Why I Love Jazz

It's great traveling music. I drive to work every day with the jazz station playing on the radio. 91.1 FM operated by Samford University. True it's light jazz, none of the old classic standard musicians like Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, etc. ad infinitum. BUT it beats the heck out of everything else that's playing, including the standard rock/pop songs that I also prefer to the more modern "music" on offer today.

Note: one day rant on the pitiful stuff called music that plays today. Whiny, tinny, off key and depressing. Or just plain vulgar. Not a thought in its head.

Traveling music is music that has a lively beat, that seems to fit the very act of driving a vehicle. Other music that offers travel pleasure: the Viennese waltzes by Johanne Strauss. Of course with the waltzes, one can imagine riding in a coach drawn by beautiful white horses.

Back to why I love jazz.

Jazz is layered music. You get to multi-task with jazz. You can listen to the beat, to the rhythm, to the melody, to the vocal (if there is one), to the instrumentation, and finally just let the whole settle into your mind. Jazz isn't for the lazy listener.

Jazz is variety. You get big band, small quartet, vocal and solo instrument, swing, Latin, bossa nova, Dixieland, cool, hot, beebop, lazy, experimental.

What I don't like is jazz that is an amalgam of rock and jazz. I love real rock with a hard driving beat and I love most jazz. I just have this thing which is hate for combining the two.

Some favorite jazz artists:

Sarah Vaughn

Dave Brubeck

Ella Fitzgerald

Marian McPartland

Paul Desmond

Sting -- note: he doesn't make the mistake of combining rock and jazz, his jazz is pure and his voice a delight, I never realized how great a singer he is until I heard him sing "In the Moonlight" from the 1995 version of Sabrina

Manhattan Transfer

Keiko Matsui

Glenn Miller

Artie Shaw

Duke Ellington

Frank Sinatra

David Benoit

Acoustical Alchemy

Eric Essix

Stanley Turrentine

Stanley Jordan

Lyle Lovett -- didn't know he sings jazz, did you?

enough already. I LOVE jazz. The artists are too numerous to mention, sadly a lot of them are deceased.

Who cannot sing jazz: Norah Jones, Diana Krall.