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Disappearing Jazz?

After years of collecting all types of music except jazz and big band I'm now playing catchup.  Looking at the recordings of Ruby Braff (trumpet), Dick Hyman (piano) Roland Hanna (piano). Art Tatum (piano), Claude Bolling even the great vocalist Sarah Vaughan I find the majority of their catalog is only available used on vinyl.  There are many other names I could have included in this list - I'm gradually getting to them (Thelonious Sphere Monk, etc ).

Beyond the lack of availability what alarms me as a new collector of this genre is that there doesn't appear to be musicians to take the place of these giants.  Not to say there are no more Big Bands or jazz pianists BUT how many new artists have the hundreds of recordings these musicians created?

Is jazz disappearing?  Will streaming services eventually include recordings only available on LP? 

Feel free to offer any suggestions for other artists to collect in the traditional jazz / big band category.  I also have collected Miles, Coltrane and Bill Evans though just starting to dive into Ellington.

Hoping to find this music soon.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

bigquery

Showing 1 response by carlsbad

carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

Rock and Roll disappeared.  Country morphed to something else.  Young musiciand think something called "hip hop" is musical.  

The change has been exacerbated by the demise of AM/FM radio along with records.  I think a lot of the people that would have been buying records casually in the past and supporting good music (you have to like something to pay for it) are now "settling" for what they can find on Pandora and they aren't really listening to what they want as much as what is provided on the station.  Somehow I think the ability for a listener to "vote" has escaped most of the over 30 listeners.  

So I think this results in more of the popular singers towing the line of what the marketing moguls think is popular and less "wow that's a surprisingly engaging song".  Could Kenny G or Herb Alpert become stars today?  (I pick those 2 as examples of instrumentalists who became popular on AM).

Jerry

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