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The Essential Jazz Recordings: 101 CDs
Book by Ross Porter
- GenresMusic
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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January 15, 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 of 1 review