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Jazz for Beginners
Anarchy Rules!
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm quite fond of jazz, in that I can work very well to it - easy listening classical just annoys me. However jazz isn't really a mainstream thing it seems, and I was wondering whether anyone had any jazz artists/albums they recommend to start me off?
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Miles Davis - The Complete Birth of the Cool
John Coltrane - Cookin/Relaxin/Workin/Steamin with the Miles Davis Quintet (this is 4 albums)
John Coltrane - Giant Steps
John Coltrane - My Favorite things
Louis Armstrong - What a Wonderful World
Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald - The Complete Ella and Louis on Verve
Dizzie Gillespie - Pretty much pick any "Best of" album and you're good. Same goes for Django Reinhardt. Same goes for Duke Ellington. Same goes for Charlie Parker.
Honestly, any of the mainstream greats you can go with a Best of or compilation album and you won't be disappointed.
And these are all mainstream, nothing really experimental or crazy here. Just genre defining classic 40's/50's/60's jazz.
The Electric Miles Davis era. Bitches Brew, obviously. I'm a huge fan of On the Corner as well.
Check out Soft Machine's Third and Fourth. Check out Volume 2 if you don't mind pop music with a strong Jazz undertone.
Frank Zappa's Hot Rats features Peaches in Regalia. Check out Jazz From Hell, Waka Jawaka (Hot Rats II), Sleep Dirt (Hot Rats III), Make a Jazz Noise Here, Uncle Meat, and Weasel's Ripped my Flesh, which is very heavy on the Dolphy.
Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and Don Cherry put out some pretty out there albums as well. Very untraditional.
If you can stand a bit of funk in your jazz then pick up some Fela Kuti.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ond09u9bekA
Regardless, I stand by my recommendations.
Get as much Dolphy, Monk, and Mingus as you can.
Out to Lunch, Monk's Dream, and Mingus Ah Um respectively.
Good thing about Sun Ra is that he has some absolutely out there shit in between legit, excellently composed and played bop. I'd recommend Jazz in Silhouette and Space is the Place (album, not soundtrack) as a good contrast. His Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy is a really awesome slice of some really interesting studio magic back before it was usually possible.
Grab Chicago Art Ensemble's Live in Paris and Bap Tizum.
Don Cherry's Orient and The Avant-Garde
Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz.
Miles Davis
John Coltraine
Duke
Bill Evans
Count Basie
Astrud Gilberto
Chick Corea
Charlie Parker
Ella Fitzgerald
Horace Silver
Herbie Hancock
Ornette Coleman
Joao Gilberto
Louis Armstrong
Thelonius Monk
Nat King Cole
Oscar Peterson
Sun Ra
That takes you from Swing to Bop to Latin to What the fuck and back.
A lot of the classic Blue Note bop/post-bop records are more what I'd suggest, along the lines of matt's post.
Stuff like:
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - Indestructible
Wayne Shorter - Wayne Shorter
Grant Green - Green Street
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Bob Curnow - The Music of Pat Metheny
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters
Freddie Hubbard - Red Clay
Maynard Ferguson - Live from San Francisco
Bela Fleck and the Fleck Tones - Live at the Quick
Bela Fleck - The Bluegrass Sessions
The best place to learn as you go what jazz you'd like would be Pandora. Make a new station and type in a couple of artists, listen to some of their works and works similar to them, thumbs-up or thumbs-down whatever you do or don't like, and then when you're comfortable with what you're hearing, add in a new artist or two and repeat.
Oscar Peterson's "We Get Requests" is similar, very good versions of standards. If you thought "Girl from Ipanema" was boring muzak, you haven't heard this version.
Since a lot of these artists have so much music out, I've never been happy with just diving in to their catalog -- some of the recordings are really blah, especially compared to today's production standards, and the drums are really quiet, the bass is mixed down low, and the main solo instrument is too loud. The two albums above has great production on it so everything, bass included, is mixed nicely.
later MMW is also great, but it's much more challenging to listen to (very avante)
Charles Mingus - Blues and Roots
Chris Potter - Gratitude
David Binney - Welcome to Life
Joshua Redman - Elastic
Kneebody
RUDDER
AlasNoAxis
Those are all great bands/players.
I'm more of a fan of the earlier Miles Davis stuff, so I'd recommend Birth of the Cool, Four and More, and Kind of Blue.
Louis Armstrong is just great no matter what era you listen to, he goes from quick and fun in the earlier swing era to more emotive and expressive, saying more with less notes later on. Honestly, I don't think you can go wrong with him.
Thelonious Monk is really fun to listen to if it clicks with you. I'm mainly listening to At Carnegie Hall and Big Band & Quartet in Concert.
Duke Ellington is also really great. He worked with a lot of the great jazz artists through the 20th century and his orchestra is consistently awesome. I've been listening to the Duke box and Duke Ellington & John Coltrane.
Ella Fitzgerald is probably my favorite singer. Honestly, anything I say won't do her justice. If you can, try and get her Songbooks. They cover much of the Great American Songbook.
I don't know if you have it, but I'd consider getting the Zune Pass. You get access to all sorts of great stuff.
In the meantime, you should listen to the Modern Jazz Quartet and anything that was ever put out on the Blue Note record label.
And for the record: A Love Supreme is the greatest Coltrane album ever recorded. So there.
Thanks!