Jazz starter CD?

Maybe try your local library,it`s free,usually a good selection of jazz and classical cds.

 

You can't go wrong with this one.

http://www.wgbh.org/listen/jackson_eric.cfm

 

Add - Elvin! - Elvin Jones.

 

The film Round Midnight was loosely based on Lester Young and Bud Powell, but it was Dexter Gordon who played the fictitious Tenor player, Dale Turner.

 

I don't know if it has been mentioned yet, but I think Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock is a great place to start. It is one of the better sounding RVG remastered versions.

I believe Steve's SACD of it will be released next year.

 

The starters, as other have mentioned:

Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Coltrane - Blue Train
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - Moanin'

I'd go for these as well:
Monk/Coltrane - At Carnegie Hall
Jackie McLean - Bluesnik
Miles - In a Silent Way to get your feet wet on electric with a pretty accessible album. If you're feeling adventurous then go to Miles - A Tribute to Jack Johnson it's pretty intense electric jazz/funk

 

That`s ok, I'm sorry.

 

By no means am I a Jazz expert but as someone who got into Jazz in the past few years I'll chime in. Like I'm sure many others I started off with "Kind of Blue" because of all the praise, I'll admit that it took me a while to get and I really don't think that I should have started with it, after trying a couple of other artists I purchased Charles Mingus' "The Clown" and this is what got me really into the genre, the first track "Haitian Fight Song" pretty much put me in a trance and I was hooked. I'm not saying start with this but instead pick an artist that plays an instrument that you're really into, I play bass so maybe thats why I connected with Mingus at first the best.

 

Some great starters have already been mentioned in this thread (Time Out, Moanin', KOB, Maiden Voyage). My advice if you want to get into jazz: find an album you enjoy and from there on start exploring the music of the players on that album. Chances are you will find another album you like, in which case you can continue with the players on that album (repeat ad infinitum). Discovering jazz this way can be a bit of hit and miss affair, but also a very exiting and rewarding journey.

The album that really got me "into jazz" was: Grant Green - Idle Moments. After I fell in love with this album I started listening to the music of Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Duke Pearson (etc.). 12 years and 500 jazz albums later and I feel like I have only just begun exploring jazz.

BTW; anxiously awaiting the AP SACD of Idle Moments!

 

It makes little sense to buy a CD by one jazz artist to find out if you like jazz. You should sample all types of jazz, all time periods, and many artists, based on recommendations in a guide.

 

This makes sense. Maybe the Ken Burns set or something like that.

 

You may try jazzy blues (e.g. Big Joe Turner or Jay McShann and lots of other great performers) and jazzy reggae (what was the name of that guitar player... yes! Ernest Ranglin) before digging deeper.

Unfortunately I don't know any good jazzy classic rock, but wait! early Chicago, maybe?

 

I'm still at the jazz neophyte stage, but I really wish I'd heard "Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book" earlier in my adventuring. Getting a handle on the vocal versions of these standards, which have been covered all over the jazz map, would definitely have eased the process of discovery and enjoyment.

 

"Brilliant Corners" was the first jazz record I ever bought, back in '85 when I was 21. At first it confounded me, but after repeated listenings it started to click. Today, it's one of my top 10 faves. It's not an "easy" album by any means - 53 years later it still sounds pretty far out - but the playing by Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, etc. is incredible. Monk really made these amazing musicians work, and they all rose to the challenge. This album is Thelonius Monk - and the sidemen - at their peak.

 

Yea, Grant Green. I'd go for 'Alive!' though if you like a little funk in your jazz.

 

All this talk of Kind of Blue, A Love Supreme, Mingus, hard bop, Blood Ulmer.... We may lose or confuse the OP before he (or she) decides if they can ever listen to jazz again.
Although all great suggestions, and I've heard and own them all, I believe this is the ONE to start with. Never met anyone who doesn't like it, there's no understanding it, it just SWINGS. And thats what jazz is all about.

Night Train-The Oscar Peterson Trio

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Train-Oscar-Peterson-Trio/dp/B0000047D4

 

Well, at least I hope you're trying to be funny. Because as John McEnroe once said 'You cannot be serious'.

To paraphrase C.T. on O.P. 'Sounds like he had to learn how to play the blues.'

 

Serious as a heart attack

 

Wow. So aside from the fact that it's your favorite, and it swings like mad, and no one's ever disagreed with you about that, what makes this the one single recording that's less confusing as an introduction to jazz? I like O.P. myself, Night Train Vol.2 was one of my favorite albums years ago. Must be something about jazz you know that none of the rest of us do.

 

We had an interesting thread a couple years back that touched on this issue. The OP and others here who are newer to the forum might find it an interesting read:

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=61927&highlight=jazz+body+soul+mack

My contribution to that discussion contained the following advice about listening to "Jazz standards" for someone who is new to the music and wants to get a deeper sense of how it works:

"Get hold of something like Coleman Hawkins' famous 1939 recording of "Body and Soul" along with a version of the song sung straight by a good singer (I like the sweetly innocent version Sinatra did for Columbia, which can be found on the "Portrait of Sinatra" 2 disk set). Listen to the singer sing the song until you've learned it yourself (it doesn't matter if you're a good singer, just listen until you can hum the thing to yourself complete). Then listen to Hawkins' recording. First, just enjoy the damn thing, then spend some time trying to hum the melody of the song along with Hawkins as he goes through the changes. Try and pay attention to what he does as he goes through the grid of the tune, gradually paying more attention to him than you are to yourself. After a while, you will begin to feel the drama and the structure of the solo (it's all just one big solo) even if you can't explain what's going on in music theory terms. Now go out there and listen to a bunch of other jazz versions of the song (there are hundreds of them). I would recommend doing something similar with other famous recordings. Sonny Rollins' version of 'Mack the Knife' on 'Saxophone Colossus' is another good one (it's long and complicated, but the tune is so easy to get into your head that it's remarkably easy to get a feel for what Rollins is doing with it chorus after chorus). Same with Coltrane's versions of 'My Favorite Things,' although he messes a bit more with that than the other two do with their songs. There are lots of good examples."

Beyond standards, of course, there are also the basic blues progressions--many of which most people know from listening to the blues itself or blues-based rock and roll. Many, many Jazz tunes are built on the blues, so knowing how that particular harmonic language works is a great asset for "deeper" listening.

The key for enjoyment, of course, is just to listen to examples of the music until you being to internalize the "rules" or "conventions" naturally and without a lot of thought. This is true of any kind of music that's new to you, and once it starts to make sense and starts to just "sound good" (becomes a source of pleasure and/or starts to move you), there's not always any need to think much more about it or to hone a set of listening skills. But for many kinds of music, and for jazz I think in particular, a certain amount of active listening with a more conscious sense of form in mind can be very rewarding. For the less formal styles of jazz, the above won't be of as much help, but once you can listen for the sorts of things that "standards" and "blues" playing is all about, you can even better appreciate what so many find so liberating in modal playing and free improvisation. It also makes it easier to see how and why the tunes Jazz composers themselves write for purposes of improvisation are structured the way they are. You start to get a sense of how they work, how they invite particular approaches to improvisation, or how they allow for many different ones.

L.

 

Look for a title called Jazz at the Movies...

Probably my favorite jazz cd.

Russia House is in it, Body Heat, etc...

 

Louis, that was a very helpful post.

For the reasons you suggest, I recommend Anita O'Day's "Cool Heat" album with Jimmy Giuffre, any Chet Baker compilation on EMI or Capitol or Fantasy.

 

For a broader collection this is a great set,
http://www.amazon.com/Smithsonian-Collection-Classic-Jazz/dp/B0000048H9

My Jazz Appreciation class in college followed this set and used a text book that did as well. It's a great set, I actually found a used LP box of it some weeks back.

edit: D'oh! I see now that the set has been discontinued. Sorry about that.

 

Start with these three:

Giant Steps/John Coltrane
Time Out/Dave Brubeck
Kind of Blue/Miles Davis

Evan

 

Thanks! Yes, those are great choices, especially the Chet Baker material (the O'day isn't quite as straightforward, although it's wonderful). Baker's vocals are so understated that he's almost not there. It's not egoless exactly, but a kind of pure inwardness. It's so inward, in fact, it's not even intimate. Like a ghost haunting the songs, rather than a singer singing them.

In any case, you can get a very pure sense of the song, like a perfect spiderweb that you can only see in a certain light and from certain angle.

L