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Favorite Jazz Album

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- Rated: 5 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 7:44 a.m. HillbillyWolf:

Whats your favorite jazz album(s) of all time?

And to make it tricky, lets leave guitar out of this discussion.

I'll start with mine.

Impromptu- Dizzy Gillespie

Go!- Dexter Gordon
- Rated: 66 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 8:00 a.m. Walter Broes:

"Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, and I like "Somethin' Else" by Canonball Adderley almost as much. (same time frame, and both discs share players)

Guitar wise, I'm not a big Jazz fan - especially the post-swing players I'm not crazy about. Love Charlie Christian, George Barnes, Les Paul, etc... though!
- Rated: 5 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 8:07 a.m. HillbillyWolf:

I can dig that man.

ah, my favorite bop guitarist is on dizzys album "Birks Works" I believe, never caught his name, killer chops though.

But mainly I stick to horns and keys for Bop.
- Rated: 19 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 8:32 a.m. Jet-Head:

Agree on "Kind Of Blue". Also Miles's "Workin'", "Steamin'" and "Cookin'" albums.

Right up there would be "Monk-Trane". Great!

For guitar, the collaborations of Bill Evans and Jim Hall.
- Rated: 41 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 9:01 a.m. dubkitty:

"Mingus Ah Um" by Charles Mingus; the Paris solo recordings by Thelonious Monk (which have been repackaged under 1000 different titles); Anthony Braxton's "Montreaux/Berlin Concerts."

for some reason i can't relate to jazz guitar after 1950 at all, and the only jazz guitarist i really love is Django Reinhardt, whose physical limitations kept him from disappearing up the dead end street of perfect technique.
- Rated: 32 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 9:56 a.m. cyclopssam:

the raymond scott quintette

essential mills bros.

best of gene kupa

braford marsalis(Sp?) quartet first disk( i've lost it AGAIN grrrr......!)

any of the louies(Armstong or Jordan)

pat martino-live@ yoshi's

bernadette peters(i know it's a bit of a strech,but i just love her) -red curly hair,he,he
- Rated: 74 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 10:04 a.m. bonedaddy:

"Talking Verve; The Roots of Acid Jazz" by Wes Montgomery. It may be a compilation album, but it's a great compilation album
- Rated: 53 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 10:11 a.m. Ratrod:

Do 'Dirty Boogie' and 'The Little Willies' count as jazz albums?
- Rated: 31 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 10:48 a.m. Danman:

I love Ornette Coleman, The shape of jazz to come. I'm sure there are more great albums by him but that's the one I have.
Also love John Coltrane, Blue train and giant steps.

edit: Like I say a few posts down, thanks to seadevil: "A Love Supreme" - John Coltrane is what I actually meant. My memory failes me a certain moments.
- Rated: 5 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 10:53 a.m. HillbillyWolf:

Ratrod- Sure
- Rated: 42 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 11:18 a.m. seadevil:

Three longtime favorites:

"A Love Supreme" - John Coltrane

"Money Jungle" - Ellington, Coltrane, Mingus, Max Roach

"The Berlin Concerts" - Eric Dolphy
- Rated: 31 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 11:26 a.m. Danman:

Oh yes, that is the one I actually meant: "A Love Supreme" - John Coltrane. Thanks seadevil. I'm not home right now and couldn't remember it's name. Isn't that a great album?
- Rated: 23 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 12:06 p.m. Shuggie101:

"Sketches Of Spain" by Miles Davis with "Kind Of Blue" close behind.
- Rated: 212 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 12:49 p.m. Proteus:

Send in the Clowns – Zoot Sims and Bucky Pizzarelli

The tones and approaches of many sax players (jazz and otherwise) annoy me, and many jazz guitarists are of course a non-stop school of technique.

There's nothing ground-breaking about this album, which wasn't a major release on a big label. It's just a quartet of jazz masters in a club on a great night, and they get everything right.
- Rated: 25 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 1:06 p.m. Parabar:

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Bobby Hutcherson/Harold Land Quintet - Now

Favorites for Jazz Guitar:

Gary Burton Quartet with Larry Coryell - Live at Carnegie Hall
Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery - The Dynamic Duo
Jimmy Smith (with Kenny Burrell) - Back At The Chicken Shack
Miles Davis (with John McLaughlin) - Jack Johnson
Larry Carlton - Sapphire Blue
Larry Coryell (with John McLaughlin) - Spaces
- Rated: 41 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 1:34 p.m. dubkitty:

aw, jeez, i should have mentioned Escalator Over The Hill, Carla Bley's sprawling "jazz opera," which (guitar content!) has my favorite playing John McLaughlin ever did. and which features everyone from Charlie Haden and Don Cherry to Jack Bruce and Linda Ronstadt.
- Rated: 27 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 2:29 p.m. Jimbodiddley:

I'm not a jazz aficionado by any stretch, but I do try to find what I like in all kinds of music. So for me it's:

Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
Time Out - Dave Brubeck Quartet

I'm listening to my two favourite tracks from the latter as I type this. "Take Five" simply epitomizes the cool, West Coast sound. Love the drum break.

And "Blue Rondo A La Turk" is just one of the finest compositions of all time.
- Rated: 29 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 3:03 p.m. Shuie:

Song For My Father- Horace Silver

This is one of the very few jazz albums where skipping tracks is no temptation to this very impatient listener. It's like jumping into a pool on a baking hot day. Once you're in, you just ain't for getting out again. Clear-as-water production, not a ripple of player showboating. Without a hint of obvious restraint, the musicians improvise with astonishing accessability on a bluesy, funky template for each other and the music. The result is more liberating than many of the demanding 'free' experiments of the period. I love it, especially Joe Henderson's tenor sax (with distinct echoes of King Curtis, another favourite sax-man), Horace's goofy fourths and the monster grooves with prominent bass hooks. I'm a sucker for a bass-hook.
- Rated: 10 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 4:08 p.m. Daddy-O:

Any recording by Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt Lester Young and Oscar Petersen . Guitar Jazz From a New Direction Hank Garland and To Swing Or Not to Swing By Barney Kessell are some of my guitar favorites. I now have close to 3K sides on my ITunes with about 85 % jazz. I have about three or four hundred CD and Records mostly jazz so my favorite album I could not pick
- Rated: 45 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 4:37 p.m. Tsar Nicholas :

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme. Most definitely! So powerful and soulful.

Herbie Hancock - Headhunters. Grabs you from the very start and is just unrelentingly funky.

Miles Davis. It's so hard to pick a favourite Miles album. He's certainly my favourite jazz artist, not much of a fan of his 70's stuff but his 50s and 60s work is just it for me. I'll say my fave 50's album is Relaxin' With Miles and as far as 60's goes Miles Smiles is on top. Can't beat Footprints or the combo of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and the boy wonder Tony Williams!

Freddie Hubbard - Red Clay. One of the first jazz albums I bought of my own accord. A perfect fusion of jazz and funk. Also featuring Herbie..

Jimmy Smith - The Incredible Vol. 3. Staggering Hammond playing in a prefect little trio of Organ, Guitar and Drums. Tight as a ducks arse.

In keeping with Hillbilly Wolf's request I won't go near my favourite guitar albums..
- Rated: 10 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 4:41 p.m. mainsoda:

last nite - Larry Carlton
- Rated: 5 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 4:49 p.m. HillbillyWolf:

I can really dig anything with Bird, Sonny Stitt, and Dizzy in the same room.

The only jazz guitar tune I can safely say I listed to a million times over is when Ferlin Husky did 'Caravan'.

There are a couple of non-Bop records I really dig, for instance, Cab Calloways "King Of Hi-De-Ho compilation.

I really dug Todd Rhodes and his Toddlers, His Chronilogical collections are a must.

Now, I'm not bashing Modern Jazz players, I just want to say, I just don't plain get it. I don't think the bands are as tight as they used to be, and I don't think the Musicians are as Hip as they used to be. I think the Great Depression had alot to do with what my concept, and the old world concept of what Hip actually was, and is. Radio, Newspapers, "That Dumb Bastard Hoover", Pre-WWII economy, 52nd street in NY, all had play on to what my concept of how the primordial soup of Hepcats came to be. There are no more Burlesque gigs, Freak shows where coming to be passe and insensitive over time. Reefer turned into pot eventually. Dope addicts eventually burned out over time. Benzedrine was eventually barred. Music theory and sight reading became Granddads bag. Bird died in 55. Busses were replaced by planes. Horns started to be replaced by student models. The Electric Bass Came. Television started to gain more channels. I still dug Hugh Hefners show. Greyhound started getting sad. Filters were being put on Cigarettes. Cars turned into Boxes. And then eventually Plastic Lunch Boxes. Catholic priests stopped drinking and got in other messes. People stopped caring about what religion somebody was. Or let alone what country they were actually from. Parents stopped caring if the kids were wasting time on reading, and then the forbidden texts then became more things to think of. Ultra Hipsters and Swingers went out like the dinosaurs.

I dunno. I'm actually just out of touch. I'm a day late and a dollar short. And I'm sure that there are some rediculously Hep cats out there. I'm just very bitter about my surroundings. But, I look around me, and I observe, and I breathe it in, and I realize, without whats around me, there would be no use to be a Deep-thinker.

and there are some proven cases of some really great somewhat modern jazz players, I'll use my case example as Tom Waits. His early stuff is by far my favorite stuff. He really had/has IT. The very being of IT.

SO, I have no clue where I was going with that rant, just my thoughts on why I don't like most jazz musicians, based on the facts of their behavior and thought patterns. I'm sure there are some great players out there, I just need to find them, but in the mean time, I study the good old granddads of it all, and I will carry that whereever I go.
- Rated: 45 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 4:57 p.m. Tsar Nicholas :

Well said, Wolf. I dig.
- Rated: 58 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 5:24 p.m. yettoblaster:

Cap'n Geek and the Shrimp Shack Shooters.

I like the Bluesy jazz, like Count Basie, etc. (I like bluesy everything).

Gate Mouth Brown, etc. K'know: Texas guys?

Oklahoma guys: Charlie Christian; Johnny Smith; Barney Kessel; Herb Ellis.

I actually like sax and trumpet, and some piano better'n guitar for jazz sounds usually, although "Easy Like," by Barney Kessell probably was my favorite Jazz album for decades. Also Chick Corea: Light as a Feather.
- Rated: 5 ↑
Jul 28, 2008 5:26 p.m. HillbillyWolf:

Gatemouth on peacock records was absolutely the BEST. his later stuff didnt suffer, which is great.

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