What are your all time favorite Jazz recordings and artists?

Lately as ive been ripping my Cds into my computer and playing them back in the shuffle modes I been reminded of the Radio stations of yesterday who mixed Jazz and new age music with adult contemporary ( also known as NAC Or New adult contemporary) which for awhile replaced Easy listening formats in some places and there I discovered many lesser known artists in the jazz realm such as Sadly underrated keyboardist Tim Heintz and GRP alumnus Nelson Rangell along with the superstars such as Bob James. Earl Klugh David Sanborn. Spyro Gyra and other similar artists I find myself very fortunate that I was able to purchase many of these artists while they were readily available and I still have them all here today and because of the way things changed so drastically over time I know If I were to lose anything I probably would never be able to replace them now that they are no longer available as was mentioned in other posts on this forum Strike while the iron is hot because future availability Cannot be guranteed.
I ripped my CDs to my computer years ago, but I don't find myself wanting to shuffle the songs across different artists. I guess it's because (1) I like to play precisely what I want when I want; and (2) I find that I don't enjoy every song on those NAC CDs like I once did. It's actually kinda coincidental that you should comment now, as yesterday I played some of my favorite tracks from those artists for about an hour. Problem is... my favorites are the only ones I have the desire to hear. A lot of deep cuts were ok, but I don't care to sit through them all.

Case in point: I love to hear "Miss You" by T-Square. But the rest of the Megalith album just doesn't grab me much anymore. It's not a bad album per se. But I'd just rather hear something I like a little better during the time spent listening to music. I guess I'm just more discerning than I used to be.
 
I have been more selective now myself--I will easily delete a few songs from an album when I play it over the network. I also find I have been "devouring" new music quite a bit also. Not necessarily newly recorded, but new to me. I just get restless. I never understood listeners who are so focused on just a few bands or artists at the near exclusion of all else. (Sometimes the Beatles worship borders on psychotic...yeah, OK, I respect them and like a small number of their records, but if I spin one record a year, that's enough for me.) I would go bat-sheet crazy if I were stuck listening to only a few artists, or one narrowly defined genre of music.

If I really want the "album" experience, I will play vinyl. That makes me pay more attention, and I also let it play out each side. I have actually found in recent years I am discovering new things on LPs in the past where I used to skip songs or entire sides.
 
To clarify I don't always use the shuffle mode every time and I like listening to albums too ( there are tons of those programmed in There too) our moods for what we want to hear differ from day to day and that's where Selectivity and Discernment comes in being selective is a good thing and as for the Beatles I was a heavy fan when I was a teen these days not quite as much but I still enjoy listening to them once in awhile same is true for everything I'm just saying it's nice to have access to your music in more than one way
 
I find that some of the album cuts that I disliked originally I am now starting to like. I’m all over the place musically so I’m continually revisiting things. (Says the woman wearing her Abbey Road T-shirt. :D)
 
The more i listen to my various Jazz albums the more I appreciate having them around now that my whole audio collection has been copied onto my laptop I've been making various playlists I've been listening to one of my favorite songs by Count Basis " Fantail" the other favorite is "April in Paris ( I love it at the end where he says "One More time") Its Good to Jazz it up now and again.
 
It was interesting reading back through this thread, and seeing how many things I have latched onto in the meantime.

ECM Records I guess is loosely categorized as "jazz" but the music takes on so many different directions that it's hard to pinpoint anything in particular. (ECM stands for Edition of Contemporary Music, and Manfred Eicher has grown the label to include modern classical works as well.) Watching an ECM documentary (Sounds and Silence), I discovered a few interesting things.

The biggest discovery was Swiss musician Nik Bärtsch, who developed the concept of "ritual groove music" and "zen funk" with his groups Mobile and Ronin--the former being acoustically oriented, where the latter is perhaps a little more funky. The documentary featured an excerpt of "Modul 42" and it kind of struck me right away. Part of it was his playing inside the piano, where he taps strings with a mallet, or brushes across them, or dampens them to create different tones as he is playing the keys. And the band sounded so precise--they are highly in tune with each other. Yet they didn't feel constricted.

Bärtsch's "moduls" to me seem like they are strict frameworks, yet they grow and adapt loosely over time. More like seeds with the basic ideas, which are allowed to grow in any logical direction. Hearing "Modul 36" on Stoa followed by the re-recording on the latest album Awase shows how much the modul has evolved and grown over the course of a decade. He is also known to mix moduls, like "Modul 8_11" which combines the two moduls. The Mobile album Continuum covers moduls from his earliest albums, and some are changed drastically...yet still recognizable.

Bärtsch has been known to hold multimedia shows, including one where the group played for 36 hours straight. When not touring, he and the band play at a club he owns in Zurich called EXIL, and some of these Monday gigs are live-streamed. (It is the "Montags" series.) This is where the band develops new ideas and expands on old ones. He appeared in Philadelphia yesterday, yet I wasn't able to get over to the gig due to other commitments.

His long-time friend and drummer Kasper Rast has appeared on every record except his solo piano recording, and his reedman Sha is amazing--he plays the bass and contrabass clarinets, and alto sax, in percussive ways I've never heard anyone play before. For a woodwind player as myself, it is something refreshing to hear. The newest Ronin member is bassist Thomy Jordi.

Beyond this, I've been starting to explore the CTi albums post-A&M. I bought two Freddie Hubbard LP reissues, and have also been listening to some of Stanley Turrentine's CTi albums. I don't know if it was Creed Taylor doubling down on the jazz, but I find the formula post-A&M works way better. He found a nice balance between accessibility and jazz on many of these, and a lot of those sappy strings are gone now. I've had the Deodato albums here but they never really clicked with me. Perhaps they will now, since I'm getting deeper into the catalog.

CTI Records: The Cool Revolution is a nice 4-CD set from 2010 that covers the Columbia-distributed years, and that is next up on for me to dig into.
 
I agree with you on The CTI post A&M years I was drawn to a lot of their albums ( Bob James early albums as one example which he now owns the masters to almost all his albums) the George Benson Albums on CTI were and still are all time favorites my standout picks are " Bad Benson" 1974 and His CTI Finale " Good King Bad" 1976 those two were one I wore out the vinyl versions to but thankfully I was able to get them on CD
 
Back
Top Bottom