Starting with Jazz try Dave Bruebeck, Gerry Mulligan, Erroll Garner and Miles Davis. Beginning with Blues try Robert Johnson, Lightin Hopkins and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Once you get into these genres you will soon notice how the Blues/Jazz artists shaped what we call Rock music today.

Any recommendations for a first dip into Anthony Braxton recordings? I'm already pretty noise oriented so don't hesitate to recommend more difficult or challenging material. My ears are wide open. Thanks.

For separate sides of Anthony Braxton, I'd say that Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions will show his most conventional sounding, Elements of Surprise will show his abstract jazz melodies, and Beyond Quantum will bring out the genius free jazz. There really is no wrong place to start but I think that those will do you fine. Fancy a few links?

Thanks man! I will check those out!

Funny thing - I've had Anthony Braxton in the back of my head for some time but I never run across any of his records at the local used record store, so I finally posed a question about him here. Sure enough, when I went to the record store today, they had pristine copies of his 'Seven Standard 1&2' LP's just waiting for me to purchase them. I'm always having mystical, magical 'lattice of coincidence' moments like this when it comes to music.

Plate of shrimp indeed!

That's how come I don't drive.

I'm looking to get into jazz a bit. I've heard some jazz I've liked and I've heard jazz-influenced work I liked, so I guess I'm ready to try and dive in. I'm looking for a few artist/album recommendations to get me pointed in the right direction.

So far my jazz experience has been a handful of Miles Davis albums and a few Sun Ra albums. Bitches Brew was pretty fantastic, although it took me a while to really like it, I think it's really cool. Most of his other works I've heard fall into the category of sounding nice but haven't done anything huge for me. The Sun Ra albums I've heard so far (Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth/Interstellar Low Ways/Space is the Place) are all interesting upon the few times I've heard them, but I also don't know if they will hold my attention in the long run. That's all I've got.

Um, I have listened to some pretty sweet jazz but I don't know where to go now. I'd like to get into some cool, film noir-like jazz, the kind of classy stuff ya know. Any recommendations on some of that stuff?

E: Some of the jazz I really like is stuff like from the Cowboy Bebop OST:



This song. So much of this song.