Jazz at the Pawn Shop...

A legacy product and probably undeserved.

I never understood why this recording has such high regard. I sometimes play it as background music, but it is nothing special.

It's a very good recording from a Scandinavian jazz club. The music is leaning towards dixieland, old style jazz.

It is a very detailed natural sounding live recording.
The reason it gets so much hype is that it is very close to being in a club setting which is what good recordings are supposed to do, sound as close to the original event as possible.

Personally I've always thought the reason it was so popular was because it's very atmospheric sound made folks think that their audio system's imaging was far better than it really was. This record made some fairly average systems sound good. A good sales tool for B&M dealers as well. Content wise, IMHO, its boring at best. Sorry to rain on anyones parade, but OP asked.