A good thing about Jazz is that everyone seems to play on everyone else's records, so when you find something you really like, even a single album, that can lead to a whole world of exploration. Especially true with Bop music. Listening to Coltrane led me to artists as diverse as Lee Morgan and Pharoah Sanders. I recently picked up Thelonious Monk's 'Unique' album only to discover it features Art Blakey on drums. You kind of have to learn to follow your ears and trust your instincts. Not liking most 70's Jazz fusion is a good start. ^_^
I've been listening to Coltrane's Infinity album lately - the one where Alice took some old tracks and added all kinds of posthumous strings and effects. Like so much of her music, the end result is extremely trippy and I think complements the original tracks very well. An interesting experiment.
Also getting heavily into Nina Simone, a very underrated Jazz singer and pianist who plays and sings with tremendous style and wit. There is a lot of anger and defiance in her music and maybe some folks find that off putting, but the best jazz is usually the stuff that's the most uncompromising.
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