Why "Jazz in the 1970s"?
The origin of this blog is a discussion thread that I started nearly a decade ago on the now-defunct All About Jazz discussion forum. The title of the thread: "Does 1970s Jazz Still Get a Bum Rap?" As a listener combing through the record bins in the early 21st century, I was encountering a disconnect. There was so much wonderful, inspiring music from the 1970s, but it didn't have the cachet of jazz from the 1950s and 1960s. Some listeners even looked down their noses at 1970s jazz, regarding the decade as "lost years." Again, this attitude didn't align with what I was hearing. Another disconnect. I think there are many, many reasons why jazz from the 1970s has been under-valued and under-recognized, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to create this blog. I also wanted to share some of the overlooked music and vital artists whose art, for whatever reason, hasn't gained widespread exposure.
How the Blog Will Operate
The year 2020 will represent 50 years since the beginning of the 1970s. I decided that would be an auspicious and appropriate day to begin my survey of jazz during that decade. Each day, I plan to list one album that was made during the 1970s. Each entry will include:
- The leader (individual or group), album title, and record label(s)
- The date that the music was recorded
- All musicians who appeared on the album
- A brief write-up offering some reasons that the album or artist appeals to me
Why "Playing Favorites"?
The music in this survey isn't the best jazz or even the most important jazz from the 1970s. I'm not interested in re-formulating the jazz canon or making any claims of objectivity. Quite the opposite. I love the idea of favorites. First and foremost, this is music that I love. That's why I want to share it with others. This music speaks to me in a personal way, and it's those subjective attachments that give jazz -- all music, all art -- it's enduring appeal. That's how I think about music, and that's how I want to write about it.
The Ground Rules: How I Decided Which Recordings to Include in This Survey
Over the last several years, I've been exploring both the highways and the byways of jazz in the 1970s. My intention was to create a list of albums that I would be happy to share with others. Every recording would offer something special and perhaps represent a jumping off point for even more exploration. A few self-imposed constraints:
- Every recording must have been made entirely in the 1970s -- recorded between January 1, 1970 and December 31, 1979. The music may have been released at a later date, but all of this music was made during the 1970s.
- Rather than focusing on many recordings by a handful of more well-known artists, I decided to limit each jazz musician to one recording as a leader. That meant I had to choose the one Miles Davis recording, one Mal Waldron recording, one Richie Beirach recording, one Duke Ellington recording! Very difficult choices!
- To make the selection process a little less difficult, I decided to allow myself one additional recording from each artist as a co-leader. So, for example, I selected Richie Beirach's Elm (ECM) for his recording as a leader. Then I also chose to include Forgotten Fantasies (A&M Horizon), the duo LP that Beirach co-led with Dave Liebman.
About Me
I'm not a musician or musicologist. So I have no unique claims to authority or expertise. I just love music, and jazz in particular. Over the last decade or so, I've focused especially on jazz in the 1970s. Since I was born in 1968, I didn't experience any 1970s jazz first hand. (I did hear a few albums that my father played while I was a child). Consequently, my love of this music is wholly retrospective, garnered entirely from recordings. I think this distance is both a blessing and a curse. Not having "been there," I am perhaps free of some of the preconceived notions that traveled with this music when it was happening. On the other hand, I know that jazz's history and its recorded history are not the same thing. So therefore a survey like the one that I've undertaken is necessarily an incomplete picture, and I make no claims otherwise.
