1. Dizzy Gilespie
2. Tom Jones
3. Lulu
4. Buddy Holly
5. Green Onions
6. Mose Allison
7. Otis Redding
8. Muddy Waters
9. Bix Beiderbecke
10. Ray Charles
11. Art Tatum
12. Billy Taylor
13. Sarah Vaughn
14. Jerry Lee Lewis
15. Louie Armstrong
16. Chuck Berry
17. Fats Domino
18. Peggy Lee
19. Diana Washington
20. Johnny Mercer

This is more difficult than I thought! There's such an ungodly amount of great Jazz that it's impossible to rank artists in this way, so I'll just throw in some 'classic' artists that I enjoy and some contemporary stuff I'm currently impressed by.
_________________________
- Bill Evans
- Cecil Taylor
- Thelonious Monk
- Miles Davis
- John Coltrane
- Ornette Coleman
- Steve Lacy
- Eric Dolphy
- Sun Ra
- Sonny Rollins
- Art Pepper
- Chick Corea
- Ken Vandermark
- Alex Cline
- Nels Cline
- Yusef Lateif
- Eric Friedlander
- Han Bennink
- Albert Ayler
- Fred Anderson

Thelonious Monk
Miles Davis
Herbie Hancock
Bill Evans
Matthew Shipp
Tony Williams
Buddy Rich
Sun Ra
Benny Goodman
Sonny Rollins
Eric Dolphy
Joe Zawinul
Ramsey Lewis
James Blood Ulmer
John McLaughlin
Jaco Pastorius
Weather Report
Charles Mingus
John Zorn
William Parker

Too hard....too hard!!!

you have the same feeling as me . I've been trying to make a list, but I can't choose between some musicians!!

Eheheheheh
Stardust, you already know that we are really similar!

I’ve just joined the Radiomute forum and have enjoyed reading all of your posts. Here’s my first contribution. While I agree that it’s almost impossible to name my 20 favorite jazz artists or those I consider to be the “best“, Here’s a list of artists (and representative albums) I find myself actually listening to the most often. It‘s not ranked. In my book, all are great and deserve #1 ratings:

Art Pepper - Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
Charlie Parker - Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Collection
Clifford Brown/Max Roach - On Basin Street
Coleman Hawkins - Body and Soul
Dave Brubeck - Live at Carnegie Hall 1963
Dizzy Gillespie - Sonny Side Up
Duke Ellington - At Newport 1956
Ella Fitzgerald - Sings the Duke Ellington Songbooks
Gary Burton - Departure
Grant Green - Idle Moments
Horace Silver - Song for my Father
John Coltrane - Giant Steps
Lester Young/Oscar Peterson - Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio
Louis Armstrong - Plays W.C. Handy
McCoy Tyner - Sahara
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Nancy Wilson - Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderley
Sarah Vaughn - Sarah Vaughn with Clifford Brown
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus
Thelonious Monk - Brilliant Corners


Well, that’s 20. Here some I had to cut to keep my list to 20:

Bill Evans - Waltz for Debbie
Cannonball Adderley - Somethin’ Else
The Modern Jazz Giants (w/Miles Davis) - Bag’s Groove
Sonny Criss - Crisscraft
Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
Nat King Cole - The Complete After Midnight Sessions
Dinah Washington - What a Difference a Day Makes
Kenny Burrell - Midnight Blue
Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil
Wes Montgomery - Full House

I could keep going but I’m already way over the limit. I left out all of the Brazilian jazz/bossa nova and will post it separately in the “Good Brazilian Stuff” thread. Otherwise, it would have been totally impossible to limit myself to 20. I also left out Frank Sinatra because I have trouble categorizing most of his music as jazz, but I’m a big Sinatra fan. My personal favorites are his original Capitol albums, recorded from 1954 to 1961. Come Dance With Me is a good place to start.

1. Eric Dolphy
2. John Coltrane
3. Cecil Taylor
4. Peter Brotzmann
5. Albert Ayler
6. Bill Evans (piano)
7. Lee Morgan
8. Grachan Moncur III
9. Jackie Mclean
10. Miles Davis
11. Ornette Coleman
12. Evan Parker
13. John Zorn
14. Archie Shepp
15. Sun Ra
16. Thelonious Monk
17. Derek Bailey
18. Leroy Jenkins
19. Andrew Hill
20. Jimmy Guiffre

WARNING TOP 20 RUSHED

I might have left-out quite a few musicians that deserve to be there.

I have to check some of these guys out, I wanna start listening to some jazz stuff cuz I heard a Jazz band the other day and they were awesome!

>Thelonious Monk
>Miles Davis
>Avashai Cohen
>Bud Powell
>Bill Evans
>Art Blakey
>Wynton Kelly
>Dizzy
>Coltrane
>Charlie Bird
>Artie Shaw
>Dave Liebman
>Chick Corea
>Herbie Hancock
>Dave Brubeck
>Charlie Parker
>Gil Evans
>Diana Krall
>Sonny Rollins
>Keith Jarret