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Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
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sambista
Joined: 25 Sep 2004
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Location: way station of life
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 Posted: 03/21/19 11:17 am ::: |
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| oh, god. impossible.
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no justice, no peace.
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jammerbirdi
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 03/21/19 12:26 pm ::: |
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Because the making of jazz music involves the creation of beauty, as well as the musical expression of an enlightenment through the often spontaneous arrangement of notes and chords and rhythm, it's very hard to apply a term or thought like 'greatest' or 'best' to jazz artists or the music they have managed to make in their lives and have recorded for posterity.
Nevertheless, when I'm answering this question in my head and not publicly, with enthusiasm, the names I come up with are Wes (who isn't on your list of suggestions along with any other guitar player except Wes’s biggest fan ever, Pat Metheny) and Bill Evans. They are the most untouchable talents and the most creative and the most beautiful. They can play music and make you see literal pictures and visit places and hear and know stories that you hadn't known or heard prior to that moment. Cannonball Adderley also had this talent but not to the comprehensive untouchable virtuosic degree that a Wes or a Bill Evans had.
In some ways this is an easy question if you're looking at who are the most important jazz musicians of all time. Because asking who is the greatest in jazz is so different than asking who's the greatest ball player because you have stats and championships and longevity etc. to base making a call like that on. Even asking who's the greatest classical composer might be easier because you have a catalogue of works and hundreds of years for the human race to decide what ultimately was better.
There's absolutely no question that the most important jazz musician of all time is Charlie Parker. Bebop is to jazz what running is to basketball. There was no running in jazz before Bird and there was no walking in jazz after Bird.
Wes or Bill Evans.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oRCCku0CehU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Today your life and your morning is blessed to hear and witness this YouTube video of Wes Montgomery. You should know that and you soon will.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EksUgcyXoO8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>_________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
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jammerbirdi
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 03/21/19 2:29 pm ::: |
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1. Wes Montgomery
2. Bill Evans
3. Charlie Parker
4. Duke Ellington
5. Louis Armstrong
6. John Coltrane
7. Thelonious Monk
8. Cannonball Adderley
9. Miles Davis
10. Paul Desmond
11. Horace Silver
12. Dizzy Gillespie
13. Billie Holiday
14. Jim Hall
15. Sarah Vaughan
16. Frank Sinatra
17. Charles Mingus
18. Stan Getz
19. Count Basie
20. Marian McPartland_________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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jammerbirdi
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 03/21/19 3:04 pm ::: |
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So I'm going to work backwards on my list. And I think it's telling in terms of the nature of all this that there ain't nobody better than Marian McPartland. Her artistry stands completely and absolutely alone. And she's just my #20.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ULmAoc0bCRo" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>_________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
Posts: 8225
Location: Heisenberg
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| Posted: 03/21/19 3:25 pm ::: |
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10 is too hard. I'll pick one . . . Buddy Rich . . . because I think it's inarguable that he's the best at his instrument who's ever lived.
Beginning on Broadway in 1921 at age 4 as "Traps, the Drum Wonder".
To playing with various big bands in the 30's to the 50's and for decades after that with his own band, famous for his insane drum solos. (The impatient can start at 4:30 for his signature acceleration trick.)
<iframe width="471" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/94DeieWZgTM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
To his last recorded performance in 1987 at age 70, suffering from several heart attacks and a brain tumor, two months before his death.
<iframe width="611" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Td8ySGHLoko" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> |
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jammerbirdi
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 03/22/19 4:07 am ::: |
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Killing as many birds with one post as we can here.
This is just a little bit hard to explain. Two really very old men, I would guess 20 years past their prime, at the very least, doing music that requires an ass-load of prime. So this really should suck. I don't know what Sinatra is using to clear his head but I want some of that.
Count Basie and Frank Sinatra.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_11BAZlrNUs" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>_________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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jammerbirdi
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 03/22/19 4:37 am ::: |
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His playing alone is like a genre unto itself. There's a 33 minute collection on YouTube entitled, Those Six Times When Stan Getz Melted Our Hearts. I'm not posting that because it's later period stuff. But I found some of the comments interesting so I'll post them.
Frederic Suffet
One night decades ago, it must have been in the 60s, I heard him play an unaccompanied version of Little Girl Blue at Birdland. Within seconds after he started the whole place fell silent -- no clinking glasses, no one talking, and it seemed as if no one was breathing. I've been going to jazz clubs since the mid-50s, and that has stayed in memory as one of the most stunningly beautiful things I've ever heard.
luis fernando
I like Coltrane, Parker, Desmond, but Stan Getz in your eyes...
Matt Dubuque
"We all wish we sounded like Stan Getz." - John Coltrane
So here is John Coltrane and Stan Gets together along with Oscar Peterson on piano and Paul Chambers on bass.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HE9bRhUwELE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
An entire concert on BBC television from 1966.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/70OuKeCOU5U" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>_________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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5thmantheme
Joined: 11 Apr 2016
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| Posted: 03/26/19 4:37 pm ::: |
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Jazz the Art, has this thing.
Lots of things got called "jazz" but some of them didn't deserve to use the word.
It's a tricky thing to negotiate for a newcomer.
King Whiteman , Bing Crosby and Kenny G are not inside the art camp at all (though Bing coulda been curated a little).
But Frank Sinatra was usually held to be a real jazz musician, by Bird too.
Frank was the #1 artist from '45 to '55, and yet was held in high esteem by the revolutionaries.
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jammerbirdi
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 03/26/19 8:26 pm ::: |
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| 5thmantheme wrote: |
Jazz the Art, has this thing.
Lots of things got called "jazz" but some of them didn't deserve to use the word.
It's a tricky thing to negotiate for a newcomer.
King Whiteman , Bing Crosby and Kenny G are not inside the art camp at all (though Bing coulda been curated a little).
But Frank Sinatra was usually held to be a real jazz musician, by Bird too.
Frank was the #1 artist from '45 to '55, and yet was held in high esteem by the revolutionaries. |
Excellent nuance there. Yeah, I think it said in Ken Burns 'Jazz' that Lester Young on his dying bed only wanted to listen to two things, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. There is a phrasing thing for singers. Comes from Louis Armstrong. Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and then a host of others followed. The jazz aspect of Judy had kind of escaped me. I didn't really see her latter work as exemplifying or incorporating that many of the elements of jazz phrasing etc. Totally my oversight. What opened my eyes were performances from early movies of all things. Jesus. She was pretty much swinging in the Satchmo style 15 years before Sinatra starting employing that kind of phrasing.
Got to give it to Judy Garland. What a talent.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eCbnJeMSGZ4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>_________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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jammerbirdi
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| Posted: 07/26/19 11:38 am ::: |
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So I just wanted to mention someone I overlooked. A lot of greats died young. Eric Dolphy, Lee Morgan. But the guy who needs to be added to the lists here is trumpeter Clifford Brown, who died when he was 25. This guy is easily one of the top four or five most influential players in jazz. You can trace his sound, his contribution, through Lee Morgan and then Miles and right into what became the basic melodic approach in cool jazz. In fact, when you hear jazz today, or for the last 50 years, there's a 90% chance you're hearing the sound of certain notes played against chords that Clifford Brown brought to jazz. Even without people knowing him, he's influenced nearly as many musicians as Charlie Parker. I would go as far to say more than Coltrane. In terms of INFLUENCE, I'd put it as:
1. Bird
2. Brownie
3. Trane
4. Miles
Again, it's important to remember that people might not even know exactly from where the music inside their head comes from. Clifford Brown inhabits everyone's sense of what jazz sounds like._________________ Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17 |
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Don't list an order just name 10 names or 15 if 10 is too difficult for you.