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

@bigquery 

Sorry if I misunderstood.

Perhaps starting a new thread specifically about the range of Jazz available for streaming would be a next step. 

Check out Jazz24 streaming radio out of Seattle (KNKX) for a good mix of old and new. I am not a huge jazz fan but enjoyed it enough I became a modest donor to the cause.

For Big Band jazz check out:

  • Ted Hogarth and the Mulligan Mosaics
  • Quincy Jones
  • USAF Big Band "The Airmen of Note"

Also,

Stream WZUM "The Pittsburgh Jazz Channel"

 

Many of my recent jazz discoveries have come from listening to "The Don Was Motor City Playlist" on WDET in Detroit. If you are not in Detroit, the program can also be accessed on the WDET website (WDET.org) or Spotify.

BTW, Don is the current president of Blue Note records.

In addition to the reissues @Sbank mentioned on vinyl-- high quality at a reasonable price, there are current bands- Snarky Puppy out of Northern Texas is a jazz collective that ought to scratch your big band itch. There are similar collectives in the UK too, Maisha, for example, which channels spiritual jazz. They did a direct to disc record a few years ago with Gary Bartz, who was one of the original players from the era. I don't know what format you are collecting --CD? but that may be part of the problem since for now, it is considered a dying medium. (They said that about vinyl too, remember?)

I'm all about discovery, research, "surfing" music-- lots of it is older stuff. I found a groove in the post-bop era from the early '70s-- spiritual and soul jazz--may not be your thing, but the point is, there's a ton of music I haven't explored that is out there. And given the relatively low price demanded for most CDs these days (if that's your thing), you can take some risks. 

There's also this thing called "Bandcamp" which is a site where bands/labels that don't necessarily have major distribution sell directly- you can sample the music and buy in a few different formats. 

Every once in a while I'll fire up a more well known performer, like Art Pepper, but an awful lot of what I've bought in the last ten years is small/private label stuff. Some of it is more avant garde than the acts you mention, but I've gradually developed a taste for less predictable stuff--

As I mentioned elsewhere, Alice Coltrane's Ptah the El Daoud has been out of print on vinyl since 1974. It is finally being reissued on LP though has been available on CD. 

There are plenty of resources, from threads here and groups on Facebook to blogs. Once you get started, it becomes an adventure- you hear an album you like and really appreciate one or another of the supporting players- you look that person up and find a wealth of other albums on which they are featured or appeared as sidemen. 

Good hunting!