Jazz

4.     Jazz. My earliest encounter with jazz was this eclectic album, which my father would have brought into the house in 1960. It includes ‘All Blues’, a cool school work by Miles Davis that my father found took things a bit too far, but I found the most fascinating track on the disc. (I should say here, this is the same person who listened for hours to Messiaen, Bruckner, and Mahler, very loud.) My education in jazz began twenty years later when living with Paul Grabowsky and other musicians in Carlton, when I did jazz shows on 3-RRR. These people pursued the meaning of bebop, free form, seventies funk, and other styles through the night and all of the weekend. I saw for the first time that ‘All Blues’ was an improvisation performed by artists who themselves epitomise jazz music’s endless possibilities, part of what became a classic, ‘Kind of Blue’ (1959). There is Miles himself, central to the invention of hard bop, modal cool, fusion, electric funk, you name it. “Cannonball” Adderley, another leader in his own right, a master of the bebop form; he plays alto saxophone. Bill Evans on piano, a musician I play all the time at home, so many records, an inimitable artist who some people think is the central cause of the ‘Kind of Blue’ mood. Jimmy Cobb on drums, the last surviving player from the session, now in his nineties, but at that time a sign of the future of jazz performance. Paul Chambers on bass, as we would say matter-of-factly on late night radio. And then the majestic figure, both musically and physically, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone. To this day his entrance on any track inspires a nervous laugh of wonder at what is about to happen. The depth and feel of his powerful playing, always in sync with what’s going on but at the same time on some other level of expression, is one extravagant gift on top of all the others that these great musicians have brought to this listener, and millions more.