I've been working at the piano for some time now; my specialty is jazz. I like Wayne Shorter, Miles, Herbie Hancock, Taylor Eigsty, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and all the other musicians from the bebop era. I like smooth jazz also, but it has its limits for me. It's not adventurous, groundbreaking,
My love affair with jazz started years ago when I was a child. My father was a musician. He played in the Santa Barbara area in the 1930's. He played Latin music: Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican. It was a string orchestra and they dressed with hip pants, with the flared trousers--bell sottoms with hats that had those little balls hanging from the brim all around. I think there is a special name for those hats, but I don't know what it is.
I remember my father playing the guitar with a very rhythmic style, a strum and slap on the strings. I must have been about three or four years old. Still, though I liked it, I preferred "American" music. I didn't know what that was, but if I had to play something, it would have been American music. And it had to be a trumpet. Even as a child I thought that was so cool. It wasn't until much later---well a few years, maybe ten years,--I was fourteen years old when my father got me a trumpet. Big band jazz influenced popular music when I was a teenager, in the fifties. There was Woody Herman, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Billy Mays, Ray Anthony, all good musicians with good bands. I was enamored with what I imagined was the lifestyle that traveling musicians enjoyed. Then I heard Miles Davis play. Wow! I was blown away by his sound. I had very defined ideas of what I wanted to hear on the trumpet, and Miles' playing was certainly it.
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