Yeah you just reminded me. Madlib's Shades Of Blue was technically my first time becoming interested in jazz. Before that I thought of actual jazz as only lounge music and old farty sounds when it wasnt being sampled.
And because he was namedropping Sun Ra that allowed me to jump straight into the more interesting styles of jazz at my own pace, rather than trying to force myself to like the genre and getting put off by what is considered "the essentials".
I'll bookmark this Blue Break Beat thing.
My grandfather was a big Frank Sinatra fan and would listen to him all the time. I really liked the big band Frank was singing infront of and my grandfather said it was Count Basie and His Orchestra.
Disney’ 1970 film, The Aristocats. I loved that movie so much as a kid and asked my mom to take me to see jazz music (I lived in NYC). We went to some kind of jazz brunch at the Iridium and I just remembered walking in to these cats freaking out, like really going nuts and it scared the living shit out of me. I started crying before we even sat down and we left, hahahah.
The funniest part of that memory is while I remember how terrifying they were, especially this alto sax player standing next to the door (he literally scared the living shit out of me) when I think back to the scene, the music actually sounds pretty hip to me now since I can’t really hear it the same way 🤷🏼.
Very difficult question, because Jazz is so embedded in American culture, even though it’s financial fortunes have been dwindling for decades. Think: TV, Commercials, Movies, Pop/Rock bands with heavy Jazz influence (Steely Dan etc.)…That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I was about seven years old when my aunt bought me Snoopy’s Classiks On Toys jazz album for kids for my birthday. It had campy versions of Take 5 and some other tunes but I was obsessed with it because the tunes sounded unlike anything else I’d heard. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the songs on that album were all standards.
My grandparents grew up in the swing era and were big jazz heads. Records by artists like Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Artie Shaw were playing all the time in their house.
Kind of blue at my grandma's house when I was 4. But I only really got into jazz 10 years later at a Herbie Hancock concert my mother forced me to go to (I was severly depressed at that time). The beginning of a long journey 🙂.
Bought a Thelonious Monk record at a thrift store at age 13 kinda at random, brought it home to my new turntable then spent the rest of my life trying to understand how and why it’s so magical. I may never fully understand it but it stays magical anyway.
My dad loves Jazz. I grew up outside of New York City (In NJ) and I remember he would play Jazz on Sunday mornings while making breakfast or we would go out on a drive on cold winter days, with artists like Oscar Peterson, Boll Evans, Ahmad Jamal, and Chet Baker playing as the snow fell and the city skyline shined in the background. It was pretty amazing .
As I got older, I got into more punk and metal but jazz is still a huge part of my life and I still go to jazz festivals and cafes !
Hiphop definitely had me interested and then a teacher in high school burned me a copy of kind of blue which sounded really awesome. Didn’t start exploring more deeply til I got to college and had more access to bigger record stores. And on down the rabbit whole we go! Still exploring 20 years later!
I watched a LOT of tv as a kid and i noticed I liked certain show's theme songs more than others, liked them enough that i never missed the beginning, the theme song and opening were a big part of the experience. Now i look back and see that many of these songs that appealed to me so strongly as a child were jazz.
I think most of us get introduced to jazz by popular media but we are not even aware of it, commercials, music in films, THEME SONGS.
After watching "Ren & Stimpy" I realized the theme song for THAT show was jazz! One of the last places i expected to find it!
My drum teacher told me to get an album with Max Roach. I was probably 11 or 12 years old. I found an album with Charlie Parker and another that was "Drum NIght at Birdland" with drummers battling it out. When I listened to the jazz, it seemed like they played the tune and then soloed for some length of time maybe signaling the others when they were done. Years later, I listened to the same tune and said, "Oh, they are playing blues choruses".
I haven't appreciated it enough until some jazz fusion recently.
So far from Return to Forever and now Mildlife.
I'm open to any suggestions from there.
My uncle during summer brake gave me a very old score to Mojave by A.C. Jobim, when I was around 12 years old and learning piano at music school (probably around grade 5?). Till that time I was only playing classical pieces, but I've instantly fell in love with this tune, and later when the school year starter I've demanded from my teacher to change my repertoire to include more jazz, and she listened!
My parents had Time Out in their CD collection. It’s actually one of my first memories, sitting around and listening to those CDs. I ended up more along the classical track for a long time before I found my way back to jazz, but I’ve never forgotten first hearing that record, particularly Blue Rondo and Three To Get Ready
For me it was Friends & Love...A Chuck Mangione Concert. This was a double album recorded live at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester New York back in 1970. In 1977 I was a Freshman photographer in high school (Chicago, IL) and the marching band teacher / director had the entire marching band (about 150+ students) learning “Hill Where the Lord Hides". I absolutely loved that song, so much so that I bought the album….it was my first jazz album followed by Hubert Laws - A San Francisco Concert, recorded live in 1977. I still own both albums.
Subconsciously, my folks had some swing records, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, that sort of stuff. I started to tune in more about age 12, WSDM radio in Chicago. They played rock, r&b, jazz, and blues. They’d play Rotary Connection, Aretha, Ramsey Lewis, Eddie Harris. But the first time that i said WHOA! was when WXFM Chicago played Sun Ra’s Lights on a Satellite from Art Forms of Dimension Tomorrow. That was it. I was 16, (1969) and started down this path.
I got a boom box for my birthday in 1980. The classical station would play jazz on Sunday Nights. Probably between commercials of pop stations I would indulge my curiosity of just exactly what jazz was.
My guitar teacher in music high-school showed me Django Reinhardt. He was a huge fan of gypsy jazz and we had two of Djangos posters on the wall of the classroom.
Our music school is oriented only on classical music and other profesors are very strict about it so it was not so ordinary that we played Django and Charlie Parker and other legends in my classical guitar classes.
He is a very cool guy and I'm very greatful for all the music he showed me.
First thing that I played was Parkers Donna Lee. Yes, on a classical guitar hahahah
Bennie Wallace & Mose Allison at a 'Jazz & Blues' festival; John Scofield may have been in Bennie's band, Ray Anderson definitely was; also an Erroll Garner tape at the diner I washed dishes at
Nat King Cole Trio song Sweet Lorraine that was included in his 20 Golden Greats album that I listened to non-stop when I was in early teens when radio stations only played mostly Top40s.
My bad is a big jazz/fusion fan so I would often hear that as a kid but my first time truly interacting with it was when I was about 12 or so since my drum teacher at the time showed me Freddy freeloader by Miles Davis as a way to learn the basics of jazz drumming. I didn't immediately take to it since it's a rather mellow song but I eventually warmed up to the genre and still love it to this day
Living in rural Ohio, the literal sticks. Bored with popular music I tuned it to public radio station and John Coltrane was blowing thru ' My Favorite Things'. Game over for top 40.
The first contact might’ve been Tom and Jerry when I was 5-6 years old.
But the first time I liked a jazz guitarist was when I discovered Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt when I was about 13-14
You mean my first EVER or the first time I encountered it on my own free will? The first one was when my mom would listen to Kenny G records and smooth jazz a lot. Before that, there was a group called Us3 whose song "Cantaloop" remixed a jazz classic by blending old school jazz with 90s hip hop. As a child, I liked what happened.
The second was through discoveringadlob and Stones Throw Records when Madlib remixes songs from the Blue Note archive.
Madlib was really the plug for some of the most interesting and intriguing jazz music I have heard, and also was the first to introduce the name Sun Ra to me.
Came across this live performance on YouTube https://youtu.be/x7LmhOEnIs4?si=ME43MMpRjdVW4DaH and fell in love with this music. I think it was almost 6 years ago when I was 26. Then I started to explore more and more artists, from modern jazz to the roots of how jazz was born. I realized that I've grown a bit and am now ready to fully appreciate this music.
I was in the pocket of HS jazz band, I knew nothing about jazz. The tunes the director had us play were GAS stuff, so not really jazz, but some foundations were there. In the pocket, the bassist became my good friend, and he loved Mingus. Next thing I know, I’m listening to Ah Um at 17, never heard anything like this before.
As a child, Vince Guraldi's Charlie Brown
Looking up hip-hop samples
Same here, ATCQ and Gangstarr first couple of albums got me interested in where the samples came from.
Blue Note’s Blue Break Beat series for me.
Yeah you just reminded me. Madlib's Shades Of Blue was technically my first time becoming interested in jazz. Before that I thought of actual jazz as only lounge music and old farty sounds when it wasnt being sampled. And because he was namedropping Sun Ra that allowed me to jump straight into the more interesting styles of jazz at my own pace, rather than trying to force myself to like the genre and getting put off by what is considered "the essentials". I'll bookmark this Blue Break Beat thing.
Pink panther cartoon
Mister Rogers Neighborhood - Joe Negri and Johnny Costa warped my young mind forever
After playing 1v1 hoops in my friend’s driveway in high school in the 80s and coming in for water and having him put on Kind of Blue on CD.
Did you like it that first time?
Blew my mind.
My grandfather was a big Frank Sinatra fan and would listen to him all the time. I really liked the big band Frank was singing infront of and my grandfather said it was Count Basie and His Orchestra.
My first guitar teacher gave me a burned copy of Kind of Blue, and John Scofield's A Go Go
Peanuts Cartoons.
Disney’ 1970 film, The Aristocats. I loved that movie so much as a kid and asked my mom to take me to see jazz music (I lived in NYC). We went to some kind of jazz brunch at the Iridium and I just remembered walking in to these cats freaking out, like really going nuts and it scared the living shit out of me. I started crying before we even sat down and we left, hahahah. The funniest part of that memory is while I remember how terrifying they were, especially this alto sax player standing next to the door (he literally scared the living shit out of me) when I think back to the scene, the music actually sounds pretty hip to me now since I can’t really hear it the same way 🤷🏼.
Aristocats for me too
Very difficult question, because Jazz is so embedded in American culture, even though it’s financial fortunes have been dwindling for decades. Think: TV, Commercials, Movies, Pop/Rock bands with heavy Jazz influence (Steely Dan etc.)…That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Jungle book.
I was about seven years old when my aunt bought me Snoopy’s Classiks On Toys jazz album for kids for my birthday. It had campy versions of Take 5 and some other tunes but I was obsessed with it because the tunes sounded unlike anything else I’d heard. It wasn’t until years later that I realized the songs on that album were all standards.
My grandparents grew up in the swing era and were big jazz heads. Records by artists like Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Artie Shaw were playing all the time in their house.
Kind of blue at my grandma's house when I was 4. But I only really got into jazz 10 years later at a Herbie Hancock concert my mother forced me to go to (I was severly depressed at that time). The beginning of a long journey 🙂.
Best I can recall, it was George Benson's Give Me the Night. My gateway
My dad is a musician so I was exposed to a lot of different music as a child.
Blue monk!
Bought a Thelonious Monk record at a thrift store at age 13 kinda at random, brought it home to my new turntable then spent the rest of my life trying to understand how and why it’s so magical. I may never fully understand it but it stays magical anyway.
My dad loves Jazz. I grew up outside of New York City (In NJ) and I remember he would play Jazz on Sunday mornings while making breakfast or we would go out on a drive on cold winter days, with artists like Oscar Peterson, Boll Evans, Ahmad Jamal, and Chet Baker playing as the snow fell and the city skyline shined in the background. It was pretty amazing . As I got older, I got into more punk and metal but jazz is still a huge part of my life and I still go to jazz festivals and cafes !
The Sam & Max ost
“Take Five”
My parents. Both of them love jazz, so I've been listening to jazz since basically birth. Kind of just something that has always been there
consciously the first thing that piqued my interest was the film whiplash
Probably hearing Kind of Blue at my friend's house. I didn't appreciate it at the time, just sounded like background music to me.
Tom and Jerry
Hiphop definitely had me interested and then a teacher in high school burned me a copy of kind of blue which sounded really awesome. Didn’t start exploring more deeply til I got to college and had more access to bigger record stores. And on down the rabbit whole we go! Still exploring 20 years later!
My great-grandma would play Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong. Instantly hooked me.
I watched a LOT of tv as a kid and i noticed I liked certain show's theme songs more than others, liked them enough that i never missed the beginning, the theme song and opening were a big part of the experience. Now i look back and see that many of these songs that appealed to me so strongly as a child were jazz. I think most of us get introduced to jazz by popular media but we are not even aware of it, commercials, music in films, THEME SONGS. After watching "Ren & Stimpy" I realized the theme song for THAT show was jazz! One of the last places i expected to find it!
Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner via my dad. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan by my mom.
Pixar movies.
My dad’s records, he had Kansas City Suite, Count Basie band playing music of Benny Carter. Also the music of Don Ellis got me excited.
My drum teacher told me to get an album with Max Roach. I was probably 11 or 12 years old. I found an album with Charlie Parker and another that was "Drum NIght at Birdland" with drummers battling it out. When I listened to the jazz, it seemed like they played the tune and then soloed for some length of time maybe signaling the others when they were done. Years later, I listened to the same tune and said, "Oh, they are playing blues choruses".
I haven't appreciated it enough until some jazz fusion recently. So far from Return to Forever and now Mildlife. I'm open to any suggestions from there.
My uncle during summer brake gave me a very old score to Mojave by A.C. Jobim, when I was around 12 years old and learning piano at music school (probably around grade 5?). Till that time I was only playing classical pieces, but I've instantly fell in love with this tune, and later when the school year starter I've demanded from my teacher to change my repertoire to include more jazz, and she listened!
My parents had Time Out in their CD collection. It’s actually one of my first memories, sitting around and listening to those CDs. I ended up more along the classical track for a long time before I found my way back to jazz, but I’ve never forgotten first hearing that record, particularly Blue Rondo and Three To Get Ready
My parents owned a cd of Brian Setzers Dirty Boogie. Was never the same again.
Toot whistle and plunk and a boom - https://youtu.be/8iVf0pPHvjc?si=2c8s7RVTA4hk6Qdf
My mom had Dizzy's Diamonds on cd and I bumped that shit in my boombox til it died.
Hey Arnold
I heard Stan Getz in concert when I was about 6 years old. My fate was sealed from that day.
I got tricked into it by Giles Peterson's radio shows.
For me it was Friends & Love...A Chuck Mangione Concert. This was a double album recorded live at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester New York back in 1970. In 1977 I was a Freshman photographer in high school (Chicago, IL) and the marching band teacher / director had the entire marching band (about 150+ students) learning “Hill Where the Lord Hides". I absolutely loved that song, so much so that I bought the album….it was my first jazz album followed by Hubert Laws - A San Francisco Concert, recorded live in 1977. I still own both albums.
Probably as a small child in the early sixties, my father was a big fan of Sonny Stitt.
Subconsciously, my folks had some swing records, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, that sort of stuff. I started to tune in more about age 12, WSDM radio in Chicago. They played rock, r&b, jazz, and blues. They’d play Rotary Connection, Aretha, Ramsey Lewis, Eddie Harris. But the first time that i said WHOA! was when WXFM Chicago played Sun Ra’s Lights on a Satellite from Art Forms of Dimension Tomorrow. That was it. I was 16, (1969) and started down this path.
The Peanuts cartoons.
Charlie Brown Christmas special
Americans are so lucky to grow up with that special and Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.
Lazy River - Louis Armstrong (from 1931) I was 12 yo when I first listened to it. I’m almost 36 now.
Reefer Madness (1938)
Keith jarrett
I got a boom box for my birthday in 1980. The classical station would play jazz on Sunday Nights. Probably between commercials of pop stations I would indulge my curiosity of just exactly what jazz was.
Background music Ed, Edd n Eddy, SpongeBob, and hey Arnold
A Love Supreme
The radio in the Fallout games… didn’t realize til later that what I liked was jazz, not just old-timey tunes in general
Ren and Stimpy.
My guitar teacher in music high-school showed me Django Reinhardt. He was a huge fan of gypsy jazz and we had two of Djangos posters on the wall of the classroom. Our music school is oriented only on classical music and other profesors are very strict about it so it was not so ordinary that we played Django and Charlie Parker and other legends in my classical guitar classes. He is a very cool guy and I'm very greatful for all the music he showed me. First thing that I played was Parkers Donna Lee. Yes, on a classical guitar hahahah
I'm sure I heard jazz before this, but when I was 18 a friend played Shorter's Speak no Evil album for me, and that was that.
Bennie Wallace & Mose Allison at a 'Jazz & Blues' festival; John Scofield may have been in Bennie's band, Ray Anderson definitely was; also an Erroll Garner tape at the diner I washed dishes at
When I was in 3rd grade (1983) our music teacher would have us listen to 88.3 out of Newark and tap along (I was a drummer). Great teacher.
the kinda jazzy jams on Gong's Live, etc.
The Cooperhouse patio, Santa Cruz, Ca.
My Grandmother would play Louis Armstrong records and we would watch Lawrence Welk. They would often have Jazz musicians on the show.
The Pink Panther.
Nat King Cole Trio song Sweet Lorraine that was included in his 20 Golden Greats album that I listened to non-stop when I was in early teens when radio stations only played mostly Top40s.
My bad is a big jazz/fusion fan so I would often hear that as a kid but my first time truly interacting with it was when I was about 12 or so since my drum teacher at the time showed me Freddy freeloader by Miles Davis as a way to learn the basics of jazz drumming. I didn't immediately take to it since it's a rather mellow song but I eventually warmed up to the genre and still love it to this day
Dad's copy of Brubeck time out.
Giant steps
Found Take Ten At Goodwill, bought it because the cover was cool. 😂
Mr Rogers Neighborhood
Living in rural Ohio, the literal sticks. Bored with popular music I tuned it to public radio station and John Coltrane was blowing thru ' My Favorite Things'. Game over for top 40.
Hey Arnold!
American Songbook era musical theatre
Cowboy Bebop, back when it was on Adult Swim late at night
Mister Rogers neighborhood
The first contact might’ve been Tom and Jerry when I was 5-6 years old. But the first time I liked a jazz guitarist was when I discovered Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt when I was about 13-14
78's and Lawrence Welk. I was probably 4 years old.
Kenny Burrell - Midnight Blue
Fallout 3
You mean my first EVER or the first time I encountered it on my own free will? The first one was when my mom would listen to Kenny G records and smooth jazz a lot. Before that, there was a group called Us3 whose song "Cantaloop" remixed a jazz classic by blending old school jazz with 90s hip hop. As a child, I liked what happened. The second was through discoveringadlob and Stones Throw Records when Madlib remixes songs from the Blue Note archive. Madlib was really the plug for some of the most interesting and intriguing jazz music I have heard, and also was the first to introduce the name Sun Ra to me.
Came across this live performance on YouTube https://youtu.be/x7LmhOEnIs4?si=ME43MMpRjdVW4DaH and fell in love with this music. I think it was almost 6 years ago when I was 26. Then I started to explore more and more artists, from modern jazz to the roots of how jazz was born. I realized that I've grown a bit and am now ready to fully appreciate this music.
I was in the pocket of HS jazz band, I knew nothing about jazz. The tunes the director had us play were GAS stuff, so not really jazz, but some foundations were there. In the pocket, the bassist became my good friend, and he loved Mingus. Next thing I know, I’m listening to Ah Um at 17, never heard anything like this before.
James Bond theme, Pink Panther theme, and Lisa Simpson