The 42 Greatest Jazz Albums On The Floor By My Coffee Table

People in the U.S. are really into hating jazz.

Remember when a bunch of us got really cranky about that Buzzfeed “What’s the deal with jazz?” thing? (Yeah, no, I’m not gonna link to it.) Then just a couple of weeks ago on the Twitter a high-profile profile writer recounted how Billy Bob Thornton once told her that jazz was a long con and that anyone who said they liked it was just doing a long con themselves.

That hurt my feelings and made me mad. The statement comes from a guy who, when I hung out with him, owned five discrete physical copies of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica, a record highly informed by jazz, and not the easy kind.

If there’s ever a record that people get accused of just pretending to like so they look cool, it’s Trout Mask Replica. So you’d think Billy Bob, or as I’m going to call him from now on out of spite, William Robert, would know better. This shit takes work, whether you’re pulling the long con or not. I’ve been up to it for so long I can’t even tell the difference anymore.

I got into jazz for the same reason every other white male in America in the 1960s got into jazz: so I could look like a beatnik. I had a high school teacher who loaned me his copy of John Coltrane’s free jazz blowout Ascension, and it was exciting to discover that I could piss off my parents with a recording of unamplified instruments as easily, maybe even more easily, than I could with the first side of Led Zeppelin II or the title track of John Cale’s Fear. About five years later at Dover’s Show Place, after a Richard Hell and the Voidoids show there, I met guitarist Robert Quine, who really looked like a beatnik, and who told me about Impulse accidentally pressing up the wrong take of the piece and putting out the right take with a different serial number, the kind of arcana that really enhances record collecting. (The eventual compact disc editions would throw on both takes because why not, bonus track baby!)

Anyway, if you want to start a jazz collection, you could do a lot worse than picking up any one of the 42 compact discs roosting on my living room floor, near my coffee table. I work from home and I don’t need complete silence to function. While our apartment has a study, I like to work in the living room so I can listen to my tunes on a medium-snazzy hi-fi system. I listen a lot and I’m a physical media person so the space is in a constant cycle of tidying and untidying, which my partner sometimes finds frustrating. But we can hug it out.

 

There’s no ranking, it’s just by whatever I picked up first. And, as always, purists beware, you may be alarmed or offended. Actually probably not, I’m sorry.

42) Tina Brooks, Back to the Tracks (Blue Note, recorded 1960)

Once you got through all the MAJOR guys in bop and post bop (most hipster jazz aficionados of the ‘70s didn’t know from swing/big band and didn’t want to, really) you then got into the major minors or the minors. This is not to make qualitative distinctions as such, just to recognize a pecking order with respect to, I don’t know, either innovation or prominence. John Zorn formed the trio News For Lulu with trombonist George Lewis and guitarist Bill Frisell (hey, I just spoke with him today after hearing him play live!) to celebrate compositions by lesser-known Blue Note stalwarts like Sonny Clark (of whom it has been said, very unfortunately, “Clark’s death, at 31, was down to both alcohol abuse and heroin dependency. How very jazz.”), Freddie Redd, Hank Mobley, and more. Tina Brooks, a tenor sax guy (yes, guy; Fats Navarro was nicknamed “Fat Girl” despite being neither fat nor a girl; jazz people, what can you do with them?) was not quite a major minor but he had a good feel for blues forms and a coherent sound and here he’s backed by a murderer’s row of sidemen (that’s a viable cliché, right?) including horn men Blue Mitchell and Jackie McLean and Kenny Drew, Paul fucking Chambers and Art Taylor as the rhythm section. Solid!

41) Lee Konitz, Brad Meldau, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Live At Birdland (ECM 2011)

Lee’s too cool for some, or for school, or for something, But he lays out acerbic but dreamy alto very generously here. It’s like he’s taking his idol Lester Young out to lunch with Wittgenstein. (That sounds pretty good, right?) Charlie and Paul are dreamy as usual.

40) Cedar Walton, Bob Berg, Sam Jones, Billy Higgins, Eastern Rebellion 2 (Ti, 1977)

Walton’s a fabulous post-bop pianist and a flat-out great writer and this is one of the nicest quartet dates of his I’ve managed to rustle up, not that I’ve been able to rustle up too many. What do you want from me. Billy Higgins is unimpeachable as always.

39) Sonny Stitt Sits In With The Oscar Peterson Trio (Verve, 1959)

Pretty much as advertised.

38) Sounds of Liberation (Corbett Versus Dempsey, 2019)

An exuberant politically-resonant burner led by Byard Lancaster, here on alto. Funky as hell. But also cheerful and relaxed at times. Recorded at Columbia University in 1973 and never released until now, which as a result meant the revolution didn’t happen. Damn it.

37) Harold Land, The Fox, (Contemporary, 1958)

I saw Land, with Billy Higgins drumming and grinning, and some other great sidemen, at the Jazz Standard in the early 2000s, maybe, and he blew me away. I’ve never found a record of his that does the same, as admirable as I’ve found many. You know when Chuck Berry said “I got no kick against modern jazz/'cept when they try and play it too darn fast?” Sometimes I’ll hear Harold Land and it reminds me of that. This one has the great and under-sung Monk-extrapolation pianist Elmo Hope on it so I need to check it again.

36) Paul Motian box set (ECM, 2013)

Six discs of Armenian Psychedelic Jazz, exploratory but superbly disciplined trio workouts, advents of Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell, all anchored by a revolutionary percussionist who defined humanist drumming. Great booklet essay by Ethan Iverson, the wonderful pianist with whom I’ve become friendly in the past year (I hope he doesn’t mind me saying so, and particularly in the context of what’s at least one-quarter a pisstake) and whose writings consistently help me understand The Music better.

35) Wes Montgomery Trio (Riverside, 1959)

Took me a while to get this guy. Is he TOO tasteful? I’m not sure. He’s not any kind of iconoclast but the depth and complexity of his harmonic conception isn’t complacent either. Especially on early sides such as these.

34) Dave Douglas, Uri Caine, Andrew Cyrille, Devotion (Greenleaf, 2019)

Douglas is a searching musician whose treks don’t always hook me. This session, clearly an unusually significant one for him, pairs him with pianist Caine, a longtime collaborator, and drummer Cyrille, who I’d listen to play a phone book. I’ve had this record for a while, but as I heard one 20-something longhair say to another while on line to see Lou Reed at the Capitol Theater in Passaic in 1974, re Reed’s then-new Sally Can’t Dance, “I haven’t gotten into it yet.”

33) William Parker/In Order to Survive, Live at Shapeshifter (Aum, 2019)

I sometimes have a hard time navigating Parker working with expanded song-forms or experimenting with jazz oratorio and such. But I have no problem hearing him blow with Rob Brown on alto, the indefatigable Cooper-Moore on piano, and Elvin Jones inheritor Hamid Drake on drums.

32) Dunmall, Gibbs, Taylor, Young Landscapes (FMR, 2019)

Paul Dunmall’s a British saxist/flautist of indefatigable energy who puts out a record about once every twenty minutes. I’ve not heard a bad one yet, although some leave me cold. This, with a bassist, violist and guitarist backing him, is pretty intriguing.

31) Matt Mitchell, Phalanx Ambassadors (Pi, 2019)

A fab NYC scene pianist with a quintet in which the female players outnumber the male, which is nice. Cerebral in the sense the title implies, but not dry.

30) Keith Jarrett, Arbour Zena, (ECM, 1976)

Wait, is this even jazz? Here Jarrett trios up with Haden and Motian with a string orchestra behind. Because so much of the final third of his career has been devoted to improvising with the now-defunct Standards Trio, Jarrett’s writing isn’t talked about much except by mavens. It’s good. This is a good record. It might not be jazz.

29) Houston Person with Ron Carter, Just Between Friends (High Note, 2005)

This most certainly is jazz. Person, born in 1934, formed his style before Coltrane shook things up and to this day plays with a pleasing burr, a nice sense of fizzy intoxication. Ron Carter is Ron Carter. The set begins with “How Deep Is The Ocean” and contains “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” Get it?

28) Forde Gjerstad  with William Parker and Hamid Drake, On Reade Street (FMR, 2006)

Norwegian alto/clarinet yawper of distinction meets two American contemporary giants. I don’t think I’ve actually listened to this yet.

27) Steve Kuhn Trio w/ Joey Baron and Steve Swallow, To and From The Heart, (Sunnyside 2018)

Pianist Kuhn in a mood almost (but not quite) soporifically sweet and tonic. Exceptionally listenable.

26) Duke Ellington Octet, At The Rainbow Grill 1967 (Gambit, ?)

This is a bootleg that took me forever to acquire. Sounds like a bootleg too. See below.

25) Bill Evans, California Here I Come  (Verve, 1967)

I acquired this and the above Ellington live set — recorded on the same night! — to complete the interactive part of Ethan Iverson’s New Yorker article in which he contrasts Evan’s modal improvisations with Ellington’s  (and Paul Gonsalves’) soloing and vamping  on the chord changes. The paradox is that while Ellington and company were playing for a dance crowd and Evans was playing for the serious listeners of the Village Vanguard, Ellington’s getting into knottier harmonic territory. The differences are fascinating and both performances are terrific. Evans is easier-listening while Ellington steadfastly answers the demands of his market at the time while stealthily delivering a sophistication he just can’t help. I imagine that in 1967 jazz was even further alienated from the contemporary popular culture than it is today. Of the two artists it was probably Evans who was considered “hipper” at the time.

24) Art Pepper, Live at Fat Tuesday’s (Elemental, 2005 recorded 1988)

After his searing autobiography Straight Life was published in 1979, altoist Pepper would spend the next, what, three whole years of his life (he died in 1982, aged 56) working his ass off in studios and on the road; they’re still putting out previously unreleased material from this era. Garrulous on stage, the not-quite-clean Pepper (he claimed to have given up getting high as such but apparently there was a whole lot of self-medicating going on) was an equally generous soloist, and on this set with Al Foster on drums he goes to town on two standards, one Monk, and two of his own compositions, which tend to the melancholy even when ostensibly upbeat. He had great tone, great feel and a LOT to say. Check him out.

23) Keith Jarrett, Paris/London, Testament (ECM, 2009)

Jarrett described his own mental state prior to the 2008 London concerts transcribed here in a beautiful interview with Ethan Iverson in 2009. A lot of the time when musicians talk out their own work it’s difficult to frame up what they’re saying with what you hear. In this case, it’s all there. And yes, the music is uncommonly emotionally direct. It’s easy to rag on Jarrett because of his oft-detailed personal prickliness, and a lot of the time on his solo recordings I get thrown by his seeming inability to distinguish between his best ideas and his worst, but when it comes down to it he really is a genius of modern music and his recording with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette are constant founts of pleasure and soul.

22) Barry Guy @ 70 (FSR 2018)

British free player of exquisite sensitivity. This is a three disc set, live recording of a birthday event as you may have inferred. So far I’ve only listened to the trio session with Marilyn Crispell on piano and Paul Lytton on bass but it’s a delight.

21) Dexter Gordon, 5 Original Albums

Less than 20 bucks at Academy and featuring Doin’ Allright, Dexter Calling, A Swingin’ Affair, One Flight Up, and Getting’ Around. YOU CANNOT GO WRONG IF YOU ENCOUNTER THIS SET UNDER SIMILAR CIRCUMSTANCES.

20) Dexter Gordon Quartet, Tokyo 1975 (Elemental 2018)

On a lot of ‘70s jazz, the recording makes my teeth hurt a little at first. Pianos sound too bright, very nightclubby if you know what I mean. I have this problem with Gordon’s small-band major-label 1978 Manhattan Symphonie, too. It’s not as pronounced on this exuberant set featuring Kenny Drew on piano and Albert Heath on drums. But it’s there, and my ears need to adjust to it. I’ve always had this problem with “Old Folks,” maybe stemming from the fact that for years of my active alcoholism my radio alarm was tuned to Phil Schapp’s Charlie Parker morning show on whatever that FM station was and he’d invariably play the Parker-with-chorus “Old Folks” three or four times a week and it seriously, I mean, have you ever HEARD it? And then have you ever heard it while HUNG OVER? Anyway, they do “Old Folks” on here and it’s tolerable.

19) The Tal Farlow Monkey Album (Norgran, 1955)

Farlow’s long fingers and searching musical intelligence enabled him to leap incredible intervals in a single bound. But the guitarist was no shredder. He’s fleet, clean, and SUPER FRESH. When he goes on one of his long runs and bends the notes, it’s perfect exhilaration.

18) Art Blakey, The Jazz Messengers (Columbia 1956)

This assemblage features Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, Horace Silver and Doug Watkins. All of them “cats.”

17) The Max Roach Trio, Featuring The Legendary Hassan (Atlantic 1965)

Hassan Ali was this hot pianist out of Philly who was big on Elmo Hope, who was big on Thelonious Monk. (One of the tunes here is called “Hope So Elmo.”) Hassan and Hope were well-versed in the strangely pleasing dissonances Monk advanced, and Hassan tricked these up with ever wackier and ever-changing time signatures. Challenging time signatures were among drummer Max Roach’s many breads and butters so it is apt that Hassan’s only official recording was made possible and led by Roach. Art Davis is the bassist.

16) Walter Bishop Jr. Trio, Speak Low (Venus 1993)

The plain truth is I got this because I momentarily mixed up Walter Bishop, Jr., with Walter Davis, Jr., whose Scorpio Rising is one of my favorite latter-day post-bop piano trio thangs and Davis didn’t record solo too often. Anyway. This is pretty good too. More lush than tricky (Davis is equally both) but very pleasing.

15) Randy Weston Trio Plus Cecil Payne (Fresh Sound compilation 2012)

Weston is a definite and absolute great but in terms of my attention has always stayed in the “subjects for further research” category. Here you get solid unfussy bop of uniform excellence, but nothing that will immediately blow your mind.

14) The John Coltrane Quartet, The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions (Impulse, 1961/1995)

Pretty much as advertised.

13) Art Blakey, Indestructible (Blue Note, 1964)

He does look badass on that cover, with the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was also into heroin, too, apparently. That stuff’ll kill you. But lung cancer got him first, at 71, not young exactly but too young to die, especially these days. Where was I? Oh yeah. Despite being into heroin I’ve never heard a recorded instance of Blakey being inattentive. And on this record the messengers are Lee Morgan, less than a decade away from getting his ass shot by his common law wife in front of a bar where he was gigging, “how very jazz,” Wayne Shorter, who’s still with us, Curtis Fuller, Cedar Walton, and Reggie Workman. You know what to do.

12) Count Basie, April in Paris (Verve, 1958)

“An early influence and still something to always answer to the question, ”Who do I like as a piano player:” Count Basie. That’s the final arbiter of how to play two notes, the distance between them and the volume of them is perfect. I can’t hold myself to that standard, but I can appreciate it.” — Carla Bley, in an interview with, yes, Ethan Iverson

11) The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume One (Blue Note, 1951)

One of the things that frustrates a growing jazzbo is when you’re reading somehing about some artist or other that tells you that what you’re listening to right now isn’t that artist’s REAL STUFF. I remember years ago getting a reissue of Bill Evans’ Trio ’65 and the whole gist of the liner notes was that Chuck Israels was no Scott La Faro. HEY LINER NOTE WRITER DUDE, CHUCK ISRAELS IS STILL ALIVE EVEN AS I WRITE THIS. DO YOU THINK HE DOESN’T KNOW HE WAS NO SCOTT LA FARO? DO YOU THINK HE DOESN’T HAVE FEELINGS? Anyway, you get a lot of “you’ll never hear the good shit” when reading about Bud Powell. All the records were made after he started falling apart, etc. Nevertheless, this lives up to its title in my book.

10) Cannonball Adderley with Bill Evans, You Know What I Mean? (Riverside, 1961)

“Everybody Digs Bill Evans” was the statement used for an album title of the pianist’s, but the proclamation was arguably as true or more so for Cannonball, a delightful bluesy player and by most accounts a solid guy. Not a challenging classic, just a classic.

9) Paul Bley, Footloose (Savoy, 1960)

If you have a hard time getting into Ornette Coleman, one good way to try is by listening to his stuff interpreted by other players. This album, with Bley backed by Steve Swallow and the magnificent Pete LaRoca on drums, kicks off with a speedy version of Ornette’s “When Will The Blues Leave?” which may or may not help with conversion. The rest of the record is split between Paul and Carla’s tunes. This is definitely an underappreciated landmark of 20^th century piano jazz.

8) Art Taylor, AT’s Delight (Blue Note, 1960)

Taylor, a drummer who was Present At The Creation of many landmark American Jazz Moments, also wrote, in 1977, an incredible book called Notes and Tones. It is made up of interviews in which Taylor invariably asks what is the situation of the black jazz musician today, and the interviewee invariably responds that the situation of the black jazz musician today is FUCKED UP. You really can’t say it enough. Anyway. This is one of his few records as leader and it’s a super friendly bop and post-bop session (kickoff track: Coltrane’s “Syeeda’s Song Flute,” one of his happiest tunes) featuring Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers.

7) The Lucky Thompson Quartet, Lucky Strike (Prestige 1964)

Man, this cat is smooth. His tone on either soprano or tenor can melt you into a puddle. Hank Jones, Richard Davis and Connie Kay back him up, so climb on board all you Astral Weeks fans.

6) Sonny Rollins, The Bridge (RCA, 1962)

Every list of the greatest jazz albums ever needs at least one Sonny Rollins record on it. Good thing this was on my floor then. Although I prefer East Broadway Run Down.

5) Oscar Peterson, My Favorite Instrument (Verve, 1968)

It’s the piano! Who’d have guessed?

4) Duke Ellington and Ray Brown, This One’s For Blanton (Pablo, 1975)

Not quite the ultimate in jazzbo esoterica but not nothing in that department either. The background: In 1939 and 1940, Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton recorded some piano/double bass duets that were the first commercially released items of such jazz interplay ever. And as such genuinely groundbreaking. Blanton was a bassist of exceptional sensitivity, already an innovator while barely out of his teens. He died in 1942, at only 23 years of age, of tuberculosis. (How very not jazz, right?) In 1973, in Las Vegas yet, Duke and veteran bassist Ray Brown (stalwart of Oscar Peterson, stalwart and ex-husband of Ella Fitzgerald) laid down this tribute. It is lovely.

3) Bill Evans, Some Other Time (Resonance, 2017/1968)

This is one of two newly discovered and spiffily mastered Resonance releases chronicling an Evans trio with longtime collab Eddie Gomez on bass and not-for-long member Jack De Johnette on drums. In his first trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, Evans kept Motian in line with his conception by encouraging him to use brushes. Motian became a low-key co-conspirator with La Faro’s revolutionary conception of time, while his more anarchic instincts were kept in check. I don’t know much about Marty Morell (although—holy shit!—I just found out that Evans covers my favorite Bobbie Gentry song, “Morning Glory,” on a Tokyo live album with Gomez and Morell) and I haven’t heard his one record with the genial Shelly Manne. With Philly Joe Jones, Evans swung. Jack DeJohnette, a definite hitter who would later become a huge Levon Helm fan, was a different proposition from any of these drummers, and he imbues these session with a drive that stands out without ever becoming overstated. And you can sense how this stretches Evans even as he sticks largely to a repertoire of reliable standards.

2) McCoy Tyner, Today and Tomorrow (Impulse, 1963)

Alternating between trio cuts with Jimmy Garrison and Albert Heath and a quintet with three horns, including that of Thad Jones, out front, this is an ideal way to get to know Tyner in the absence of Coltrane. McCoy still walks among us, by the way.

1) Bill Evans, Another Time (Resonance 2016/1968)

See number three. More of the same only live instead of studio. BUT an almost completely different playlist, including “Alfie.”

Comments

[Farran Nehme]

Said profile writer already endeared herself to me no end by citing Citizen Kane as an overrated movie and when people responded with things like "Jesus" she said "I have a degree from a prestigious film school and I stand by this." Between that, and this, suffice it to say I won't be buying her overpromoted novel.

[Blankemon]

Hey, I have that Evans in Toyko album. It's real good!

[Gary McGrane]

All pianists today, cognizant of it or not, owe a great debt to Bill Evan's. As far as most Americans, look what they listen to. To quote another clown " sad".

[Marc Ziner]

I’m disappointed by the skepticism in your piece. I think jazz deserves to be celebrated as often as possible and not criticized in a cavalier way. I got my first Jazz album, ”Birth of the Cool” when I was 15, so I’ve been a jazz enthusiast for 56 years. I’ve heard many people tell me they hate jazz, and candidly, I think those people are missing the boat and the excitement this music brings us. Also, I’m curious as to why you write about the 50 albums on the floor by your coffee table and not your 50 favorite albums.

[Glenn Kenny]

I'm sorry for the disappointment, Mr. Ziner. As is indicated in a couple of asides and a link embedded in a quote, a good third or quarter of the piece is facetious. The format is a parody aimed at the arbitrary nature of list or listicle making; the stuff in the preamble is a piss-take of the GQ UK piece linked to in the unfortunate quote about Sonny Clark, which derives from that piece. Most of my observations are sincere and genuine, though. I have no genuine skepticism about jazz; if I had, I'd be a fool to have spent so much money and time on it over forty-seven years.

[Ddran]

Great notes. You made it clear that you are responding to an assinine ignoramus who claims jazz is a con, and you provide a groovy response that basically even the records sitting next to your turntable provide plenty of evidence that Billy Bob, a con name if ever there were one, is as sensitive to musical quality as Trump is to the environment. No need to select favorites, that's your point.

[Redbeard]

Fun list to sleep on. As a jazzophile, I’m starved for conversation and hope you’ll share more jazz columns. If we’re going to be accused of cultural elitism, we might as well flaunt it, right?

Not many guitarists on your list. Random coffee table assemblage, or not a lotta love for amplified jazz?

[Droopy]

What is the Monkey Album of which you speak? Looking through Tal Farlow discography, internet searcing... no clues! I'll give a couple of the Norgran albums a spin. Should I be ashamed to admit, as an (amateur) guitarist I haven't listened to Tal Farlow's work.

[Glenn Kenny]

It’s a joke of the “not worth explaining” variety. The actual record is titled “The Tal Farlow Album” and it’s great.

[Jan Kopecky]

What? There should be 43 jazz recordings on your list. No Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"? Many consider it the best jazz album of all time. Therefore, it should be No 1!

[acojidonerak143]

I will surely try this..Very good to follow this kind of idea..Thank you for sharing this!!

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[Cadavra]

My pantheon would include a trio of Carnegie Hall albums: Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck and MJQ.

[Rand Careaga]

Late to the party, but I commend to the attention of anyone checking in on this thread the 1964 album “Jazz på svenska,” austere arrangements (Jan Johansson, piano; Georg Riedel, bass) of Swedish folk songs. Sample here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2D5HlKLh34

[Titch]

Jazz på svenska (Swedish jazz) is an essential piece, one of the cornerstones of Swedish jazz. Jan Johansson also did "Jazz på ryske" (Russian jazz), which is also essential.

[James Keepnews]

Dude! I couldn't bear to keep seeing a bare Kirk Douglas above the fold, as it were, when I'd check in here, so I haven't lately and missed this post entirely. Quite the stacks of wax, Max -- as to the peerless Wes, let's not forget that his deep and complex harmonic concept was also almost entirely self-taught. He was able to tease out the advanced harmonic language of bop by ear (and thumb) and on the gig. His chord-melodic technique is exquisite, genuinely stirring and pursued by almost no one else in quite the same way -- Joe Pass had his own ideas in that regard well before Wes emerged and Jim Hall gravitated towards more parallel chord forms. It can come off schmaltzy in the wrong hands, but never with Wes, or at least not via his guitar playing (some of those of the cheese-ass Don Sebesky arrangements for Verve towards the end, though, oy...). Some of the best practitioners of this chord-melodic form include Carmen Caramanica, a Utica-based guitarist and one of his students, my buddy Paul Kogut. What I wouldn't give to hear his much bruited live dates with Coltrane in the early 60's.

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