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Sunday, June 14, 2015

RAW and jazz


Ornette Coleman

Oz Fritz has just done a nice tribute to Ornette Coleman, the legendary boundary-pushing jazzman who died on June 11.

Which leads me to pose a question: Can anyone give some information about the jazz artists that RAW enjoyed? I know he liked jazz, as any intelligent young person in the 1950s would, and that one of the artists he liked was the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Yet I don't know much about this aspect of his life. His literary tastes are pretty well documented (look for example at the bottom of this link) , we have a lot of information on what movies he liked,  and we know that he loved Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Mahler, yet I know little about which jazz musicians he listened to. Can anyone help?

4 comments:

Jesse said...

To judge from the jazz haikus in Coincidance, he likes Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, and (as you mentioned) the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Eric Wagner said...

I think Bob listened to less jazz as he got older. He does mention dreaming of Monk in _TSOG_.

Oz Fritz said...

Thanks, Tom! I don't know much about RAW's preferences in jazz.

The earrings the woman in the photo of Ornette's album in my blog reminded me of the spiral ring RAW often wore.

nakchtra devi said...
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