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11.21am
26 January 2017
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From what I can gauge of the music listening habits of fellow BB-ers, I’m going to guess more than a few of us are jazz fans. What are your favourite jazz albums/artists/songs?
I’m mostly into mainstream jazz like Sinatra, Miles Davis, John Coltrane etc but I’m hoping to get into more obscure stuff, so any recommendations would be very welcome.
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Von BonteeI've been up on the mountain, and I've seen his wondrous grace,
I've sat there on the barstool and I've looked him in the face.
He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow him down,
he was humming to the neon of the universal sound.
11.48am
26 January 2017
Offline I’m a big fan of pianists like Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, and Vince Guaraldi. Pretty much any LP with them at the keyboards is a great listen for me.
I play a small amount of jazz on piano, but these guys are absolute wizards. I’m honestly not a massive fan of Miles Davis’s trumpet playing, but his songwriting and ability to assemble an All Star band is unparalleled.
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vonbontee"The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles!"
-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
"We could ride and surf together while our love would grow"
-Brian Wilson, Surfer Girl
1.01pm
25 December 2017
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I haven’t really dug deep into Jazz. I Like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue as well as some songs from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane and The Madhouse Projects that Prince did. But i haven’t done much other than that
"Dinner with Delores Must be some kind of sin
Like a Brontosaurus She was packin' it in" -Prince
2.05pm
26 January 2017
Offline sir walter raleigh said
I’m a big fan of pianists like Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, and Vince Guaraldi. Pretty much any LP with them at the keyboards is a great listen for me.I play a small amount of jazz on piano, but these guys are absolute wizards. I’m honestly not a massive fan of Miles Davis’s trumpet playing, but his songwriting and ability to assemble an All Star band is unparalleled.
I’ve recently listened to one of Thelonious Monk’s more famous albums, but the name escapes me. I really enjoyed it. I’ll give the others you mentioned a go.
I've been up on the mountain, and I've seen his wondrous grace,
I've sat there on the barstool and I've looked him in the face.
He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow him down,
he was humming to the neon of the universal sound.
3.59pm
1 December 2009
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wow this thread is bontee bait!
I think Brilliant Corners is probably one of Monk’s most famous, and possibly his one actual “studio album” I’d choose of his for this forthcoming list of 11 or 14 or so favourites of mine by much-loved performers if I wasn’t going to impose a one-per-individual rule…anyways, here’s a lot of my favourite sounds, chronologically laid out to get crazier as they go into the future)
Louis Armstrong – any Hot Fives/Hot Sevens collection (where it begins)
Thelonious Monk – any Blue Note 1947-53 collection (“the genius of modern music”)
Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus (yes, yes but don’t forget drummer Max Roach)
Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (more probably a complete Atlantic collection but I don’t own/don’t wanna pay $$$)
Art Blakey – Moanin’
Jackie McLean – One Step Beyond
Eric Dolphy – Out To Lunch!! (great great day for music recording!)
Ornette Coleman Live at the Golden Circle
Cecil Taylor – Unit Structures (recorded on another great day for recorded music, particularly the piano and horn and drum variety)
Sun Ra – College Tour Vol. 1
Miles Davis – Miles Smiles
John Coltrane – Interstellar Space (one of my top five recordings of all time, just saxophone and drums (plus a few sleighbells) exploring the solar system (and universe in time/space/sound, Coltrane making his second or third or fiftieth great musical advance just months before dying at age 40, on a day when all the love in the world couldn’t beat liver cancer)
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sir walter raleigh, QuarryMan, WeepingAtlasCedarsGEORGE: In fact, The Detroit Sound. JOHN: In fact, yes. GEORGE: In fact, yeah. Tamla-Motown artists are our favorites. The Miracles. JOHN: We like Marvin Gaye. GEORGE: The Impressions PAUL & GEORGE: Mary Wells. GEORGE: The Exciters. RINGO: Chuck Jackson. JOHN: To name but eighty.
4.39pm
26 January 2017
Offline Sonny Rollins is better than Coltrane IMO. Best sax player ever.
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Von Bontee"The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles!"
-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
"We could ride and surf together while our love would grow"
-Brian Wilson, Surfer Girl
4.58pm
7 May 2017
Offline I like Bill Evans, especially his trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.
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vonbontee7.27pm
15 May 2015
Offline I tend to like “adulterated” jazz better than classic jazz. Although Brubeck’s gold standard albums in the 1960s beginning with Time Out seem to be classic jazz, they are subtly warped with experimentation in time signatures: so I count him among my favorites. Into the 70s, I also like Ramsey Lewis and Herbie Hancock, both who began as ordinary jazz musicians but later explored funk and pop. After listening to ordinary jazz, one has only to sit down for the first time to listen to Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” to have one’s mind blown.
But this kind of experimentation with the genre is subtler than, say, what Miles Davis did, by which I’m not as wowed as is the consensus.
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a coffee dessert, yes you know it's good news...
7.34pm
26 January 2017
Offline Watermelon Man is so awesome. Hancock is an all time great piano player.
The following people thank sir walter raleigh for this post:
Von Bontee, Pineapple Records"The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles!"
-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
"We could ride and surf together while our love would grow"
-Brian Wilson, Surfer Girl
1.49am
14 December 2009
Offline sir walter raleigh said
Sonny Rollins is better than Coltrane IMO. Best sax player ever.
Sonny has so much fun in his music that Coltrane never could duplicate – ecstasy isn’t the same thing. Sonny made a Massey Hall crowd of hundreds (including me and my Beatlebud) laugh out loud on cue back in 1991, with a well-timed seven-note bit of drollness in the middle of his unaccompanied segment. Plus I like how Sonny concentrated on swinging a lot more than Coltrane…but Trane’s still my guy.
(Oh and I forgot to add Roland Kirk’s Rip, Rig and Panic LP up there, too bad, it’s fun!)
And as long as Funny Paper opened the door to jazz-rock fusion, here’s a few of those too…
The Tony Williams Lifetime – Emergency!
Miles Davis – Jack Johnson (or the complete sessions box)
The Stark Reality – Acting, Thinking, Feeling
Mahavishu Orchestra – The Inner Mounting Flame
Frank Zappa – The Grand Wazoo
Santana – Lotus (three amazing live-in – Japan records)
Herbie Hancock – Sextant
Jeff Beck – Blow by Blow (the first version of “She’s A Woman ” I heard!)
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sir walter raleigh, Pineapple RecordsPaul: Yeah well… first of all, we’re bringing out a ‘Stamp Out Detroit’ campaign.
4.38am
26 January 2017
Offline Give Guthrie Govan a google. Probably the most talented guitarist out there. He plays in a fusion band called The Aristocrats. They get a wee bit too metal for me at some points, but the Govan songs have incredible guitar work.
Also, if we talk about Jazz LPs, Joni Mitchell’s Shadows And Light is one of my favorites. Played with another great jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, and legendary bassist Jaco Pastorious.
The following people thank sir walter raleigh for this post:
Von Bontee, Pineapple Records, ewe2"The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles!"
-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
"We could ride and surf together while our love would grow"
-Brian Wilson, Surfer Girl
12.40pm
14 December 2009
Offline Pineapple Records said
I tend to like “adulterated” jazz better than classic jazz. Although Brubeck’s gold standard albums in the 1960s beginning with Time Out seem to be classic jazz, they are subtly warped with experimentation in time signatures:
Have you heard of the Don Ellis Orchestra? He played trumpet and led a rocking big band that experimented a lot with complex time signatures much of the time. This 1968 performance is pretty fun…
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Pineapple RecordsPaul: Yeah well… first of all, we’re bringing out a ‘Stamp Out Detroit’ campaign.
1.22pm
26 January 2017
Offline Thanks, all. I’ll give them a go 🙂 Very excited to get further into the wild, wonderful world of jazz.
The following people thank QuarryMan for this post:
Von BonteeI've been up on the mountain, and I've seen his wondrous grace,
I've sat there on the barstool and I've looked him in the face.
He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow him down,
he was humming to the neon of the universal sound.
10.47pm
15 May 2015
Offline Von Bontee said
Pineapple Records said
I tend to like “adulterated” jazz better than classic jazz. Although Brubeck’s gold standard albums in the 1960s beginning with Time Out seem to be classic jazz, they are subtly warped with experimentation in time signatures:Have you heard of the Don Ellis Orchestra? He played trumpet and led a rocking big band that experimented a lot with complex time signatures much of the time. This 1968 performance is pretty fun…
Thanks Von Bontee, I’m not familiar with Don Ellis — or with about 80% of the list you gave above that — I have my homework cut out for me (fun homework!)
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Von BonteeA ginger sling with a pineapple heart,
a coffee dessert, yes you know it's good news...
9.50pm
8 January 2015
Offline I’m a bit of a magpie with jazz, my dad was heavily into big bands, but he had a quite varied collection ranging from trad. through to modern. We had that bloody Miles Davis record like everyone has, but dad wasn’t into fusion at all, so I missed all that, the closest he got was the eponymous Blood Sweat and Tears album. He must have had some piano jazz because I’ve always liked it, Bill Evans and more obscure guys like Hampton Hawes who had the brilliant Barney Kessel on guitar and Red Mitchell in a trio for a while. Horace Silver gets my vote too, and also Dave Brubeck who did more obscure things than the popularised stuff. Nina Simone is very important and she did some wild reinterpretations of Beatles songs. I never quite latched on to Charlie Parker or Coltrane, but got into Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz instead. Eventually I did discover fusion, Jeff Beck’s stuff and later Miles, Bill Bruford, Jaco Pastorius and especially John Scofield. Whoops, almost forgot Herbie Hancock, he turns up on everything anyway. Frank Zappa is frequently jazzy and that Joni Mitchell jazz period was great.
So you can see I’m all over the shop and I’m often veering back and forth across jazz history. Of course I revisited a lot of old stuff due to the ukulele practice, but I’m always happy with more modern stuff particularly if it’s funky or Latin-tinged. There is stuff I dislike, for example Duke Ellington (however much I like the Stevie Wonder song) leaves me cold, I’m pretty much down on music that tries to talk down to people, and jazz is full of that kind of music unfortunately. I’ve never understood Charlie Mingus either, I’ve tried hard to like his stuff, but it’s just boring, and there’s a heap of fusion/progressive that falls into that basket for me also. Outside of the music, the jazz scene seems to be furious and preachy which makes new stuff difficult to find or like.
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Von Bontee, QuarryManI'm like Necko only I'm a bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin and also everyone. Or is everyone me? Now I'm a confused bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin everyone who is definitely not @Joe. This has been true for 2016 & 2017 
but I may have to get more specific in the future.
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