Jazz

Judging by the queues, we seem to have many jazz lovers in our midst. What are everyone's favourite recordings?
I haven't delved too deeply into the genre, just sort of picked up what i've found interesting plus a few essential albums that i've actually had mixed feelings about. but what i like, I really love:

Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue
-- accessible classic.
Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda
-- listening to this right now. Coltrane shreds on both piano and harp on some beautiful Indian-flavoured jazz. amazing stuff! i also like some of 'Ptah, The El Daoud' but her later, electric stuff i'm not so into.
Sun Ra - Supersonic Jazz
-- i find Sun Ra really hit and miss but this, from '56, is a good spot between his big bandy stuff and his experimentalism.
Emil Richards And The Microtonal Blues Band - Journey Into Bliss
-- an interesting album that i was exposed to through b2b research. cheesy lighthearted percussive jazz on the first side, but the flip is a lot stranger.

Sorry to interject - my only contribution here is to confess I'm with Nigel Tufnel on this one:
"Jazz is just a series of mistakes without the 'oops"

I grew up listening to a lot of different styles of jazz, but never really found one that I could relate to. it's always been more of just background music for me. Researching for this site has changed that a bit and now there are some artists that I love. Art Blakey is probably the most prominent one for me and I haven't been disappointed in any of his albums that I've picked up.

I've researched jazz more than any other genre on this site, but I think it's been more out of my fascination for how many groups connect to each other than anything else. Everyone has played with everyone. Most players come to be leaders at some point in their career and create their own trios, quartets, quintets, and so on. Jazz family trees are astonishing.

I don't listen to every group I research, I think that would be too overwhelming and may turn me off from jazz completely. I'm fine with putting on some Blakey or Dizzy, but outside of that I'm not looking to find the next great jazz group. I can't really get into Miles Davis or Coltrane, but I will try to track down every recording they ever released for this site.

I feel I'm obliged to answer because I'm partly responsible for jazzing up b2b with all kinds of crossover stuff 5 years ago.

What got me into 'jazz' or improvised music was not a record, but a performance by Han Bennink playing drums with everything and using everything as drums. Still going strong: [youtu.be] http://youtu.be/ENJHoLnZxeI

As far as records go, the one that started it for me was The Big Gundown by John Zorn, with spectacular reworkings of Morricone's film music. I like most of the 60s stuff on Impulse! records, especially the Mingus, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders records. The Monk solo records on Riverside are great. Too much to mention.

Recently, I picked up some awesome metal-jazz crossovers: Carboniferous by Zu and Blackjazz by the Norwegian group Shining.

Actually, the only reason I've added jazz records is because most of the time they are very easy to verify since the lineup is mentioned on the cover.