Jazz for aficionados

Orpheus - 
What I wrote was a real stripped down, simplified version of the far more complex history of the blues.  Written almost facetiously - though there's truth in it.  The roots of the "song form" date back to early on in the last century and probably well before that.  The blues absolutely derive from an oral tradition.  Thank God for Alan Lomax preserving some of that.  I don't find anything too profound in Rok's statement.  This is well-documented music history, not the product of some "authority" pontificating in a locked, ivory tower cell somewhere.  AND I was talking about what I hear(d) - my listening - that shaped a lot of my music preferences WAY before I even knew there was something called "the blues".  Jazz-wise, I defer to your knowledge.  Blues?  I will be guided by my own lights, thank you.     

"...so much of it is the same music with different words."  Yeah, it can be kind of formulaic (there's even a standard music theory structure for "a blues"!) but the blues don't have to always sound the same...and they DON'T.  I'm inclined to think some of the sameness reflects a kind of dumbing down and catering to a mass market (maybe).   Listen to enough B.B. King's Bluesville and it sometimes sounds like the same song on repeat.  Regardless, it's pretty clear to me jazz offers a lot more creative options...a bigger palette and more colors in the paint box.  Personal preference though?  Most days I'll be picking the blues 5 to 1.  

PS -
"Blues, Jazz, Fusion; what shall it be?"

How about all the above?

Hey O - Thanks for the Jean Luc Ponty Cosmic Messenger link.  I had saved that album to Spotify or Tidal a while ago.  Tried to listen and didn't care for it too much.  Just sounded dated and uninteresting.  Now tonight, this track (at least) I'm finding more agreeable.  

Re Mahavishnu, I think "visionary" is an apt term for them.  I blow hot and cold on 'em.  Sometimes that music is just too amped up and discordant; can find no rest there.   You realize Jerry Goodman from MO is also on that School of the Arts recording.  

Ghosthouse, I go back to the time when I bought the album, and I'm surrounded by the memories of that time when "Mahavishnu" was hot. No, I don't have it on my "playlist"; that's reserved for some of the cuts off the best 100 jazz LP's or similar.

Fusion sounds good once in a blue moon but not on a consistent basis. The title "Cosmic Messenger" says it all; we're in outer stellar space or someplace only your imagination can take you.

Most good "jazz" is about human beings and things you can relate to; while good fusion is for exercising your tweeters, and imagination. Personally I prefer to get into one zone at a time.


Rok, knew cotton fields, juke joints, and the people who made the blues, while others wrote and observed from afar; especially when you're talking about the "Delta Blues". I could always read between the lines of what Rok wrote and that's where the foundation of the blues lies. That's why I proposed a work shop of sorts, to define what the "Blues" is to us individually; otherwise it's quite ambiguous.