[jyl]

I like a lot of stuff. Jazz was my main listening for a decade or so. I like Miles, Coltrane, Parker, Eric Dolphy, Sweets Edison, Ben Webster, Keith Jarrett, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, just to name a few.

Some of these artists were "searchers". They were always trying to invent something new, to change and push the boundaries. Some of the results are acquired tastes and some can't be acquired by me. For example Ornette Coleman. It's not for lack of instrumental skill; these men were incredibly skilled.

I think it is kind of like a period of modern art, where artists constantly tried to invent new things, and some of the prototypes are puzzling or half baked or simply beyond many viewers. I recall visiting the small Picasso museum in, I forget which Spanish city, it had almost none of his mature works (those having been done in Paris) but instead had his early work, including sketches drawn when he was just a boy and then a teen. His command of figures and lines as a child was so masterful, I felt like I understood why he was so relentlessly experimental in his career. How could he spend his whole life drawing and painting in styles that he had already mastered as a young man? John Coltrane and Miles seem to me much of that mold.

Then there are musicians and artists who I think of as "perfecters". They do one thing their whole career, brilliantly. A lot of blues musicians seem this way to me. One blues song sounds rather like another, to me, and one Muddy Waters song sounds very much like another. That was his groove and he stayed in it, and the music is accessible to many listeners.