Your top five Jazz albums of all time.

[Steve Reynolds]

Only thing I can do is mention 5 modern jazz recordings that have great meaning to me and are also, in my view, recordings of substantial objective merit.

Joe Maneri Quartet: Dahabenzapple

Parker-Guy-Lytton: At The Vortex

Peter Brotzmann Tentet: Walk, Love, Sleep

Gerry Hemingway Quintet: The Marmalade King

Clusone Trio: I Am An Indian

 

Edited October 13, 2016 by Steve Reynolds

[StarThrower]

5 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Hmmm...

i can dig that. But, IMO, it cheapens the meaning of transcendent. Again, that is strictly my opinion. 

Maybe communication is a more appropriate term for what I was stating?

[clifford_thornton]

Among the jazz records I've listened to the most are:

Art Ensemble of Chicago 'People in Sorrow' (Nessa)

Archie Shepp 'Four for Trane' (Impulse)

Ornette Coleman 'Change of the Century' (Atlantic)

Bill Dixon 'Intents & Purposes' (RCA-Victor)

Albert Ayler 'Ghosts' (Fontana)

really not sure what 'favorite' means anymore, but I'm pretty sure those five have been on deck the most in the last 20 or so years and especially the first ten or so of those years.

[JSngry]

Yeah, but how many compilations do we reflexively think of, not as great albums, but as Great Albums. It's a carryover from the pop roots most of us have, I think.

Here would be one:

but does anybody think of that as an "album" the same way as this?

Should they? Are they really the same type of "album"?

[paul secor]

For me an album is an album, not an "album" or an Album. But that's just me.

[Scott Dolan]

2 hours ago, paul secor said:

There are many recordings from The "juvenile" phase of the art form that I value very highly. I'll let it go at that.

"What dies it say in your opinion?"

I just asked the question. I can't answer what it says for others. 

Fair enough. And by no means do I mean to denigrate any recordings prior to 1940. My previous response didn't make that point clear. I just wondered what your answer to the question was. 

 

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

That singles are not albums?

I guess "albums" becomes a tricky word in this case. Perhaps I should have said "recordings" as to encompass the decades before long players became the accepted norm. 

3 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

S2 Ray Charles - What'd I say pts 1 & 2

Two weeks later, I ordered the next Atlantic single to come out. Another revelation and music like I'd never heard it before. A LOOOONG electric piano solo to start off with... who knew what an electric piano even WAS in those days? And then... Bloomin' 'ell! And a conversation of muffled shouts moved things on to part 2. They didn't make records like that ever before.

 

Mind blown! And I LOVE this! Excellent addition to the conversation! 

[paul secor]

1 hour ago, Scott Dolan said:

Fair enough. And by no means do I mean to denigrate any recordings prior to 1940. My previous response didn't make that point clear. I just wondered what your answer to the question was. 

 

I guess "albums" becomes a tricky word in this case. Perhaps I should have said "recordings" as to encompass the decades before long players became the accepted norm. 

I don't have an answer. I just wondered why almost everything listed was from later than the bop era.

[Scott Dolan]

1 hour ago, StarThrower said:

Maybe communication is a more appropriate term for what I was stating?

Ah, now I dig it even more. 

If it speaks to you, it speaks to you. But, is there no upper echelon? We could all list 100 recordings, or more, that speak to us. I just think there are an elite few who had something more to say...

Does that make sense? 

[StarThrower]

1 hour ago, Scott Dolan said:

Ah, now I dig it even more. 

If it speaks to you, it speaks to you. But, is there no upper echelon? We could all list 100 recordings, or more, that speak to us. I just think there are an elite few who had something more to say...

Does that make sense? 

Sure! I know this forum has its share of Jarrett detractors, or at least I've gotten that impression from some comments, but I mentioned Treasure Island because that music transports me to an elevated state of being. Or at least I feel like the musicians are on that plane, and they are edifying and uplifting my experience as a human being. It's more than just putting on a jazz record and grooving to the music. Same with Mingus. I can empathize with the struggle, the dignity, and the commitment to not only his art, but to living a life true to himself. And Ornette has said this too.

[clifford_thornton]

People today, mostly younger, seem more inclined towards playlists. I have had several 20-something coworkers ask me about favorite playlists/etc. on Spotify and what-not. I just can't think of music like that, though I've heard some good online mixes made through Mixcloud and other apps (mostly of the psychedelic and new age variety). If I'm going to put on a recording it's not from the perspective of a setlist, though my listening does sometimes flow from album to album depending on my mood. Then again, last night I went from Hans Reichel to Bud Powell, so...

[John L]

7 hours ago, paul secor said:

Interesting that no one has listed a recording pre-1940. What does that say?

The problem is that there were no albums back then.  That is the primary issue that I would confront for making a list like this.  To what degree to various collections of 78s count as "albums?"  They can be compiled in various different ways.    

[paul secor]

If music has been released in album form, it's an album. Even post 1940, Bird's Savoy sides and Dial sides were originally issued as 78s. Monk's Blue Note sides and Bud's early Blue Notes were originally issued as 78s. Does the fact that they were later compiled on albums mean that those weren't albums? Ridiculous.

[jeffcrom]

Okay, I'll bite. I actually think the question of what constitutes an album is an interesting one. I'm assuming that each one of us can play his/her own way, and couldn't imagine a list of my favorites without some earlier jazz. So, in chronological order:

Louis Armstrong - The Hot Fives and Sevens, Vol. III (JSP). This has all the Hot Fives with Earl Hines.
Charlie Parker - The Complete Dial Sessions. If it's "cheating" to choose a four-disc set, there are several single-disc Bird on Dial collections that would suffice.
Thelonious Monk - Brilliant Corners. This edged out Monk's Music because of the presence of Sonny Rollins in his first prime period.
John Coltrane - Crescent
Miles Davis - Miles Smiles.

The limitation to five albums is pretty tough. In my case, I was surprised to notice that my top five choices have nothing more recent that 1966. If I had a few more choices, that would change, of course. But just five is hard - no King Oliver, Bix, Jelly Roll, Duke Ellington, Ornette, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Braxton, or Roscoe Mitchell, all of whom are among my favorites.
 

[JSngry]

What's the best Bird Dial or Savoy album? What the best Jelly Roll Morton album? What's the best Commodore album, period? I bought the Columbia Louis LPs of the 78s, but always viewed them as collections, "albums" meant something else to me. Columbia did that well, Robert Johnson, Charlie Christian, long runs in the catalog, but although the material lives on, the albums?

Blue Note early on gave you albums of their 78s, kept them as albums. Monk, red and green. Bud, that big head, twice. You could buy those in 1957, 1967, 1977, they were standard catalog.

But Bird...Verve albums, Everest albums (the first one maybe making this list), but Dial...Charlie Parker Records, at best. The City Kids showed up with Spotlite, finally, I schlepped into Dallas one day th score the WB box. Savoy? Yeah...

Now these kids today with their CDs, they might have a different wallpaper on their walls. Me, I love this one, and it was an "album", but where is it today?

 

The music still compels. And it stayed in the catalog for a good while (but just that one, other RCA collections did not). If you find it, buy it, even if you already have it on CD, just because. But any Album List that that one shows up on is predicated on Huh? What? Why not___instead?

[rostasi]

Leaving it at five titles is a real challenge, 
but as I stared out onto a beautiful night 
in my backyard from our garden room,
I decided that the real test was which ones 
had impacted me so intensely that I had 
uncontrollable tears running down my 
childhood face. Even for then, 5 are too few, 
but these not only got a lot of loud and 
constant play in my bedroom and in my 
practice room, but it would often cause 
shouts of disgruntled misapprehension 
loudly sounding from just outside my 
sound-shelter palace. The beauty of young 
discovery coupled with a desire for a less
jaded older discoverer that still is possible
if one learns to start, each time, from zero.

 

This is also so very close in the mix.
It made me want to play alto then.

Edited October 14, 2016 by rostasi

[felser]

Charles Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

Charles Tolliver - The Ringer

McCoy Tyner - Sahara

Jackie McLean - One Step Beyond

Lee Morgan - The Gigolo

 

[jcam_44]

Christian Scott - Yesterday You Said Tomorrow

Kenny Dorham - Quiet Kenny

Vinny Golia - One, Three, Two

John Handy - Live at Monterey Jazz Festival

Tyshawn Sorey - Koan

Phil Woods - Live at the Showboat

and

Steve Coleman - Invisible Paths: First Scattering

 

This was really hard

 

Edited October 14, 2016 by jcam_44

[GA Russell]

Favorite two albums
Groove Holmes - Soul Message
Mike Nock - In, Out & Around

Favorite two hit albums
Henry Mancini - Music from Peter Gunn
Miles Davis - The Birth of the Cool

Favorite two box sets
Paul Desmond Mosaic
Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard, 1961

[Homefromtheforest]

Gosh.

Charles Mingus "presents Charles Mingus"

Jackie McLean "destination out"

Miles Davis "kind of blue"

John Coltrane "Coltrane"

Eric Dolphy "out to lunch"

These are the albums I have played the most times out of all the records and CDs I own.  It's leaving out MANY great albums but I just picked the 5 records I have probably listened to the most times in my life thus far.

[soulpope]

5 hours ago, jcam_44 said:

Christian Scott - Yesterday You Said Tomorrow

Kenny Dorham - Quiet Kenny

Vinny Golia - One, Three, Two

John Handy - Live at Monterey Jazz Festival

Tyshawn Sorey - Koan

Phil Woods - Live at the Showboat

and

Steve Coleman - Invisible Paths: First Scattering

 

This was really hard

 

Good to see this platter as one of the top choices ....

[A Lark Ascending]

Like others, I can't even begin to narrow down a top five. As 'for all time', well my centres of interest change every few days so 'for all time' is a fairly meaningless concept. But these are five albums I heard when I was looking beyond rock in the mid 70s for music of interest that made me want to go further:

They (or in the case of the Ellington, that music on other discs) continue to bring great pleasure forty years on. They all opened doors into other gardens which themselves had doors to further gardens....

[BillF]

14 hours ago, paul secor said:

You should have been a politician, Jim. (Though I guess I wouldn't wish that on anyone.) Obviously, pre-1940 music has been issued in album form.

OK, let's have a few:

 

[randyhersom]

Walt Dickerson - Peace

John Coltrane - Africa Brass

Pat Martino - Live

Duke Ellington - The Great Paris Concert

Keith Jarrett - Death and the Flower

 

Slight bias toward the undeniable, total obsession track, here represented by Sunny and The Star Crossed Lovers.  Might have gone with Blanton-Webster Band otherwise,

[BillF]

Speaking entirely personally of course, I think these deserve a mention:

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

To continue, by repeating the last half of album #1 (these are in chronological order of when I heard 'em first by the way)

A1 David Newman & Ray Charles - Fathead

I got this in summer 1960, when I was working in Harrods, so I got staff discount. I'd been nuts about Ray Charles since early 1959, when 'What'd I say' had come out. And Harrods had a good selection, so I bought lots. I thought it strange that Ray would make an album called 'Fathead'. I bought it the same day I bought Duke Ellington's 'Nutcracker suite'. Now THAT was conventional jazz as I knew it. 'Fathead' didn't sound anything like that, and nor did the MJQ albums I already had, or Ella Fitzgerald, George Shearing, Louis Armstrong or even Dakota Staton. (Duh! Of COURSE!) Yeah, it was jazz but it had the feel of R&B. Just as 'Ray Charles at Newport' which I'd bought a month before did, but MUCH more so. But I could tell Dakota wasn't that far away and started thinking about her a bit differently. And I found myself thinking about all the music I had a bit differently. I've never been able to 'follow' bebop - I can tell the difference between a b flat and a salt flat, but that's not terribly helpful. But I can hear ideas as sounds and melodies and rhythms OK. And this record, from start to finish, was ALL there.

S3 Phil Upchurch - You can't sit down pts 1 & 2

This one came out at the back end of 1961. This, and Ray Charles' 'One mint julep' were the first jazz organ instrumentals I ever got. Of the two, this made more impact; 'One mint julep' wasn't really a revelation; just Ray doing his thing differently. But Upchurch's record was chock full of exciting solos, trumpet (Mack Johnson), tenor (Bubba Brooks), organ (Cornell Muldrow), Upchurch on guitar and bass, and the great Joe Hadrick (Yusef Ali, later with Gator) on drums. I didn't at the time know who the players were but they ALL hit really hard and dirty.

S4 James Brown - (Can you) feel it

This was the B side of 'These foolish things', which was one of James' takes on old Clyde McPhatter things. I didn't realise James Brown was an organist at that stage - 1963. This was absolutely FILTHY music. No matter WHAT great recordings JB made afterwards (and before) this is, to me, where it's AT with funk.

S5 Alvin Robinson - Fever/Down home girl

And now in 1965 the funk gets REEEEEAAAALLL deep! And NO ONE gave a damn about this great masterpiece of funk.

A2 John Coltrane - A love supreme

I got this one in 1965, as well (a good year for revelations )

At the time I was working night shift in a small anodising factory. It wasn't noisy work, and there were only four of us, so the foreman had the radio on. At 2AM, BBC closed down, so he turned to a French channel. You didn't listen to the announcements, so I didn't know what I was hearing when this came on. I'd never heard Trane before, though I'd read about him and guessed this HAD to be him. How? Dunno. And they played the WHOLE GODDAMN ALBUM!

It was a Friday night and I got paid, so I didn't go home for breakfast, just got a bus into town and went into a Joe Lyons café waiting for the jazz record shop to open. I had to get this album the first available minute. When Ken opened up, I rushed in and, after he'd made us coffee, I said 'I just heard something on French radio which HAS to be Coltrane. I don't know what it is, but it went on forever.' 'Oh, they all do', Ken said. (He was a bop-oriented vibes player when he put his vibes together.) But, together, we identified  the record and I rushed off home to play it. I fell asleep and DREAMED I was listening to it and think I got it even better when asleep than awake

A3 Lou Donaldson - Good gracious

I got this one in '65, too. I got it because it was going cheep, cheep, otherwise I might have got 'Natural soul', which is better. Because I had it, though, this one hit me first. It was the first album I had with Grant Green on it. It didn't hit me immediately; I had to be in the right frame of mind. But a few weeks later, listening while washing the dishes, 'The holy ghost' stood up and screamed at me.

A4 B B King - There must be a better world somewhere

This album just clicks with me. The band couldn't be improved upon. Hank Crawford (as), David Newman (ts), Ronnie Cuber, (Bars), Tom Malone, Waymon Reed & Charlie Miller (tp), Dr John (kbds), Hugh McCracken (g), Wilbur Bascomb (b), Bernard Purdie (d). The songs (all but one by Dr John & Doc Pomus) are great and REAL songs about real stuff. The arrangements are by Hank. And they're all done with complete feeling by B B King.

A5 Youssou Ndour - Gainde

I saw Youssou Ndour performing live on TV in the late eighties and was completely knocked out. He's one of those rare performers who truly lights up the stage. So I went in search of his albums, but after buying one of his Virgin and one of his Columbia albums, realised that it wasn't any good trying to find good Youssou Ndour on American or British labels, started looking at the racks of K7s that Virgin in Cardiff had started putting out. This was the first I got and it was everything I was looking for; music coming at you in several different rhythms and tempos and being sung in yet another rhythm, all together. It was THE most amazing dance music I'd ever heard. I think I must have played this one so much I ruined it; but I'm afraid to try. And it's never been reissued by anyone anywhere. And I've never seen it on any of the world music blogs, either.

Oh, two compilations.

C1 Fats Domino - Million sellers by Fats

Got this one in '64, but 'I'm in love again' was the first Rock and Roll I ever heard; and the first pop music I ever liked. I was twelve. I kind of attribute my preference for black music to that record and the fact that I hadn't heard Elvis Presley beforehand. But everything Presley, or even Jerry Lee Lewis, did didn't seem like the real thing. Because there was such ease in the way Fats sang and played and the way the band played, it seemed like the natural way to make music.

C2 James Brown - Mighty Instrumentals

I got this in 1967. A whole LP of instrumentals by James Brown, wow! Yeah, '(Can you) feel it' was in there, and so were about ten others covering all sorts of JB work over a period of several years.

MG