Most of the great recordings of the jazz era were made with equipment that would be considered by today’s producers to be a cruel imposition.  Most of the musicians we know can make better quality recordings on their cellphones  than was possible for Bix Beiderbecke or Louie Armstrong’s septet, and yet, those tracks have an amazing vitality still infectious to us today.   The inescapable truth about making good tracks is that you must have good musicians to begin with.  These are many of the best we know: