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.
https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/90761/The_Ray_Brown_Trio-Soular_Energy-45_RPM_Vinyl_Record Just reissued. A great pressing and one of those essential albums you can always refer to for evaluating a system |
This list is still fairly parochial. Pianists. No one mentioned the very late very great Chick Corea, Hank Jones; the pianist who made the young Oscar Peterson cry (Art Tatum); the guy who alternates with Bill Evans as pianist on KOB (McCoy Tyner), Monk’s sometime roommate, Bud Powell; the George Shearing series with various vocalists; Teddy Wilson, who played with the Benny Goodman Quartet; and what about Duke Ellington or Count Basie? Besides being band leaders, and in the case of Duke a great composer, they also played piano. There are dozens more. Then there’s sax players. No one mentions the generally accepted GOAT, Charlie Parker. Admittedly, most of his LPs are from the late 40s to mid 50s and will be in mono, but he must be heard. (I beg to differ with Elliot that you must have a mono cartridge to listen to mono LPs. A mono switch on your linestage will suffice, and in a pinch, so will just using your stereo cartridge in stereo.) Then there is also, in no particular order, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon; Art Pepper’s contemporary also on alto sax, Lee Konitz; Stanley Turrentine, Gene Ammons, Benny Golson, Zoot Simms, Wayne Shorter, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins. These are just some of my favorites. Here is a list of 50 great sax players. And this is just some of the great players on only two instruments (3 if you separate alto and tenor sax). This is why I say I have 2000-ish great jazz LPs. As to the years of great jazz recordings, I would pretty much avoid the 70s and early 80s, because in those years jazz players were desperately trying to find an audience by interpreting the contemporary music of those years, which music in my opinion does not translate well to the jazz styles I like. Not to say also that a lot of the music of those years is weak. |
