Jazz lovers: What brought you to the music?

[immoderate]

4. Tap Dancing. I started when I was six.

And searching for instrumental tracks through stacks of 45s, I came across a wide variety of jazz and near jazz performances. Some of them were by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Stan Kenton, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller. By the time I was adolescent, I already had a collection of albums, Miles, Oscar, Kenton, Duke, Brubeck were some of my early favorites. Monk, Ellington, Coltrane, Dolphy, Mingus, and most post boppers are the pillars of my view of jazz. But I keep some Django, and Tatum around for nostalgia, and switch to bossa nova for rhythm change.

As a small child, I got some pop and semi classical available in the early 50s. I particular remember a percussive twin piano version of Ravel's Bolero on 12 inch 78s. But the most transformative encounter was hearing Louis Jordan and the Tympani Five being blasted from the outdoor speakers of a record store. I was three years old, and I had to dance. That's when I got hooked on syncopated rhythm.

--imm