Between my senior year in high school, and my first year of college, I decided that I needed to expand my musical palette. So, I went to a record store and started browsing through the bins. I came to the jazz section and started looking. There I found The Dave Brubeck Quartet. I had heard of them when they had a hit with Take Five. As an added attraction most of their album covers had modern art paintings. I chose Countdown: Time in Outer Space. I took it home, played it, and couldn’t stop playing it. I became a lifelong fan. My freshman year at Indiana University they came for a concert. I had to go! My sister and brother-in-law also attended as I recall. In my dorm there was a fellow who lived a few doors down the hall from me and he had a small collection of jazz albums that introduced me to other jazz artists such as Herbie Mann and Donald Byrd. My dorm was in a quadrangle that had its own radio station with a late night jazz show; that’s where I first heard Miles Davis. My father gave me some albums by Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller that became favorites as well. I’ve become a fan of jazz from all eras. These early songs just scratch the surface of what I’ve come to love.

As part of my new mixtapes project, I have asked select friends to curate playlists for me. This mixtape is specially curated for us by Norm. He quickly became a true friend and confidant 7 years ago when I correctly recognised a floppy disk for what it was. Since then, he has seen me through all my ups and downs through perfectly timed memes, several postcards, lessons on the American presidency, and music, music, music. When not spreading positivity by sharing his song of the day on Twitter, you can find him blogging at Classical Gasbag.