Rabshakeh

City Pop. Are the underlined ones recommended?

I do not, although I love TV Action Jazz, so will certainly check this out. One of my wife's favourite records, there. Good suggestion. I'll give it a listen.

I mean, they were all great records.

I just mean that if the band has some bop / progressive edges, that's fine; likewise R&B, or even electric edges. It doesn't need to be preserved in time. But the bop big band stuff I have a reasonable handle on. Obviously these distinctions are not always easily made.

These are great big band records, but not so much in the swing category.

Rick James – Street Songs (1981)

Just read all of that. I feel vaguely dizzy.

What's Sauter / Finegan? The others I know. Probably more in the modernist camp, and more frequently discussed (especially Quincy!) Thank you!

Terry Gibbs I know. Great example of this sort of music. For some reason Gibbs is more in favour than other contemporaries, and I've seen his records posted here and elsewhere with reasonable frequency. This is stuff I see in the bins all the time, next to the equally unloved but slightly more navigable jazz vocal records. Thank you, as always.

What is futurist / jazz leaning big band? I'm pretty intrigued. Do I need to start another thread? Thanks!

Beaver Harris 360° Music Experience With Grachan Moncur, Ken McIntyre, Ron Burton, Cameron Brown – Live At Nyon (1981)

Glad it is good. 4LPs are a bit of a pass from me. Just thinking about it makes me exhausted.

@Big Beat Steve, thank you as always for a wonderful, thought through answer. Basically, what I am looking for is to patch a hole in my own knowledge. I tend to concentrate on LPs (which is the way that I overwhelmingly like to listen to music, rather than box sets of singles, although historic singles collections are fine tok). The Georgie Auld record to which I am referring is swing in a brassy, confident idiom (which I associate with c.1939) but with some (welcome) bop and R&B in the sound, and fresh and of their time arrangements. It is noticeably different to the mainstream jam concept, or to what the more famous big bands like Basie or Ellington had moved to. I really liked it, not because it preserved an historical style (it doesn't, as you say) but because it had a lot of guts, an awareness of what else was happening, and great tunes. Getting record recommendations for this sort of music is hard. It is unfashionable music that is not discussed in the histories of jazz and LP covers are certainly not getting flashed around on social media. It is reasonably easy to identify what the go-to classic records are with which to start for postwar Basie and Ellington, for the bop era big bands like Kenton and Herman, for mainstream swing, or for the later progressive big bands like Ellis, Ferguson, Jones/Lewis or Wilson. In contrast, Georgie Auld was just a name to me until yesterday. I recognise many of the names that you mention, but, other than Gerald Wilson and Boyd Raeburn (both of whose records I know to some extent), I would not really know where to start. Any direction would be hugely appreciated. "Personal quirks" and "firm favourites" in particular (that's what this forum is for!). As mentioned above, if the groups released any of particularly recommended LPs, I would love to know.

10³²K – The Law Of Vibration (2018)

(D)IVO Saxophone Quartet - (D)IVO (2022) Nice to see James Carter doing stuff like this, in good company.

Willem Breuker – Psalm 122 (1998)

Lakecia Benjamin – Phoenix I like to keep up with what the kids are listening to, or what the companies are telling the kids to listen to (hard to tell). This one is definitely better than the previous Coltrane tribute record. I'm not sure that it's so much better that I'd listen to it again, though. Great cover.

In the good way or the bad way?

Michael Shrieve – Stiletto Very dated, but David Torn is excellent on here, perhaps better than on his solo records.

Idris Muhammad – Peace And Rhythm

I've heard that one too, I liked it but it is quite a different record because of the mixed sources of the tunes.

Artifacts: Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell, Mike Reed – …And Then There’s This (2022) Listening to this after seeing it posted upthread. A really good one. Exciting from the opening. I like the use of bass-like cello and percussion on many of the tunes. Good to hear a bit of funk in the vanguard jazz world these days.

Orchestre National De Jazz, Daniel Yvinec, Gil Goldstein – Piazzolla! (2012)

Those records that you mention are great, and I think any jazz fan could / should be able to enjoy them. This thread is perhaps more designed for the "deeper cuts" that would appeal to a hardcore fusion head who particularly likes this era. To me, this era of fusion seems like a very arid period of music, with too much widdly guitar and complete rhythmic constipation, but I have found some gems whilst exploring, like that Niacin record.

I posted yesterday about a Georgie Auld record I was enjoying (In the Land of Hi-Fi). It's not ignorant of bop (look at the players), and there's a big chunk of R&B in the sound, but overall, this is some great big band swing of the pre-war style. I'm pretty familiar with 1950s-80s small group 'mainstream' records, and with the post-war work of the greatest of the swing groups, Ellington's and Basie's, but my knowledge stops there. What are some other really great post-war swing records of the pre-war type? I'm looking for anything on level with the Auld record. I should add, on the edit, that it needn't be that big a band. If Artie Shaw or whoever made a great sextet record in 1957, I'd love to hear about it.