Higher resolution Jazz

"Jazz at the Pawn Shop" syndrome.
The music was well recorded, and so the album is used endlessly to demo equipment. Pity the performance is crap.
Jazz IS all about the performance, and the performers interacting. And not much about 'sonic candy'.
A huge amount of really great jazz was recorded on 78
s, and basically all you can do to hear those is to listen to a transcription from someone's old 78 to CD, or to LP reissues still from 78 sources.
Then the late 40's and all of the 50's is still mono.
To ignore that music? wow.

Elizabeth returns with a bang. Well said. I also love Jazzcourier's comment about ECM's sound being a "sonic iceberg". Many good suggestions so far.

As always, Elizabeth tells it like it is !
I like to listen to Jazz because it is fascinating to listen to 5 different guys playing 5 different instruments
play the same 8 bars is such creative ways not only in their solos, but in how they back up other players in idiosyncratic ways through different modes and changes.

And how such great masters like Horace Silver,Jackie McLean, Sonny Clark et al can say SO much in so few notes!
Similar ,to my ears anyway, to how the greatest classical pianists often say the most between notes.

Elizabeth,

Sorry -- but "all of the 50s" was not mono. There was a lot of stereo in the 50s.

Pity that "Jazz at the Pawnshop" performance turned out like grandma's jello mold.Arne Domnerus (alto saxophone) and Bengt Hallberg (piano) are so much better than that recording portrays. Both were leading lights of Swedish Jazz since the 50's.Domnerus(d.2008) was an exceptional player with a distinctive sound and Hallberg (d.2013) was a true world class pianist.
Both were firmly rooted in the Bop tradition and as they became older they leaned more to a refined,mainstream formula.
Sadly,they WILL be judged by this one performance that says nothing about a distinctive and unusual approach to Jazz and improvisation that is based on the Swedish "Folksong" tradition, and can be heard on many of their other recordings and other recordings by Swedish artists.
What truly sets these musicians apart from most other international Jazz artists is their ability to integrate the haunting and forlorn quality of much of this Swedish music and base their compositions around these distinct melodies.Baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin may be the best example with his "Danny's Dream" for metronome Records in the 1950's.This performance was filled with great emotion, austerity and a profound detachment that merges with the visual images of Bergman's "Seventh Seal" from the same period.Like American Jazz,it defines a national Art experience,and a story of a time and a place.
OK,Back to higher resolution Jazz,and better than that,back to Mono.