One of my Giants of Jazz--Bill Evans--is missing from this collection.  The controversies with this series are many:
Some great jazz musicians were not covered or barely covered (Charles Mingus was barely covered).
Some of the jazz styles were favored over other jazz styles (early styles favored over free jazz).
Some modern jazz musicians were not mentioned or barely mentioned to imply that modern jazz is dead and a greater emphasis was placed on early jazz history, even before the swing era; with only the last few VHS tapes on current jazz.

There are several other controversies by critics of the series.  But the bottom line is that this series has introduced jazz to a larger audience (me for instance) and with some effort, new jazz listeners will figure all of this out for themselves.  This little page attempts to "correct" some of these matters.  Bill Evans has been included in my Giants of Jazz.  Charles Mingus is given more emphasis on my page than he got in the Ken Burns series--but that may be my own subjective opinion.  I've tried to mention some of the modern jazz musicians, many who have jazz styles that were not applauded in the series.  Other jazz listeners will be able to make some of these same supplimentary adjustments and be able to see . . . All That Jazz.

John Coltrane, on the other hand, recorded on Prestige (early years), Atlantic/Rhino (middle years) and Impulse (later years).  The Prestige recordings would let you hear him developing as a young jazz musician, the Best of the Atlantic label would give you the big hits like "Giant Steps", "Naima" and "My Favorite Things" when he matured, while the Best of the Impulse label will let you hear some of his experimentations with his later jazz visions. . . like the free jazz in the piece "Ascension".  He also may have rerecorded some of his Atlantic hits on Impulse (studio or live versions?).  However, as strong as his Atlantic recordings are, many feel his greatest achievement was his Impulse album "A Supreme Love".  Note that his famous "Blue Train" album is not even on any of these three bigger labels.  It is on a label Trane briefly recorded on called Blue Note.

Charlie Parker recorded on the Savoy label, the Dial label, and the Verve label; to name just three.  Fortunately, he has a good overview 2 CDs set titled "Yardbird Suite: the Ultimate Charlie Parker Collection" that was able to get recordings from several labels in collaboration onto the same compilation album.  The point is "The Very Best Of" does not always mean the very best of the jazz musician on all his or her various labels, maybe just the label that created that particular "Best Of" album?

One other thing to look for is that as albums are reissued as digitally remastered, they many times have extra bonus alternate takes of some of the original tracks.  While sometimes selling along side the original albums with only the original tracks, these remastered CDs are about $2 to $4 more for the remastering and bonus tracks.