JAZZ IS LIKE HEROIN TO ME ! ! ! ~~~~ ILM POST-1945 JAZZ ALBUMS POLL - THE RESULTS COUNTDOWN (now counting top 25!)

but guess what?

he's not up next

64 Ornette Coleman - Change of the Century (1960) 1083 points, 10 votes
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_HmvaR5cGW80/TIqDVgCNUEI/AAAAAAAAAXM/om0QJ92U2Co/s1600/change.jpeg
http://open.spotify.com/album/0ME2xPIm65f5cJve3ALqdi

i definitely voted for this one

oh it seems i didn't.. dont know why

going over this thread and listening to nothing but jazz in the last couple days - I've realized I have very little understanding/conception of the jazz audience of the 60s. I kind of assume jazz reached its commercial/popular peak much earlier (I know Miles' best-selling albums were in the 60s, but the ubiquity of jazz as a dominant style seems undeniable for earlier eras like the 20s-40s than it does for the 60s, what with r'n'r in the picture), but as a genre the general consensus represented here is that the aesthetic/artistic peak was in the late 50s through the 60s. This is when a lot of the essential ingredients of jazz - swing, improvisation, acoustic ensemble playing - became really intensely refined. But exactly how popular was, say, a giant like John Coltrane...? I have no idea. And who bought these records? Middle-class black people, white "intellectuals"...? I can't really see Hank Mobley and Grant Green appealling much to teenagers, the whole Blue Note vibe is one of adult sophistication, for example.

i voted for 4 of his so i guess it got culled from 5

I wish we could all have just voted for the "Beauty is a Rare Thing" compilation. I didn't feel comfortable voting for any Ornette album on its own, haha. I feel that way about Cecil Taylor, too... nothing feels fully representative.

like I would guess the genre skewed older and richer...? Black kids were being sold r&b, motown, etc. and white kids were being peddled a combination of pop and rock, I kinda can't imagine jazz was even on the menu for most younger music consumers...

xp

(Though I did vote for Ornette & Cecil albums)

but then jazz was sold to rock fans after that shakey

xp yeah i sort of wonder about jazz audiences, too -- obviously people like miles and coltrane were big cultural figures, but a lot of the time they'd be playing these tiny clubs! there must've been a disconnect between people who bought records and people who went out to gigs for whatever reason.

I wish we could all have just voted for the "Beauty is a Rare Thing" compilation.

agree, all of those early ornette albums are great, but they sort of seem like one big album to me

Exactly.

I don't think Coltrane was ever that popular among the general populace... A Love Supreme was considered a hit album by 60s jazz standards, but it didn't sell quite as much as the big rock and pop albums of the era. I think even back then Coltrane was mainly listened by "serious", highbrow jazz fans; the big, popular jazz hits of the 60s were more melody and/or groove oriented, like "Watermelon Man", or "The 'In' Crowd", or "Mercy Mercy Mercy".

obviously people like miles and coltrane were big cultural figures, but a lot of the time they'd be playing these tiny clubs

exactly I find this perplexing, this ability to occupy a "serious" and well-preserved cultural space while... not really selling all that many records or being all that popular...? how does that work? seems like anything comparable would be totally impossible today. but maybe I'm underestimating how much Miles and Coltrane sold. certainly I can see how they would have something of an appeal to a casual, adult, well-educated middle class music listener, but uh how many of those were there in America really...

but then jazz was sold to rock fans after that shakey

after what...? Bitches Brew?

coltrane "crossed over" with my favorite things, but i think he just used that as leverage for the rest of his career to do what he wanted, as opposed to repeating the formula ad nauseam. though i suppose there are a few attempts at another "favorite things" in his catalog -- greensleeves, chim chim cheree, etc.

How it was explained to me in a 20th century music class: bebop's complexity and undanceability, while they were musical advances, were bad news for the form economically from the late 40s on. As jazz switched from a dance music to a chamber music, R&B and rock and roll claimed their audiences.

loads of xposts

not really selling all that many records or being all that popular...? how does that work?

I think the key is that Coltrane and Miles appealed to the type of serious listeners who are also music writers, or musicians themselves, and they kept their names alive even if they weren't selling big amounts of records.

how does that work?
the house that trane built book from a few years back about impulse records goes into some of this -- basically there was a fairly sizeable core audience of die hards, but in general, the label coasted by because it was part of ABC Paramount. Impulse had a few hits (ray charles comes to mind) that made the label able to get by for a while, i think.

Were these artists profiled in, say, LIFE magazine, the way contemporary visual artists were (esp. thinking of the abstract expressionists)? They may have been chosen representatives of serious art by mass media publications.

As jazz switched from a dance music to a chamber music, R&B and rock and roll claimed their audiences.

this makes sense. what seems really odd to me is that the artform would fluorish and reach its peak several decades AFTER its commercial peak.

xp

obviously people like miles and coltrane were big cultural figures, but a lot of the time they'd be playing these tiny clubs! there must've been a disconnect between people who bought records and people who went out to gigs for whatever reason.

seems like back around the middle of the 20th century artists (visual and musical...authors too) could get to be "big cultural figures" and not be all that popular. a houswife or salesman in Lawrence, Kansas would know OF someone like Coltrane, Miles Davis, Keurorac, Ginsberg, Warhol etc, but not be too familiar with their work. they'd know they were important figures in their discipline, but not why.

lee morgan's "sidewinder" crossed over and sorta kick started the "soul jazz" thing in the early/mid 60s. my understanding is coltrane lost a lot of fans after 'a love supreme'

like once it had weaseled its way into being considered "serious"/highbrow it was able to economically coast and reap the benefits of that security without having to sell records.

xp

They may have been chosen representatives of serious art by mass media publications.

That's my sense of it (mainly from talking to older family members)

I guess the economic bar was reset a good bit lower and artists could experiment. xp to shakey

the soul/jazz movement is an obvious pop re-crossover attempt - a move back to jazz as dance music, but this time replacing swing with contemporary (at the time) funk and r&b rhythms. (I'm not knocking this stuff, I like a lot of it).

xp

ON.E # 1

Very droll.

That's... not one of my Cecil Taylor favorites.

I do not understand this. To my ears, it is majestic.

obviously people like miles and coltrane were big cultural figures, but a lot of the time they'd be playing these tiny clubs!

My mom grew up outside Chicago, and her older, hipper sister has great stories about sneaking out of the house when she was in high school (would've been I guess around 1960) to go with a friend to jazz clubs in the city. They saw Coletrane a bunch of times, playing in packed little places. Once they took him some chocolate chip cookies, because they read he liked them. He came out between sets to thank them.

Coltrane, that is.

wow, that's great.
obviously a lot of these guys could tour around europe and play big halls, too.

emil.y that was actually a typo

Once they took him some chocolate chip cookies, because they read he liked them. He came out between sets to thank them.

awwww

An interesting example of how much critical consensus has shaped our understanding of that era of jazz is that Charles Lloyd was actually one of the most popular, if not the most popular jazz artist of the 60s, yet he has been almost completely excluded from the 60s jazz canon, because his artistic merits weren't considered big enough, and the critics felt he was pandering to the hippie audience.

More discussion on the subject in this thread:

Artists/bands that were once quite popular, yet nowadays are mostly ignored in canonical history books

xp - Didn't a bunch of musicians end up spending long periods in Europe because it was they only place they could make any sort of reliable income?

they still do!

Were these artists profiled in, say, LIFE magazine, the way contemporary visual artists were (esp. thinking of the abstract expressionists)? They may have been chosen representatives of serious art by mass media publications.

Yeah. Here's a Miles write-up from Time, in 1958.

63    Charlie Haden - Liberation Music Orchestra(1969) 1091 Points, 10 votes
http://www.covershut.com/covers/Charlie-Haden-Liberation-Music-Orchestra-1969-Front-Cover-29509.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/1LjPCzf3XWmJswuKdoVn3L

i voted for this one

During the 1970s Lloyd played extensively with The Beach Boys both on their studio recordings and as a member of their touring band. In the late 1970s Lloyd was a member of Celebration, a band composed of members of the Beach Boys' touring band as well as fellow Transcendental Meditation followers Mike Love and Al Jardine. Celebration released two albums.

WHAT THE FUCK

European support of chamber music extending to American forms, Americans being too invested in moving they asssss shocka.

it all comes back to mike love

Kind of weird seeing that Charlie Haden album up here - it's fun and all but I didn't really consider voting for it.

emil.y that was actually a typo

Ha! Very fitting, then. (For those not keeping up, Conquistador! was my number one vote.)

my understanding is coltrane lost a lot of fans after 'a love supreme'

Really? IIRC, even in the 60s it was his biggest-selling album. So if he lost a lot of fans because of it, he gained even more new ones.

i meant the albums AFTER als

I do not understand this. To my ears, it is majestic.

― emil.y, Wednesday, August 31, 2011 5:50 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

Ditto. I'd be hard-pressed to name a single favorite Cecil record, but if the house is on fire, this is the one I'm gonna grab. If I grab two, the other one would be his European Orchestra 2CD Alms/Tiergarten (Spree).

And I really hope this isn't Bill Dixon's only appearance in the poll.

And i'll bet you didn't think this was going to place..