Teach Yourself Jazz - online guidebook

For the beginning player, with sheet music samples

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	CHAPTER ONE GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH JAZZ THE FIRST STEPS If you pick up this book, the odds, are that you've got to know jazz fairly recently. You're thrilled by it. You want to widen your experience of it. You'll feel sympathy towards this statement: "That was my big night, the night I really began to live .. . My mind kept telling me that this was where I really belonged. I had found my Utopia and I began scheming to come back every night, including Sundays and holidays." These are the words of Mezz Mezzrow, writing of the days when he was a white youngster on the streets of Chicago, and had just bumped up against the thrill of real negro jazz, hot up from New Orleans. As you come up against jazz, as you cross the frontier in search of wider enjoyment, you're likely to get your first rebuff. A whole lot of per­suasive, vehement people will tell you that "you can't teach yourself jazz," that you're "wasting your time." They may start by telling you the story of 'Fats' Waller and the Society Matron. The Society Matron approached famous jazz pianist Thomas Tats' Waller