A Jazzy Jam 🎶 February

With the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl on Sunday, and with all the headlines centering around Taylor Swift, I felt it was appropriate to play Taylor’s playlist while I was at work. In a way I was emulating my 11 year old niece who herself is a “Swiftie”. She has seen the Eras Tour in theatres and has plenty of Taylor merch at her disposal. While I love a little bit of pop and a little bit of country, my favorite music genre is always going to be jazz.

When my love affair began is debatable. It can be traced back to 2000, during my senior year of high school, when I discovered a publicly-funded station in Pittsburgh that played classic jazz hits as well as some local artists. 90.5 WDUQ was owned by Duquesne University at the time and was also a National Public Radio station as well. They had some shows during the day that were national but at night and during the morning and early afternon, they played jazz. On and off during college, I would listen to 90.5 when I was able to get it or when I was home. The university sold the station in the early 2010s and was rebranded but, you can still listen to jazz on one of their HD channel or on AM 1550 WZUM Braddock.

Perhaps it goes back to 1996, when I discovered a smooth jazz station in Pittsburgh that was short-lived known as 104.7 WJJJ. My mom listened to this station way before my interest in jazz became a thing. The format switched to an oldies format in 1999 and became a conservative talk radio outlet in 2004. But I’ll take smooth jazz over an outspoken talking head anyday.

Or, it goes back to the late 1980s, about the time I discovered the Weather Channel. For a long time, their local forecast music was a genre of music I soon discovered was smooth jazz. It was very catchy and the music would always live rent-free in my head. One of the most common artists whose music played during the local forecasts was the Rippingtons, whose music is still played to this day on jazz stations. I discovered who played these songs years later on a site called twcclassics.com one night after work just after I graduated college.

I’ve bought many jazz CDs over the years and books related to the subject. But before I talk about the music, I have a little story to tell. While I was a student at Slippery Rock University, a course on Jazz was offered in the music building. Listening to music was involved and I wish I would have taken the course while I was there (it would have been worth it). One of the books I owned is The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia. Fun fact: I’ve read three editions of the book including the latest one. I also watched a miniseries on Jazz by Ken Burns back in the early 2000’s and bought a few CDs from that collection.

To close off the blog, here are a few of the jazz albums I’ve owned over the years. I’ve since done away with CDs and stream music exclusively on Amazon.

1. Pure Jazz (2001)– A wonderful compiliation of the greatest icons of jazz. Nice way to end the CD with Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World.
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas (Vince Guaraldi) (1965)–One of the greatest Christmas cartoons and Peanuts specials of all time. Great message but also a great soundtrack. Vince Guaraldi did all the music for the Peanuts specials.
3. We All Love Ella: Celebrating the First Lady of Song (2007)–Ella’s best work released in honor of her 90th birthday. One of my favorite Ella Fitzgerald hits would be Summertime which was performed with Louis Armstrong.
4. Spellbound (Joe Sample) (1989)–I’m a big fan of jazz fusion and there are some great ones on this album. This artist’s music has been played on the Weather Channel for many years either solo or with the Crusaders.
5. Dave Koz and Friends: Summer Horns (2013)–This is a group of smooth jazz musicians collaborating on some old 1970s hits. Overall, this was done very well. A follow up album was released in 2018.