Thursday, August 11, 2005

Five Jazz CDs You Must Own

From Terry Teachout, arts critic for The Wall Street Journal:

The Essential Louis Armstrong (Sony). A brand-new two-CD set by the greatest of all jazz musicians, not perfectly chosen but full of good things and easy to find.

• Duke Ellington, Masterpieces 1926-1949 (Proper). An unusually low-priced four-CD imported box set that contains most of Ellington’s best pre-LP recordings.

Ken Burns Jazz Collection: The Definitive Charlie Parker (Sony). An exceptionally good single-disc introduction to bebop’s key figure.

• Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (Sony). The most popular and influential jazz album of the Fifties.

• Pat Metheny, Bright Size Life (ECM). One of the earliest and most successful attempts to "fuse" jazz and rock. It still sounds fresh.

Pat Metheny is my favorite, and everything he's ever done is very good. But I'd have to agree that this is probably his best. Recorded in the late '70s, it sounds brand new.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You boys are getting too old for me. Next you will be posting your favorite Elvis songs.