Having an ear for Jazz

Charles1dad, the several nominations received for awards would agree with you.

I think Diana Krall was first responsible for my Jazz interest , I won't say she's the best , but her warm sultry voice and smooth rhythmic lines grabbed my attention . My audio system also must take some of the blame for my seduction into Jazz . The rock I was reared on made it hard to focus on detailed improvements . But Jazz music made it easy to hear the blatt of horns , the range of the piano , the texture of strings and the warmth and humanness of vocals .

I saw Return to Forever back in 76 but recently have been listening to mostly the classic jazz giants and now do not really think of RTF as jazz, (they have fallen into the noisy catagory). Subconsciously I have dismissed them and other fusion type bands - even though they are still awesome, I think of Mingus, Ellington, Ella, Getz (etc.) as blissfully good and 'real' jazz.

Tmsorosk,
You`re right, jazz and a good system do indeed compliment each other.

I had 25 years,was in London,and on one market heard some Jamaican guys listening to a casette tape on their radio,music was full of organ rythm, kind a dirty but with great guitar moments,sounded so exciting,like nothing I have heard before.It was my first encounter with great Jimmy Smith,and the rest followed naturally,looking who played some insrument on some record,than finding it,than discovering some new musicians,who again played with some other great players and so on.By that time I already had a quite big record collection that spanned from blues,sixties rock,bay area late 60's period,to a hard rock of seventies,german psychodelia and progressive rock and punk,with just a few interesting bands of eighties.Since than,and it was in 1998,I bought no other but jazz album,and still I feel like there are thousands of albums that I still must hear,and they are all from a relatively short period between 1955 and 1970,at the most.I still have all my records,but at home I listen only to jazz,aldo i like to hear some good rock music on the radio or in a car