Jazz can be hilariously inaccessible. I think one of the problems is much of it is 'standard based' (ie. they're improvising around the chords and melodies of c

Jazz can be hilariously inaccessible. I think one of the problems is much of it is 'standard based' (ie. they're improvising around the chords and melodies of classic old songs like Autumn Leaves, All of Me) but they take HELLA liberties (i once heard a Dinah Washington rendition of All of Me and could swear she didn't know what the song actually was). Once you know the standards, and the majority of them really are gems in their own right, you start to realize what the jazzmen are really DOING, what patterns they're playing with. Then you can follow and appreciate long improvisatory solos better. But if you're just hearing some 60 year old song that you don't even KNOW, and they assume that you already know it SO WELL that they barely need to play the original melody, and they're ramping up the complexity 5x to challenge themselves, then it's tough going. Something that's helped me a lot recently is typing standards into Spotify and just listening to different versions of the same song (not always jazz artists) for hours. I used to think 'why can't all standards be as enjoyable as Summertime?' but now they kinda are