right?
But as with Ella another Duke album kept popping up that for decades I had convinced myself I had no need for. Boy was I wrong.
I opted for the expanded 2 CD version, which includes the entire concert including the between-song patter and the band opening with a perfectly good "Star Spangled Banner". (Hendrix rules, though.) So things aren't as compact as I'd like them to be, but I can live with that.
It's one thing to listen to the original recordings of these songs on Centennial and enjoy them despite the relatively poor sound quality. But to hear his band dig into these songs with such gusto live, well that's another thing entirely.
And yes, "Diminuendo in D" is everything you heard it was.
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But really, the issue was that Billie forced you to listen, and I wasn't prepared to do that at the time. She was just too damned intense.
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