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Great and well-recorded jazz on CD

I'm looking for recommendations for great CDs that are also great recordings. Let's keep it to jazz recorded between 1950 and 1980. Some CDs I've been listening to recently that fit the bill as posed in this post include Sarah Vaughan's first LP with Clifford Brown (Verve), or Bags Meets Wes (Riverside).

I listen to just about anything, including free jazz and fusion. Not looking for suggestions of awesome records per se, or for suggestions of audophile-quality recent jazz.

I listen to music for all sorts of reasons, and some of the albums I like are horribly recorded. I do appreciate a nice Sun Ra album for example that has bedroom-quality recording (hear the telephone ring just before the cut ends!) But that's not what I'm asking about here. On the other hand, I don't mind old recordings where you can really hear the hiss and the bacon frying---those can still be beautiful recordings with a sense of space, depth, etc.

Any ideas? Thanks.
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hifimaniac
508 posts
 
I forgot these favorites; on Reference Recordings; Dick Hyman's the Age of Swing. Bill Evan's Waltz for Debbie. Miles Davis LP's, Relaxin, Workin, Steamin.
Diana Krall's LIve in Paris. Wyton Marsalis's Unforgiveable Blackness.
rrog
1,958 posts
 
Hifimaniac, That's Barney Kessel not Bernie Kessell.
grimace
624 posts
 
Check out the last two James Moody CDs, 4A and 4B. They only came out in the last two years, but they're played in that classic style and the recordings are outstanding.
grimace
624 posts
 
Another sleeper - from 1957 is Shelly Manne and his men play Peter Gunn. It's all Henry Mancini tunes with a septet. It's a fantastic recording on the Contemporary Label. The title track has reached cliche status, but the rest of it is terrific. Not a lousy track on it.
price OP
31 posts
 
Thanks guys, for all the help... First wave of Amazon purchases came in. I'm enjoying Sinatra's Only the Lonely in a gold MoFi edition, the Sonny Stitt, some Gene Ammons, Bird with Strings, and Jimmy Smith's the Cat. Beautiful!
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