Personally I really enjoyed the following on first listen:
Dave Brubeck - Time Out
John Coltrane - Giant Steps, Blue Train, My Favorite Things
Miles Davis - In A Silent Way, A Tribute To Jack Johnson
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
Duke Ellington - Ellington at Newport
Bill Evans is my favorite, also very accessible. Check out Explorations.
When I was getting into jazz, I had a good time listening to a record, picking a specific performer and finding other records they played on. Every jazz musician ends up playing on hundreds of albums. This is a good way to familiarize yourself with prolific musicians and listen to a lot of music in the process.
>jazz (modal, free) is anti-music
What the fuck does this mean? Free jazz, I could understand. But modal is completely different and as musical as it gets.
>I had a good time listening to a record, picking a specific performer and finding other records they played on
Seconding this. It's like "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" except with jazz musicians, and you're probably two connections away from every notable jazz musician from the albums already posted.
Old white men are the only people that listen to jazz in the 21st century
trying a genre out=/=forcing himself to like it
why do you want to do that
>Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot
>Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
>Duke Ellington - Money Jungle
All pretty accessible records, with a good energy
Peter Brötzmann - Machine Gun