kind of blue...

[juice21]

i recently picked up the new recording of mile davis' kind of blue. it was off a suggestion in 'the speaker specialist'. all i have to say is WOW. i can't beleive i never picked this album up before. it is an amazing disc - rich, ambient, full. incredible. if you don't have this disc, i highly reccomend picking it up. i can't take it out of my player...:D

[hoosier21]

I have a regular copy of this CD, I like it also.

If there is anyone who can recomend more jazz Iam all ears.

[juice21]

same here, it is a genre that i am just really getting into...

[DarqueKnight]

In that same issue of Speaker Specialist, Ken Swauger also recommends the remastered reissue of "Saxophone Colossus" by Sonny Rollins. Another awesome recording. It's amazing how stuff recorded back in the 1950's sounds so wonderful and lifelike.
Maybe true recording technique is a lost art.

Listening to these well-recorded discs on SDA's is an eargasmic experience.:D

[tommyrod74]

I just picked up a Sony SACD player on ebay for $220 ($350 list) so I could try this hi-res music thing- one of the first discs I picked up was Kind Of Blue in Multichannel. Damned if it's not unbelievable. The stereo mix is very similar to the remastered CD version you are listening to, there are subtle differences (played thru my rt800 mains) but we're talking about 50 year old source tapes here, a lot of the added resolution just highlights the faults in the recording. That being said, the sound really is warmer, more "analog", and smoother. The multichannel is where it's at, this mix is very subtle, not a lot of crazy use of the surrounds, just a "wider" version of the stereo mix, better seperation of instruments, the center channel used to "firm up" the center image. Highly recommended, and if all the multichannel releases are nearly this good, I'll never regret buying this player. If you get a chance, listen to one of these in your own system, the kiosks at Best Buy and Circuit City just don't do the format justice (although the CC kiosk is a MILLION times better than the one at BB).

[tommyrod74]

More jazz that is hard to pass up-

Anything by Miles Davis

John Coltrane (my personal favorite- he's from my hometown, High Point, NC)

Herbie Hancock (more fusion than "pure" jazz, esp. later material, but great to listen to, creative, and STUNNING in surround SACD

A lot of these titles have been recently remastered at 20 bit or higher rates (I know, CD is only 16 bit, but these do seem to sound better) and are awesome. :D

[juice21]

tommyrod74, i've been tempted to pick up a SACD player, just didn't know if i wanted to start repurchasing my cd collection. i would love to bring one home and check it out set-up properly. i have only seen these in CC/BB, and there is no way to notice the quality over a 16bit cd.

after purchasing kind of blue, it willbe the first of many miles davis discs i will own. as for coltrane and hancock - is their a 'must own' album from each of them? i would be interested in picking those up.

raife1 - thanks for the suggestion on "Saxophone Colossus" by Sonny Rollins, i might have to pick that up...

[TrappedUnder Ice]

try Spirogyra (probably killed spelling), and if ya like big band.. Glenn miller ochestra...IN the Digital Mood.. is quite excellent

[tommyrod74]

John Coltrane- try Blue Train (in a similar vein as Kind Of Blue)- also Coltrane (album name) is a cool selection. There is no "bad" Coltrane.

Hancock- Try Headhunters (different, but grows on you).

FYI, both these guys played with Miles Davis early in their careers, then went in different directions. Hancock is still at the forefront of blending electronica with jazz and funk.

Buying an SACD player doesn't mean replacing your CD collection- I still buy CDs all the time as there aren't a lot of titles on SACD yet, especially popular music. But jazz and classical are both very well represented. I would recommend "borrowing" a player from CC or BB (via the liberal 30-day return policy) to try it out. BTW, my SACD player makes a great CD transport as well, via optical output.

-TR

[juice21]

thanks for the recommendations! i probably will end up 'borrowing' an SACD player from CC sometime in the near future, and i won't replace my entire collection, since selection is so limited right now, but as i spoil myself and become conditioned to the quality, i know i will want to replace every cd that i can... that is my only fear of SACD...another thing to dump money into endlessly, but hey, it wouldn't be an addiction if i didn't...:D

[joe logston]

heres two dave grusin cds, migration (grp lable) grd-9592.
two for the town,(grp lable)grd-9865
patricia barber; nightclub (blue note lable)7243 5 27290 29got a lot more if you want , tell me, thanks, joe

[flason]

Cannonball Adderley "Something Else", Wynton Marsalis "Thick In The South". Add these 2 to your collection. You won't be disappointed. Cannonball plays on the Miles "Kind Of Blue" album...oops, cd. This is the real jazz and not that smooth (elevator music) jazz.

[juice21]

sweet! thanks to everyone, got a whole list of stuff to go and buy now...:D

[wodom1]

anything by Dave Brubeck. he's one of my fav's. The Ultimate Bill Evans, anything by Miles Davis--i've got Birth of the Cool, Milestones, Blue Miles, Kind of Blue, and Live at Carnegie Hall. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers-Moanin'. Horace Silver, Stan Getz, Modern Jazz Quartet, Bird (Charlie Parker)--they're all great.

[DarqueKnight]

If you only get one Dave Brubeck, his "Time Out" CD is a must have. More well-recorded jazz from 1959. I don't know if they've come out with a 20 bit remastered version. The standard Columbia/Legacy version is excellent.

[johnnyamerika]

If you're looking for something 'different' by newer artists, all paying homage to the classics of course, then try St. Germain or Thievery Corporation. Also, Herbie and the Headhunters are classics!

[DarqueKnight]

juice21:

If you live in or near a major metropolitan area, you might want to check your main branch of the public library. Larger libraries usually have a good selection of Jazz CD's you can check out: classic as well as the modern stuff.

It's a good way to find out what you like before investing a lot of cash.

[juice21]

raife1 - no metro area around here...:( good suggestion though. i have actually been listening to sound clips on bmgmusicservice.com at work to listen to alot of the recommended material listed throughout this thread. not high quality, but still a sample...

[juice21]

Originally posted by johnnyamerika
If you're looking for something 'different' by newer artists, all paying homage to the classics of course, then try St. Germain or Thievery Corporation. Also, Herbie and the Headhunters are classics!

i own st. germain's tourist disc, it is awesome!!!! i'll have to check out theivery corp. thanks for the suggestion

and welcome to the forum...:D

[Kenneth Swauger]

Hello,
I'm glad "Kind of Blue" is gaining new listeners, it's great when a classic performance lives because people experience it over and over. I can recommend a fairly new book that describes the recording session and gives some very interesting background on the people and the music of the recording. The title of the book is "Kind of Blue, the Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece", by Ashley Kahn, Da Capo Press. The book describes how the recording engineers used another room, in the building, where where they sat a single loudspeaker at one end of the room and a microphone at the other. The sound of the recording would be sent to the speaker where the microphone, a distance away, would pick up the sound from the speaker, slightly delayed because of the distance traveled. This "echo" sound would be mixed with the recording done, upstairs, with the musicians to give a "warmer" quality to the sound. It really adds to the enjoyment of the recording when you know more about the people making it and the situation itself.
There are two other books I can recommend as guides for building a jazz record collection. One is "The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide" edited by John Swenson a Random House/Rolling Stone Press and the other is "The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette", by Richard Cook and Brian Morton a Penguin Press publication. The first book is indispensable for beginning collectors, it gives a thumbnail sketch of the artist and then lists and rates the major works they have done. If you want to know which Sonny Rollins' records are regarded as the best and which ones are most important, then this is extremely helpful. There are just so many performers and each person has made so many records, that a guide like this is great. I'm on my second copy, I bring it to used record stores, flea markets and record swap meets. You can compile "want lists" and figure out which ones to look for. The second Penguin guide is much thicker and more comprehensive, with lots of little known European performers. The artist's description is longer and more detailed than the Rolling Stone guide and covers a wider assortment of people. I've found some really great musicians who are lesser known, but do some wonderful recordings, such as Attila Zoller, a great guitarist, and others.
I hope this is helpful information.
Ken Swauger

[DarqueKnight]

Thank's Ken!!! I'd never heard of the Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. I'm on my way to pick one up.

[juice21]

thank you first ken for the great recommendation of the disc. secondly, thanks for the recommendations on the books. i am going to check out kind of blue, making of... & R.S. jazz guide. thanks again!

[Kenneth Swauger]

You're welcome, glad to be of help.
Take care, Ken

[gidrah]

Tommyrod74: There have been a number of threads in the pas about SACD & DVDA multichannel abilities and how some people were expecting the drums in (say) the rear right, piano in the front left etc. I'm glad to hear this disc lived up to my expectattions of the format. Subtle yet versatile. I got "The Ultimate Blue Train" for X-mas. It's labelled as an enhanced CD. It has CD-Rom abilities that I haven't checked out. I'm too busy listening to it. I don't know if the sound is any better as this is my only Blue Train.

I've gotta get Kind of Blue. While I own some good Davis (ie. Essential Miles) this isn't yet one of them. It's kinda tuff at the store as I usually pick an artist and do an eeny meeny miny mo kind of thing. My peers (present party excluded) have different musical tastes. Both source and equipment. I can hear them saying about how they really want that Bose set-up to listen to undistorted Bubba Sparx.

[gidrah]

Man this is good! I've seen the cover before. Glad to see Coltrane didn't overpower it. After this, it's the new T. Monk/Sonny Rollins.

God I love music.

[Steve@3dai]

juice, you might want to check out Hefner, Nightmares on Wax, Blue States, Tosca, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Peace Orchestra

Those are all "buddies" (literally) of Thievery Corp. and St. Germain

- Steve

[juice21]

man, the list is getting TOO long...

thanks for all the great suggestions...:D

[George Grand]

Over the past few months I've limited my participation to Flea Market items only, but this was too good to pass up.

MAINSTREAM jazz is dead, kaput, finished. The stuff that passes for jazz today is pathetic. SMOOTH jazz? Gimme a break. It's sonic wallpaper and nothing else. Every time someone calls that crap jazz, Miles, Buddy, Oscar, Bird, Cannonball, and a host of others do 360's in their graves.

The Marsalis Bros., while technically competent, have no soul. The last GREAT mainstream jazz album, in my own twisted opinion, was Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage". This was about ten years (1963) before the fusion album (also a landmark) "Headhunters" was recorded. If anything, "Maiden Voyage" put Hancock on the map, and was probably the reason Miles asked him to join his rhythm section. Incidentally, ANYTHING recorded by Miles with the Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock rhythm section is worth owning. Anything he did BEFORE that is worth owning (try Sketches of Spain). Anything he did AFTER the mid 60's, is Miles trying out new directions. This would be "Bitches Brew", "On the Corner", and stuff like that. Good stuff to be sure, but NOT mainstream jazz. By that time he was using two or three drummers, guitarists, and keyboard players on every recording.

Jean Luc Ponty? Again, fusion stuff. If you want him in a PURE, mainstream jazz setting, in the 60's he sat in a couple nights with The George Duke Trio out in California. THESE are available on disc. Pick of the week? 1969's "King Kong", Jean Luc Ponty plays the music of Frank Zappa. GIDRAH!!! This one's for you! Zappa caught a couple of the live shows with the George Duke Trio, sat in on a couple numbers, and the rest is history.

Gosh, why do the jazz recordings from the 50's sound so good? Well MAYBE, because a lot of them were recorded on analog equipment, at Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio. He was "The Man".

You want mainstream jazz? You need to collect works by:

Miles Davis
Dizzy Gillespie
Art Tatum
Oscar Petersen
Gerry Mulligan (the BIG sax, the baritone, disrobes women)
Art Pepper
Louis Armstrong
Sonny Rollins
Dexter Gordon
Gene Ammons
Lionel Hampton
Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ)
Django Reinhardt
Thelonius monk
Charles Mingus
Eric Dolphy
Cecil Taylor
At this rate, I could be here all day, and most of you don't want THAT, do you?

Okay last thing. Here's the PERFECT accompaniment to your "Kind of Blue". Try Miles Davis "58 Sessions". Buy THAT, and you will be listening to Miles, Cannonball, Trane, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, AND Bill Evans.

Jazz Fusion? Might as well get the trailblazers:

Hancock and "Headhunters"
Weather Report "I Sing the Body Electric"
Chick Corea "Light as a Feather", and "Hymn to the 7th Galaxy"
Tom Scott and the L.A. Express "Express" and "Tom Cat" (these two albums were responsible for Kenny G's FIRST hard-on)
The Mahavishnu Orchestra "The Inner Mounting Flame"
Billy Cobham "Spectrum", "Crosswinds", and "Total Eclipse"
Larry Coryell "The Eleventh House"
The Tony Williams Lifetime "Emergency"
Zappa "Hot Rats", "Waka Jawaka", and "The Grand Wazoo" (those three discs DEFY musical categorization, just wildly fantastic music, with a MINIMUM of lyrics and Frank's social commentary)

Oh yeah, some of your slips AND your ages are showing.


WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

______________________

"It wasn't the airplanes.............."

Carl Denham

[juice21]

george, thanks for the very comprehensive 'what to buy' list, like my new listening interest didn't have a long enough list of 'to buy' albums.:D sounds like '58 sessions' may be one of my next purchases, i can't believe what i was missing out on, not hearing 'kind of blue' until now...

[George Grand]

You're welcome. Musically, it was a GREAT time to be alive, as opposed to the Black Hole we are in now.

[Micah Cohen]

YEH! George, back with a great post! TWO POINTS! And the crowd goes wild!

Thanks for that list, man! I printed it out.

MC

[TroyD]

George is one of those rare folks that, not only is he a looker, but can converse intelligently on a variety of topics..

Troy

[trubluluc]

EF Hutton...when he speaks, we listen.

Thanks George!

-luc

[George Grand]

You're welcome Micah, thank you Troy, you're welcome and thank you Luc.

[joe logston]

kind of blue is a graet performance, but the sound has a little tape noise if it wasnt for that it would be a awesome cd

[Billm57]

Kind Of Blue is the cd that got me turned on to jazz..you need to hear some of Miles more experimental stuff now to offset it..In A Silent Way is his next best IMO next to Kind Of Blue

[George Grand]

Joe Zawinul ("Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", "Birdland" etc.) was responsible for "In a Silent Way". It appears as an original on his cd "Zawinul". It was written for the mountains in Austria where he grew up. There is also a great cut on that cd/album which is a tribute to Herbie Hancock. It is entitled "Dr. Honoris Causa".


"This next song is dedicated to the pr*ck backstage who is counting the overtime money."
FZ
(the intro to the encore at Carnegie Hall, 1971. Zappa was told he had to pay $600 up front if he wanted to use the hall past midnight. Best show I ever saw. Maybe cause it was the best band that ever existed, at a great hall before they "re-did" it and dicked up the acoustics.)

[Billm57]

yep good stuff..I have that Cannon Ball Adderly with Mecry Mercy Mercy on it..I just picked up Herbie Hancok Mwandishi..great stuff

[jcaut]

I'm pretty sure my roommate in college had the "Zawinul" CD.
If it's the one I'm thinking of, then it was some good material. Never made a copy though....

Jason

[juice21]

i just ordered:

joh coltrane. the very best of john coltrane
dave brubeck. time out
sonny rollins. saxaphone colossus

thanks for the recommendations guys!:D

[Billm57]

Juice21-great choices..that best of coltrane is a good start if you dont own any of his other stuff..some of his best stuff is on there..

[George Grand]

Yeah Mwandishi! I forgot about that one. There were a couple more albums (pre-Headhunters) that featured damn close to the Headhunters line-up (Julian Priester, Bennie Maupin, Billy Hart instead of Harvey Mason). I think one was "Crossings". I think another one might have been "Sextant", although I could be starting to confuse song titles with albums. I definitely did NOT like the album following Headhunters. I think it was called "Thrust". As for Headhunters itself, I really only listen to Chameleon and Sly. Chameleon for the soundstage (great SDA stuff girls), and Sly because it is wicked, evil, awesome jazz of a sort.

Try Sonny Rollins "Way Out West". Widely recognized as a great recording, plus you get a couple different versions of "I'm an Old Cowhand" on sax. SOME stuff that is "too good to be true"....isn't false.

"It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight, than to neutralize the long-range effects of our national stupidity."
FZ

[Billm57]

George - actually what I have is called "Mwandishi-the complete warner bros recordings"..its actually his 3 warner bros albums on 2 cd's..The Fat Albert Rotund, Mwandishi, and Crossings..Crossings is probably the weakest of the 3 but very fusiony..sounds alot like Bitches Brew..The Fat Albert stuff is excellent though..good funk jazz..Yea I though Thrust wasnt to hot either..I highly recommend this set though ..