Miles Davis is the reason I didn't start listening to much jazz until the last year or two. It's not his fault directly but his many imitators. For years my main experience with jazz was live trios, quartets and quintets copying Davis' early style by playing meandering, jazzy versions of recognizable tunes. Once in a while you would hear a melody come through and think, "oh, now I know what they're playing." Davis could make that work. Many other bands can't.
Combine that with people like Lawrence Welk representing big band and I didn't see the appeal. There's a lot of good jazz out there but there's a lot of bad jazz too. It took watching Ken Burns' Jazz series to find what I like.
Miles still isn't my favorite. I'm not crazy about the trumpet in general and lead trumpet players often sound like they're trying too hard to get my attention. Blending in with the band is not a bad thing. I prefer non-trumpeters like John Coltrane and Benny Goodman.
But...Workin with the Miles Davis Quintet is a good album and I've enjoyed listening to it several times since I brought it home. I'll probably get one more Miles album from later in his career.
One of the first jazz albums I owned was John Coltrane's A Love Supreme on CD. It completely blew me away. Blue Train is my first Coltrane album on vinyl. It makes all the lists of great Coltrane albums everyone should own and now I do. I love it, but A Love Supreme is still my favorite.
I've heard Gil Scott-Heron called a jazz musician and the godfather of hip hop. He's most known for the song, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Some of my favorite songs by Kanye West and Common used samples of Scott-Heron songs.
I was a little disappointed when I got this album home and noticed in fine print that it's a collection of previously released songs. I'd rather have an original full album if it's someone I know I like. The collection is good though so I'm happy with it even though I already have many of the songs on CD. It's always good to have one of his albums around on vinyl just in case you ever find yourself hosting a party full of radical left wing activists.
Charlie Christian caught my attention in the Ken Burns Jazz series as an early innovator of the electric guitar as a lead instrument. So I picked up one of the Benny Goodman Alternate Takes series which has a mix of big band and smaller group recordings with Charlie Christian. It's funny switching from a Coltrane or Davis album with songs that last ten minutes or more to a series of quick three minute numbers that were standard in the 30's and 40's.
Finally, I picked up a copy of a Lou Rawls album, Man of Value. This post is getting long so maybe I'll write about that one another day. I'm eager to get back to Jazz Record Mart, but thankfully, for the sake of my checking account balance, I won't be back in Chicago too soon.