Best jazz song/ album ever?
 

I am new to jazz music, and I would love to buy more songs, but I dont know where to start, it seems like an ocean full of good jazz music, I only know big names like Diana Krall, Miles Davis etc:)

While rock tends to be defined as prog rock/hard rock/rockabilly and so on, jazz is often just treated as one genre. It's a bit hard to know what people would like when they ask for recommendations in jazz.

In the thread expand your horizons, I posted this post that gives an example of some flavours of jazz that I like. I'll repost it here for you :)

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I'm not really into jazz .. I like it a lot, but it's not what I play most. Also, just asking for jazz is like asking for recommendations on metal. You don't know if they want Dio or Korpiklaani. Anyways!

I think an easy entry into jazz is to check out the cream from last decades swing revival. Squirrel Nut Zippers is my favourite of the bunch and their album "Perennial Favorites" is excellent. I also wrote a review on it in my journal. I have one album by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy called "Americana Deluxe" and although it's not as diverse, it's also good.



This is not the track I wanted to show, but the selection off youtube is not really extensive. It's Squirrel Nut Zippers opening track from Perennial Favorites (released in 1997).


If you like gypsy jazz reminiscent of old Django Reinhardt, I can recommend Joe Pass album "For Django" (1964) or Bireli Lagrene's "Gipsy Project & Friends" (2002).



The video above shows Bireli and his gang playing Django's jazz standard, Minor Swing.


If you like more trippy electronica jazz with a bit of drum n bass and other stuff thrown in, then you could have a look at Jaga Jazzist from Norway or perhaps Kyoto Jazz Massive from Japan.



The video above shows Jaga Jazzist song Animal Chin from their 2001 album "A Livingroom Hush" which got good reviews in Norway.


If you want more prog-jazz fusion stuff, I think you should check out the Canterbury scene's legendary Soft Machine. The following video is from the last half of the last track on their album "Third" from 1970. Also try out Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever or Weather Report, all of which are perhaps more accessible than Soft Machine.




Guys like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Herbie Han**** or John Coltrane shouldn't need an introduction since they are all still immensely popular. I have Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" from 1965 and I like it a lot. It's also critically acclaimed. "Miles Ahead" (1957) and "Kind of Blue" (1957) by Miles Davis are awesome .. I also got Bitches Brew on a recommendation here, but I've yet to listen to it. It's also easy to get box sets from all these artists.



In the youtube-vid, you can see Miles Davis and John Coltrane together playing "So What", the opening track on "Kind of Blue".


If you think you might like avant-garde jazz, try Bill Frisell. The following vid shows him playing Shenandoah which is from his 1999 album "Good Dog, Happy Man" ..



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nice, thanks for sharing

thanks toretorden
Really wonderful and useful videos

I am no afficionado, but I absolutely am entranced by Jazz 'Round Midnight, with the Gilbertos and Stan Getz.

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

don't take this the wrong way but that sounds like the oddest pairing of names ever.

'Round Midnight is Thelonius Monk's most famous piece, mostly because it's the only 'proper' melodic piece he composed. most people thought he was crazy back in the day due to his atonal and unorthodox approach to playing piano. he was just way ahead of his game (regardless of his mental state).

as for the Gilbertos and Stan Getz, that was a series of albums from the early 60s of Antonio Carlos Jobim's compositions. He's the main man behind what's typically referred to as Bossa Nova. Getz's participation in the recordings was a successful attempt by his record label to sell a new sound to north america, everything is very smooth and melodic across the three albums in the initial series (Jazz Samba, Jazz Samba Encore!, Getz & Gilberto)



basically ACJ's music can best be described as the greatest elevator music you'll ever hear.

Thelonius Monk's on the other hand is like a music box rolled down a flight of stairs.

both will get you to the ground floor but you can see why it becomes an odd pairing of names.


as for the best song album thing... i'm going with 'you don't know what love is' by Eric Dolphy from his 'last date' album. NOTHING i have heard to this day tops this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgGs3h7CytA (WARNING - the very last note is missing, no other versions)

I'd like to set up camp in that elevator

Lol, That's quite an appropriate analogy!

Guess I'll just post a few favourites...

Art Ensemble of Chicago - Les Stances A Sophie
- Avant garde jazz, which I love not only due to the proficiency of the artists, but also a interesting interpretation of classic/classical ideas. Favourite songs include 'Variations Sur Un Theme De Monteverdi', 'Theme De Yoyo' and 'Theme Amor Universal'.
- Theme De Yoyo

Charles Mingus - Pithecantropus Erectus or The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
- Classics in every sense of the word. I can't really split them. (Can't find any bloody youtube vids)

Sonny Sharrock - Ask The Ages
- Pushing away from conventional jazz, ATA is Sharrock's best work IMO, doing his normal stunning work as lead jazz guitar. Supported by a top crew including Pharaoh Sanders.
- Many Mansions

Nils Petter Movlaer - Khmer
- One of the best albums of the 90's. Still holds ground today. The Norwegian trumpeters solo debut.
- On Stream

Contemporary Noise Quintet - Pig Inside The Gentleman
- A newer find, I just find myself loving it every time I listen to it.
- Even Cats Dream About Flying

Many more just thought I would highlight a few worth trying out IMO.

Ditto.

http://perfekcyjnanuta.blox.pl/resou...ver_a_love.jpg

Thelonious Monk - Epistrophy

Most jazz is pointless, inane, masturbatory jive....but I like monk and mingus. My all-time favorite would be "a love supreme" by John Coltrane.

If you think you might like avant-garde jazz, try Bill Frisell. The following vid shows him playing Shenandoah which is from his 1999 album "Good Dog, Happy Man" ..

-[/QUOTE]


wow - great post, love this Frisell guy. You are right about rock classifications.

Theres too many great Jazz albums out there. But with Miles Davis in mind (being my most endured Jazz artist and all) I think this album deserves to be up there: http://tirado.files.wordpress.com/20...the-corner.jpg

Man, the beats on this track really do great things for me:

Its just too much like every other fusion album he put out post Bitches Brew.

Yeah, I know its mental shit that the Jazz 'purists' dont take seriously, but theres just something about the beats on that album that really do it for me. I'd much rather listen to On The Corner than say 'Kind Of Blue' anyday. I'm more a fan of his later stuff.

EDIT: Satchmo, have you heard this yet?
Great collaboration album by Jazz pianist Rein De Graff & the late saxophonist Bud Shank, who sadly died earlier this year.
http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg

I don't believe it is possible to pinpoint a Best Album but here is a contender: The Shape Of Jazz To Come by Ornette Coleman

http://img11.nnm.ru/8/0/a/3/1/80a31c...23add_full.jpg

One of the best jazz fusion songs was Byrdland (Weather Report and others) and another was Bali Run by Fourplay.

my favourite nu jazz band is Pink Freud, very strange but in some way awesome ;)

Cool, couldnt find anything to download, got any links ?

i really love Jazz it not boring ^-^

Theonious Monk was the best jazz music composer ever and also the epitome of coolness. I love the way Monk playfully used sharps and flats in all of his piano playing and makes abrupt changes in tempo, often three or four times in the same song. Monk's deconstructive approach to jazz was and is still a revolutionary approach to music. He was the bridge between the bop era and the free jazz era. All of the adventurous players like Mingus, Miles, Ornette and Coltrane all took all of their cues from what Monk was doing with his music.

Monk had a small body of work but nearly every song he wrote was flawless jewel of musical perfection. His piano playing was completely intuitive and defied all the rules of conventional musicianship. Monk was completely unschooled in musical theory and maybe that's why his playing is so originial.

Notice how Monk was never afraid to pound away at the piano like it was a percussion instrument And the piano is technically a percussion instrument because striking the keyboard causes the hammers (or mallets) to fly up and strike the finely tuned strings within the soundboard of the piano. Monk left a lot of space in his rhythmic solos and had an unusual technique, many people thought that he was an inferior pianist. Monk was a minimalist in an era where pianists were expected to showcase their technical prowress with displays of their virtuosity. Monk played only as much as required to express the body and soul of the song. He never played a wasted note.

Monk was acutally a brilliant pianist. Early on, Monk was criticized by observers who failed to listen to his music on its own terms, suffered through a decade of neglect before he was suddenly acclaimed as a genius; his music had not changed one bit in the interim. In fact, one of the more remarkable aspects of Monk's music was that it was fully formed by 1947 and he saw no need to alter his playing or compositional style in the slightest during the next 25 years.


Round About Midnight was written by Monk in the Fifties and became a standard jamming tune for jazz musicans in smoke filled bars from Paris to New York during the Beat era.



Monk was a man of few words and he spoke almost exclusively in the language of music and as you can see from the studio video I've posted below. The record company executives appear to be in dire need of a translator to understand the Monk's free association style of talking.

What a cool cat. He epitomized the style of the bebop era.

Monk was brilliant, an amazing pianist, and a solid composer. Giving him the title of best Jazz composer ever is a bit of a stretch though. I would save that honor for Charles Mingus definitely who had a penchant for writing fugues for jazz ensembles. How crazy is that?

Mingus was brilliant and in the same class as Monk as a jazz composer. Mingus was far more prolific than Monk and more of Mingus' music is hit and miss because Mingus's ideas about composition were so complex, he had problems getting his players to play the music the manner he wanted them to play.

I think more of Monk's songs have become real book jazz standards than Mingus because they're improv friendly. For non-jazz musicians: the real book is a thick book (usually xeroxed) of pirated sheet music and arrangements of jazz standards that is sold hand to hand, usually by jazz musicians. Some music stores sell the real book under the counter.

The real book is a kind of Bible for every jouneyman jazz musician and the arrangements are frequently used a musical platform in jam sessions.

A lot of Mingus' arrangements and themes were too tight to improvise around but Monk's themes were so elegant, simple and easy to do variations on.

It all depends on the type of jazz you like. Mingus wrote for big band type ensembles and was known to thrown tantrums if his players got adventurous with his arrangements. That sort of jazz is really comparable to classical music and Mingus was the equal of Debussy or Stravinsky at that kind of music composition.

On the other hand, Monk wrote for solo piano, quartets and quintets and gave the musicians quite a lot of musical space to jam. In that sense Monk was firmly rooted in improvisational jazz of bop. Each man was a different side of the same musical coin.

I never heard Monk play any of his songs the same way twice but he never fail to play them well, and seldom had an off night as a stage performer. Mingus was more of a temperamental perfectionist who was known to walk off the stage or even punch his sidemen if the sound wasn't exactly right.

I guess my hang up is with the title "composer" it connotes a sense of rigid multi-part arrangement that isn't often seen in the world of jazz, with the exception of big band ensembles, which tend to rely considerably less on improvisation than most other styles of jazz.
As far as melodic composition I would have to agree with you. There is a certain paradox in Monk's composition's in that he often stretched the boundaries of time and syncopation in his actual performance of his own material, yet the core melodies were very "user friendly" for other musicians to work around.
Let's not forget that while Mingus was known to become frustrated with the musicians he worked with, the case with Monk was quite the opposite, as he himself would frustrate his musicians by deliberately throwing off their sense of timing while staying completely within the meter of the song. It was almost a game for him.

Some jazz for you to chew on
 

"A Love Supreme"-John Coltrane; Both "Live-Evil" and "Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis; and the "Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall"....thos are definitely classics. Also, check out some of Nels Cline's albums...."The Giant Pin" in particular. He's a huge leap from Coltrane, but it should definitely be a great lesson in just how crazy jazz can get. "Bitches Brew" should definitely be a similar experience.

Hope that helps....

My favorite jazz album is either 'Saxophone Colossus' by Sonny Rollins, or 'My Favorite Things', by John Coltrane. Really, though, I don't think one could go wrong with anything by either artist. Sidney Bechet is also excellent.

Three fantastic great recommendations. It's definitely not everyday that you hear people speak of Sidney Bechet. You must know your stuff.

thinks:)

Well, I'll go with Round About Midnight I guess, esp if you include the two disc bonus edition that includes a complete live set with the sextet, plus the original live version of Miles playing Round Midnight with Monk at Newport a few years earlier.
I can't really pick one from the first great quintet as *the* one, and I like me some Cannonball added in too (check out Two Bass Hit, man).

Very nice. That Newport set is really hot.

Chris Potter's new CD 'Ultrahang'--is pure genius. Solid pocket, interesting melodies... I don't think you could ask for a more perfect album.

peace,
-nick

The most cliche answer is Dave Brubeck's version of Take Five, but I still love it and is my favorite jazz song.

Fly Me to the Moon
Love Walked In
A Sleepin' Bee
Thou Swell
A Fine Romance
They All Laughed

Anything from Miles Davis between 69 & 75 :hphones:

^^^^^Yes!, wow!, awesome!, and hell yes!

Nils Petter Movlaer

Mingus Ah Um - Charles Mingus

thanks for your video post.

Here's two cents from me regarding best jazz and what-not;

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZUhYWV0MZV...400/lateef.jpg


http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/7...1111111111.jpg