When I hear someone tell me, “I don’t care for jazz,” my first response is very direct: “Which kind do you dislike?” Many of my jazz friends are quick to point out that there are jazz genres that they do NOT care for. Most of us do know what we like and we love listening to it, but Jazz is a creature of many heads. How many? I stopped counting when I got to 25.
The word “jazz” in the early years carried a vulgar connotation that still exists for some folks but as jazz grew in popularity, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, most of what we heard was jazz people could dance to—and dance we did. Dance halls thrived as well as record sales.
Jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane produced a “new” jazz that was not designed for dancing; however, I’m betting some folks tried. Dizzy’s modal jazz and hard bop attempts helped cool that movement somewhat but we still have a lot of bop lovers. Cool jazz popped up about then and has a decent fan base yet today. Nor can we forget Avant-garde, often described as experimental, radical, or unorthodox.
Over the past six decades I’ve heard a lot of new jazz. In the 1950s while in a service band, the 3rd Infantry Band, I was introduced to West Coast jazz. Up to that time, the only West Coast I was attracted to was the New Orleans jazz being revived in California. Soon I was buying Bud Shank’s records—W
