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What Jazz Records Would You Reccommend?
zmotula asks: "What Jazz records do you think are a must-have for a Jazz Geek? I've got about twenty records I really love (Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Tijuana Moods by Charlie Mingus, Lush Life by John Coltrane, just to mention some) and I want to spend some more money on buying more. Alas, I can only afford buying around two CDs a month. What records do you think are essential?"
The genre is too large to simply say "this is good".
Now I'm going to say something that's going to get me flamed.
Check out Kenny G. No seriously. Stop laughing.
Kenny G represents the future of Jazz, for better or worse. Soprano sax in the fore and a solid trio in the backup is the type of music coming out of the Jazz world for years to come. Take a listen to any recent Jazz album and you will find easily followable rhythms and very few solo excursions anymore.
As an art form, Jazz has essentially played itself out. This is as much a result of its maturity as it is a result of the intrinsyc drawbacks of the style. The style allows the artist complete freedom and this was exploited for years in the form of gratuitous solos and wildly off-beat excursions. There is only so far you can go with that kind of artform because eventually it all has to come back to the essential 4 4 beat and at that point Jazz loses all its magic.
It's a shame that the best American musical artform is on the verge of dying (BSD trolls begone!), but there's simply nowhere for the music to go except into Kenny G-like easy listening, no chance taking, simple, boring, and unsatisfying albums.
It's kind of like being an Altair aficianado. The only thing you can do is look to the past because they just don't make what you want anymore.
I have been pwned because my
Still Life Talking by Pat Metheny.
When I am new to a music form, I tend to seek out the opinions of "experts" with that music form in order to start my collection. I'd love to see this same question asked with other music forms. Rap, house music, world music, jam bands, alternative music....let's see a string of these questions.
If the music labels would only wake up and realize that people that engage in P2P filesharing actually buy *more* music, they might realize that this is the perfect application for (illegal) downloading of copyrighted material. Want to expose yourself to some of this music? Download a bunch of mp3s. Buy what you like (some of the liner notes on these jazz albums are fantastic), and delete the rest. After all, you don't want the RIAA on your butt when they come to arrest 1/6 of the population!
--Be human.
Anyway, if you're interested in Jazz + Blues + Folk then grab her UP UP UP UP UP album, and To The Teeth. Her live stuff ain't too good - don't bother, but those albums are excellent. Particularly, "Hat Shaped Hat", "Back back back", are great jazz/blues songs. Here are some lyrics,
Lots of the Good Stuff (Monk, Coletrane, Ella, Brubeck) has already been mentioned.. But you should check out Django Reinhart, the original guitar god ;)
Even if you were right, there are millions of us youngsters born in the 70s and 80s who don't know a lot of these names, much less ever heard the music. It's new music to our ears.
There would be lots of life left in jazz if the music got more exposure and promotion.
Jaco Pastorius was not in the Yellow Jackets. He was in Weather Report, but only on a few albums. "Heavy Weather" is the high point of the Jaco era of weather report.
The bassist for the Yellow Jackets is Jimmy Haslip, also a fine bassist (from what I hear; I haven't heard them myself.)