Miles Davis, My Funny Valentine. Great recording and performance.
Help me build up a jazz album collection. Can you suggest a must have album?
Just got back into analog after not having a turntable for 38 years. That was a Thorens TD 320. Now I have a VPI. Building a jazz album collection now since jazz seems to be what I enjoy now. I have barely 12 albums from Miles Davis, Art Blakey, King Curtis, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Ike Quebec and Illinios Jacquet. Can you suggest a must have album? I generally like great sax, and percussion and sometimes a good vocalist, but I am open to anything that sounds GREAT. Also, if there is a particular label, issue or type of album. Thanks in advance.
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Dave Brubeck, Time Out, and Gone With The Wind Listened enjoyably for decades, I just learned a bit about them just now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Out_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(album) Note: The more Jazz you collect, the more Mono LP’s you will come across by artists in their ’rise to fame’ 40’s, 50’s. The recording techniques were already excellent, and a true mono cartridge is a little/lot/whole lot better at producing less noise and more distinction of individual instruments and voices. Hopefully you have a tonearm with a removable headshell that allows you to change to a true Mono cartridge, even better is two tonearms with a mono cartridge ready to go, mix and match during a listening session.
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Some strong female voices with terrific Jazz Musicians Betty Carter, Finally https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/3058070200 Cassandra Wilson, Blue Light Till Dawn https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Light-Dawn-Classic-Vinyl/dp/B09T642S68/ref=tmm_vnl_swatch_0 Abbey Lincoln, You Gotta Pay the Band https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/2936146591
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Thelonious Monk Quartet with Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street. Loius Armstrong Complete RCA Victor Recordings. Louis Armstrong Hot fives and Hot Sevens. Dexter Gordon Go. Kurt Elling, Flirting with Twilight and Live at the Green Mill. Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. Miles Davis and Coltrane, Live in Stockholm. Jackie McLean and Dexter Gordon, Montmartre Summit 1973. Duke Ellington, Mingus and Max Roach, Money Jungle. Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, Side by Side. Cannonball Adderly, Somethin' Else. Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus. All the Billie Holiday you can find. Ditto Charlie Parker. Lester Young-Teddy Wilson Quarter, Pres and Teddy. Thelonious Monk, Straight No Chaser. |
Which Miles and Coltrane recordings do you have and do you like them? If not, why not? Of the artists that you mention, Miles and Coltrane were the only ones who ventured outside of what can be called “mainstream”. This would help offer suggestions that you might like. There is so much great Jazz in various styles from different periods and so much that could be considered “must have” which isn’t necessarily well known, as demonstrated by @slf ‘s great list. Incredibly rich art form. Enjoy! Here’s one that is not well known. Great sax like you like from the great Joe Henderson with percussion by the also great Elvin Jones who you may know from his work with Coltrane.
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Umbrella label - Boss Brass - Rob McConnell - big band jazz D2D - incredible sound Guitar - Ed Bickert, Emily Remler, Pat Metheny, Grant Green Piano - Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Sonny Clark Blues? Gary Moore Trumpet - Chet Baker, Miles, Harry Edison One thing I do - you are listening to an album, and maybe you like the piano - check who is playing; Miles was great about picking new players in his bands. Sax - Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Paul Desmond
Have Fun!!
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For Bill Evans, I like Waltz for Debbie even more than the Village Vanguard album which came from the same series of performances. Also, his Portrait in Jazz. I concur otherwise with many of the above suggestions. But an omission is Herbie Hancock--get a greatest hits anthology or Maiden Voyage and (if you like electric funk-jazz) Chameleon. Paul Desmond is my favorite alto-sax player. His albums with guitarist Jim Hall are wonderful, although one of them had some string arrangements I could do without. Easy Living is one of their better albums. |
I'll add to some of the greats already mentioned, Art Pepper Today, which has his 3rd recorded rendition of "Patricia" with Cecil McBee on bass. "Katanga!" from Tone Poet- a great reissue. I have not heard the newish reissue of Woody Shaw's Blackstone Legacy, but the OG is a wonderful album. The new one was promoted as being cut by the notorious Bernie G, but apparently was done by Kevin Gray. Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans, "Know What I Mean?" should still be in print as a Kevin Gray cut on Craft; I compared it to a couple others and if you can find a mid-'80s OJC copy in clean playing condition, you'll find it a little more visceral. Gary Bartz and Maisha- Bartz was one of the original spiritual jazz players with his own discography; here, he teams up with a young collective inspired by the original spiritual jazz movement. Bonus: cut direct to disc. Cochemea’s All My Relations- part of the Daptone band that backed the late Sharon Jones, a cool record that is a sonic treat. None of these should be terribly pricey. OGs of some of Pharaoh Sanders' work are now expensive, as are some of the early (pre-Ashram) albums by Alice Coltrane. Many have been reissued using digital sources. Worth trying, perhaps, to see if you like any of them enough to spend the money on original pressings. It's all a great adventure. Part of the fun is "surfing" players to find other works. I was entranced by Cecil McBee a few years ago, and started buying pretty much anything I could lay my hands on. Hope you find your own muse in exploring. There is a recent Pharaoh album that is undoubtedly cut from digital but it is all standards and ballads- very straight ahead without the multi-phonic sqwack for which he was known--entitled "Welcome to Love." Very accessible though not typical of his work. The Kevin Gray recut of Hancock's "Crossings" just sparkles. I compared it to an unmolested green label and the recut had more of everything. It's a hodgepodge of jazz sounds turned on its head, very inventive, like a primer to every jazz idiom put into a blender. There's a whole lot more that is worth exploring. I'm a big fan of the work Gil Scott Heron did with Brian Jackson, like "Winter in America." It was released on Strata-East and has that wonderful chime-y Rhodes sound. Also released (and cheaper) as retitled The Bottle. The Strata-East label is a gold mine of jewels and dross and worth researching- now pricey. |
Jazz is a very broad range. I suggest you try to determine what period you like or develop some focus before going to far into just buying records. It all started in the 1920s of course and one approach would be to take a historical guided tour. The Ken Burns film available on DVD would be one place to start. Another would be to go to the Smithsonian where they have a jazz history course as I recall. If you really just want to dive in take a hard look at Blue Note for hard bop, they are re-issuing a lot of their catalog from the 1950s and 1960s. Verve same period, but softer focus, more small group swing and some big band and bop. Verve also had Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Anita O'Day and Billy Holliday. Plus you'd find Dizzy Gillespie, and Bill Evans, and Jimmy Smith and and and. In fact if you just focused on Blue Note and Verve to start you'd get to a lot of the most important jazz recorded in the post WWII up to the Beatles era. Then you can start to fill in with Prestige and Columbia to pick up guys like Miles Davis, and Atlantic for a whole bunch of important artists, and Impulse and Contemporary, but lets leave those for later. I also suggest you check out The Jazz Shepherd on YouTube. |
Many greats mentioned thus far! I would add the Jazz Crusaders, with later name of The Crusaders. Their evolution has quite an arc of styles, and I highly recommend any album in this mix. |
I was browsing Presto looking to "discover" what sub-genre of jazz I might like and I came across this classification (filtered for vinyl only, I think)
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I think my favorite jazz album has got to be Michael Garson's "Serendipity". It's Reference Recording RR-20. A really nice accoustic jazz album, with high quality performances, and above average audio quality for the time it was produced. Second choice would be Dave Gruisin's "Discovered Again. Sheffield Treasury ST500. Great performances, and very nice recording by Sheffield Labs, too. Hope these are still available! Hope this helps, and best of luck to you in building out your jazz collection. |
