Blues On Bach - Modern Jazz Quartet (1974)

Quality or nostalgia: was younger me onto something, or just on something?

I started learning guitar with my teacher, Keith, when i was 12 or 13, I think. After the basics, I opted to learn classical guitar, I think because Randy Rhodes was said to be “classically trained” and that was an easier sell to the parents than admitting I just wanted to play Crazy Train. After that we got into Keith’s real love–jazz guitar–and i started going through fakebooks and playing along to jazz records.

Just some background on why, when I was going through my local library’s collection of jazz records, I settled on this oddball collection of jazzy Bach arrangements and bluesy originals inspired by Bach.

Milt Jackson (o_O) on vibraphone and John Lewis on piano (or often harpsichord here) made the MJQ a formidable group. They’d made some crucial post-bop jazz in the 50s and 60s, but were maybe just trying to find a niche in the 70s as jazz became a lot less mainstream.

So is it Quality or Nostalgia?

MJQ are a longstanding and storied outfit. I’m not sure that this one distinguishes them, but using Bach for harmonic ideas, at least so overtly, was a pretty unusual thing that holds up fine. As I said with Spyro Gyra, another local library jazz record, I was new enough to jazz that I would have been impressed with about anything. Hearing it again after knowing about MJQ’s 50s and early 60s output I don’t think as highly of this one.