yeah!!!!!

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women can be difficult sometimes

But oh so amusing :tongue:
Chet!!!

see, i can't say who is the best, because im sure my miniscule knowledge of jazz makes me unqualified to name a single artist. of the jazz i know, im quite torn, so i cant imagine what it would be like if i knew more.

I am going to say Sun Ra, just to throw that name in there. He is at least the craziest one.
I would have to say Duke, if you considered writing and performing. If it were just performance skill then maybe Louie Armstrong on the trumpet.

Chet Baker? who is chet baker??

Sun Ra, who's sun ra?
I think he's a good artist, and indeed a crazy one, but he's not the best.

im going say Thelonious Monk, but im a bit of a Jazz rookie

Im listening to it more and more, but still kinda favour other types of music

Thelonious because i can appriciate piano players a lot more, i used to play, and he is so innovative, as well as being able to be in the background, rather than always needing to be the main man

rookie or not, you made a good ecision Monk is a great artisit

it's really tough looking at recordings. the history of jazz starts just a little earlier than when recording started. so we have very old jazz recordings and they sound like crap, and you really don't get the full picture of that music. i love hearing ellington's recordings from the '20s and '30s, but i can only imagine how the music must've sounded sitting in front of the band. but those recordings changed peoples lives. ellington was a great composer and arranger, and very modern too. his later arrangements use dissonance a lot more than his earlier ones. mingus loved ellington. monk loved ellington. miles loved ellington. bird and diz loved ellington. get the record ellington made with mingus and max roach. it's great. and get the one he made with coltrane. amazing! louis armstrong was great too. his recordings also changed people lives. but louis lost some respect for the poppier stuff he did. stuff ellington never did. the music he made was his music always. he did something armstrong didn't do. he composed. louis changed the way people played and duke changed the way people thought about writing. so duke was very important.

bird also changed the way people played. everyone today plays like charlie parker. it's unbelievable when you listen to people before and after parker. saxophonists today play mainly three ways. like bird. like 'trane. and like 'trane. the later 'trane, i mean. it's the same with piano players. everyone plays like either bill evans or mccoy tyner. so those are all very important people too. you can even hear those two guys in chick corea's playing.

i don't remember where i was going with this now. but anyway.

you can't really pick one person, i guess. so just listen to everything you can get your hands on. i have a friend who's a drummer. he's been collecting records since the '40s. i've been to his house and seen some of his collection. it's immense, and i only saw part of it. anyway, he makes me tapes. any album i want by any artist and he's got 'em all. so i'm very lucky, he's saved me over $2000 by making me tapes. i just have to ask. so i now have a pretty good jazz collection, and i've been introduced to a lot of stuff by andy. horace silver, sonny rollins, sonny clark, bill evans. i have about 30 miles davis albums. it's ridiculous.

also check out albert ayler. he played free jazz based on old marches, hymns and folk tunes. if charles ives was a jazz musician in the '60s, he would've been albert ayler.

Coltrane and Davis are uncomparable, as are Duke and Louie... this is like comparing Hendrix and McLaughlin... They're both great but it's not like they play the same style.

he was a great artist in his prime, as he got to old age it seems it took its toll, but he was very lovely