A quick jazz primer: 10 albums you must have (in roughly chronological order).
Off and on over the years, people who learn that I have lots of jazz albums and write about jazz professionally have said things to me such as, “I’ve just started listening to jazz, what should I get?” and “What jazz albums do you think everyone should have in their collection?” Well, I’ve thought about that question from many angles, and have narrowed it down in ranges from 100 (for a book I’m theoretically working on) to 20. This week, I boldly put the list on a diet and slim it down to 10 (well, 11).
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Louis Armstrong – Vol. 4, Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines (Columbia)
Armstrong, a trumpet and cornet player from New Orleans, was the first great jazz soloist, and directly or indirectly is an influence on every jazz musician who followed him. He had a long and productive career and became a superstar before the term was in use. These tracks, recorded in 1928 with an all-star group, also document the importance of pianist Earl Hines’s style, which made horn-like right-hand lines the focus. Armstrong’s introductory cadenza on “West End Blues” remains the epitome of spontaneous improvisation 80 years later.
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Duke Ellington – Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA Victor)
Many consider the 1940-42 period when Jimmy Blanton was its bassist to be the finest flowering of the Ellington band. Add the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and you’ve got an unbeatable combination – and there were plenty of other stars in that group, from trumpeters Cootie Williams and Rex Stewart to clarinetist Barney Bigard, saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney, and vocalist Herb Jeffries. This three-CD set includes such moments of genius as “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Ko Ko,” “Harlem Air Shaft,” “Jack the Bear,” and “Main Stem.”
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Charlie Parker – The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes (Savoy)
Parker is another frequent candidate for the much-debated honors of “greatest jazz musician” and “inventor of bebop.” There’s certainly no single figure who can definitively claim either crown, but he certainly was the finest horn soloist since Coleman Hawkins, the epitome of bebop, and the greatest alto saxophonist ever. The material from these 1944-48 sessions is as crucial to jazz’s legacy as anything ever recorded: “Moose the Mooche,” “Ornithology,” “A Night in Tunisia,” “Relaxin’ at Camarillo,” “Bird of Paradise,” “Scrapple from the Apple,” and many more, full of ground-breaking improvisations by the leader and sometimes by his bandmates, including at various times trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie (the Lou Gehrig to Parker’s Babe Ruth – but with the personalities reversed) and Miles Davis, underrated pianist Dodo Marmarosa, and drummer Max Roach.
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Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners (Riverside)
Though he was in at the invention of bebop, this pianist’s uniqueness always made him stand apart from any movement. He had an oddly squared-off yet irresistible sense of swing, favored angular lines and spare harmonies alternately widely spaced or in piquant clusters, and had a propensity to improvise on the tune or motivic cells rather than merely over the chord progression. These distinctive characteristics were embodied in both his playing and his vastly influential compositions. For all the fine musicianship on this 1956 album, from the leader and a band including tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummer Max Roach (with alto saxophonist Ernie Henry added on three tracks, and trumpeter Clark Terry on one), it is Monk’s tricky and memorable compositions that make the most profound impression.
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Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
Mingus was one the greatest bassists and composers in jazz history, an important figure in bebop who anchored a Parker-Gillespie band at one point but who later developed in very different directions. This 1959 album has Mingus’s two most famous tunes, the rollicking, gospel-influenced “Better Git It In Your Soul” and the tender Lester Young tribute “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.” The loose (in the best sense of the word) interplay among the musicians, most prominently trombonist Jimmy Knepper, saxophonists John Handy, Booker Ervin, and Pepper Adams, pianist Horace Parlan, Mingus, and drummer Dannie Richmond, pointed the way to many later developments, from soul jazz to the avant-garde.
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Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (Columbia)
In a period when bebop was dominated by Gillespie’s bright virtuosity, Davis carved out an instantly recognizable new sound built on space and tonal fragility rather than speed and robustness – though he could muster both of the latter when he wished. Recorded after Davis had already established himself several times over as a forward-thinking jazz superstar, this landmark 1959 sextet album took the modal experiments he and pianist Bill Evans had worked on in the previous year to a new height of expressiveness. Exceptional saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley are very different but equally effective complements to the leader’s style. Kind of Blue is considered by many to be the greatest LP in jazz history.
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Ornette Coleman – Free Jazz (Atlantic/Rhino)
Still controversial over three decades after it was recorded, this influential 1960 album of free improvisation without reference to chord progressions (“outside” playing) or steady beats named a major movement and cemented Coleman’s reputation as a jazz visionary. Coleman put together a double quartet for the occasion – his usual group with trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins mirrored by Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Ed Blackwell. They played with a roughly conceived form of preset thematic cues and with a greater equality between foreground and background than was the norm in the bebop they were reacting against.
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John Coltrane – A Love Supreme (Impulse!)
Music, for this great tenor saxophonist, was a quest toward greater understanding of one’s humanity and spirituality. One of the few avant-gardists to achieve widespread popularity, Coltrane and his famous quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones infused modal jazz with deeper meaning. This challenging 1964 album draws listeners into its profound musical utterances through chant-like themes and exploratory, heaven-seeking improvisations.
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Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (Columbia)
This 1969 double album took the then-new fusion style combining jazz and rock (mostly just rock’s electric instruments and more aggressive beats) into more avant-garde realms. Though jazz purists were aghast, it actually is as texturally based and colorful in timbre – notably shaded by bass clarinet (Benny Maupin) – as Davis’s work with Gil Evans, but it grooves a lot harder and shouts where the earlier stuff whispered. Davis expanded his band considerably for these sessions, with most of the players – including saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardists Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, and Larry Young, and guitarist John McLaughlin – going on to lead the fusion movement in bands of their own.
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Cecil Taylor – Silent Tongues (Freedom)
Taylor has long been a polarizing figure. Some have insisted that what he plays isn’t jazz. Certainly there are aspects of it that come from avant-garde classical music, yet I find it hard to imagine this largely or entirely improvised, highly kinetic music being played by anyone not coming from a jazz background, and on his early recordings in the late 1950s Taylor definitely played jazz. Taylor’s band music is also important and inspired, but this virtuosic solo concert recorded July 2, 1974 at the Montreux Jazz Festival gives the best idea of the essence of his approach. It’s been said that Taylor plays the piano as though it were 88 tuned drums, and he does often have a highly percussive, aggressive sound, but he is also capable of quiet lyricism.
If, like Nigel Tufnel’s favorite amplifier, this list went to 11, the additional album would be Albert Ayler’s 1964 jolt to the system Spiritual Unity (ESP)
