What do you think?
Rate this book
The Essential Jazz Recordings: 101 CDs
A guide to the all-time must-have jazz recordings by a maven of the genre.
Possibly the twentieth century’s greatest musical innovation, jazz is now more popular than it has been for the past fifty years. But with the plethora of new recordings and the phenomenon in jazz of the same standards being recorded seemingly by almost every artist and band or trio, it’s very hard to know where to start or to improve a CD collection.
The Essential Jazz Recordings provides a trustworthy, concise guide, heavily skewed to Porter’s personal favourites and showcasing Canadian talent where it’s merited. With background information on the music, the artist, and the recording, Porter explains the unique merits of each recording, from Louis Armstrong to Wynton Marsalis, Billie Holiday to Diana Krall. With this guide, dedicated jazz aficionados can ensure a complete collection and novices can expand their knowledge. Both will hugely enjoy the musical riches in The Essential Jazz Recordings.
Possibly the twentieth century’s greatest musical innovation, jazz is now more popular than it has been for the past fifty years. But with the plethora of new recordings and the phenomenon in jazz of the same standards being recorded seemingly by almost every artist and band or trio, it’s very hard to know where to start or to improve a CD collection.
The Essential Jazz Recordings provides a trustworthy, concise guide, heavily skewed to Porter’s personal favourites and showcasing Canadian talent where it’s merited. With background information on the music, the artist, and the recording, Porter explains the unique merits of each recording, from Louis Armstrong to Wynton Marsalis, Billie Holiday to Diana Krall. With this guide, dedicated jazz aficionados can ensure a complete collection and novices can expand their knowledge. Both will hugely enjoy the musical riches in The Essential Jazz Recordings.
- GenresMusic
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
January 9, 2025
Some good tips
I picked this up in the Ottawa branch of Chapters a couple of weeks ago. Initially, I thought that the internet would have made this sort of book (and anything else that lists 1001 xxx to yyy before you die) redundant, but I found some of the selections in here appealing - in particular, I see that he included Mark Isham's Blue Sun (and noted that Down Beat selected it as one of the top albums of the 1990s), which is one of my favourite records. Of course, we all want affirmation that our choices are (or have been) the right ones, so I bought it.
It doesn't take long to read, and there are some good tips in here (I'm particularly interested in his recommendations for records where Pat Metheny is a sidesman), but it'd be better to dip in and out of it than to try and read it all the way through. I also spotted a few errors, or - maybe - typos: Count Basie was born in Red Bank, not Red Band (p43), the bass player called Paul Champers is really Paul Chambers (p126), and it's not true to say (p165) that Weather Report disbanded after "Heavy Weather"; although the drummer and percussionist left at that point, there was nothing noteworthy about a lineup change like that in their history, and in fact they released more records after "Heavy Weather" than they had before then.
Originally reviewed 11 March 2008
I picked this up in the Ottawa branch of Chapters a couple of weeks ago. Initially, I thought that the internet would have made this sort of book (and anything else that lists 1001 xxx to yyy before you die) redundant, but I found some of the selections in here appealing - in particular, I see that he included Mark Isham's Blue Sun (and noted that Down Beat selected it as one of the top albums of the 1990s), which is one of my favourite records. Of course, we all want affirmation that our choices are (or have been) the right ones, so I bought it.
It doesn't take long to read, and there are some good tips in here (I'm particularly interested in his recommendations for records where Pat Metheny is a sidesman), but it'd be better to dip in and out of it than to try and read it all the way through. I also spotted a few errors, or - maybe - typos: Count Basie was born in Red Bank, not Red Band (p43), the bass player called Paul Champers is really Paul Chambers (p126), and it's not true to say (p165) that Weather Report disbanded after "Heavy Weather"; although the drummer and percussionist left at that point, there was nothing noteworthy about a lineup change like that in their history, and in fact they released more records after "Heavy Weather" than they had before then.
Originally reviewed 11 March 2008
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review