Like lots of people who have an abiding interest in music, there have been a few moments that I can single out as pivotal in drawing me in. When I was small much of what grabbed me was the exuberant fun of punk/post-punk/new wave etc. In my mid-teens I found jazz. I had hated the smooth swing and trad varieties I had heard before finding bop and the musics that desended from it.
Punk slapped me in the face and woke me up. Jazz was more of a slow impact, but it hit me. One of the really cool things about moving to New York City as a teenager was getting to go to clubs that had previously just been part of the names of live albums. New York felt like a jazz city in a way that London didn’t (it is but it’s a little more under the surface and I didn’t see it as a teenager).
Blue Train is the first jazz album I really fell in love with. I had heard a fair bit before including some great albums like Kind of Blue (that Coltrane contributes massively to also), but there was something about this album that grabbed me and it has stayed with me.
Continue reading “Music That Shaped Me: Blue Trane”