How to Build Your Jazz Collection From The Ground Up!

Admin
Oct 5, 2017
4 min read

When I started my blog one of my goals was to share the best way to start your very own Blues or Jazz record collection. Common questions like where to start? Who to listen to? Well, rest easy because I will answer all of these questions and more! You’ll have a record collection before you know it.

Research

Although it sounds tedious it is very important, you can’t spend money on albums if you don’t know what (or who) you like. Sites like Udiscover and digitaldreamdoor, are great starting places that touch on different era’s within both genres. Whether it’s Early Delta Blues (i.e. Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton) or the well known subgenre the Chicago Blues (Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf) or the various subgenres in Jazz (Fusion, Bebop, Soul-Jazz). Going out and researching different artist will help you make the choice of which ones are worth listening too.

Listen

Whether it be through a streaming service (Spotify, Google Music) or YouTube, once you find an artist you’ll have to listen to them perform. What’s helpful here is that these services will list artist who share similar traits and some will suggest tracks for you to listen too. YouTube is a vital tool because you’ll have a bevy of live and studio performance tracks (depending on the era you choose) to help you decide if you want to shell out and own that artist material. There are rare tracks as well on YouTube which are a part of really expensive box sets (more on this subject later) that you can listen to for free instead of paying 189.00 (USD).

What To Buy?

If you are really indecisive there are a bunch of compilation CD’s that have over 100 songs that you can sample. The problem with these CD’s is that they often don’t flow because the artist are too different or the tracks don’t match the title. Meaning, if a track is labeled Cannonball Adderly’s “What Is This Thing Called Soul?” but in reality, it’s his quintets version of Randy Weston’s “Hi-Fly,” this actually happened to me. So the question remains what to buy, you can buy a compilation CD of an artist, if they are really famous (Mel Torme, Charlie Parker, Billie Holliday) they’ll have a lot of compilation CDs on the internet. Which sounds like a good thing but they vary in quality, among the popular (and ones to avoid) are “The Most Requested Songs,” “16 Requested Hits,” and other variations on those titles. The problem with those is that they rarely feature their best material or are sanctioned by the artist estate, for example, “Billie Holiday’s 16 Most Requested Songs,” omits “Strange Fruit.” Which is an egregious error, when buying a compilation you can go for Double CD’s (which combine two full-length albums) or buy a compilation for a specific time period, for example, “Lester Young: 1936-1947.” Not only do you get nine years of one of the greatest Tenor Saxophone players of all time it only cost 4.99$ (plus shipping).

Study The Hits!

Every artist has a critically acclaimed album (some have more than one), which people have been debating for decades, an example would be “Which is better Kind of Blue or ‘Round Midnight?” Their both Miles Davis albums and both are worth owning. You can engage in those debates once you have a collection! A great way for you to expand your collection is to study the hits! The primary focus of expansion is to determine which albums are worth the money and which can wait (research comes in big here!). In certain cases, you can buy a full-length album for as little as one dollar and seventy-eight cents or two dollars and sixty-seven cents! However, most of the time you’ll have to spend ten dollars or the conveniently marketed (9.99) to purchase an album. Reading reviews on the site (5 stars means the album is perfect!) are helpful because they have to buy the album before leaving the review. Sites like Allmusic and Downbeat also have insightful reviews about the album and the musicians who played on the session. This along with the research section will help you make the right selection. (P.S. you can preview the album on-site or search for it on YouTube.)

Enjoy!

Finally, you have picked up an album (or two or three…) the next step is to Listen! Enjoy the album you’ve purchased, read the liner notes or just listen. Find out what tracks speak to you or what tracks you found better than others, more importantly, figure out if you want to hear more from that particular artist.

P.S.

A Word on Box Sets

Box Sets are marvelous wonders that offer you a lot of music from an artist and presents them in new or exciting situations. Some cover time with a record company or a complete retrospective of an artist career or just a huge chunk of time (around five or six years). While marvelous with enticing features like remastered tracks or liner notes and biographical essays, they can cost a lot of money! I’m not talking about 20 or 40 dollars (although, some cost that much), I’m talking about 200 or 350$ if you have money they are worth it most of the time. They feature rare material that you won’t be able to hear anywhere else, like the Mosaic Box Set of Johnny Smith (with the exception of four albums his material is really rare!). I’d advise that if you are a novice Jazz collector to find a used Box Set (for hardcover) or a digital equivalent of a box set, for example, you can spend from 125 to 320 dollars on Mosaic Box Set “The Complete Verve Johnny Hodges Small Group Sessions 1956-1961.” Or you can spend 48 dollars on “The Complete Verve Small Group Sessions 1956-1961,” same music and fidelity at two drastically different prices.