What are the essential jazz albums?

I have been listening to a lot of jazz recently. All piano stuff... Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson...

What would you say are the "important" jazz albums... a list of albums that would give some sort of sketch of how jazz has evolved over the years...

InsatiableCream said:

giant steps kind of blue , those kind of titles needs to be checked out.
you like piano right? you should check thelonious monk , i dont own his stuff but he was top knotch

motownlover said:

IAintTheOne said:

Monk's Dream - Thelonious Monk
A Love Supreme - John Coltrane
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady - Charles Mingus
In A Silent Way - Miles Davis
Tribute to Jack Johnson - Miles Davis
On the Corner - Miles Davis
Change of the Century - Ornette Coleman
Out to Lunch - Eric Dolphy
Unit Structures - Cecil Taylor
Unity - Larry Young
Maiden Voyage - Herbie Hancock
Time Out - Dave Brubeck
Real McCoy -McCoy Tyner
Bitches Brew - Miles Davis
Atlantis - Sun Ra
A Love Supreme - A Love Supreme
Mingus Ah Um- Charles Mingus

I think all of these albums are important and essential. I would've named more more, but I thought I'd just list some of the albums I own

dilwithers said:

Grover Washington Jnr - Feels So Good

dilwithers said:

dilwithers said:

dilwithers said:

Since there're ones already mentioned, here're my other selections...

Love is just like the faucet
It turns off and on
Sometimes when you think it's on baby
It has turned off and gone


Lady Day

And since you're into pianists(like me) this will give you a great showcase, since she worked with the creme de la creme of Tin Pan Alley/Swing pianists of the day...



Unlike other singers, she doesn't treat pianists as just accompanists,,,but as artists who equally share the same bill as her, musically speaking that is.
[Edited 6/27/09 5:06am]

Love is just like the faucet
It turns off and on
Sometimes when you think it's on baby
It has turned off and gone


Lady Day

This list is good enough.

http://home.austarnet.com...op100.html

dilwithers said:

dilwithers said:

chuckaducci said:

coolcat said:

novabrkr said:

chuckaducci said:

The only albums on this list that I thought were appropiately considered "essential" were Maiden Voyate, Time Out, A Love Supreme, and maybe Mingush Ah Um. The rest of the albums listed are mostly esoteric, in my opinion.

I don't like threads asking for lists - they usually turn into a jumbled mess. So, I would just like to offer Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall as one album I hold essential in jazz.

coolcat said:

would you say are the "important" jazz albums... a list of albums that would give some sort of sketch of how jazz has evolved over the years...

He was asking for a list of albums that would "give some sort of sketch of how jazz has evolved over the years". It's not about whether you like lists or what single album you would consider the most essential.

Carry on.

I'm more of a bop collector, I hear this is the building block . . .

other albums or collections that I believe are considered formative:

Bird and Diz -- Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie


Cannonball Adderley -- Something Else


Hank Mobley -- Soul Station


The Quintet (Roach, Powell, Gillespie, Parker, Mingus) -- Live At Massey Hall
[Edited 6/27/09 12:14pm]
[Edited 6/27/09 12:15pm]

namepeace said:

Appreciate all the responses to the thread. I know it's probably impossible to reduce jazz to an "essential" list...

It just seems to me like jazz is better appreciated when there is a understanding of the musical history behind it...

I wouldn't consider this album nearly in the same "foundational" vein as albums that some of the earlier posts have listed. But, I would rate VERY highly Bela Fleck & the Flecktones' "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" as one of my essential albums. Those cats were on:

ThreadBare said:

I wouldn't consider this album nearly in the same "foundational" vein as albums that some of the earlier posts have listed. But, I would rate VERY highly Bela Fleck & the Flecktones' "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" as one of my essential albums. Those cats were on:

Love is just like the faucet
It turns off and on
Sometimes when you think it's on baby
It has turned off and gone


Lady Day

How about some recommendations for great vocal jazz albums?

A new 50 year celebration release of Kind of Blue has just come out recently with lots of liner notes and alternate takes. This is the biggest selling jazz album of all time and well deeserved.

The last living member, drummer Jimmy Cobb is touring with some "young" lions to reproduce the album live. I'd like to see that tour.

50 Years On, Drummer Still Relishes "Kind of Blue"

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Jazz drummer Jimmy Cobb has spent the last half century laying down rhythms for stars like Sarah Vaughn and Nancy Wilson, so one might expect him to tire of talking about the milestone record on which he played in 1959. But one would be wrong.

The record was Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," widely considered one of the most influential albums in jazz, and one that is finding renewed interest in its 50th anniversary year.

As the sole survivor of the group that played on the album, Cobb, 80, is still talking about it -- and playing music from it -- as the leader of the So What Band, named for the landmark album's opening tune.

"I enjoyed it when we did it, and I never thought that it would come to be, 50 years later, what it has come to be," he told Reuters ahead of Calgary's jazz festival where the tribute band will play while on tour.

"Besides loving the music, and me being the only one you can talk to about it -- that's a lot of good reasons to talk about it, I think."

"Kind of Blue", which also featured saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, and bassist Paul Chambers, was seen as a turning point for jazz because its five songs are mostly improvisations with relatively few chord changes when compared to the rambunctious bebop style that preceded it.

On the record, made at two sessions at Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York in March and April of 1959, Davis and his group eschewed loud, fiery solos and up-tempo tunes, preferring a light, elegant sound with scant embellishment.

That's where Washington D.C.-born Cobb came in.

Davis, who died in 1991, made a career of surrounding himself with just the right players for a particular style. He chose Cobb for his smooth cadences that did not rely on flash.

"If he wanted that he would have used Philly Joe (Jones) because he had been in the band, but he wanted what I brought," he said.

Cobb said that was key, because Davis provided his players with only a bare "map" of what he wanted, rather than detailed musical scores. He wanted musicians around him who could inspire him with their ideas.

Cobb, who had played earlier with Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday and Dizzy Gillespie, simmered at the drums on tracks such as "Freddie Freeloader," "All Blues" and "Blue in Green," which became required listening for generations of musicians.

He had no inkling during the sessions the status the record would attain as one of a handful of must-haves album's in every jazz fan's collection.

"If I knew that, I might have also gone to the racetrack and invested in the stock market," he said.

Davis had a reputation for being aloof and hard on players who did not meet his expectations. But during Cobb's time with the trumpeter from 1957 to 1963, he and Davis became close.

The drummer would drive his bandleader to the gym and photograph him working on his boxing footwork, he said.

Today's tribute band, featuring trumpeter Wallace Roney, Javon Jackson and Vincent Herring on sax, pianist Larry Willis and Buster Williams on bass, has its own strengths, Cobb is adamant it isn't simply an attempt to reproduce the original.

"That's never going to be duplicated, so we need to get away from that right away," he said.

Still, all the members have varying degrees of connection to the initial roster, most notably Roney, to whom Davis was mentor, Cobb said.

rialb said:

Check out Tierney Sutton, the heir apparent to Ella Fitzgerald:

http://www.imeem.com/warb...h-is-dead/

Sampler form her album Something Cool:


[Edited 6/27/09 22:57pm]