While there's a long tradition of list-making among music fans of every stripe, there is also usually an accompanying reaction, along the lines of: "who are you to judge music like it's an Olympic sport, telling me which jazz is 'better' or worse'? It's just music, man!" In fact, I might have been quoting myself just now. All the same, if you spend enough time around jazz, listening to it, reading about it, talking about it, you must face the fact that certain albums possess that certain undefinable quality of "greatness" that causes them to rise above the rest and maintain relevance for decades longer than the others.
Therefore, we make lists. To create this Top 50 channel, I consulted a few lists that other, smarter people had already made, including the Penguin Guide's core collection, this nifty aggregated list made up of 22 others, and this list, which looked pretty solid. I also left a little bit of room for my own opinion (choosing "Our Man In Paris" over of "Go", making room for Brad Mehldau and including Miles Smiles, which I'd put in the top 5 but, inexplicably, I didn't find on many lists). What you end up with is a pretty agreeable list that shouldn't offend too many folks, but might surprise you at times. I took care to keep the list diverse, so it wasn't just everyone's favorite 50's Blue Notes. There's old music (Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt), Fusion (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bitches Brew, Weather Report), free jazz (Peter Brotzmann, Albert Ayler), and even some modern stuff (Brad Mehldau, Bill Frisell). Of course, there is also plenty of classic straight-ahead jazz and post-bop.
I spent a long time whittling this list down and I'm confident that it reflects a broad scope of jazz's greatest moments. Your favorite record might not be on here, and there might be a few albums you hate, but I really do hope you enjoy listening to it.
Never at any point during the creating of the list did I think of ranking the albums from 1 to 50, so I'll list the albums in alphabetical order by artist. The titles are links to the albums' pages on Amazon. Click here to listen to the channel while you read. Enjoy!
- Louis Armstrong - Hot Fives and Sevens Recordings
- Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity
- Count Basie - Complete Atomic Basie
- Art Blakey - Moanin'
- Peter Brötzmann - Machine Gun
- Clifford Brown and Max Roach - Clifford Brown and Max Roach
- Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out
- Charlie Christian - Genius of the Electric Guitar
- Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come
- John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
- John Coltrane - Blue Train
- John Coltrane - Giant Steps
- Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
- Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
- Miles Davis - Miles Smiles
- Miles Davis - Milestones
- Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch
- Duke Ellington - The Blanton-Webster Band
- Bill Evans - Waltz for Debby
- Ella Fitzgerald - Best of the Songbooks
- Bill Frisell - Have a Little Faith
- Erroll Garner - Concert By the Sea
- Stan Getz and João Gilberto - Getz / Gilberto
- Dexter Gordon - Our Man In Paris
- Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
- Coleman Hawkins - Body and Soul
- Joe Henderson - Page One
- Andrew Hill - Point of Departure
- Billie Holiday and Lester Young - A Musical Romance
- Ahmad Jamal - At the Pershing
- Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert
- Lee Konitz - Subconscious-lee]
- Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Inner Mounting Flame
- Brad Mehldau - The Art of the Trio, Vol. 4 - Back at the Vanguard
- Pat Metheny - Bright Size Life
- Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
- Charles Mingus - Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
- Hank Mobley - Soul Station
- Thelonious Monk - Best of the Blue Note Years
- Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder
- Charlie Parker - The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes
- Bud Powell - The Amazing Bud Powell
- Django Reinhardt - I Got Rhythm
- Return to Forever - Light as a Feather
- Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus
- Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil
- Horace Silver - Song For My Father
- Sarah Vaughan - Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown
- Larry Young - Unity
