Jazz Me Up
Here I am, writing on and on yet overlooking the fact that this blog is an outgrow of the musical website - www.wilsrecordshop.com - yearning for your attention, and I haven’t written anything about music. Bucking the traditional marketing rule that you must have a specific target audience (yes, that is how they refer to you) before designing a website, I took the position, why can’t you be all things to all people? After all, music is for everyone, and the parameters that define the target market are infinite. Hence, here we have a site, Wil's Record Shop that can be found appealing to the older generation, who want to reminisce and those (like myself), who weren’t even born when jazz arrived on the scene in the 1930’s, and others somewhere in between– making this site what I like to call intergenerational, universal and gosh doggone it good old fashioned entertainment. For everyone
Take, for instance, the musician Grant Green, whose tracks from the album Green Street can be heard on www.wilsrecordshop.com …
People not only in Japan but all over the world have heard the name Grant Green but what do you know about him? He was born in St. Louis in 1931. This, I find quite interesting as I am learning so many great jazz legends were also born in, 1931 (too many to mention here). Must have been something in the air. Green, who rose to become the cornerstone of great jazz guitarists, developed his style at the tender age of 13 by listening to horn players, like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.
As precisely stated on the liner notes of the album Green Street featuring Grant Green with Ben Tucker on bass, and Dave Bailey on drums…. by Leonard Feather, author of The New Encyclopedia of Jazz, After you have hailed the most brilliant new this and the most remarkable new that, what words do you have left when Grant Green comes along?
In closing, here’s a short quip taken from the most beloved liner notes that I rave so much about, on the back of the Freddie Hubbard L.P., Blue Spirits
As written by Nat Hentoff for the Blue Note record label when the studio was located at 43 West 61st Street... As has been evident for some time, Freddie Hubbard is as committed to growth as a composer as he is involved with further expansion as a trumpeter. Hentoff continues with a quote from Hubbard himself regarding this LP, Emotionally, the album represents all things that are happening today - the civil rights movement and the thrust for dignity beyond civil rights... In this sense, it's a spiritual album. I don't mean that in a religious sense, but in a sense that I consider music to be a spiritual experience because you can get at your deepest feelings in music.
The history one can get from Liner Notes is amazing. In fact, Liner Notes are our last vital lifeline to envision what the musician was feeling, what was their life like both on and off stage, what went into making music, connecting the sounds, tones, vibrations.... Universities can be built just off of the intense study of Liner Notes. Fascinating reading. If one ever felt like tripping, all they had to do was just pick up an album and read the Liner Notes. Ergo.... the raison de erte for www.wilsrecordshop.com where you can hear the music and yes, I'll post captions from the Liner Notes.