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.
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.
- ...
- 68 posts total
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)
|
- 68 posts total