Help Me Expand My Music Taste

Blues
1. Muddy Waters: Folk Singer
2. Buddy Guy & Junior Wells: Alone & Acoustic

Jazz
1. Jazz at the Pawn Shop
2. Jessica Williams: Live at Yoshi's

Check out http://www.allmusic.com to read about most of the suggestions mentioned. they have an excellent rating system and you can also sample alot of songs.

The above posts recommend Blues, here are some thoughts on JAZZ...
As a teenager I grew up with Rock, Hard rock, and Progessive Rock.. at age 16 or so I began to wade into the waters of Jazz... my first Jazz records were predictably Jazz-rock fusion, some of which are still my favorites today:
1. Return to Forever - Romantic Warrior
2. Weather Report - Heavy Weather, Black Market, Tale Spinnin
3. Stanley Clarke - School Days, Journey to Love
4. Jean-Luc Ponty - Imaginary Voyage, Enigmatic Oceans
5. Jeff Beck - Wired
And many other similiar titles... John Mclaughlin, Soft Machine, Al Dimeola, etc.
My first REAL Jazz albums purchased at age 17-18 were:
1. Chick Corea - Inner Space (still one of my favorites today)
2. Miles Davis - Water Babies (my first of twenty or so Miles Davis album purchases
3. Buddy Rich - Class of '78 direct-to-disk (I ran out and bought this at age 18 the next day after seeing Buddy Rich and his big band close up in a club in Rochester, NY... really changed my ideas about "who is a good drummer")
4. Oregon - Roots in the Sky (a challenge to my 18 year old sensibilies, became a favorite)
5. George Benson - Breez'in (his best, hands down IMHO)
At this time in college I met a young jazz musician who began teaching me some jazz theory and gave me the following jazz recommendations to get me started (and I'll give these to you)
1. John Coltrane - Blue Trane, A Love Supreme, Ballads, Lush Life
2. Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain, Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, to start with
3. Dave Brubeck - Time out
4. Cannonball Adderly - Something Else
5. Lee Morgan - the Sidewinder
6. Herbie Handcock - Maiden Voyage

Other names(Jazz standards):
Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Charlie Byrd... and many others

Some "advanced concept" Jazz artists:
Keith Jarrett, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, George Russel, Don Cherry, others...

Or, try ANYTHING on the ECM jazz label.. an instant adventure. I recommend Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie, Terje Rypdal, Eberhard Weber, the earlier Pat Metheny pieces, Egberto Gismonte.

Anyway it's nice to see someone interested getting into jazz.

I would suggest visiting pandora.com. It is a great free internet radio station that does a pretty good of learning your preferences. You can set up multiple channels with different types of music. As you listen, you can rate what you like. The stations will learn your preferences and add more music that fit with what you have rated as liking. Because of pandora.com I have been exposed to so much new music recently. My music purchases have increased dramatically as well. I hope this helps.

If you have XM radio, or willing to get it, the Real Jazz station is a great source. They have a lot of diversity, and on Saturday mornings they have a musician on profiling a jazz great. It often goes into detail about techniques, etc.
They also have regularly daily interviews with both established and up-and-coming musicians.
John

You could also try something like Charlie Parker's "Au Privave" which is basically Parker doing Gershwin, etc., with a few of his own stuck in. There are plenty of good albums like that by classic artists, and it's a great place to start if you have trouble "getting it".