Chuck,
That brings me to a question I've wanted to ask for a long time but haven't. As a music teacher, I talk to my students frequently about jazz, how a particular technique would be used in a jazz context, how some jazz artist did something similar to what we are working on. As a result I'm often asked to recommend some albums to students that have no background in jazz.
So, my question is:
What 3 CDs can I recommend to a person that will convey the "heart and soul" of jazz?
I chose the number 3 to limit the answer to an amount of money that anyone, that can afford to pay for music lessons, could afford and to an amount of music that an interested person could listen to in one sitting.