About four months into my postcollege work life, a co-worker and I were listening, at my suggestion, to KATZ 100.3 FM in the office.
Upon hearing an instrumental she liked, my co-worker said, "This is considered jazz? This is nice. I like it."
I was glad that jazz gained at least a partial convert that night in '93. To many listeners who don't seek out jazz, it probably seems like an exclusive, indecipherable world. When I first heard artists such as Ron Carter, Sonny Rollins, and Stanley Turrentine in grade school, however, I recognized how accessible jazz frequently is. To the uninitiated, jazz might infer hearing 10 minutes of strangely improvised, discordant wailing.
That's not usually the case, however, so it was heartening to see someone who didn't know jazz well discover how melodic and listener-friendly much of it is.
