Top Jazz & Pop/Rock Groups/Artists you listen to and the best recording you have on vinyl


Thought everyone may have a few minutes of downtime this week to do a survey. I'm looking to discover new groups/artists, especially Jazz that I may not be aware of. Please list the 10 Jazz and Pop/Rock Groups/Artists you spend the most time listening to and the best album/release from each you own or have heard. This is not your favorite album of the group, but the recording that sounds the best. Here's my list:

Jazz

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - MOFI 45
John Coltrane - Ballads -Speakers Corner
Wes Montgomery - Down Here on the Ground - Speakers Corner
Milt Jackson - Bags Meets Wes! - Analogue Productions 45
Jimmy Smith - Back at the Chicken Shack - Analogue Productions 45
Stan Getz - Stan Meets Chet - Analogue Productions 45
Charles Mingus - Ah Hum- 180g
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus - 180g
Pat Metheny - Offramp - regular release/pressing
Earl Klugh - Finger Paintings MOFI UHQR

Pop/Rock

Steely Dan - Gaucho - Japanese Pressing
Beatles - Sgt. Pepper - MOFI UHQR
Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps - Japanese Pressing
Boz Scaggs - Boz Scaggs - Analogue Productions
Pink Floyd - Dark Side MOFI UHQR
Fleetwood Mac - Rumors - Nautilus Recordings
Dire Straits - Love over Gold - Pallas Germany (Grundman)
Tom Petty - Damn the Torpedoes - MCA Mastersound
The Eagles - One of these Nights - Japanese Pressing
Jackson Browne - Running on Empty - Japanese Pressing

Thanks.
sokogear
Jazz: These are my list from my collection. I like the sound and music.

Sonny Rollins. Work Time (Original mono, Prestige LP 7020)
Patricia Barber. Nightclub, Cafe Blue
Bill Evans Trio. Waltz for Debby (reissue, OJC-210)
Radka Toneff. Fairytales
Muddy Waters. Folk singer (Chess LPS 1483)
Coleman Hawkins. The Hawk Flies High (reissue, MSFL)
Harry James & his big band. The King James Version
Nat King Cole. The very thought of you (reissue, LPZ-2047)
Marcus Miller. Suddenly
I please list in the OP, so no question mark.

Maybe to @millercarbon was a comment.....

What about your list @fuzztone?
Thanks Chuck - but you really didn’t answer the question. I’m aware of Better Records, but they are much more than I am willing to spend, and I really don’t like noisy albums. I guess I have the mindset of what I used to pay, getting UHQRs for $35-40. I know it was 35-40 years ago, but even with inflation, it’s less than what BR charges.

I’m not looking to demo a system, am more interested in discovering new groups that people listen to a lot, and which of the albums they have from that group happens to sound best.

I don’t listen to albums just because they sound good or even great. I have an old demo record that Yamaha made for stores to demo their equipment which sounds unbelievable called Sessions II. It’s not even in the cabinet where my records are due to space limitations. It has to be a group/artist’s music that I really like. Of course I’d rather have a better sounding copy of a given album, but I won’t pay insane prices for them. It’s all about the music. If I wouldn’t go see them in a concert, I wouldn’t listen to them at home.

I’ll listen to a mediocre regular pressing of The Royal Scam or Pretzel Logic before Janis Ian. Maybe you want to sell me your second best copy of Rumours 🙂
If you really are serious about sound quality you need to know about Better-records.com   https://better-records.com/pages/about-better-records

That Nautilus half speed mastered Rumours you have is the worst of all that I have it in. Worse than the original random LP. Much worse than the 45 reissue. All of which are crap compared to my White Hot Stamper. Those are altogether another level of sound quality. You have to hear one to believe it. 

Had one guy Michael drove up from Portland to hear my system, loves Fleetwood Mac, had me play him two tracks off the Rumours 45. Which honestly sounds really good. So good he says that's gonna be hard to beat. Then after the White Hot Stamper, no contest. Not even close. 

Tom Petty, I have the Damn the Torpedoes White Hot Stamper and its really awfully good but my White Hot Stamper of Southern Accents is so freakishly good its hard to believe. Never in my life dreamed TP was a stone cold hard core audiophile. Probably this is what it takes to find out.  

Hot Stampers are not new records. They are not quiet. If you want quiet keep buying reissues. They don't sound anywhere near as good. But they do tend to be more quiet.  

If you want really killer sound quality AND dead quiet vinyl the only one I know is the new Patricia Barber Impex 1Step 45 Cafe Blue. Probably as close as we will ever get to the master tape without going to open reel. 

Next after that, another 45 limited, Jennifer Warnes, The Well. Simply sublime, deep and liquid, and with several extra tracks that are so good its hard to see how they didn't make the original release. Especially the last one, Born in Time, which is unavailable anywhere else, only on this 45, and alone is worth the price of the whole album! 

Another one everyone should know about, Janis Ian, Breaking Silence. Superb audiophile classic and some of the best adult pop music ever recorded. Its all tube, she even uses a tube mic, and one track Some People's Lives is recorded live to two-track. Killer sonics. 

My wild card, the Sheffield Labs LP of Michael Ruff, Speaking in Melodies. Good luck finding a copy. Discogs has two, couple hundred bucks. I would snap up the RTI test pressing if I was you. If it was disc 2 I would have bought it, that's the side with the full length version of I Will Find You There with the most incredible live improv you ever heard. This kind of thing simply never seems to make it on tape any more. It does here! This is not one I play a lot but every time I do I get the feeling this is the most alive you are there of anything I have, and look at the list.  https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=680042&ev=mb&format=Vinyl