The Blue Note Thread

Matt M said:
Oh man, here it comes. Every one of those Tone Poet's are great. This crowd is so knowledgeable about everything except that I can't buy every freaking album they recommend. Good luck, these TP's sound so good. I really like the Grant Green - Born To Be Blue, Lee Morgan - Cornbread, Tina Brooks - Minor Move, Wayne Shorter - Etc...
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Exactly. Stream them all and narrow it down to your favorites because those Tone Poet jackets are of the highest quality and come complete with session photos on the inside. They are incredible.

In short, this is the best reissue series out there.
Period.

Recommend checking out all the ones he mentioned above.
Born to be Blue has been my obsession recently.
 
Amazing - thanks all! I’ve added all of these mentioned to my list and will go through them on Apple Music before ordering any. I’m working from home tomorrow, so it’s officially BN80 day to work through my new arrivals. Then onwards to these recommendations.
 
Doctor_of_Jazz said:
I've been doing many direct comparisons between 'old' and 'new', and find that I like the older albums better. They do have more noise, but there is a crispness from the original that normally wins me over. There can be more noise for sure, and if this reaches a moderate level where it feels intrusive, I favor the newer release. I'm listening with headphones and doing A/B comparisons for a few various parts to compare. I don't have a crazy audiophile setup, so someone with a better setup may experience this differently, but find I'm leaning towards clean old copies over new.
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I mostly agree with this. I was lucky enough to find a NM og mono copy of Free for All for way cheaper than I would have expected after I had already bought the SRX version a few months previously. After A/B-ing them I definitely preferred the original over the SRX. with some albums, though, it can be easier to buy an MMJ level reissue than waiting and looking for a deal like that. Or, at least, I'd be less inclined to put in the effort to find an OG for some albums when such a high level reissue is easily available.
 
Bsdmr2 said:
Amazing - thanks all! I’ve added all of these mentioned to my list and will go through them on Apple Music before ordering any. I’m working from home tomorrow, so it’s officially BN80 day to work through my new arrivals. Then onwards to these recommendations.
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I think I did something similar to yourself, make a list and work through it before making purchases! There's a lot of amazing albums out there, some are more essential than others. You could actually leave the Tone Poets for now and focus on the classics. Here's some recommendations for starting off:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Stan Getz - Jazz Samba
John Coltrane - Love Supreme
Grant Green - Idle Moments
Lee Morgan - Sidewinder
Art Blakey - Moanin'
Cannonball Adderley - Somethin Else
Dexter Gordon - Go

Also, the PBS series about Jazz is worth a watch, as well as any Blue Note / Jazz documentaries you can find on Netflix. Theres some good books too, Uncompromising Expression is worth picking up, Ashley Kahns book about the making of Kind of Blue is decent, and Miles Davis autobiography is good too. Its a big learning curve so take your time and enjoy 🙂
 
QuickDrawDave said:
I think I did something similar to yourself, make a list and work through it before making purchases! There's a lot of amazing albums out there, some are more essential than others. You could actually leave the Tone Poets for now and focus on the classics. Here's some recommendations for starting off:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Stan Getz - Jazz Samba
John Coltrane - Love Supreme
Grant Green - Idle Moments
Lee Morgan - Sidewinder
Art Blakey - Moanin'
Cannonball Adderley - Somethin Else
Dexter Gordon - Go

Also, the PBS series about Jazz is worth a watch, as well as any Blue Note / Jazz documentaries you can find on Netflix. Theres some good books too, Uncompromising Expression is worth picking up, Ashley Kahns book about the making of Kind of Blue is decent, and Miles Davis autobiography is good too. Its a big learning curve so take your time and enjoy 🙂
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I'll add to your list.

Bill Evans Trio - Waltz for Debbie
The Ahmad Jamal Trio - The Awakening
All the Miles Davis on Prestige - Cookin, Relaxin, Steamin, etc.
Sonny Clarke - cool struttin
 
zdkaiser said:
I'll add to your list.

Bill Evans Trio - Waltz for Debbie
The Ahmad Jamal Trio - The Awakening
All the Miles Davis on Prestige - Cookin, Relaxin, Steamin, etc.
Sonny Clarke - cool struttin
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Have to admit I haven't listened to the awakening, or the prestige albums often as other stuff has come first. The more I'm learning about jazz, the more there is to know...!
 
QuickDrawDave said:
I think I did something similar to yourself, make a list and work through it before making purchases! There's a lot of amazing albums out there, some are more essential than others. You could actually leave the Tone Poets for now and focus on the classics. Here's some recommendations for starting off:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Dave Brubeck - Time Out
Stan Getz - Jazz Samba
John Coltrane - Love Supreme
Grant Green - Idle Moments
Lee Morgan - Sidewinder
Art Blakey - Moanin'
Cannonball Adderley - Somethin Else
Dexter Gordon - Go

Also, the PBS series about Jazz is worth a watch, as well as any Blue Note / Jazz documentaries you can find on Netflix. Theres some good books too, Uncompromising Expression is worth picking up, Ashley Kahns book about the making of Kind of Blue is decent, and Miles Davis autobiography is good too. Its a big learning curve so take your time and enjoy 🙂
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What's the PBS series called? they sometimes put PBS series on Netflix in the UK
 
Lots of great suggestions, but the best thing to do is stream things before buying as a lot of it might not float your boat, TP are very well done, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to like all the music, it’s a pretty broad cross section of styles and no point in paying for stuff you won’t listen to.
Bsdmr2 said:
Thanks for the information - that’s really helpful! Looking forward to expanding my musical repertoire and knowledge!
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kafunis said:
Lots of great suggestions, but the best thing to do is stream things before buying as a lot of it might not float your boat, TP are very well done, but that doesn’t mean that you are going to like all the music, it’s a pretty broad cross section of styles and no point in paying for stuff you won’t listen to.
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good advice and very sensible. I've fallen into the trap of buying pretty much all the Tone Poets as a matter of course. I don't have time to listen to them all anyway, but what I found interesting is some that I didn't think I liked on first listen, when I've listened again have become my favourites. But I do have a lot of records that don't get played.
 
Andy said:
What's the PBS series called? they sometimes put PBS series on Netflix in the UK
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I think it's "Ken Burns: Jazz", if youre in the UK you can watch it on Amazon Prime as you get a free 7 day trial of PBS.

If you have Netflix, you can also watch "Chasing Trane", a John Coltrane documentary, and "I called him Morgan", a Lee Morgan documentary. Both are very much worth a watch.
 
QuickDrawDave said:
I think it's "Ken Burns: Jazz", if youre in the UK you can watch it on Amazon Prime as you get a free 7 day trial of PBS.

If you have Netflix, you can also watch "Chasing Trane", a John Coltrane documentary, and "I called him Morgan", a Lee Morgan documentary. Both are very much worth a watch.
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Brilliant I have Amazon Prime as well, didn't realise they had the PBS channel.

I've seen Chasing Trane and the Lee Morgan doc. Both great, but the Lee Morgan doc I thought was outstanding, what a story.
 
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