What Were Your First Few Jazz Albums?

This was my first jazz album:



Not bad for an introduction, eh?

I think I got it either in my first highschool year (at 15) or in the last gymnasium year (at 14). The band had just played in our town but I didn't go see them, but I was hyped enough to get the album. It sounded quite esoteric for me back then... Strange music.

Some of my first jazz records were:

My first jazz albums were lent to me by an older friend, when I was in my early twenties.

Coming from rock, metal and folk, I didn't get it right away - it probably took me a year, on and off, to come around. I guess sometimes it just takes a while to appreciate what's going on in jazz (part of what makes it so rewarding)

There are the three I was given



And I listened to them in that order too, from memory. When I finally got it, KOB received the most rotation, but I think it was Davis' version of "Round Midnight' that sold me on jazz.

Then it was straight to Bitches Brew and I was buried sound, coming up for air with Mahavishnu Orchestra and other albums of a more fusion-nature. Next came my second favourite Miles album



From memory, approximately the same time as either BB or Sketches..., I got Head Hunters by Hancock and was hooked. From there I went mostly into the post-bop area, with this, my second Hancock album, which is still one of my favourites years later



and which in turn led me to Freddie Hubbard and so on and so on!

Thanks for the opportunity to ramble here, great thread, Mike





Edited by dreadpirateroberts - 09 Aug 2011 at 8:07am

^ I suggested them for JMA here: Jazz Unit / Romania

That track is a composition by Lucian Ban and Eduard Jak Neumann (who both have solo entries on JMA too). Unfortunately the album can't be accessed in any way. My cassette is lost, too, so if I ever get the mp3s in a way or another, I'm going to upload them to YouTube.

The best part of the album, or at least the one that fascinated me the most, was a track dedicated to Mingus and which started with more than one minute of a very realist simulation of the sounds emitted by an African cow herd and its shepherds (all done with musical instrument). That was amazing to listen at headphones, at night, in the dark. Took me to Africa...


Edited by harmonium.ro - 09 Aug 2011 at 3:26pm

Christ...I have no idea. Haha. I'm assuming it was something in the fusion field being I only started to get into jazz proper recently. Maybe Brand X's Moroccan Roll? I've also had some The Industrial Jazz Group stuff for what seems like quite a long time, so maybe their City Of Angels.

In order of purchase (and in one case, in order of having heard after borrowing and then eventually buying from a friend):

I'm pretty sure it was an album by Jimmy Smith because I loved the sound of the Hammond B3 ever since I'd heard Dave "Baby" Cortez's 45 single of "The Happy Organ."  Not sure if I was ready for what Smith was doing, though, and the fact that I don't still have that LP proves that it went over my head.  "Streetnoise" by Brian Auger and the Trinity may have been the first one that I liked enough to keep but that one opened me up to all sorts of possibilities.

The first jazz albums I really got into were The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady by Mingus, and Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival 1965 by John Handy.

Edited by Noak2 - 20 Aug 2011 at 7:55am

Kazuhiro wrote: Tune of Art Blakey to which I listened on radio by chance. And, 8:30 of Weather Report to which it listens by chance in the library of the university. These have expanded my interest in jazz.

I also started my interest in fusion with Weather Report (Black Market)

^ Very cool! Welcome to JMA. I used to work for a CD retailer too - it was pretty damn good having access to amazing music at a staff discount!