DISCOVER JAZZ

Regardless of whether you’re learning to play jazz or just a passionate fan, there’s so much amazing music out there! On this page, you’ll find all the information on the articles and features on the Jazzfuel site which aim to help you discover more great jazz music.

We’ve profiled some of the great players, highlighted the many styles of jazz through history and picked out some of the most essential artists to check out on each instrument.

→ The jazz greats…
→ Best jazz pianists, trumpeters, drummers…
→ Cool jazz, hard bop, bebop, free jazz…

Each article has a comments section at the bottom where you can join many others in letting us know what you think of the choices and how we should update them!

And, if you’re more interested in finding out what’s going on in the jazz world right now and supporting some of that music, you can also discover new releases we’re working on via our New Releases playlist or Music Video Premieres.

As always, if you have comments, questions or requests feel free to get in touch with us via the contact page.

Or, if you’re looking for more technical, learning resources and tips, head over to the learn jazz area on the site which features educational resources and instrument specific guides.

We know: everyone has their own tastes and there’s no such thing as a definite list of ‘best’ players in music.

But it’s still fun to think about and a good excuse to go back and listen to some of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded! If you’re keen to dive into some of those right now, why not check out:

• 10 of the greatest jazz trumpet players in history
• The most influential pianists of all time
• Jazz singers: the best of the best
• Legendary guitarists
• 10 of the best jazz trombone players in history
• Essential listening: best jazz drummers through the years
• Best bass players (double bass only!)

So often, the actual music only tells half the story. For those of you interested in getting to know what was going on around the playing, we’ve got some recommendations!

Firstly, don’t miss the (ever-growing) list of great jazz biographies. We’ve ordered them by instrument, so you can jump straight to the one you’re most interested in.

Similarly, we’ve put together an overview of 18 of the best jazz documentary films of all time. Of course, there’s still some to add (as people in the comments section have reminded us!) but hopefully you’ll discover a few new ones along the way…

As everyone knows, if you want a quick biography of a jazz great, you’ll probably find it on Wikipedia.

We’ve tried to dig a little deeper and pull out some of the more interesting career highlights of individual musicians, with a focus on the music they played and the albums they released.

Sound interesting?

You can check out our articles on the greats like Miles Davis, Michael Brecker, Kenny Wheeler and Paul Chambers or discover more about what’s going on in jazz today with our new releases playlist or jazz video premieres area.

The first jazz recording was made in 1917 (by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band) and in the 100+ years since then the music has seen some radical innovations and upheavals.

From early ‘trad’ jazz to swing, bebop, hard bop, cool, free, avant garde & fusion music – not to mention all the modern jazz of today – it’s pretty amazing how much has changed in such a relatively short space of time.

Compare that to Western classical music, for example, where individual periods like Baroque and Romanticism lasted well over a century each.

In this section, we’ve highlighted a few of the more famous styles of jazz and presented some of the best artists and most essential albums from each period…