...the great jazz drummer, once said that it was much harder to write a great pop tune (he was speaking at the time about Michael Jackson) than to solo all night in a jazz context. I think the message he was getting at might be: don't discount what you or the masses love... loving anything in this world is a gift, and I will bet you that the kid who adores her Miley Cyrus music is having a more profound listening experience than somebody who listens to music that doesn't move her emotionally, but who likes the "idea" of it. There is so much music in the world, and there is absolutely no need or reason to slog through stuff you dislike.

One expression I hate, often applied to music and other arts: the "guilty pleasure". As if there should be any guilt or shame in liking something!

They run parallel, and only on occasion do they stop at the same station at the same time.

Long, long ago, I took a trip to NYC for the Newport Jazz Festival - a great trip, with Tito Puente, Machito, Dizzy, Mongo Santamaria, and Cal Tjader all on one bill at Avery Fisher, then Count Basie at midnight (Dizzy came back out), and a wonderful show at Carnegie Hall a few days later, with Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, and the guitar duo of Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine on the same bill. Then the MC came out and told us not to leave, just go get a little walk in the lobby and come back soon. It was the US debut of Cuban band Irakere.

Then I took a long train ride to visit my sister in Minnesota, and there saw the Grateful Dead, all in the same trip.

If it's good, it's good. Check some of the people the Rolling Stones have open for them - like the Neville Brothers. The link from Miles through John McLaughlin to Hendrix. And then there's the wonderful combinations the jazz world came up with, such as the inimitable "Duke Ellington's Jazz Violin Session" with Stephane Grappelli and Ray Nance. Or John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana playing Coltrane to an arena of rock fans on their one and only "Love, Devotion, and Surrender" tour.

Lucky I have been, yes, hmmm?

Miss them.

"Jazz can become an endless set of footnotes; rock can dissolve into a scream. But when they get it right, the genre distinctions vanish, the math and the mere gesture disappear, and what's left is that old black magic: the unfolding of human passions in time that we call music."

I offer a few choice cuts to further keep this conversation going. These are only a few of the hundreds of tunes that (I believe) articulate the meaningful and "dramatic" dialog between rock and jazz. Search out and enjoy. keep the conversation going and add your own gems.

Freddie Hubbard--"Red Clay"

The Grateful Dead W/Branford Marsalis "Bird Song" (12/31/90)

Grant Green-- "Let the Music Take Your Mind" (from the album Alive)

Soulive--"Get Down!"

Jimmy Smith--"Root Down"

The Beastie Boys--"Root Down"

A Tribe Called Quest-- "Jazz"

The Quintet--"Live at Massey Hall" (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Bud Powell, Max Roach)--The first recorded supergroup, one of the greatest albums (of any genre)of all time, and it effing rocks!

Santana--"Incident At Neshabur" from "Lotus"--awesome "Love Supreme"quote at about 3:13 min

The Jazz Crusaders--"Live At the Lighthouse"

Allman Bros. "Memory oof Elizabeth Reed" From "At the Fillmore East" --Duane Allman's guitar solo encompasses almost every form of American music

Cannonball Adderly Sextet--"Work Song"

With the headliners of Jazz, a kind of Jazz compendium you'd get from reading Playboy.

Kudos to Mr. Hancock, but he's spent the better part of the last 30 years trying to make electronic funk fusion Jazz commercially popular. I wouldn't say there's a sharp bleeding edge to it anymore. I mean his stuff is on bank card TV Ads.

Did anyone hear Hiromi Uehara on Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" show on NPR Feb 8th? Holy Awesome Crap.

One expression I hate, often applied to music and other arts: the "guilty pleasure". As if there should be any guilt or shame in liking something!

Funny! Last night I was talking to a woman at work, and she learned violin as a child and was saying how she really dug Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, but that her husband just didn't get it and only like "easy listening", and I said "well, all music is really easy-listening as long as you like it. If it wasn't you wouldn't be listening to it."

I'm just listening to Miles Davis's 1956 album Steamin' as I write this, and it is very easy listening, even though Miles is not something I listen to a lot and haven't played this album for years.

I don't agree with all this stuff about having to understand various scales to appreciate jazz. No music can ever be popular if you have to take a test and get a license before you listen to it.

Louis Armstrong's only formal musical education was during his two year stint at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs up to the age of 14.

I think if you look at a painting of flowers by Monet and then compare it to a photgraph of flowers in a catalogue, you can see that what Monet is really doing is making an arrangement of colors that is pleasing to the eye, more pleasing than nature, perhaps. You don't need any formal training in color charts or spectrometry for this. Jazz is the same, it is an arrangement of sounds all along the spectrum in a way that is pleasing to the ear and delights with the way it varies what the melody leads the ear to expect.

Glen Miller achieved his characteristic sound by having the melody delivered by a lead clarinet with a tenor saxophone playing on the same note, and three more saxophones (soprano, tenor, bass) harmonizing, but the millions who bought his records and could instantly recognize his signature sound certainly didn't need to know how it was made to be able to appreciate it.