It would help to know what sort of music you enjoy now. What instruments do you enjoy in particular? Both jazz & blues are expansive genres, so much great stuff to enjoy & appreciate. We all could throw out our favorites, but they might not resonate with you. One thing that has helped me appreciate new musical tastes is reading about music history. I think it's often hard to really appreciate different eras' music unless you can place the music in a cultural & historical context, Yeah, it's a often repeated cliche that music is a universal language, but I'm not so sure that's really true. I guess we start listening for what elements of a new musical language are shared with music we're familiar with and expand on that. One really great little book is Robert Palmers "Deep Blues." I can't praise this one enough as fine place to start. As to the music, when it comes to the blues, I think you could make a great argument for starting with the two musical giants that bridged the era of country blues and modern chicago style blues, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. I'd suggest one of Chess records remastered collections that cull the best of their respective careers. These guys laid the groundwork for the development of electric blues. BB King is a a great and influential artist, he incorporates some elements of jazz into his music. I really think his "Live at the Regal" is one of the best live albums ever. A really underappreciated but phenominal bluesman is Otis Rush. His "So Many Roads" was recorded live in Tokyo in 1975 and was an incendiary bit of music making. As to Jazz, some of my votes for favs to start with would be Cannonball Adderlys' "Something Else," Cassandra Wilsons' "Blue Light 'Til Dawn," John Hassell's "Fascinoma," Ben Webster's "Soulville," and Charles Lloyd's "Canto." Those are rather disparate artists separated by five decades, but are all are excellent representations of some the many sides of the genre.
