You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Favorite First Jazz Albums From a Non-Musician - #36

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

Peter and Adam are joined by Open Studio co-founder and jazz fan, Dan Martin to discuss Dan's favorite first jazz albums and what non-musicians are thinking about when they listen to jazz. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today we're going to talk to a non-musician about his or her favorite first jazz albums. Well, I'm only seeing one person here and it's not a her. It's Dan Martin. Dan Martin, co-founder of Open Studio. How you doing? What's up guys? Okay, now this is funny because we said favorite first jazz albums. Is that correct? I think it's correct in this case because I think Dan has three albums that he wants to talk about. So I mean, what we're going to do here, The whole point is that Peter and I like to talk about jazz from a very inside perspective, but it's super important as a musician to know how your audience hears things. Like, Dan, you don't know what scale is being played over a chord change at all, right?

I sure don't. Yeah, but you still like jazz. Yeah, I know it sounds good. That's right. Ultimately, the name of the podcast is you'll hear it, so we must put some value on how it sounds, right? I mean, we should anyway. Okay, so let's kick it off, Dan. What's first on your list?

Yeah, so growing up, you know, in the 70s and 80s, we had a collection of records that is probably pretty popular back then of a Smithsonian collection, which took you from the beginning, I think like 1915 all the way to the 70s, kind of a whole repertoire of jazz, multiple artists. And at the time, that was kind of my initial exposure, which let me kind of pick a genre or a tune and figure out what I liked and didn't like. So for our younger listeners, this would be the equivalent of like a Spotify playlist, the curated Spotify playlist.

Right, but curated by like a intergovernmental agency. There were many, there was like timeline and Smithsonian. Not by some random Norwegian guy. Westinghouse. They all have these collections, right? Right. But this was, I mean, I remember,

I mean, the Smithsonian classic jazz, I think, I mean, it's incredible. That's right. And it was definitely, you took it, each side of the record was a different, like, five years or basically, or 10 years, it would take you from East St. Louis Blues all the way to the 70s experimental stuff

with Cecil Taylor. And then in between you had Thelonius, you had Duke Ellington, you had everything else in between. So it was kind of cool that I could listen to different tunes that I liked that wasn't necessarily what the record labels wanted to put out as the greatest hits. And kind of didn't have to buy a whole artist. That was my first entree into just kind of the jazz world. Nice. Do you remember what you're the first jazz CD that you bought yourself? I do.

It was Winton Marsalis' Standards in Time Number Three, which was, him playing with his father. That's a great record. And I actually never even bought two or one. This was recommended to a friend by a friend of mine as his favorite. And I think it was the perfect entree into jazz for me because it really has set the bar pretty high for what I liked and just set it as like, this is the style that I'm very comfortable with.

Nice. And I think that record, and now I'm kind of just remembered having grown up listening to Winton's records. And like we've talked about Black Coats from the Underground. on earlier episodes, but that record is probably the best sounding, most kind of immersive, I mean, very sophisticated, but a simple record with a lot of sophistication underneath there, very atmospheric, you know, of any of the things that he's certainly recorded since then. So, funny story is I actually played that.

I only had one or two jazz albums at the time. I played that at my first date while I cooked for, not my very first date ever, First date with the person that ended up being my wife, as I cooked her dinner at my apartment, that was playing in the background. It works. It worked. It worked. That is classy. The capital K.

That's right. That's a great lesson, though, for musicians. We get caught up, I think, in the minutia of, like, of, you know, what triadic pattern should I be playing? But, you know, your average listener... That's one my voice was. No, that was definitely my voice. But your average listener, you know, they're much more concerned with the sound of it, the feel of it, the groove of it. It's creating an atmosphere.

And I think that's actually, this is really nice. And I'm rethinking my entire structure. There you go. I'm rethinking my date I was going to take my wife on time. We're staying in. I'm cooking. I'm putting, getting some wine, getting a little Whitmercala standard. It's time, volume three going.

But you got to remember, so in the early 90s, as far as mainstream jazz went, Winton was kind of at, I don't know if I dare say he was at the top of his game then. But at the time, he was kind of the godfather of current jazz. Before you went to people that were, you know, the older. older folk. Right. So, you know, I remember going and seeing whatever his latest release would be and looking at the record label and looking at who's on that CD with him and then buying their CDs.

So it definitely was this network of a genre of jazz for that era that was something I really liked. And that helped then to say, okay, what kind of older stuff do I want? Well, is it similar to that? Oh yeah, then I'll definitely like it. Well, that's interesting. That might have been the tail end of this period of kind of having the network effect, kind of some virality to you like this one thing,

because you mentioned like somebody that played with him. Then if they had an album and musicians have done that, but really jazz listeners over the years, I know my dad talking about that when he was coming up, like you go to the record store and you could test it out and hear it. And then if you like something, you like, if you like this, maybe you like this. And maybe it's being done a little bit on Spotify, Apple Music, whatever, YouTube like, you know, check this out next.

But at that time it was really, I guess, based really upon who you heard on somebody else's record. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So what's your next album on this list? Next album. You know, so it's a little bit unusual, but one of my favorites from early on was Miles Davis's Porgy and Best, which wasn't a soundtrack per se, but it was just this epic recording.

That's great. That really, I actually listened to before I'd ever even heard the regular standard version of Borgian Bess. So that set the bar pretty high when I heard like a regular Broadway version. Yeah. I think the Miles version is a pretty decent compared to the regular version.

No, I'm saying I loved it. I think it's so epic, you know, just in the depth and the size. Gil Evans arranging on that is unbelievable. Yeah, and I mean the sound of that record like with the kind of echo chamber Sony church vibe that they had going really matches the epicness of the arrangement

and Miles's approach. I mean, you're talking about his lyricism. I think that really comes across, you know, to musicians and non-musicians. For sure, because I didn't even know there were words, right? So that's the beauty of it. So I'm hearing it, and I'm hearing the trumpet singing. Right. And then when you finally hear the tune, oh, that's kind of what he's referring to.

Okay, Dan, saying, you heard the trumpet singing. And Miles, mission accomplished. Right. Dan, you got good taste, man. Yeah, good taste. Okay, I see why we hang around together at this open studio place. That's right. Well, thank you for being our very first guest.

My pleasure. pleasure. My pleasure. You'll hear it and we'll see you at the next episode. Oh I guess we we we do a little bit of you want to do a little housekeeping with us. I'm sure. Okay. You'll hear it. Oh no, maybe the part of my go to the website and give us suggestions. He's not a pro folks. I'm sorry. Put too much pressure. It's your first episode. The podcasting stuff. That's easy. Yeah, yeah. So go to you'll hear it.com. Wait, hold on. I got it. Okay. Sure I can do the housekeeping. Go to you'll hear it.com or open studio network. com slash podcast. I mean, now you confuse them, but that's cool. I can edit that out. And what do they do when they get there?

And make sure to subscribe, and if you like it, go ahead and like us on... Give us five-star. Five-star review on... Minimum, minimum. We don't want to tell you how to rate it. Rate it as you want, but... And you can give us some suggestions for future episodes, future guests, that kind of thing. I will.

Oh, you didn't remember me. Yeah. And take some advice. jazz musicians from a jazz fan who is not a jazz musician and You'll hear it. That's it for today's episode of You'll Hear It. We'll be back tomorrow, but if you need more information, you can go to you'll hear it.com