Where to start ?

I was out and about and put on one of those 80 something stations found on the FM dial. They were jammin on some jazz and for some reason whatever they were playing clicked in the head. Maybe cause I was driving out in the middle of nowhere without distractions ?, who knows ? Anyways, if I was to look into the usual suspects, Coltrane and/or Davis....should I get studio stuff ? live recordings ? or seek out some particular era ?

Thanks and Laterz

Just a couple that I really like.....

right on Brian, thanks

Duke Ellington - The Blanton/Webster Band, Money Jungle, Piano In The Foreground, Duke Ellington & John Coltrane

Miles Davis - Relaxin' With The Miles Davis Quintet, Kind Of Blue, Sketches Of Spain, Miles Smiles, In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew

John Coltrane - Coltrane's Sound, Live At The Village Vanguard, Africa/Brass, A Love Supreme, Crescent, Interstellar Space

Thelonious Monk - Thelonious In Action, Alone In San Francisco, Monk's Dream, Criss Cross

Charles Mingus - Blues And Roots, The Clown, Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady

Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage, Empyrean Isles, Mwandishi, Headhunters

McCoy Tyner - Inception, The Real McCoy, Expansions, Echoes Of A Friend

Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz To Come, This Is Our Music

Pharaoh Sanders - Karma, Deaf Dumb Blind, Live At The East

Archie Shepp - Four For Trane, The Way Ahead

Kenny Burrell - Midnight Blue, Soul Call, Guitar Forms

Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land, Cornbread, Charisma, Caramba

Art Blakey - A Night At Birdland, Moanin', The Witch Doctor

Horace Silver - Song For My Father, The Tokyo Blues, The Cape Verdean Blues

Hank Mobley - Soul Station, No Room For Squares, A Caddy For Daddy

Jimmy Smith - The Sermon, Midnight Special, Back At The Chicken Shack

Dexter Gordon - Dexter Calling, Our Man In Paris, One Flight Up

Ben Webster - Soulville, Meets Oscar Peterson

Dave Brubeck - Jazz At Oberlin, Time Out

Grant Green - Street of Dreams, Idle Moments

Wayne Shorter - Schizophrenia, Etcetera

Tony Williams - Emergency!, Believe It

Johnny Griffin - Introducing Johnny Griffin, Way Out!, The Tenor Scene

Marion Brown - Why Not?, Three For Shepp, Live In Japan

Bobby Hutcherson - Dialogue, Patterns, Oblique

damn Shawn....only heard of a handful, at most, of those listed. I'll start from the bottom and work up from there. I can only hope that most of that is available on vinyl. Ya know, gotta have a turntable and headphones to get the desired effect.

thanks man

That's just a starter list I threw together in about 10 minutes. It's also fairly broad stylistically (jazz has a ridiculous amount of subgenres) but should offer a good cross-section for you.

You can also collect by record label; Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Contemporary, Pacific Jazz, Flying Dutchman, etc.

There are alot of vinyl reissues out there, jazz LPs never went away. Buying originals can be incredibly pricey, I've seen some Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley original deep groove Blue Note LPs sell for thousands of dollars.

i am not reading this thread... i am not reading this thread...

The album that got me interested in jazz was Idris Muhammad's Power of Soul. Really accessible stuff, but awesome nonetheless.



I still haven't delved as far into the genre as much as I'd like to, though. I've really only jammed the bigger names like Davis, Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, and Freddie Hubbard.

I've gotten a tad bit more into fusion and electric jazz than "traditional" jazz; as I find it a bit closer to metal/rock. Stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Larry Coryell & Eleventh House, Alphonse Mouzon, and Billy Cobham.

Wurthless wrote:

I've gotten a tad bit more into fusion and electric jazz than "traditional" jazz; as I find it a bit closer to metal/rock. Stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Larry Coryell & Eleventh House, Alphonse Mouzon, and Billy Cobham.

That's what I started with before I started listening to the stuff with horns and such in it! Lotsa RTF(and its offshoots. Except for Chick solo: I just can't get into it), Al Di Meola, Cobham, and MO.

I've known quite a few people that either used fusion/jazz rock albums or guitar jazz albums as their gateway (due to similarity in instrumentation). It's definitely an avenue that can work.

I kind of jumped right in, my girlfriend in college had a few jazz CDs, one night she played Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue and I was completely floored. I thought "this is the coolest damn album I've ever heard". Luckily soon afterward I got a job at a used CD store and a couple of my co-workers were jazz guys, one of them even had a masters degree in jazz composition. When I expressed interest to them they gave me an exhaustive crash course in the history of jazz, all the myriad sub-genres and the major players to start with.

I was a fast student, I jumped right into buying box sets, reading books on jazz, etc. In the beginning I basically liked everything I heard which was a real joy because at that time I was completely burnt out and jaded about rock music...it was so refreshing to check out album after album and continuously find new facets of the music that inspired me. After a couple years my ears improved and I could discern the really successful albums from the run-of-the-mill ones, I also started to understand the more "outside" stuff (which I initially had a problem grasping). That process of learning by intently listening continued for about 10 years.

I would say the decade I spent studying jazz was one of the most rewarding times in my music listening. I did kind of over-saturate myself in the music from focusing too exhaustively on it without taking breaks so I've limited my listening over the past several years just until more of it sounds fresh again. Slowly but surely I've been adding it back into my normal listening and the spark is returning. It will always be one of my favorite musical art-forms, it satisfies a specific artistic need in me that no other genre of music does.

I also think studying the music raised my appreciation and understanding of other genres as well, once you learn the vocabulary you never quite hear anything in exactly the same way again.

I'm gonna second S.D.'s recs but if I HAD to narrow it down I would go here:

Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Miles Davis - In A Silent Way


and I'll add:

Miles Davis - Miles In The Sky (one foot in fusion)
Sun Ra - Jazz in Silhouette (one foot in..the places Ra would go in the coming years)


and for something newer which is not necessarily fusion but you might be able to sink into a little easier also, I'll add:

Pat Metheny/Brad Mehldau - Quartet


and for something newer which is a killer band but fairly out of the box:

Wadada Leo Smith - Golden Quartet


If you wanna jump right into incredible fusion with tons of guitar you need the debut Mahavishnu Orchestra record to start with, absorb, and inevitably become obsessed with.


I know ya don't listen to me on most stuff but I thought I'd give the input.

thank you sir

Is the Alex Skolnick Trio any good? I would assume his stuff wouldn't be considered "authentic" in most jazz circles.

Troublezone wrote:

Is the Alex Skolnick Trio any good? I would assume his stuff wouldn't be considered "authentic" in most jazz circles.

Haven't really heard much. I did hear him perform a cover of Miles Davis' So What once but he didn't perform it modal as intended, he played standard blues changes over the progression.

My start was Charlie Parker.

Man am I a numbskull extraordinaire !

Went on the 2 hour drive to the city and forgot my lil list-o-names from this thread.