Bill Evans Trio!!! Anything you can get your hands on. It's all instrumental, but WAY good stuff. I love it.

Duke Ellington, Chet Baker, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk are all great musicians. Vocal talents include Sarah Vaughan and Nina Simone. Uh, there's also Stan Getz who's cool. Amazon.com has a great Essential CDs of Jazz section here: Get Started In... Jazz

I have a 3 CD set of Louis Armstrong with Billie Holiday that's excellent. :)>

I know that XM has a good Jazz station (there are 3; the one called Real Jazz plays the stuff you're talking about), and you can get a 3-day pass to the stream on-line (subscribers get it for free). Sirius has on-line streaming with a free trial as well.

AOL just started streaming a ton of music for free, but you need a PC.

There are probably other sources (Yahoo music?) as well.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. 'nuff said.

A&T's radio station plays a fair amount of jazz. They're at 90.1 FM, but you might want to find their web site and find show times. WFDD has a Friday-night jazz show as well. There's a syndicated show on NPR "Jazz After Hours" as well. The DJ seems rather knowledgable. I think WFDD plays that show at least one night on the weekends. There's also "Piano Jazz" which is yet another syndicated NPR show that has the host (Mary Lou Williams) and a guest sitting down at pianos, playing and talking about jazz. Do you pick up WVTF and whatever the Winston-Salem State radio station is called (90.5 FM, WSNC?)?

Probably best of all though, is to find local establishments that feature jazz musicians. Jazz is inherently improvizational and "live".

Pharaoh Sanders
David S. Ware

Josh Redman
Pat Martino

Was this entry somehow inspired by the "Family Guy" episode we just watched where Brian hit it off with the Bachelorette over a conversation about "real" jazz? After which I decided Brian rocked, because he was the only character I could stand? Because that would be really funny.

Mmmm. Mojito.

If you had asked about 24 hours earlier, (and if I'd read it), I'd have been in Jazz Central - my nephew's house. My two nephews know all there is to know about jazz musicians. At least, now they do, since I've introduced them to DTB.

I'll ping 'em for a list. I also have a little bit of stuff on my iPod for you to sample, once it's resync'ed.

Saxophone? I have some good ones... But Alan says "that's not jazz." I think that they are.

Hmmm... Mostly I don't like vocal jazz all that much, but I do dig the instrumental stuff.

For vocals, anything with Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, or Billie Holliday is worth your while. Much more recently (as in current), a lady by the name of Susan Reeves sounds pretty good too--and as it turns out, she at least occasionally uses an old high school acquaintance of mine as her guitarist.

Charles Mingus has some good stuff. So does Charlie Parker. Bud Powell, Clifford Brown, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach are pretty good too, though I have less of their stuff and I know them less.

If you're into that subset of jazz that is Dixieland, Preservation Hall has some of the best that I know how to track down. There are occasionally better performers just out on the street passing a bucket for money, but as far as I know they've never recorded anything.

Some people'd complain about Dave Brubeck in this category, but he's good fun too.

I'm sure I can dig more up if you're interested--my guitar teacher's a student of jazz and can probably give you such a wealth of names as to keep you busy for quite a while... so let me know if you want more!

peace,

--me