What are your all time favorite Jazz recordings and artists?

We had a great local radio station, WJZZ, that played a lot of the contemporary releases in the 70s and 80s, so that opened my ears a bit. Jean-Luc Ponty became a favorite when I was a teen, back when Cosmic Messenger was his newest, and I've bought everything since (and worked backwards).

The crowd I ran with back then was big into the funk/jazz scene in the late 70s/early 80s, so some of those records by George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, etc. had as much play among us as Earth Wind & Fire and their contemporaries. Maybe not strictly jazz but I don't care what it's called--music is music. Don't need a label if you like it. :)

Pat Metheny has been a big influence here as well, as much as Jean-Luc Ponty. Other than Zero Tolerance for Silence, I can't really think of anything he's ever done that I haven't liked in one way or another.

I've liked a handful of the artists who recorded for GRP (I have many here), but to be honest, Rippingtons were kind of boring after a while. Curves Ahead was a good recording (the track "Aspen" is a favorite), but they got too repetitive. I saw them (featuring Eric Marienthal) on a really odd triple-bill with David Benoit and Jean-Luc Ponty. (Odd because the Rippingtons/Benoit crowd were the khakis and loafer types, while the Ponty fans were in the 70s t-shirts and had the long hair. :laugh: ) Benoit opened and sadly was not able to play too long of a set. Ponty's band kicked everything up a few notches, well worth seeing. As for Rippingtons...sadly, one song sounded the same as the next, and the song titles were all variations on tropical themes, and at least half of the audience left during their set. We stuck it out.

Glad we did, too--they totally floored the audience when during the encore, they ripped into a version of "Purple Haze" that gave Hendrix a run for his money. Freeman burned it up on guitar, and I think that entire band expended more energy on that one tune than they did their entire set. I think everyone had a chance to solo on that one, so it ran for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. So I can't knock them as musicians at all, but the music? They didn't even play "Aspen" which is arguably their most famous track. And the rest of it all sounded the same!
Ponty's COSMIC MESSENGER was really a compelling album, but for some reason I could never get into any of JLP's other albums. Just never grabbed me.
As for the jazz/funk scene, I can totally relate. Just look at my list above and you'll see what I mean.
Regarding Metheny's ZERO TOLERANCE... a friend of mine bought the CD and took it back because he thought something was wrong with it when he put it in the player!
And I agree, the Rippingtons are definitely an 'early on' band. After around 2000, I pretty much gave up on them because [as you said precisely] the rest all sounded the same. But then again, they were corrupted by the 'smooth jazz' muzak format dictated by Broadcast Architecture and the like. Their last album that really moved me was TOPAZ in 1997.
 
And while it's often mis-categorized in the "New Age" category, I really like the early Acoustic Alchemy stuff, before Nick Webb passed away.
 
Well I guess I'm kinda the odd kid out on this one, because all of my favorite "jazz" recordings come from the fusion/contemporary period of the 70s and 80s, and into the early 90s before Broadcast Architecture started dictating the Snooze fest of the "smooth jazz" format into Sominex muzak. After the mid-late 90s I just lost all interest in the genre altogether. Turn on a satellite radio channel playing contemporary sounds and it's all generic elevator music.
At any rate, I was pleasantly surprised to see Grover Washington's WINELIGHT album listed in a few others' favorites lists. The following aren't necessarily my absolute 'favorites', but they're some of the first and favorite 'jazz' albums that come to my mind (in no particular order):

WINELIGHT; TIME OUT OF MIND - Grover Washington, Jr.
WISHFUL THINKING; SUDDEN BURST OF ENERGY - Earl Klugh
TOUCHDOWN - Bob James
ONE ON ONE; TWO OF A KIND - Bob James & Earl Klugh
EUPHORIA; CALIENTE - Gato Barbieri
OUT OF THE SHADOWS; MIGRATION - Dave Grusin
PORTRAIT; EARTH RUN - Lee Ritenour
HARLEQUIN - Dave Grusin & Lee Ritenour
FEELS SO GOOD; FUN AND GAMES - Chuck Mangione
NIGHT CHARADE; MANGO TANGO - Tom Grant
MORNING DANCE - Spyro Gyra
AMERICAN GARAGE; STILL LIFE TALKING - Pat Metheny Group
NOCTURNAL PLAYGROUND - Russ Freeman
SAHARA; TOPAZ - The Rippingtons
RATAMACUE - Harvey Mason
FOURPLAY; BETWEEN THE SHEETS - Fourplay (Yeah, I know... but those first Fourplay albums were actually some "smooth jazz" albums which were really good, IMHO.)
Wow Now you are in my ball park i have most of these too and im also a fan of elevator music too. Gee i like a little of everything when it comes to jazz even if its not everyone's cup of tea Or coffee. So to speak but you have excellent taste here.
 
I have all the acoustic alchemy cds up to arcanum. Which was Nick webb's last appearance in 1996 before his illness and subsequent passing. Acoustic alchemy wasn't ever the same after that
 
Here's one that sort of flies under the radar: John Klemmer. He had some great early albums, then sort of got stuck in a rut for a while. He has not recorded much in recent decades but through the late 60s to the early 80s, he was releasing albums regularly. Many may not have heard his albums, but that is his sax solo on "The Caves of Altamira" from Royal Scam (Steely Dan...and only the Dan would recruit someone like Klemmer to play on an album).

Some of his best were on the Cadet/Concept label (a division of Chess Records). His first album Involvement is one of my favorites, primarily a straight-ahead date with a lot of solid playing. All The Children Cried is another good one that taps into more of his "spiritual" side. The really wild album is Blowin' Gold--it is a jazz/rock fusion album (complete with distorted guitar, a Hammond B3 cranked to 11, the Echoplex which would become his trademark, and a cover of the Jimi Hendrix tune "Third Stone from the Sun" as well as "Hey Jude") that predates Miles' classic Bitches Brew by a year. He had some good contemporary jazz albums in the 70s (Arabesque is a favorite), but the one that received the most attention was Touch, which anticipated the smoother jazz sounds of the 80s and beyond. He also recorded two solo saxophone recordings, accompanied only by his Echoplex (which looped a lot of his lines).

From Involvement:




My favorite track from the Touch album:

 
My sax/woodwind instructor turned me onto Klemmer via Involvement, I think more for his tone than the music he'd play on later albums (he definitely was not into rock or the mellower sounds in jazz). He's had some duds along the way, but I would say my personal highlights are Involvement, All The Children Cried, Blowin' Gold, Arabesque and Touch. A few others are interesting, but he had this way of shifting a style, then working it to death on the following few albums. (So, there were albums very similar to Touch yet, not as engaging.)

I know some purists really like to kick Touch around, but it works for me both due to its laid back vibe, without losing the essence of jazz and his agility on the horn. He plays a melody to open a tune for maybe a minute or so, followed by tasteful soloing for two or three minutes. Then he'll turn it over to the keyboard player for a solo, and finally close out the tune by restating the melody. Or there is a track like "Glass Dolphins" that have a nice, simple melody to them.

Forgot to mention that he also had played with the Don Ellis Orchestra in his early days. This cut is "Excursion #2," which he also played on his Blowin' Gold album.



Ponty's COSMIC MESSENGER was really a compelling album, but for some reason I could never get into any of JLP's other albums.
That album never clicked with me right away, but then again, I first had it on cassette, and tapes in general usually sucked. :laugh: Local jazz radio started playing "Sunset Drive" from his next album A Taste for Passion, and that is what hooked me, and I bought everything he released from that point forward, and worked my way backward as well.

I must say that I've liked pretty much everything, except for a couple of albums. I never could get into Tchokola all that much, and I have to say that the recent Anderson Ponty Band was one I didn't care for--it sounded more like a Yes album with Ponty as "special guest," and some of the tunes being a mash-up of both artists. Not that it is a bad album--it's just not to my liking, and I'm not all that big of a Yes fan as of yet (so some of it is unfamiliarity).

The trio albums are also kind of a nice chance of pace--The Rite of Strings featured Ponty, Stanley Clarke and Al di Meola, and last year's G Stringz featuring Ponty, Stanley Clarke and Bireli Lagrene is also quite good.

But I can see it being an acquired taste. :wink:
 
I have all the acoustic alchemy cds up to arcanum. Which was Nick webb's last appearance in 1996 before his illness and subsequent passing. Acoustic alchemy wasn't ever the same after that
Agreed. But if you want to hear Webb's final compositions, check out POSITIVE THINKING.

Although Nick was too ill to play on it, he still was present for the recording dates and his influence is definitely there... one final time.
 
Speaking of acoustic guitar, I have always been a fan of Earl Klugh. But sometimes a live performance just blows the studio version away completely. And this was the case in the late 1980s when Earl played "Dr. Macumba" on a late night music program using his Chet Atkins Gibson classical acoustic guitar. Here he is joined by Joe Sample on piano, Marcus Miller on bass and if you look closely off to the right side occasionally (around the one minute mark and just before the end) you'll actually see Donald Fagen on a Yamaha DX7. Yeah. Imagine that. Oh, and I'm not too sure, but I believe that just might be Omar Hakim on the drums (Someone correct me if I'm wrong here). Your thoughts?
 
Earl Klugh is one of our "hometown" boys. :wink: Always a radio favorite, back when WJZZ was still on the air.
I Got into Earl klugh in 1985 when i was working at a college media center and among their production music records they had Earl's Finger paintings and Dream come true LpS and once i heard them I was Hooked and today i have most of his discography on cd from his self titled 1976 debut through his 1996 "Sudden Burst of Energy" his Last Album For Warner Bros. I sadly lost track of him after that but i Still enjoy his music.
 
Getting back to the real stuff.

Count Basie - Complete Decca Recordings, April In Paris, Prime Time, Ella & Basie
Gerry Mulligan - The Gerry Mulligan/Paul Desmond Quartet, Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan Quartet At Storyville
Dizzy Gillespie - Birks Works (The Verve Big Band Sessions), Diz & Getz (Dizzy & Stan Getz), Town Hall NYC June 22 1945 (with Charlie Parker)
Dave Holland Big Band - What Goes Around
Bill Holman - In A Jazz Orbit, Great Big Band
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Mosaic, Caravan
Freddie Hubbard - The Artistry Of..., Hub Cap, Red Clay, Keep Your Soul Together
Herb Ellis - Ellis In Wonderland
John Coltrane - Blue Train, Giant Steps, Ballads, Live At The Village Vanguard
Johnny Lytle - People & Love, The Soulful Rebel
Lanny Morgan - It's About Time, The Lanny Morgan Quartet
Lee Konitz - Subconscious-Lee, Lee Konitz With Warne Marsh, Konitz Meets Mulligan
Oscar Peterson - Live At The North Sea Jazz Festival
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus, Tenor Madness, The Bridge, Volume 1 & 2 (Blue Note sessions)
Thad Jones & Mel Lewis - Central Park North, Live At The Village Vanguard
Woody Shaw - Rosewood, Woody III, Stepping Stones - Live At The Village Vanguard
Zoot Sims - Hawthorne Nights, Zoot & The Gershwin Brothers
 
And then there's Miles. I love almost all of his stuff from different periods, but my faves include:

Cookin', Relaxin', Steamin', Workin' (all Prestige titles)
Birth Of The Cool
Cookin' At The Plugged Nickel
Porgy & Bess
Sketches Of Spain
Miles Smiles
Milestones
Nefertiti
Seven Steps To Heaven
Water Babies
Some Day My Prince Will Come
Walkin'
Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series
Kind Of Blue (naturally, though I get tired of hearing it after a while)

For the fusion era:
Bitches Brew (complete sessions)
Tribute To Jack Johnson
Get Up With It
Live-Evil
Star People (a truly underrated album)
Aura
 
Earl Klugh is one of our "hometown" boys. :wink: Always a radio favorite, back when WJZZ was still on the air.
I always found Earl Klugh to be rather boring. He did one decent album with George Benson called Collaboration that had some good playing. Other than that I considered him EZ listening. almost New Age-y. But to each his own.
 
For fusion stuff, outside of Miles:
Weather Report - all of their early albums until Mr. Gone (an awful album), plus 8:30.
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Apocalypse, Inner Mounting Flame, Birds Of Fire, The Lost Trident Sessions
John McLaughlin - My Goals Beyond, Inner Worlds, Electric Guitarist, Shakti (great album!)
Jean-Luc Ponty - Enigmatic Ocean, Imaginary Voyage
Al DiMeola - Elegant Gypsy, Casino, Land Of The Midnight Sun
Billy Cobham - Spectrum, Crosswinds, Total Eclipse, A Funky Thide Of Sings
Alphonse Mouzon - Mind Transplant
Bill Bruford - One Of A Kind
Herbie Hancock - Headhunters, Thrust, Man-Child
Larry Coryell - Eleventh House, Back Together Again (with Mouzon)
Lenny White - The Adventures of Astral Pirates
Pat Martino - Joyous Lake
Crusaders - Chain Reaction, Scratch, Southern Comfort, Those Southern Knights, Free As The Wind
Pat Metheny Group - PMG (white album), American Garage, Offramp, First Circle
Return To Forever - Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy, No Mystery, Where Have I Known You Before, Romantic Warrior
Stanley Clarke - School Days, Journey To Love
Steve Smith - Vital Information
Tony Williams - Emergency
 
Totally forgot about Don Ellis. Some of my faves of his are:

Tears Of Joy
Electric Bath
Live in 3 2/3 /4
Live In Monterrey
Live At The Fillmore (I need a better vinyl version of this. Mine is worn out!)
 
To me most of your list is smooth jazz.
"Smooth jazz" didn't even come about until 1994. However, I can go along with your assessment stylistically where a few are concerned, most notably Rippingtons, Acoustic Alchemy and Fourplay. However, the others don't quite fit in that category. They get categorized as such because they're a bit more mellow than traditional "straightahead" jazz, and the improvisation is often a bit reserved. In the mid-late 90s I ventured into some 'smooth jazz' territory with Peter White (who used to play backup to Al Stewart in the 70s-80s). But as time went on, his albums grew less and less appealing (a la Rippingtons and Fourplay) and after a while it just became cookie cutter generic elevator music with no compositional depth. But if you listen to some of the more upbeat 80s tracks from say Grover Washington Jr., Lee Ritenour, Dave Grusin or Tom Grant, even Bob James... I promise you that they are anything BUT 'smooth'. Compare any of my list compositionally or stylistically with anything that has come out in the last 20 years and you will discern a very noticeable difference. Just sayin'.
 
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I Enjoy the Crusaders music that the Captain listed but i also like the albums they did after free as the wind such as "Street Life"Rhapsody and Blues. And "Healing the wounds" along with some of Joe Sample's solo efforts such as "Spellbound" Voices In the Rain" and " Roles"
 
"Smooth jazz" didn't even come about until 1994. However, I can go along with your assessment stylistically where a few are concerned, most notably Rippingtons, Acoustic Alchemy and Fourplay. However, the others don't quite fit in that category. They get categorized as such because they're a bit more mellow than traditional "straightahead" jazz, and the improvisation is often a bit reserved. In the mid-late 90s I ventured into some 'smooth jazz' territory with Peter White (who used to play backup to Al Stewart in the 70s-80s). But as time went on, his albums grew less and less appealing (a la Rippingtons) and after a while it just became cookie cutter generic elevator music with no compositional depth. But if you listen to some of the more upbeat 80s tracks from say Grover Washington Jr., Lee Ritenour, Dave Grusin or Tom Grant, even Bob James... I promise you that they are anything BUT 'smooth'. Compare any of my list compositionally or stylistically with anything that has come out in the last 20 years and you will discern a very noticeable difference. Just sayin'.
I Agree with you. Although i must admit i do like some of that Elevator music. Which was usually mixed with the various Jazz artists on Easy Listening stations of the Mid 80s to early 90s when the Genre completely Disappeared from the airwaves. Where i live. Thankfully i have all my favorites in my collection now. It took all my life to find it all. But its been worth it.
 
I like the style of smooth jazz, but the modern day compositions are lacking. I can't put my finger on why. Back in the late 90s I bought LUCKY MAN by Dave Koz... and it was an exceptional album for that style and period. But subequent releases just don't grab me at all. Maybe it's just me. Same goes for Richard Elliot, the aforementioned Peter White, and several others. Talented players, decent arrangements... but all of the songs sound the same.
 
Here's a good example. Upbeat, improvisational and fresh for the time. But it's not generic by any stretch. That said, I wouldn't give you a nickel for one of his more recent releases.
 
I like the style of smooth jazz, but the modern day compositions are lacking. I can't put my finger on why. Back in the late 90s I bought LUCKY MAN by Dave Koz... and it was an exceptional album for that style and period. But subequent releases just don't grab me at all. Maybe it's just me. Same goes for Richard Elliot, the aforementioned Peter White, and several others. Talented players, decent arrangements... but all of the songs sound the same.
again Agreed. Lost track of many of those aformentioned artists after the late 90s when i was getting busier. I will forever hold on to my early smooth jazz and earlier stuff before that because sadly " They Just Dont make music Like that anymore. I have that Elliot album you posted i also love his debut album Troll town Great Stuff
 
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