http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John_discography

start at his second album and work in chrono order through the 70s, as it's not far off the order of his best albums, which are yellow, brown, tumbleweed, madman, honky, elton, dont shoot, zero roughly in that order

dm3857 said:

Great suggestions! I highly recommend these albums too. I think these 4 make up the large majority of his best work.

The thing with Elton and some others that have actually had careers over decades where sounds and production changed, you have to break it into the eras.

For the 70's you pretty much nailed his best stuff, but you gotta have his self titled second album which to me is still one of the best albums from anyone, the label gambled on him his first album didnt sell and they put tons of money into the second (labels dont invest in artists that way now) but def get that Elton John Album

For the 80's the key, dont compare to the 70's mainly because production changed the false rumour that Elton had no good albums in the 80's is a huge lie. Get "Jump Up" or "Too Low For Zero" even the later 80's album "Sleepin with the past" was elton starting to strip away a lot of the production

For the 90's thats a little tougher because there was a bit of stepping into other forums like writing for the stage and shows and movies so its a bit unlike the first two decades, but, "Made in england" was pretty strong.

For the 00's Elton has been on fire, and shows YES you can make good albums later in your career just like actors make great movies when they older, so do singers.
For Elton here go with "Songs From the West Coast" possibly his best album since the early 70s, and dont sleep on the "Peach Tree Road" album .

Some fine other work would be the album he did with Leon Russell called the Union and his new album is stellar, produced by the best in the game T Bone Burnett, next to Mark Ronson, T bone gets the best out of the best artists.