What was the first jazz artist that got you hooked on jazz? I was in a high end audio store and the salesperson put on Dianna Krall All or nothing at all on a pair of B&W's and ever since then I was hooked. And that is what led me down this never ending audio addiction.
Not sure whether it was Bill Evan's (Trio) Debbie, or Oscar Peterson's (Trio) We Get Requests. In either event it was a great place to start and has anchored a lot of my jazz preferences.
I have actually on a whim within the last few months picked up a couple used Spyro Gyra albums in mint condition for a pittance, like a buck apiece. These are very good recordings and the music and performances are quite good and enjoyable overall if not earth shattering creatively.
$1 can still buy you some good new sounds these days!
Laugh if you want, but I would say that my first step into jazz was listening to Spyro Gyra's Morning Dance on a Nautilus Super disc in a audio store on some Maggie speakers in 1979. I went out and bought the LP, not the speakers. I was still heavy into my rock phase at this time, Zepplin, Skynard, Floyd, etc.
Fast forward about 20 years later, and Miles Davis started developing my current tastes, where jazz is my prime genre of choice.
Interesting thread. Back when all I listened to was mind bending rock like Hendrix, King Crimson and Procul Harum I bought Miles Davis Bitches Brew for the cover art. Man was I disappointed; it sounded like incomprehensible, unmusical noise. A short while later by a lucky coincidence I heard the McCoy Tyner album Trident and several by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. I've been hooked ever since. 30 years later Bitches Brew sounds out-of-this-world marvelous but hey, that's not really jazz, it's that more mainstream, stepchild fusion music, haha.
Vince Guiraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas." I was six. Thirty some odd years later, I listened to a discussion on the making of "Kind of Blue" and was impressed. I've slowly built a collection from there.
It was the early 1980's. I was in my car and a song came on the college radio station by John Coltrane. The song was "Soultrane," from the Prestige album of the same name.I've been a jazz lover ever since.
Jazz Crusaders in the mid 70's. Heard them at a college party during an "altered state". The first jazz to insinuate itself in a rock & roll mindset and stick.
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