Novocastrian

Of course not. But I can spell it.

iaink

No.

yours sincerely, a saxophone player.

Good jazz is great to listen too as ideas pop off one another. but sadly its also incredibly rare. Anything less that good jazz is generally awful to listen too and all to easy to stumble upon Im afraid. Give me Basie over Miles any day, but for me it far more fun to play in a band than to listen to the results... so those that think Jazz is self indulgent wank are probably onto something.

As a wise man once said, Rock is playing 3 chords in front of thousands of people. Jazz is playing thousands of chords in front of 3 people.

dollface

and Country is 3 chords and the truth

Shard

If it's Jazz, I prefer the old Dixieland style sound too.

Oakvillian

One of my all-time favourite albums (as a very mediocre trumpet player) was an LP of Louis Armstrong playing Fats Waller tunes. Closely followed by a collaboration between Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges called "Back to Back," which was their take on a hatful of blues standards.

But then there's also the double-album set of Dave Brubeck's "Time Out" and "Time Further Out" which I found amongst my albums the other month and have been using to teach my son about unusual time signatures (the tracks on "Time Further Out" are arranged in order of the number of beats in a bar, from 3/4 and 4/4 through 5/4, 6/4, 6/8, 7/4, and 9/8). My boy, incidentally, absolutely loves the way some of the tracks mess with your head.

I'd take those, or an Art Tatum or Oscar Peterson piano trio, or even a trad jazz Humphrey Lyttleton number, over Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie any day - I could never really get into free jazz or be-bop stuff.

Shard

Listened to the "Back to Back" samples on Amazon, a warm authentic sound.

bats

But nobody, surely, can enjoy listening to Cleo Laine scatting? (Scat being the right word here)

Siouxie