It wears me out seeing the same four records listed as the first things to get, when first getting into jazz: Moanin’, Saxophone Colossus, Kind Of Blue, some other bleeding obvious record. They’re great. Of course they’re great. It’s just a little lazy. They’re not the only records in the world, and people who are actually listening and know some records should have their own ideas about it.
Ideally, for a first record, with the purpose of learning about jazz, I want to give a clear picture of how the music is structured, and how the drums are played within it. I want there to be some activity, not just straight groove, so people can begin to recognize 1) the kinds of activity that go into this music, and 2) how the drummer handles them. If the drummer is just playing time, we’re only getting to hear them make one choice: I’m going to play time. I want to hear them make some other choices. And we want to hear some commonly played tunes, ideally in a similar form to how people play them today.
Here are some possibilities I like at the moment:
Charles Mingus – East Coasting – Dannie Richmond on drums
Small group playing tunes, in a very Duke Ellington-oriented vein. All medium and ballad tempos, drums are well recorded, and Richmond is playing some stuff.
Cannonball Adderley & Milt Jackson – Things Are Getting Better – Art Blakey on drums
Slightly more involved arrangements here, with that Cannonball gospel thing happening. Blakey is mostly grooving, but we can hear everything he’s doing on top of that. And we should hear what grooving sounds like.
Sonny Rollins – The Sound Of Sonny – Roy Haynes on drums
A straightforward framework hiply played— they’re just playing tunes, not in an overly busy way, but the players’ creativity is real obvious. Roy Haynes guides us through the structures of the music in his flamboyant way. There’s even a transcription of Roy on Toot Toot Tootsie as a listening aid.
Miles Davis – Workin’ – Philly Joe Jones on drums
You can’t not have any Miles Davis on this, and this is an excellent choice, it’s got Four, In Your Own Sweet Way, and two different versions of The Theme. I listened to a lot of Miles, and recommend it, but I would have been helped by hearing some of the other things here sooner. I think these records leave some fundamentals a little bit mysterious to inexperienced ears.
Horace Silver – Trio – Art Blakey on drums
These albums (vol. 1 and 2) are compilations of 78s, so the tracks are very compact. Drums are not extremely well recorded, but Blakey is playing actively, and we can hear it well enough. The tunes are not all widely played, but this is more about getting jazz structures in our ears.
But really, people should get whatever grabs their ear, that they want to listen to. There is no duty to take things in some kind of linear way. The first thing about learning about jazz (or anything else) is you have to have some attraction, some interest. So here are some more picturesque options, that may be more challenging in terms of jazz fundamentals, but that will be attractive to people’s ears:
John Coltrane – Coltrane – Elvin Jones on drums
Some very vibe-heavy pieces here, and a good, relatively clean first look at Elvin’s thing.
Branford Marsalis – Trio Jeepy – Jeff Watts on drums
A newer record than all the others. Old recordings are off putting at first, for some people. Here we get to hear some modern sounding drums— a lot of them, at times. Housed From Edward I think is one of the great tracks illustrating blues, and of the drums played melodically.
Thelonious Monk – Trio – Max Roach and Art Blakey on drums
Very attractive, very tight record— short, creative versions of some famous Monk tunes. The only reason I don’t put it on the first list is that the recording of the drums is a little ragged, and Roach and Blakey are playing in a kind of “organic” zone. It’s not immediately obvious to your ear what they are actually playing.
Ahmad Jamal – Live At The Pershing – Vernell Fournier on drums
Obviously very attractive, with famous versions of some well known tunes, and Poinciana, with its grand arrangement. Drums are very clearly rendered, and it’s easy to hear a reason for everything he does. A lot of it is so particular to this record, so possibly the general lessons from it are not so clear.
Miles Davis – Four & More – Tony Williams on drums
Why not. There is a tremendous amount of energy here— all the tunes are played at very fast tempos. And we get to hear a couple of famous drum solos, and some time things that have become widely used rhythm section devices. And we get to hear Tony playing the ride cymbal. How it’s all put together will be mysterious, but that’s all right, it’s about energy.
We could have put some Jazz Messengers, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon on there— maybe on a different day. It’s not meant to be an overview of jazz history. Someday I’ll give you my list of first jazz records I actually listened to, it wasn’t an orderly process.