hepcat, daddy-o, zoot suit kings, and what not
Posted by u l a n on Sunday, August 06, 2006 at 8:05 PM.
I am relieved.
I have finally found a branch/style of jazz that I like. For years, I have struggled with the fact that I couldn't dig any of the jazz stuff that I encounter. Not enough corners, I would always say. Having grown up to rock n' roll, I've developed an intense liking for music that had a lot of corners.
Let me put it this way -- jazz (at least the kind that I couldn't like) had too much glissandi -- where notes would sort of slide slippery into each other. And I liked rough edges. Even if they're not too rough, I like them with some sort of edge. Or corners.
And then I realized...I liked big band. I had heard a few samples from some movie or other. So, off I went to allmusic to research.
"Big Band refers to a jazz group of ten or more musicians, usually
featuring at least three trumpets, two or more trombones, four or more
saxophones, and a "rhythm section" of accompanists playing some
combination of piano, guitar, bass, and drums. "Big band music" as a
concept for music fans is identified most with the swing era, although
there were large, jazz-oriented dance bands before the swing era of the
1930s and '40s, and large jazz-oriented concert bands after the swing
era."
Ok, I started there and got a few names to check out. Count Basie and Benny Goodman were the first names I checked out and I liked them immediately, especially Benny Goodman. I was hooked! So, armed with names from allmusic (Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong -- I only knew Duke by name and not by work; and as for Louis Armstrong, I just knew him to be the trumpeteer who did the song "What A Wonderful World").
I searched for big bands from the 30s. Lifey also introduced me to a few groups that fall under Neo-Swing (or swing revival) -- 90s groups that play swing: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Squirrel Nut Zippers (a group I'd heard of from my friend Peej; and theslob also mentioned them) and the Royal Crown Revue. And of course, there's the Brian Setzer Orchestra -- a group I've always liked because Brian Setzer was from the Stray Cats (a rockabilly revival group that I like very much). Never occured to me that hey, BSO is swing!
So there. I am now almost well-rounded hehehe.
Later, daddy-o.
A few jazzy/swingy tracks that I like can be found here:
dance, dance, dance (with a swing)
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Woo! Big Band is a cool genre! I studied that in music class last year and it turned out that I've been listening to that every time I would go to my lolo's house right next door. Such dance-y music!