New To Jazz Music - Need Album Recommendations

[fmw]

I think the greatest jazz men of all time were:

1. Oscar Peterson
2. Oscar Peterson
3. Oscar Peterson

Oscar was the most prolific recording artist of all time with over 450 albums to his credit. It shouldn't be hard to find something. My preference is for the albums he recorded prior to 1965 when his trio included Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen.

You can tell I'm a Peterson fan. As young lad, I used to travel weekends to hear him play live. Incredible pianist.

 

[jliedeka]

I forgot to mention Al DiMeola. For fusiony stuff, Electric Rendezvous is pretty cool. Paco de Lucia plays on some of the songs. Also, check out Bela Fleck, my favorite banjo player.

Jim

 

[rnatalli]

Swing jazz does it for me. I think a couple of greats have already been mentioned.

 

[100r1]

Count Basie
Donald Byrd

Big band/ Swing I like Stan Kenton

How about:

Wes Montgomery
Bill Evans

These are some of the cornerstones of their time.

 

[allargon]

I don't have the gear to make sonic recommendations. However, I will recommend stuff based on the quality of the artist and the song.

#1) Anything by Miles Davis

#2) I own Time Life's Essential Jazz Collection. I play it in my car all the time. It has stuff from the 20's to the 1960's.

#3) Diana Krall for the easy listening contemporary stuff

#4) John Legend just so you can be in the know on who's hot right now.

 

[itschris]

Does anyone have experience ordering from www.telarc.com. Are their prices competitive and how fast do they ship?

OH MAN!!!!!!! One of my absolute favorite discs... my go to... my reference disc to test out new stuff: SPIES!

It's an awsome disc. There's a song called Barcelona sung by BJ John Smith, it's like butter. I have several discs from Telarc. Their prices and shipping are just about like any other. They're on online... go check em out:

http://www.telarc.com/

 

[itschris]

Diane Krall is hit or miss I think. From This Moment On was a pretty good disc, the title track has amazing musicianship as does the entire disc, but her singing get a bit predictable for me. I'm not a Jass afficianado by any means, but it seems that a lot of the times she sings in in the cliche way you would expect a cliche jass singer to sing.... if that makes sense.

Overall however, I do like that disc a lot... my wife loves it, but niether of us are crazy about the other ones.

I like that kind of jazz though. The new age fusion stuff is okay, some of the real traditional stuff just gets hard to listen too for me. Often times it seems like there's several people playing several different songs. I have immense apppreciation for the musicianship, but it gets hard to listen to for me.

I like the big band sound though. Actually the title track From This Moment On has fantastic horns. Great trumpets and big deep trombones. It sounds great a on a nice system.

 

[jostenmeat]

I haven't made a cool jazz discovery for a while it seems. Well, I happen to make discoveries with the radio as that is almost the only thing I listen to while driving. So last week I heard some Gary Burton in duo with Chick Corea. I didn't know they had a long standing duo. I cannot remember the name of the tune, let alone the album, but my ears haven't perked up that much listening to my local jazz station in quite a long time.

Anyone familiar with any of their duo stuff?

I think, amazingly, I might not own any Corea. I think* the only Burton stuff I have is Matchbook with Towner. I remember hearing Goodbye Porkpie Hat with McLaughlin years ago, and yet again on the radio...

*I think my favorite big band album Ive owned is Live In Sweden with Basie. Backwater Blues is pretty sweet.

 

[Davemcc]

Some of my favorites are Spyro Gyra (Freetime, Catching the Sun), The Clarke/Duke Project, Hiroshima (Hiroshima) and George Benson (Breezin'). I also find some of the older stuff hard to listen to due to recording quality, esp. some Charlie Parker stuff but the older Oscar Peterson tracks are still pretty good.

 

[jliedeka]

Another good female vocalist is Lorraine Feather. She writes really quirky stuff and has a good voice.

Jim