Blues, Jazz, Rock Violinists?

If you read the synopsis of Ponty's career in the All Music Guide to Jazz, you will see that he has not been a serious Jazz player. He seems to be experimenting with a lot of stuff. When the words FUSION and Electric Violin appear, they should be seen as red flags. Last seen playing with some west african group. Stuff Smith was not mentioned on the thread yet. Seems to be very good, but the recordings might not be of the best quality. 20's - mid-60's

I highly recommend the All Music Guide to Jazz. Used out dated ones are just as good as new, since all of the good stuff will be there. The most useful part for me is, they tell you what type of jazz the artist played. Helps me avoid those fusion,free,avant-garde,world, noise makers.

Inna, while I agree with your general statement; it's not good enough to be against something, and not be "for" something else.

Why don't you post a "Youtube" that best illustrates the violinist who "floats your boat".

I agree with some of Inna's sentiments,

Jean Luc makes me think of 'POP' not jazz

Jean-Luc Ponty has had a long, long career and I cannot say that I have followed every path he has gone down. What I can say is that at one point he was an excellent jazz violinist. Jean-Luc Ponty Stephane Grappelli is proof. (Note that the link is to a CD that contains contains bonus material. The first five tracks comprise the original album.) There's also a live recording that he did with George Duke that is quite good.

Some Ponty stuff did hit me as cheez whiz... haven't kept up with what he's doing. He's obviously a big talent and he's recorded things that can't rationally be described as pop or fusion. The MPS releases are generally pretty solid and his work on the 1970 World Pacific/Liberty release (King Kong) demonstrates what he can do w/ FZ material, (even Downbeat had sense enough to recognize that this stuff had compositional weight on par w/ Charles Mingus or Oliver Nelson).

And yes you should read recommendations to avoid hearing avant garde noise makers or that f word music, (whatever that is)... if you're not careful you might learn something ... be sure to keep those training wheels on!