Confessions of a Jazz Hater

The album was Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, and I desperately wanted to like it. Rolling Stone raved about it, and in those heady days that was as good as canonical truth. To hear the ecstatic reviewers tell it, Bitches Brew was unquestionably one of the greatest and most important albums of all time, the simultaneous birth and apex of jazz-rock fusion. And I was absolutely convinced. It seemed as likely a place as any for an inquisitive 15-year-old fan of rock ’n’ roll to start exploring the vast, mysterious realm of jazz.

There was only one problem: I hated it. It was awful. Bitches Brew sounded nothing like Chicago or Blood, Sweat, & Tears—the closest touchstones I had to jazz-rock fusion at the time. I couldn’t find a melody, couldn’t find a rhythm to latch onto, couldn’t find one single redeeming quality in the sprawling, incoherent mess. If this was jazz, who needed it?

And so I slammed the door on an entire genre for another 15 years. I know. It’s stupid to write off 100 years of great music because of one bad experience. But I’ve found—as I’ve done my own informal poll of my musical friends—that my experience has been shared by many other people, and with many other jazz albums. If people don’t grow up with jazz (and the vast majority of music listeners don’t), sooner or later they get curious. They buy their token jazz CD, just to test the waters. And far too many of them turn away in disappointment. The same music fans who patiently sat through endless improvisational noodling from the Grateful Dead, who willingly tolerated and enjoyed 10-minute drum solos during the height of the Prog Rock era, suddenly can’t sit still for a John Coltrane solo. Why? What is it about jazz improvisation that is so foreign, that inspires such a strong reaction from people who otherwise seem like calm, rational human beings? “I hate jazz,” my friend tells me. “Absolutely can’t stand it. I’d rather get a root canal than listen to it.” Okay, he’s a masochist, maybe a fool. But he also listens to a lot of music. What is it that turns an otherwise intelligent, temperate man into a foaming, frothing lunatic?

I think I have some clues. For starters, there’s very little new here. Jazz makes up a miniscule three percent of all music sales. There are temporary spikes in the music’s popularity—as, for example, when Ken Burns’ documentary Jazz aired on PBS several years ago. But those anomalies cannot camouflage an almost 60-year decline in the commercial viability of the music. As recently as the early 1970s, iconic jazz figures such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane were known by most serious rock fans, and their music could occasionally be heard on freeform FM radio. With the advent of narrowcasting, those days are long gone. And although the crossover appeal of jazz-like vocalists such as Norah Jones and Diana Krall signals something of a mini-renaissance in the jazz-music industry, there is, sadly, no evidence to suggest that jazz vocalists bring new listeners into the instrumental jazz fold.

Second, as much as its devotees want to downplay the issue, jazz suffers from an image problem. Even hardcore music fans—those who spend inordinate amounts of time and money on their favorite music—tend to ignore it. It’s either perceived as the domain of a coterie of effete music snobs or as inconsequential, pleasant background noise. They think of the roots of the music—Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in grainy black and white newsreel footage; important, to be sure, but ancient history. Or they think of the puffery heard on “Jazz Lite” stations, barely one step removed from Muzak. The New Traditionalists who arose in the 1980s—Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Joshua Redman, Marcus Roberts—could have stepped in to fill the void. Instead, they were so focused on slavishly imitating the post-bop jazz of the mid-1960s that they missed the opportunity. And now we’re approaching 35 years—roughly the time since Miles dropped Bitches Brew on an unsuspecting world—without anyone at the helm, without a single iconic jazz figure to serve as a focal point for the music, let alone the half dozen or more who prevailed throughout the ’50s and ’60s.

Obviously, I don’t hate jazz anymore. I’ve learned to love it, and have spent much of the last 20 years avidly following new trends and filling in the gaping holes in my music collection, trying to make up for the fact that I had ignored almost a century of musical greatness. You’ll find the usual suspects in my list of favorites—Armstrong, Ellington, Holiday, Monk, Hawkins, Parker, Coltrane, Rollins, Evans, and yes, most certainly Miles Davis. But that transition to musical elitism—or whatever it is—didn’t come easily, and I sympathize with those who’ve tried unsuccessfully to enter the door into a whole new realm of music.

I do know that it helps to find the transitional albums, those albums bridging the gap between familiar musical genres and the impenetrable world of jazz (see “Ten Gateway Albums”). In spite of what some purists say, jazz has never existed in isolation from the rest of the musical universe. Louis Armstrong, long revered as the Father of Jazz, had no qualms about recording pop standards throughout his long career. It’s a practice that has continued throughout the history of the genre, from the great Charlie Parker covers of ’40s and ’50s pop standards through The Bad Plus’ frequent forays into the music of Nirvana and the Pixies. It’s almost always instructive to hear what great jazz musicians can do with a familiar tune. The early-to-mid ’70s were filled with excellent examples of jazz-rock fusion, back before fusion took on the emasculated connotations it now has. And there are many albums featuring jazz-rock guitar heroics. Fans of the blues will find a familiar touchstone in many of the greatest jazz improvisations, and it’s really not a great leap to move from the incandescent guitar solos of a Stevie Ray Vaughan or a Buddy Guy to the equally luminous blues-based solos of Miles Davis on Kind of Blue or John Coltrane on Blue Train. The door will open.

In retrospect, Bitches Brew really is a great album. It was just the wrong place for me to start. It’s a long, long journey from the straightforward three-chords-and-a-backbeat foundation that underlies much of rock music to the experimental free-jazz excursions of late-period John Coltrane (or Bitches Brew, for that matter), and it would have been helpful to have some signposts along the way to point the direction. You can get there from here. It starts with a willingness to hear new sounds, and it proceeds along a path that moves from the familiar to the increasingly unfamiliar. There may be no hope for those who truly prefer the dentist chair to jazz. But for the rest of the sane universe, there’s every reason to believe that jazz haters can become, if not jazz lovers, then at least begrudging admirers of the form.

Interested in starting your journey into jazz, but you don't know where to begin? Here are 10 Gateway Albums to start you on your way.