Wood Goblin wrote: Thu Jul 24, 2025 3:23 pm For me, it’s a toss-up between big band and hard bop. Not only are the heights really high, but so are the averages. Mediocre examples from those genres are often at least listenable, if not exceptional.

Least favorite is bebop. As important as Charlie Parker and Gillespie were, I just don’t care for any of it. Neither fish nor fowl.

Great free jazz is transcendent. Bad free jazz isn’t just annoying; it’s also pretentious. “This next song is called ‘Benediction.’” SKRONK screech plunk plunk BLURT skrook whir BLEAT. “And this next song is called ‘Leviticus.’” GROOOMP flurr flurr GRUGG flurt wang wang BOINK.

Same complaint applies to spiritual jazz, where you also run the risk of encountering spoken word. But the best stuff? Sublime.

Great fusion is evocative like little else is, but you run out of it quickly.

I agree with everything except I'm down with bebop. Hell I can't think of any type of jazz that I hate. Unless zydeco counts, because fuck zydeco

60s jazz, probably "hard bop" from this poll. The heyday of Blue Note, when "progressive" jazz artists still jammed around and found both kindred spirits and labels operating in good faith.

Early fusion and free are fanfuckingtastic but not something I seek out terribly often. Ayler, Mingus, Miles' fusion, Tony Williams, Ornette, Sam Rivers, Pharoah, Joe Harriott, a few of the noisier guys on ESP - that keeps me covered on both counts more often than not.

Loft era has a lot of gems, but it was clearly standing on the shoulders of giants.

Cannot do much swing. That's stuff my grandpa played in the car.

Zydeco is good, but that’s not jazz. If you can sit through a Les Blank film and tell me that sucks, ok, but. Its great and I love their high sad voices. Those areas are where my family comes from and i could barely understand my great grandparents for their cajun accents. .

Big band and swing music sucks so bad. I love Miles Davis but I would never call that cool jazz and I have this gnawing feeling that I hate cool jazz. In A Silent Way isn’t cool jazz and neither is any of the earlier stuff.

Jazz is both transcendent and the worst genre, but I think that’s what makes it so great.

Anybody remember the Evolutionary Jass band? I discovered them in the early days of filesharing and was sort chasing that sound, ultimately found what I was looking for in Coltrane and Mingus to start and then branched out.

I love Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner, love those Alice Coltrane records. John Coltranes “last” live cd sounds heavier than anything else.

I really, really don’t like fusion, but I like a lot of adjacent stuff.

I still can’t believe yall would go to bat for big band music. I’m going to go easy on NPR in this political moment but that shit sucks so bad. Frank Sinatra was something else when he was good.

This shit is crazy. 1959!

Uff, hard choices. I’d voted Hard Bop but prefer later Modal Jazz, which sits between Hard Bop and Free, kinda.

I can listen to most eras and styles post Bebop. Recently I’ve really been enjoying Bill Evans, who I weirdly discovered in my formative years from the track Beautiful Love, on Helmet’s Betty.

Dolphy is fantastic when I’m in the mood. Out to Lunch blew Grammy’s little 17 year old mind. Again this was discovered after reading John Frusciante interviews just after BSSM was released. The RHCP were a massive gateway into a lot of great music. They probably deserve a lot of credit for that.

Miles helped define "cool jazz", see "Birth of the Cool" etc.

gotdamn wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2025 12:11 am 60s jazz, probably "hard bop" from this poll. The heyday of Blue Note, when "progressive" jazz artists still jammed around and found both kindred spirits and labels operating in good faith.

Yeah, 60s Blue Note and Impulse is where it's at (a few of the Colombia artists too). It's kind of like subgenres of rock. The greats might have hinted at a new genre but the people who follow the later codified genre are less great (see "emo", "hardcore").

It's the people who took it to new places: Coltrane, Mingus, Davis, Monk, Dolphy, Brubeck, Oliver Nelson, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins. I think Dizzy and Bird were amazing. They rewrote the rules, but only a diehard could list a half dozen other bop players cause the original article was more vital. Everyone else on my list was more interested in innovation than genre. Also they were as/more interested in composition as being a virtuoso soloist. It's the same reason that peak Ellington stuff transcends "big band".

So yeah, it's kind of an eras thing more than a genre thing. Early 30s to late 60s was where most of the magic happened, but if I have to take ten years it's probably 55-65.

The first two Mahavishnu Orchestra records plus the live album. Agharta and Live Evil by Miles.

Cool/hard bop and free, probably. I thought Ornette Coleman was out there until I heard Basil Kirchin.

I agree that the best Ellington transcends big band/swing (or any genre, for that matter), but his straightforward dance music is also often really fucking good.

The Glen Miller stuff can leave a bad taste in one’s mouth; he wasn’t particularly well respected by some of his peers, who called his music “jazz for Republicans.” But the best big band is some of the greatest, rawest music ever made.

A playlist for skeptics:

Ellington: “Harlem Air Shaft,” “Blue Serge,” “Mood Indigo,” “Ko-Ko,” “Caravan.” The live version of “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” from Newport is my favorite piece of jazz, period, though you might not want to devote 15 minutes to it. I also LOVE his take on “Moonglow,” though I admit that gets close to sounding like old person music.

Fletcher Henderson: “Limehouse Blues,” which is jazz at Motörhead speed; the 1934 take on “Shanghai Shuffle,” which is more of a big band version of the song than his 1920s take with Louis Armstrong.

Jean Goldkette: “Clementine,” featuring Bix. This is sometimes considered the first big-band arrangement.

Benny Goodman: “Jam Session.”

Artie Shaw: “Alone Together,” “Rose Room,” “Any Old Time” (w/ Billie Holiday), “Good Night, Angel” (also kinda old person music).

Jimmie Lunceford: “Jazznocracy.”

McKinney’s Cotton Pickers (unfortunate name here): “Some Sweet Day.”

Casa Loma Orchestra: “Smoke Rings,” which could be used in (and probably has been used in) a horror movie.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Jul 25, 2025 1:10 am
This shit is crazy. 1959!

This ^ is what I was talking about with Pacific Jazz/World Pacific Records, the former of which released that record (Chico Hamilton Quintet featuring Buddy Collette, who compose "Blue Sands"). Whichever this era is, this is the era I'd pick. I'd be happy just to listen to that catalog and no other jazz records.