I really like:
Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue, Birth of Cool
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, His version of My Favorite Things
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz
Any recommendations to what else I might like?
You like guitar? Try Mike Stern and Frank Gambale.
Freddie Hubbard
Charlie Parker is in line with some of the Birth of the Cool stuff (bebop influence)
Any Miles Davis record from the 60’s/70’s (bitches brew is an experimental take.)
Cannonball Adderly
Herbie Hancock - Mwandishi, Watermelon Man
John Coltrane - Naima, Giant Steps (if you love the Ornette this’ll be right up your alley
Charles Mingus - Epitaph
Thelonius Monk - Solo Monk
Those are all particularly strong albums. For artists in general, look for any of the following, they all should be pretty easy to find…
Piano: Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Ellis Marsalis,
Trumpet: Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Hargrove, Wynton Marsalis, Clifford Brown, Ronald Brecker
Guitar: Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass
Saxophone: Illinois Jacquet, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne Shorter, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt
I could go on and on but I’m sure others will list the classics, so I’ll just mention:
Lee Morgan, “Search for the New Land”
how bout some modern stuff
soulive
herbie hanckock
martin mediski wood
chicago underground trio
A very hard to find album, but its my absolute favorite:
Oscar Peterson - Nigerian Marketplace (1982)
I also recommend checking your library for “The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz” and giving it a listen. It’s a great overview (of everything before 1980, anyway), and may help you define your tastes.
You didn’t mention any big band, but I can’t recommend the unjustly undervalued Jimmy Lunceford.
…HIGHLY ENOUGH! :smack:
Regina Carter.
The lady plays the violin.
Also on piano: McCoy Tyner.
Two of my favorites are “Sound” by Roscoe Mitchell (free jazz that was right before the formation of the Art Ensemble of Chicago), and “Interstellar Space” by John Coltrane (this one is very heavy).
Louis Armstrong
Why didn’t anybody list Saint Louis?
The Manhattan Transfer, and of cousre,
The Chairman of the Board, Mr. Frank Sinatra.
For something a little more out of left field, check out Ephel Duath’s The Painter’s Palette.
The OP’s list is identical to the one I started with.
Now you need Kenny Dorham’s “Una Mas” and Herbie Hancock’s “Headhunter.”
If you like avant-garde, check out Sun Ra. He has a million CDs. Plus he’s just awesome. Coleman’s the father of avant-garde, and a purist would say to delve more into his stuff. His other big recording was “The Shape of Jazz to Come”. There’s also a KEN BURNS JAZZ CD for him. Miles also has some great abstract work- notably "Bitches Brew". “Live Evil” and **“Dark Magus” ** are also two favorites of later Miles for me.
You can’t go wrong with Coltrane, though his later stuff can be hard to grasp for some. Check out **“Giant Steps”. ** The entire “My Favorite Things” album is classic. If you like Coltrane you might like Sonny Rollins. His “must get” is “Saxophone Colossus”. But then again, as a jazz god, he has dozens that are sure hits.
I’m a huge Bill Evans fan- you MUST check out “Sunday at the Village Vanguard” and “**Waltz for Debby”. ** Jazz trio stuff- if you like Brubeck you’d like Evans. Evans wipes the floor with Brubeck anyway.
Also, I’ve gotta mention Charles Mingus. Any jazz enthusiast has him in their collection, but there’s something a little quirky about him that gives him a cult following. I love him- check out "Mingus Ah Um" for an introduction.
I’ll back up the Herbie Hancock and Medeski, Martin and Wood suggestions. Both are big on fusion- Herbie’s electric masterpiece will always be "Headhunters". For acoustic Herbie, Maiden Voyage. If you like Miles you’ll like that. MMW is more avant garde. All of their stuff is a sure hit- try earlier CDs.
Great thread, jazz is something I’ve always loved but haven’t devoted enough time to learning more about.
If you’re interested in something a little more contemporary, you should check out an album called “Tourist” by a guy called St Germain. Very very cool, but also probably sacrilege for the purists.
Wes Montgomery is wonderful. Ben Webster, if you can find Ballads, is sublime.
But don’t miss out on the great vocalists. Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan. And don’t turn your nose up at these new kids like Norah Jones and Diana Krall.
For sheer entertainment value, Louis Jordan’s Man Alive, It’s the Jumping Jive is really hard to beat.
Additional:
Trumpet: Chet Baker, nearly any album
Vocals: Jane Monheit, k.d. lang w/Tony Bennett
If you like “Time Out”, try “Live At Carnegie Hall”, which has some of the best work the quartet ever did.
Sax: **Stan Getz ** (Getz and Gilberto is a classic)
Great suggestions here. Some others:
Sonny Rollins - Great sax player, the Ken Burns Jazz compilation is a good place to start
Horace Silver - phenomenal piano player, try Safari, which is a great overview of the man and his work, which is brilliant.
Check out Art Blakey. One of the greatest drummers ever, he led the Jazz Messengers, who featured Horace Silver for a while. The Ken Burns Jazz compilation is a good starting place also.
Don’t forget Dizzy Gillespie. He and Charlie Parker practically invented be-bop. His stuff from around the end of WWII and into the early 1960’s was awesome.
I tout the Ken Burns Jazz compilations for the primary reason that I believe the digital cleanup and reproduction was as painstaking as possible, and makes a lot of music that was recorded between 40 and 70 years ago sound fresh and new.
One of my favorite one-off albums is ‘Two of the Few’, which is just Oscar Peterson (perhaps the greatest jazz pianist of all time) and Milt Jackson (a truly supreme vibes player) playing together and making the most heavenly sounds imaginable.
Also, I suggest latin Jazz, specifically Tito Puente (percussion) and Cal Tjader(vibes). Pick up any of their stuff from the 50’s and 60’s, it is essential listening.
For contemporaries, I like Poncho Sanchez for latin jazz, he is the Tito Puente of our time. Also I can’t let an opportunity go by without plugging my absolute favorite group of any genre, Bela Fleck and The Flecktones. They come closest to replicating the incredible skill and composition talent of Dave Brubeck in a modern context, but they deserve a category all their own, as they incorporate just about every possible musical style available across the globe in a unique and pleasing way.
Heh…this reminds me of someone…I think maybe Brook Shields…she was asked what she though of Thelonius Monk. She replied, “Who’s the loneliest monk?”
All these picks are good.