Grant Greene - idle hands
Freddie Hubbard - open sesame
Bill Evans - waltz for debbie
Chet Baker - sings
Jackie McLean - destination out
John Coltrane- coltrane’s sound
Joe Henderson - page one
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.
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@gareents- I got turned on to Horace Tapscott a while ago; that live double album, side 3, is killer. Through him I also got onto Nate Morgan--Journey Into Nigritia is pretty amazing. He was not only was part of that underground ensemble, but worked with Chaka Khan! Not well-known players but fascinating stuff. |
Esbjorn Svennson Trio “Plays Monk” The Ray Brown Trio “Soular Energy” Les Meccan & Eddie Harris “Swiss Movement” Stan Getz “Bossas and Ballards” Kurt Elling “The Gate” Benny Green Trio “Greens” Art Pepper “The Trip” Mary Lou Williams Trio “Free Spirits” Frank Morgan “A Lovesome Thing” Wayne Shorter”Speak No Evil” |
Two sides of jazz, east coast and west coast. Two different sounds. Many have recommended great east coast jazz albums. To add some great west coast artists: Art Pepper, saxophone, any album any time in his great career Chet Baker, trumpet, especially the early years Shelley Manne, one of the great drummers and band leaders Lastly, a brand new but going to be one of the all time great jazz singers (4 Grammy awards at the age of 24) SAMARA JOY -GAR |
Lennie Tristano and his star pupil, my teacher, Sal Mosca. Has anybody mentioned Armstrong? Not a jazz collection overall without him. Lester Young with the Nat Cole Trio will have you humming his solos all day long, and his solo on "Embraceable You" on the "Charlie Parker Jazz at the Philharmonic 1949" album is one of the greatest of all saxophone improvisations. And don’t neglect the best of the big bands and swing. As Duke Ellington said, "All the audiences are still there." |
Dave Brubeck's-"Time Out" Columbia 45 rpm pressing CS 8192 Art Blakey's- "Just Coolin"-Blue Note pressing ST-64201 Paul Chambers-"Bass on Top"-Blue Note pressing BST 81569 Ella Fitzgerald & Billie Holiday at Newport-(side A is Ella recorded July4th,1957) (side B is Billie recorded July 6th-1957) Both pressing originals by Verve Records pressing MG V-82341-1958- Current re-release by Not Now Music (visit-- Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong-Verve pressing-MG V 4003 Enjoy the music.
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The Modern Jazz Quartet. "The Last Concert" live at Carnegie Hall. It was the first jazz record I ever bought on recommendation from Stereo Review c. 1974. I still have it, play it often, and get something new out of it every time. Ellington's small group performances on "Money Jungle," and "The Intimate Ellington." The combo on "Money Jungle consists of Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. How cool is that? For big band jazz anything by Duke and Count Basie, but a special favorite is the three record set of Linda Ronstadt singing from the great American songbook, "'Round Midnight." Nelson Riddle orchestrated the whole shebang and led his orchestra. Is it jazz? It'll do 'til the real thing comes along, to paraphrase Patricia Barber. Her "Live, A Fortnight in France" is also a fine album. |
You should attend Axpona next month and spend some time in Expo Hall and Record Fair. I usually spend hours there talking with local and national dealers about new music and sounds. Very educational. I have purchased new music on the advice of Chesky records, Music Direct, Acoustic Sounds and many others. Check out the dealers attending Axpona |
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. |
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 |
I think my favorite jazz album has got to be Michael Garson's "Serendipity". It's Reference Recording RR-20. A really nice accoustic jazz album, with high quality performances, and above average audio quality for the time it was produced. Second choice would be Dave Gruisin's "Discovered Again. Sheffield Treasury ST500. Great performances, and very nice recording by Sheffield Labs, too. Hope these are still available! Hope this helps, and best of luck to you in building out your jazz collection. |
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)
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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. |
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. |
I'll add to some of the greats already mentioned, Art Pepper Today, which has his 3rd recorded rendition of "Patricia" with Cecil McBee on bass. "Katanga!" from Tone Poet- a great reissue. I have not heard the newish reissue of Woody Shaw's Blackstone Legacy, but the OG is a wonderful album. The new one was promoted as being cut by the notorious Bernie G, but apparently was done by Kevin Gray. Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans, "Know What I Mean?" should still be in print as a Kevin Gray cut on Craft; I compared it to a couple others and if you can find a mid-'80s OJC copy in clean playing condition, you'll find it a little more visceral. Gary Bartz and Maisha- Bartz was one of the original spiritual jazz players with his own discography; here, he teams up with a young collective inspired by the original spiritual jazz movement. Bonus: cut direct to disc. Cochemea’s All My Relations- part of the Daptone band that backed the late Sharon Jones, a cool record that is a sonic treat. None of these should be terribly pricey. OGs of some of Pharaoh Sanders' work are now expensive, as are some of the early (pre-Ashram) albums by Alice Coltrane. Many have been reissued using digital sources. Worth trying, perhaps, to see if you like any of them enough to spend the money on original pressings. It's all a great adventure. Part of the fun is "surfing" players to find other works. I was entranced by Cecil McBee a few years ago, and started buying pretty much anything I could lay my hands on. Hope you find your own muse in exploring. There is a recent Pharaoh album that is undoubtedly cut from digital but it is all standards and ballads- very straight ahead without the multi-phonic sqwack for which he was known--entitled "Welcome to Love." Very accessible though not typical of his work. The Kevin Gray recut of Hancock's "Crossings" just sparkles. I compared it to an unmolested green label and the recut had more of everything. It's a hodgepodge of jazz sounds turned on its head, very inventive, like a primer to every jazz idiom put into a blender. There's a whole lot more that is worth exploring. I'm a big fan of the work Gil Scott Heron did with Brian Jackson, like "Winter in America." It was released on Strata-East and has that wonderful chime-y Rhodes sound. Also released (and cheaper) as retitled The Bottle. The Strata-East label is a gold mine of jewels and dross and worth researching- now pricey. |
For Bill Evans, I like Waltz for Debbie even more than the Village Vanguard album which came from the same series of performances. Also, his Portrait in Jazz. I concur otherwise with many of the above suggestions. But an omission is Herbie Hancock--get a greatest hits anthology or Maiden Voyage and (if you like electric funk-jazz) Chameleon. Paul Desmond is my favorite alto-sax player. His albums with guitarist Jim Hall are wonderful, although one of them had some string arrangements I could do without. Easy Living is one of their better albums. |
Umbrella label - Boss Brass - Rob McConnell - big band jazz D2D - incredible sound Guitar - Ed Bickert, Emily Remler, Pat Metheny, Grant Green Piano - Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Sonny Clark Blues? Gary Moore Trumpet - Chet Baker, Miles, Harry Edison One thing I do - you are listening to an album, and maybe you like the piano - check who is playing; Miles was great about picking new players in his bands. Sax - Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Paul Desmond
Have Fun!!
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