Blogging Assignment Post

For my blogging assignment, I listened to Johnny Griffin, an American Bop and hard Bop tenor saxophonist. Johnny Griffin was born in Chicago Illinois, on April 24, 1928. He started his life playing music with the piano, then he played Hawaiian guitar, clarinet and oboe before he started he started to play the saxophone. It wasn't until the age of twelve when he started to play the Saxophone (however, he started on the alto and not the tenor). He even played in a band with some of his school friends called "The baby band". He finally switched to tenor at the age of 18, when he left Chicago to play in Lionel Hampton's big band (he actually left about 3 days after his graduation from DuSable High School). In 1951 he joined the army where he played in the army band.
He moved to France in 1963, where he mostly played for European labels, but he did go back to the U.S.
On July 25, 2008, he died in Availles- Limouzine France.

Now that we now about him let' s talk about his music: The song That I listened to was obviously a jazz song. It kind of sounded like he was doing scales over and over again for a bit. The music that he played seems very repetitive to me, however, His music did seem to sound very difficult (I don't think that I would ever be able to play something like that in my life). I thought that it was amazing how he was able to play so quickly while he was able to play the notes without any mix-ups of any kind. I also found it interesting that even with his speed, he wasn't stuck play one long slur.

To listen to it yourself, just click on this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUYUcLRud50