Jazz recommendations for a beginner?


Hello, I purchased my first 3 jazz cds just to experiment: Cafe Blue (Pat Barber), Love Scenes (D. Krall) and Kind of Blue (M. Davis). Now I want to officially start listening more jazz. I really liked tracks 2,3,4,9,10 and 11 on Barber's cd, almost every song on Krall's, but honestly 'Kind of Blue' was not too much of my taste. So based on this brief comments, has anybody some good recommendations for a beginner? I'd appreciate your suggestions. Thanks.
Jorge R.
jorge_err

Showing 1 response by zargon

Jazz is a very broad category (or genre) of music, along with others such as classical, country, blues, easy listening, folk, rap, latin, new age, pop, rock etc. Jazz has a number of subcategories (or sub-genres) as well, such as ballroom, big band swing, bop, dixieland/New Orleans, fusion, general, vocals, latin, smooth, traditional etc.

In exploring jazz one may discover they like one sub-genre but not another. Jorge, you are gravitating towards traditional vocals (Krall) but not towards general jazz (Davis). Identifying the sub-genre will help you find more of what you like.

At the same time, trying to categorize artists is sometimes a challenge. While Eva Cassidy on "Live at Blues Alley", is mostly "blues", most of her work is actually "folk".

Based on your attraction to Krall, I'd suggest artists like Karrin Allison, Shirley Horn, Jane Monheit, and Tierney Sutton. Then, experiment with other genres and see where it takes you.