django reinhardt! a legend - the first famous european jazz musician. he was a belgian gypsy guitarist, usually worked with stephane grapelli, a violinist of the same background.
Try Vince Guaraldi. And not just his Charlie Brown music. "Samba De Orpheus" is a great trio jazz. Bass + drums + piano = Love
What everyone else mentioned. I also like Stan Getz, Mingus, Coltrane, Phil Woods, Jaki Byard, Billie Holiday, and Buddy Rich. .
Stan Getz and [size=-1]Joao and Astrud [/size]Gilberto were good at the Brazilian stuff too. Antonio Carlos Jobim is another. .
I recommand you stuffs linked to rock, like some of zappa's stuffs (the ocean is the ultimate solution, hots rats), and Soft Machine (psychedelic free jazz), also john zorn's masada (not the electric ones which are quite different from regular jazz, mostly the masada trios)
dude ! you want al di meola (albums elegant gypsy,land of the midnight sun , and casino) vital tech tones (volume number 2) vital information (come on in) tribal tech(reality check) bela fleck and the fleck tones (left of cool) marcus miller(m2) gambale hamm smith(g.h.s) album - light beyond*my fav* allan holdsworth , victor wooten dennis chambers , victor wooten , greg howe (extraction) mark isham (live) bozzio levin stevens (black light syndrome) billy cobham - (spectrum) mahavishnu orchestra - albums - birds of fire , visions of the emerald beyond ,inner mounting flame . p.s who ever wrote fourplay should be killed ...
