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good jazz albums


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yesterday i picked up a Billy Cobham cd and i really like it. it was my first jazz cd but now, after listening to it, i would really like to get some more. most of the tracks on it are instrumental and have really groovy bass lines. i am very new to the jazz world but after listening to my new album i want to get into it more.

 

so what are some good albums to get or some good bands/artists to check out? i'm looking for instrumental music mostly because thats all that i've heard so far and i really "dig" it. so any suggestions would be great. i am really looking forward to getting into alot more jazz music.

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Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder

Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage

Wayne Shorter - JuJu

Blue Mitchell - The Thing To Do

Freddie Hubbard - Ready For Freddie

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - Mosaic

 

There's six of the many wonderful hard bop jazz albums out there. You might consider them more "straight-ahead" jazz than Cobham (whom plays fusion from what I've heard), but they are still very easy to absorb.

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Depends how you define jazz. Do you like tradtional jazz: swing, Be Bop, Big Band, Dixieland, Free Jazz, Ragtime, Kansas City, Gypsy jazz and so on...Or Modern Jazz: Fusion, Hard Bop, Jazz-rock, Nu-Jazz, Acid Jazz, Jazz-Funk, Blusion, Latin Jazz, Smooth Jazz and so on...
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A Love Supreme - John Coltrane

Time Out - Dave Brubeck Quartet

 

More modern/fusiony: CDs by Jaco Pastorius, and any Weather Report albums with him playing on them. Chick Corea Electrik Band, Stanley Clarke, and Return to Forever are also great "contemporary/fusion" artists.

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QUOTE (GeddyRulz @ Dec 19 2007, 05:50 PM)
A Love Supreme - John Coltrane
Time Out - Dave Brubeck Quartet

More modern/fusiony: CDs by Jaco Pastorius, and any Weather Report albums with him playing on them. Chick Corea Electrik Band, Stanley Clarke, and Return to Forever are also great "contemporary/fusion" artists.

Weather Report are incredible. My guitar teacher introduced me to them.

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QUOTE (guitarman_2112 @ Dec 18 2007, 10:32 PM)
yesterday i picked up a Billy Cobham cd and i really like it. it was my first jazz cd but now, after listening to it, i would really like to get some more. most of the tracks on it are instrumental and have really groovy bass lines. i am very new to the jazz world but after listening to my new album i want to get into it more.

so what are some good albums to get or some good bands/artists to check out? i'm looking for instrumental music mostly because thats all that i've heard so far and i really "dig" it. so any suggestions would be great. i am really looking forward to getting into alot more jazz music.

 

anything by billy cobham, return to forever,and buddy rich and you are headed in the right path. tony willams also. killer stuff

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Miles Davis - Sketches Of Spain, Kind Of Blue, In A Silent Way, Porgy & Bess

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Giant Steps

The Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds Of Fire

Any of Bill Bruford's Earthworks albums

EST - Viaticum

Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert

 

 

 

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QUOTE (1-0-0-1-0-0-1 @ Dec 19 2007, 12:12 PM)
QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Dec 19 2007, 11:54 AM)
Kenny G is great jazz I think. He plays a wicked saxophone.

Kenny G isn't jazz. Not even close. He's a pop saxophonist. Some people call that music "lite jazz," but it isn't real jazz. He has good skills but he's a soulless player.

I think he was taking the piss 73, at least I hope he was for his sake...

 

laugh.gif

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Anything by the Chick Corea Elektric Band, who regrouped and are doing a few weeks here and there. They were just here at Yoshi's in Oakland for the week, this week in LA and next week in NY. I highly recommend them. Chick is an astounding keyboardist and composer. The band features Dave Weckl on drums (quite possibly the best drummer on the planet right now), Frank Gambale on guitar and Eric Marienthal on sax. The regular bass player, John Pattitucci is replaced for these dates by Victor Wooten. Absolutely stunning.

 

Also any Dave Weckl solo albums are interesting. Steve Smith (formerly of Journey, yes THAT Journey) has a band called Vital Information that is very good as well. Gambale was with them and left to rejoin Chick.

 

Bill Bruford did some stuff back in the 80s with Kitaro, a Japanese guitar player along with Jeff Berlin on bass. They called themselves Spice of Life. That stuff is pretty good too.

Edited by CygnusX-1Bk2
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Don't Forget John Mclaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra

 

http://panther1.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2178220-1643080428.jpg

 

http://www.cdjungle.com/cdjungle/images/5/5099746790424.jpg

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Apocalypse_-_Mahavishnu_Orchestra.jpg

 

http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2303275-858928741.jpg

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QUOTE (treeduck @ Dec 19 2007, 03:40 PM)
Don't Forget John Mclaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra

http://panther1.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2178220-1643080428.jpg

http://www.cdjungle.com/cdjungle/images/5/5099746790424.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Apocalypse_-_Mahavishnu_Orchestra.jpg

http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2303275-858928741.jpg

that's right, and who's the drummer on all the classic m.o. BILLY F-N COBHAM 1022.gif

Edited by metaldad
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QUOTE (metaldad @ Dec 19 2007, 04:38 PM)
QUOTE (treeduck @ Dec 19 2007, 03:40 PM)
Don't Forget John Mclaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra

http://panther1.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2178220-1643080428.jpg

http://www.cdjungle.com/cdjungle/images/5/5099746790424.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Apocalypse_-_Mahavishnu_Orchestra.jpg

http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2303275-858928741.jpg

that's right, and who's the drummer? BILLY F-N COBHAM 1022.gif

Correct!!

 

1022.gif

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QUOTE (treeduck @ Dec 18 2007, 10:21 PM)
Depends how you define jazz. Do you like tradtional jazz: swing, Be Bop, Big Band, Dixieland, Free Jazz, Ragtime, Kansas City, Gypsy jazz and so on...Or Modern Jazz: Fusion, Hard Bop, Jazz-rock, Nu-Jazz, Acid Jazz, Jazz-Funk, Blusion, Latin Jazz, Smooth Jazz and so on...

QFT! trink39.gif

 

For starters, I would recommend some:

 

Miles Davis

Oscar Peterson

John Coltrane

Thelonius Monk

Herbie Hancock

Stan Getz

 

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QUOTE (1-0-0-1-0-0-1 @ Dec 19 2007, 12:12 PM)
QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Dec 19 2007, 11:54 AM)
Kenny G is great jazz I think. He plays a wicked saxophone.

Kenny G isn't jazz. Not even close. He's a pop saxophonist. Some people call that music "lite jazz," but it isn't real jazz. He has good skills but he's a soulless player.

smile.gif Wheres that rant by Sanborn against G? smile.gif

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Check that, it wasnt Sanborn, it was Pat Metheny. This is a riot.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Question:

Pat, could you tell us your opinion about Kenny G - it appears you were quoted as being less than enthusiastic about him and his music. I would say that most of the serious music listeners in the world would not find your opinion surprising or unlikely - but you were vocal about it for the first time. You are generally supportive of other musicians it seems.

 

 

Pat's Answer:

Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other either live or on records.

 

I first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff Lorber when they opened a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style. He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music.

 

But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp.

 

Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years. And honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than Kenny G on his chosen instruments. It would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.

 

Having said that, it has gotten me to thinking lately why so many jazz musicians (myself included, given the right "bait" of a question, as I will explain later) and audiences have gone so far as to say that what he is playing is not even jazz at all. Stepping back for a minute, if we examine the way he plays, especially if one can remove the actual improvising from the often mundane background environment that it is delivered in, we see that his saxophone style is in fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably objective listeners WOULD normally quantify as being jazz. It's just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians. So, lately I have been advocating that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty much of the rest of the world OUTSIDE of the jazz community does anyway - and let the chips fall where they may.

 

And after all, why he should be judged by any other standard, why he should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does? He SHOULD be compared to John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter, for instance, on his abilities (or lack thereof) to play the soprano saxophone and his success (or lack thereof) at finding a way to deploy that instrument in an ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the context of his instrument's legacy and potential.

 

As a composer of even eighth note based music, he SHOULD be compared to Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver or even Grover Washington. Suffice it to say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't fare well.

 

But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently".

 

Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.

 

This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.

 

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, f*cked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.

 

His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring.

 

Since that record came out - in protest, as insignificant as it may be, I encourage everyone to boycott Kenny G recordings, concerts and anything he is associated with. If asked about Kenny G, I will diss him and his music with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay.

 

Normally, I feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of their level, just trying to play good and don't really benefit from public criticism, particularly from their fellow players. but, this is different.

 

There ARE some things that are sacred - and amongst any musician that has ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, Louis Armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. To ignore this trespass is to agree that NOTHING any musician has attempted to do with their life in music has any intrinsic value - and I refuse to do that. (I am also amazed that there HASN'T already been an outcry against this among music critics - where ARE they on this?????!?!?!?!, magazines, etc.). Everything I said here is exactly the same as what I would say to Gorelick if I ever saw him in person. and if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

Edited by lerxt1990
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QUOTE (lerxt1990 @ Dec 19 2007, 09:27 PM)
But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, f*cked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.

I hate to quote my own post, but ive just read Pat's rant again, and it makes me laugh like a hyena...

Edited by lerxt1990
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Here are some old classic jazz albums

 

John Coltrane-A Love Supreme, Blue Train

Miles Davis-Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Miles In The Sky, In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson

Charles Mingus-Mingus Ah Um, Mingus Mingus Mingus

Ornette Coleman-The Shape of Jazz to Come

Alice Coltrane-The Journey to Satchidananda

Herbie Hancock-Empryean Isles, Head Hunters, Thrust

 

Here are jazz-fusion/jazz-funk and more contemporary albums

 

Billy Martin and John Medeski-Mago

Cadillac Jones-Junk In The Trunk, The Big Takedown

Charlie Hunter Trio-Friends Seen and Unseen, Copperopolis, Mistico

Dreams-Dreams

Frank Zappa-Hot Rats, The Grand Wazoo, Imaginary Diseases(trust me)

Garage a Trois-Outre Mer

Mahavishnu Orchestra-The Inner Mounting Flame, Birds of Fire, The Lost Trident Sessions

Medeski, Martin and Wood-Combustication, Friday Afternoon In The Universe, The End of The World Party (Just In Case), Its A Jungle In Here, Farmer's Reserve, Uninvisible

Omar Rodriguez-Omar Rodriguez, The Apocalypse Inside of An Orange, Please Heat This Eventually

Pat Metheny-We Live Here

Santana-Caravanserai, Welcome, Borboletta

Weather Report-Heavy Weather, Black Market

Edited by Lerxst2112
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