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Jim, How do we sort through it to know who in the new era is worth hearing, without buying a lot of $15-$20 CD's which sound like academic runthroughs or trip-hop wannabees? Are there trustworthy domestic labels the way Blue Note, Riverside, Prestige, and Contemporary were for our parents generation? I sure don't trust the "new" Blue Note or any of the majors, can't afford the imports. How do we avoid the hype of the "new breakthroughs" which foist the Modeski, Martin, and Wood's, etc. on us? How do we avoid the pure noise? What critical sources are trustworthy? I've bought a couple of large collections chock full of jazz promos from small labels and have spent the last several years working through them, finding dozens of new artists I like on labels like Origin and Sharp Nine, etc.

Great record - forgot about that one. Also the Don Friedmans are excellent. Forgot about Friedman. Going back to add 'Circle Waltz' to my list immediately.

Give Ken Burns most of the credit for that. Ellington and Armstrong were the two narrative threads which held his version of the story of jazz together, and the Ellington persona was so utterly compelling, you couldn't see it and help but want to know a lot more about Ellington the musician and Ellington the man. The series for what it did do was marvelous. Now if only Burns had also included the second half of the 20th century. How do you present 10 hours on the history of jazz and never mention Keith Jarrett once?

Chick Corea - Return to Forever (my absolute favorite ECM) Chick Corea/Gary Burton - Crystal Silence Chick Corea - Piano Improvisations, Vol. 1 and 2 John Abercrombie - Timeless Stanley Cowell - Illusiuon Suite Ralph Towner - Solstice Ralph Towner - Diary Ralph Towner/Gary Burton - Matchbox Keith Jarrett - Whisper Not Mal Waldron - Free at Last

Blue Mitchell did his greatest work on Riverside. Outstanding series of albums. Cannonball Adderley, Monk, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans of course. Jimmy Heath did a nice series on Riverside. Couple of nice Clifford Jordan titles on Riverside. Three wonderful Art Blakey albums with IMHO the greatest Jazz Messengers lineup of all (Hubbard, Fuller, Shorter, Walton, Workman). My very favorite Riverside would have to be Blakey's 'Ugetsu' if it isn't Don Friedman - Circle Waltz. Friedman is amazing, and very overlooked/underrated. Frank Strozier did two nice titles on Jazzland. Wonderful Bobby Timmons titles, his best work. Johnny Griffin did his best work on Riverside. The George Russell's as mentioned Here's a list of maybe my favorite titles on the label: Art Blakey - Ugetsu Don Friedman - Circle Waltz Bobby Timmons - This Here Is Bobby Timmons Johnny Griffin - The Little Giant Wes Montgomery - Incredible Jazz Guitar Blue Mitchell - The Cup Bearers Bill Evans - Everybody Digs Bill Evans Thelonious Monk - Monk's Music Cannonball Adderley - Them Dirty Blues Cannonball Adderley - Jazz Workshop Revisit late edit: replaced Frank Strozier - March of the Siamese Children with Don Friedman - Circle Waltz, which has to be on the list.

Our backlogs would make an interesting string some time. I have a huge one due to a couple of collections I bought. I feel your pain. I didn't say I could afford them. I just said I bought them. Hence the huge trade/sale list.

I'd add his appearance on Chico Freeman's Destiny's Dance to that list. (Hard to imagine him keeping that kind of company these days) When I interviewed Wynton in April, 1982, he said that "Destiny's Dance" was a very poor experience for him because Chico Freeman did not know the changes to his own songs, and that he would not be getting involved in any projects with musicians like that again. What a douche bag. He meant, I won't play anymore with musicians who have more talent and personality than I do. Actually, to me, Freeman is a bigger waste of talent than even Wynton is (better pretension than ill-conceived, weird semi-sellout), though Wynton created the marketing atmosphere which destroyed Freeman. Some of Freeman's early playing, especially with Cecil McBee (under both Freeman's name and McBee's name), was truly marvelous.

Our backlogs would make an interesting string some time. I have a huge one due to a couple of collections I bought.

Wynton's music has been a basic downward slope for me. I loved his playing with Blakey when Watson was the musical director. The repertoire became museumish when Watson left. I liked the early Wynton jazz CD's (except 'Hot House Flowers', the one with strings) and loved 'Live at Blues Alley', which I still consider his masterpiece. The early CD's include the 'Soul Gestures in Southern Blue' series, which were recorded before 'Majesty of the Blues' but released afterwards) The drastic changeover in conception with 'Majesty of the Blues' was depressing in it's pretensiousness, and I have found 90% of his jazz CD's since then to be utterly boring. The ones I like are 'Blue Interlude', 'Citi Movements', and the Vanguard set. I haven't even heard his Blue Note CD's. His classical stuff is irrelevant to my musical interests, so I can't discuss that with any degree of intelligence. I did love him in the Ken Burns Jazz series - I thought he was the star of that series the way that Bob Costas was the star of the Baseball series.

can you point me towards some specific Nucleus albums to check out with Marshall and Jenkins on them? Thanks for the tip. I know who Nucleus is, but haven't really heard them much.

I also always found 5 a disappointment (except for "All White"), much prefer 6 to 5.

They are very different albums, very different sounds. 7, as you state, is very delicate. Bundles rocks out with Holdsworth's guitar front and center. Preference of either over the other will maybe have as much to do with musical tastes as with the relative merits of the two albums. Me, I really like Holdsworth, and think he was a much needed boost to the group. But I can see where someone else would disagree if they don't like guitar in Soft Machine,

Guy, this is great news as these works are way overdue for a good remaster. The live CD included with Third is of course potentialy intriguing, but there is a LOT of live Soft Machine on the market, so we'll see if it is noteworthy. Six is well worth having for the live material which makes up half of it (it was a two record set in the day and for the blistering "Stanley Stamps Gibbons Album", one of the most exciting cuts they ever did and the last great moment on a Softs record for the wondeful Michael Ratledge. Seven is OK, worth having, but was always an anticlimax to me. It didn't reach the heights of Six, which came before it, or the wonderful Bundles (THE great Alan Holdsworth performance, to me, is the "Hazard Profile" suite from that album) which came after it. Third and Fourth, of course, belong in every collection. Third was the breakthrough work for their jazz style, and Fourth is the best album they ever did.

And don't forget Tolliver's earlier "Music Inc + Big Band" date. That's the one I like.

I'm gonna put a few words in here about their second album - "Dance to the Music". A little less social significance, a whole lot more party. I suspect some of you guys may not have heard these records as they came out - this one blew me away when I first heard it, and it's still a favorite. A lot of people think highly of "Riot" - I never dug it, and am happy to stick with "Stand" and the singles which came right after it as Sly's finest work- to my ears, anyway. I also feel that all of their absolute gretest work was the pre-'Riot' singles. 'Riot' is a devastating personal/political statement of despair, but I've never been totally sold on it musically (or as a life thesis). "Dance To The Music" was also a huge political statement, but not so much for the lyrics as for who was singing them. Men and women, black and white, each expressing their uniqueness yet come together for a common purpose. The one statement of the times in the lyrics comes when Cynthia Robinson cries out "All the squares go home!", a statement much more significant in early 1968 than today.

A lot of Grateful Dead archival stuff that I picked up at the beginning of the year, and a whole lot of semi-obscure West Coast 50's jazz from the Concord Blowout sale. Also, as always, a lot of the first five albums by the Byrds.

It's a nice session, as are all of the Riverside Heath's. Someone should jump on this one at this great price.

It's actually excellent. I own it on the twofer 'Hip Harp' US reissue (contains 'Hip Harp' and 'In a Minor Groove') and enjoy it quite a bit: Review of 'Hip Harp'/'In a Minor Groove' CD reissue by Scott Yanow in AMG: Dorothy Ashby, the top jazz harpist during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, recorded just a few albums as a leader during her career. This CD reissue has the complete contents of her Prestige and New Jazz albums: Hip Harp and In a Minor Groove. In both cases, Ashby (who really could improvise) was joined by flutist Frank Wess, bassist Gene Wright, and either Art Taylor or Roy Haynes on drums. The bop-oriented program is naturally at a low volume, but Dorothy Ashby shows that she could swing hard too. Her definitive reissue.

I groove to Dorothy Ashby and have lots of Harold Mabern CD's!

Ok - just one. Accent On The Blues Jim, for having absolutely no interest in this thread, you sure post to it a lot!

Well, say that 'The Real McCoy' were to show up here five times, which could understandably happen. It's a real nice album. Now say someone were to come on here and say that 'The Real McCoy' is the greatest album that's ever been released. That would certainly overrate the case for it, even if it, very possibly deservedly, were picked on 5-6 lists here. And that is exactly my problem with the "overrating" concept - it is a judgment call about someone else's taste. If someone thinkgs that The Real McCoy is the best album ever, then it is - TO THEM! Look, I'm a physicist with an egghead number crunching job, and even I don't understand why people feel a need to superimpose some quasi-objective ranking framework on art. It is a matter of personal taste. Someone out there CAN legitimately feel that The Real McCoy is the best record of all time. Now, if you want to talk about jazz records popular amongst connoisseurs that I don't personally get in to, I've got a long list, but I'm not going to claim that any of them are overrated. Good, because I'm much more interested in discussing "jazz records popular amongst connoisseurs that I don't personally get in to" with you than I am in hearing an argument on the semantics of "overrated".

Well, say that 'The Real McCoy' were to show up here five times, which could understandably happen. It's a real nice album. Now say someone were to come on here and say that 'The Real McCoy' is the greatest album that's ever been released. That would certainly overrate the case for it, even if it, very possibly deservedly, were picked on 5-6 lists here.

No doubt produced by Larry Mizell, with George Duke, Larry Carlton, Bernard Purdie, and the Memphis Horns making special guest appearances.

A radical lifestyle goal like that may get you exiled to a spiritual desert island in this day and age. Keep the faith.

Guess that likely depends on who's doing the rating, which is most of the point.