Attend a concert by your local high school or college jazz band.
Listen to a jazz CD that is new to you. Try to stretch your ears. If you need some guidance, try The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 4th edition, by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, Tom Piazza's Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz.
Read a good book on jazz.
Find a new jazz website.
Listen to a radio station that plays genuine jazz.
oin your local jazz society. If none exists, organize one.
Subscribe to a jazz magazines, such as Down Beat, Jazz Times, Jazziz. Others include: Cadence, Marge Hofacre's Jazz News, The Mississippi Rag, and from
Canada, Coda, Planet Jazz, and The Jazz Report.
Host jazz listening sessions in your home.
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| Nazi Anti-Jazz Propaganda |
1. Pieces in foxtrot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the repertoires of light orchestras and dance bands;
2. in this so-called jazz type repertoire, preference is to be given to compositions in a major key and to lyrics expressing joy in life rather than Jewishly gloomy lyrics;
3. As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation. On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated;
4. so-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs);
5. strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);
6. also prohibited are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quarter beat (except in stylized military marches);
7. the double bass must be played solely with the bow in so-called jazz compositions;
8. plucking of the strings is prohibited, since it is damaging to the instrument and detrimental to Aryan musicality; if a so-called pizzicato effect is absolutely desirable for the character of the composition, strict care must be taken lest the string be allowed to patter on the sordine, which is henceforth forbidden;
9. musicians are likewise forbidden to make vocal improvisations (so-called scat);
10. all light orchestras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of saxophones of all keys and to substitute for them the violin-cello, the viola or possibly a suitable folk instrument.
T-Model's credentials are impeccable; if anything he's over qualified. He was born James Lewis Carter Ford in Forrest, a small community in Scott County, Mississippi. T-Model thinks he's seventy-five but isn't sure. He was plowing a field behind a mule on his family's farm by age eleven, and in his early teens he secured a job at a local sawmill. He excelled and was later recruited by a foreman from a bigger lumber company in the Delta, near Greenville, and eventually got promoted to truck driver. Between that and working in a log camp T-Model was sentenced to ten years on a chain-gang for murder. He lucked out and was released after serving two. He says, grinning, "I could really stomp some ass back then, stomp it good. I was a-sure-enough- dangerous man."
John Coltrane. Albert Ayler is well known for his love of leather suits (green ones, particularly). Less well known is fellow saxophonist Coltrane's obsession with lederhosen. Coltrane bought his first pair on tour in Germany in 1963 and is believed to have acquired over 300 pairs by the time of his death four years later. He regularly threw barbecues at his upstate New York home where he and pianist Alice Coltrane would model their latest purchases to music provided by a local oompah band. Pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones both quit Coltrane's "classic quartet" when Coltrane insisted they wore lederhosen on stage.
Miles Davis. The trumpeter's impish sense of fun sometimes bordered on the absurd. He would surprise audiences by turning his back to them, slipping on a red clown nose and then stopping the band while he told jokes. Critics accused him of tomming, but Davis said he got his inspiration from Louis Armstrong. "You can't tell a single joke that hasn't already been told by Armstrong," he once said. "We is happy folks, yassuh boss," he added.
