Jazz is a bottomless pit we can so easily fall into... Once you hold up the greats as a reference, unfortunately, we are ALL destined to live our lives in abject misery as we achieve nothing even remotely close to those guys!

Gods walk (or walked) amongst us...

The only mitigating factor is, most of the 'gods' that walk amongst us now look back to Bird or Miles etc., and feel that same abject misery! Some geniuses define the genre, and all we can do is struggle to even get in the ballpark...

I've always had a deep appreciation of jazz, played my fair share, but I've never gone down that rabbit hole. I'm happy to be an all-rounder. I like my jazz, but I like reggae, rock, country, classical, alternative and pop, even! Once you set your happiness up by how well you play jazz, you are either one really talented SOB, or you are miserable! I am happy simple getting close to Roy Bitten or Rabbit Bundrick, Chuck Leavell, guys like that. No way in heaven or on earth, no matter how much I practice, am I ever going to come close to Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, or Herbie Hancock!

So study it by all means, but be careful how and where you set your goals. Who wants to set themselves up for disappointment?!