Later, when Mordo and I were talking about it, it dawned on us both how daunting an exercise it is to try to explain to someone who is curious why you like jazz and what things in particular you like, using only YouTube videos (in truth, even without these limitations it’s impossible. Just ask Ken Burns). To Mordo’s credit, he was somewhat self-conscious about his choices (after all he was being asked to explain an entire genre of music), but is choices were at once a great cumulative introduction to the music and also highly personal reflections of his own tastes and tendencies as a player and listener.

My favorite pick of his was Bill Cosby’s 1973 appearance on the Dick Cavett show talking about his experiences learning how to play drums in Philadelphia.

Even though lists compete with irony as the most overused Internet ploy (describing your dislike for things is number one), here is my attempt at dealing with Mordo’s dilemma. It’s not a music appreciation course, it doesn’t start with field hollers and end with free jazz. These are just videos that I like that I think convey interesting things about the music.

Transcendent Moments – Louis Armstrong – It helps to listen to music recorded before this to understand why this was such a big deal, but the way he plays on this recording, to me, always feels like the beginning of real improvisation.

Swing – Count Basie – This is the best swing tutorial I can find.

Ensembles – Miles Davis Quintet – Not all jazz ensembles are created equal. When the best ones work together there’s nothing like it.

Drums – Roy Haynes & Tony Williams – If you hate jazz, you can start listening only to the drummer and then branch out to the others in order of decreasing size of their instruments. The drummer is key though.

Tunes – Yesterdays – A tune is not a cover, and I like that.

Troubled people triumph – Bird & Monk – Two underdogs screwed up in entirely different ways get to be geniuses. That’s a good enough reason to love jazz.

Me, this Web site, and Bettye Lavette are all on the same page. We’re doing better than /research, where inactivity and insecurity resulted in the unwelcome and unnoticed deletion of, well, /research. So, I got that going for me, as the unluckiest person I know likes to say.