Time Life Classic Jazz

I have a couple of time-Life Box sets(cassettes) Dolby B/HX Pro and digitally Remastered. The quality of the tapes are good but remember remastering anything from the 20's-50's are poor quality and you can only do so much. Steve

It is only my opinion but Time-Life is so so. It depends a lot on what yours tastes are and how serious you are. Look at a couple of the recent posts by Sdcampbell "best recording I heard in 2001" and "Downbeat Best Recordings of 2001". E-mail him and ask, he is a nice guy. Time life willl find a way to homoginize anything and is... well... one step below Ken Burns.

THe Ken Burns set is actually quite good and has the merit of being cross-label compilations. You could start with the boxed set and then move on to the compilations of individual artists and that will set you on your why to finding some great albums and will eventually lead you to a lot of the great music and musicians that weren't included in the set. Take a look at the bookstore and read up and keep asking around. I would say that this is not at all a bad place to start as they give you a good sampling of some of the artists best work throughout their careers.
For someone starting to check out jazz this is a more reasonable place to start and learn the tradition of the music so that they can then move on to some of the more modern records like some of those listed on the Downbeat best of 2001. Finding the music that you like and relate to in any given style takes time, patience and exploration.
Good luck and have Fun!

Sorry .. didn't mean to take any cheap shots.