Jazz listening: Is it about the music? Or is it about the sound?

As a long-time jazz collector, to me, it is about the music first. That's not to say that sound quality isn't important too, but in looking at my collection, it contains a lot of jazz history. Back in time, there were some pretty poor quality recordings that contained fantastic music. Charlie Parker albums readily come to mind. "Bird's" influence on jazz musicians cannot be denied, including current ones. His recordings belong in any serious jazz fan's collection. 

Frank

It is about both but when you get the best recordings of really great music the thought about the sound goes away and yes the better the system the more the flaws of most recordings are shown. When you have the best music and it is not recorded or played back well it is a shame because you do not want to listen to it.

@OP,  I get it.  I listen to the Bill Evans Trio, Waltz for Debby, album nearly every week.  Sonically, it still blows me away.  And it's a 1962 recording, made live inside the small Village Vanguard.  

I think MillerCarbon has some good advice about trying to focus in on what's off with other genres so you can improve your system to maximize your pleasure across all music.  Nonetheless, I'm with you--jazz can be so pleasing and its recording quality pretty high, generally, that we can start to feel like other genres are more difficult to enjoy or not as pleasant.  My situation has gotten better on the other genres--yet it cost me a bit to get here.

jbhiller:

I listen to the Bill Evans Trio, Waltz for Debby, album nearly every week.  Sonically, it still blows me away.  And it's a 1962 recording

I think a pretty good argument could be made that regardless of genre, some of the best, most present sounding recordings came from the late 50's and early 60's.  The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison come to mind.

True, OP, very true.