The ten best jazz LPs of all time

Of course what I really mean is ‘these are my favorites’. Two rules: 1. no greatest hits compilations, and 2. a limit of only one choice per artist – otherwise you might see a list containing John Coltrane and Miles Davis only.

Other Lists
My list is below. Let’s begin with three other lists of “best” jazz albums.

Best Jazz Albums: Essential Albums You Need To Hear
This was the most authoritative of the three marginally worthwhile lists I found. Eighty selections, their top five are here:

1: Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue (Columbia)
2: John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (Impulse!)
3: Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out (Columbia)
4: Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
5: Ornette Coleman: The Shape Of Jazz To Come (Atlantic)

Rolling Stone’s Best Jazz Albums of All Time
A strange list. In Rolling Stone’s world, Norah Jones, the Buena Vista Social Club, and Frank Zappa are all jazz artists. Out of a list of 57 total selections Norah Jones gets 4 slots, Frank Zappa gets 6, and the Buena Vista Social Club gets 2. Two of the Rolling Stone choices are unanimous selections – they appear on all three lists: Miles Davis’ recordings ‘Bitches Brew’ and ‘Kind of Blue’.

Here is the Rolling Stone top five:

1. Miles Davis – ‘Round About Midnight
2. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
3. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
4. Ray Charles – My Kind of Jazz
5. John Coltrane – Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album

Top 25 Jazz Albums of All Time
Hmmm…23 of the 25 also show up in the first list above. One of their two unique personal choices was ‘Thelonious Monk At Carnegie Hall – Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane’. I’ll buy that one; but the other one was “A Boy Named Charlie Brown – Vince Guaraldi Trio”. Really? That’s shallow.

Here’s their top five:

1. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
2. A Love Supreme, John Coltrane
3. Time Out, Dave Brubeck
4. Ellington at Newport, Duke Ellington
5. Jazz At Massey Hall – The Quintet

You decide. Here’s my top ten, in no particular order:

1. Billie Holliday ‘Stay With Me’
By consensus Billie Holliday is the greatest jazz singer of all time. She had a long career, stretching from the early thirties through her death in 1959. Miles Davis is quoted saying he prefers the Billie Holiday of the fifties: “She’s become much more mature….. She still has control, probably more control now than then.” Released in 1958.

2. ‘Nancy Wilson / Cannonball Adderley’
This is one of the first jazz albums I ever bought. I was bewitched by it from the first listening; and it stays with me today as a model of sophistication, fun, and great melody. The real mystery to me is why Nancy Wilson didn’t do more jazz recordings. Looking at her catalog, it seems to me this is the only one; the rest are all mainstream pop albums that were common in the early 60s. You won’t see this album on any of “best” lists, but allmusic.com says: “Given the play list and the outstanding artists performing it, why any serious jazz collection would be without this classic album is difficult to comprehend.” Released in 1962.

3. ‘Johnny Hartman John Coltrane’
I don’t think there’s any other singer that sounds even vaguely like Johnny Hartman. This album is probably strong medicine for anyone with a 21st century sensibility. They’ll gag at the saccharine quality, but this is deep stuff. Johnny Hartman is a caricature of a certain model of male sophistication, joined in this session with the greatest jazz saxophone player of all time. Jazzfuel.com calls it “one of the classic jazz ballad albums of all time”. Released in 1963.

4. Charlie Haden ‘Haunted Heart’
An eccentric choice, I don’t think it will appear in anyone else’s list of top recordings. I don’t know LA or Hollywood at all, but this breathes Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Chandler. Charlie Haden evokes the spirit of Hollywood circa 1930-1940. Alternatively, get ‘Always Say Goodbye’ also by Charlie Haden. Beautiful and strange. Released in 1992.

5. Miles Davis ‘Miles Smiles’
This is the second album recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet, featuring Miles Davis with John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. Most other top jazz lists point to ‘Kind of Blue’, but this is my favorite. Allaboutjazz.com says “this is a delicately great album, both unusual and tender in its art.” Allmusic.com says “This is music that demands attention, never taking predictable paths or easy choices … utterly brilliant … They’re playing for each other, pushing and prodding each other in an effort to discover new territory. As such, this crackles with vitality, sounding fresh decades after its release.” Released in 1967. Alternatively, see the 8 CD compilation ‘Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965’.

6. Duke Ellington ‘Far East Suite’
I love Duke Ellington’s earlier stuff, especially the small group recordings and the Blanton-Webster band, but this is my Duke Ellington pick. I can only have one. The album was inspired by a world tour Ellington and his band made in 1963. Billy Strayhorn gets the composer credit, the album was released in 1967 shortly after Strayhorn’s death.

7. Bill Evans ‘Waltz for Debby’
Pianist Bill Evans recorded and played with both Miles Davis and Chet Baker, and led and recorded with his own groups. According to udiscovermusic.com he is “Widely considered to be one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, Evans’ use of harmony and his inventive and impressionistic interpretation of the jazz repertoire has few peers.” This album was recorded live at The Village Vanguard. Jazzfuel.com calls the recording “introspective and thoughtful”. Yes, and beautiful. I love live recordings from small clubs. This album also appears on the udiscovermusic.com list, cited above. Released in 1962.

8. McCoy Tyner ‘The Real McCoy’
Incredibly, McCoy Tyner does not appears on any of the top jazz recording lists I looked at. McCoy Tyner recorded extensively with John Coltrane and had a long solo career. He left John Coltrane’s band in 1965, this album was released in 1967. On this album McCoy Tyner is teamed with Joe Henderson, Ron Carter, and Elvin Jones.

9. John Coltrane ‘Afro Blue Impressions’
This is a live concert recording from 1963, released in 1977. It’s got it all, the classic lineup of Coltrane with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones, performing at shows in Berlin and Stockholm. Thom Jurek wrote in a review on allmusic.com: “Afro Blue Impressions is the sound of one of the greatest — albeit short-lived — quartets in jazz history completely coming into its own in concert.”

10. Herbie Hancock ‘Maiden Voyage’
Released in 1966. Quoting from a user review on allmusic.com: “One of the most sublime albums of all time, “Maiden Voyage” represents not only the pinnacle of Herbie Hancock’s late 60s acoustic work, but quite possibly that of his entire career. ” According to udoscovermusic.com “Eminently accessible yet with an ear for what was cutting edge at the time, Maiden Voyage is the jewel in Hancock’s Blue Note crown”. This album appears on both the udiscovermusic.com and thejazzresource.com lists, cited above.

The ones that got away
I deliberately avoided listing greatest hits compilations because it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and because they’re artistically tainted. If you like greatest hits albums, you can’t miss with this one: “The Best of Miles Davis & John Coltrane (1955-1960)”. Otherwise, these are two singers I love, and they are both otherwise inaccessible, so greatest hits compilations are advised:

Ivie Anderson ‘An Introduction To Ivie Anderson: Her Best Recordings 1932-1942’
Ivie Anderson (1904 – 1949) was the best singer the Duke Ellington band ever had. If you’re not familiar with her see some of the many YouTube videos of her with the Ellington band.

Lee Wiley ‘Time on My Hands’
Allmusic.com says Lee Wiley (1908 – 1975) was “one of the few white vocalists with more respect in the jazz community than the popular one”. She has a husky voice and a very nice understated sense of rhythm; for example on my favorites “How Long Has This Been Going On?”, and “Let’s Fly Away”.

The Bottom Line
There’s no accounting for taste!

Some numbers

Happiness
In the US many people think we’re enduring epic bad times. First it was four years of Donald Trump, and then the COVID epidemic. Can we possibly be any more UNHAPPY?! Can we quantify unhappiness? There is a report that tracks “happiness”, published by an arm of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In the 2020 survey the US ranks fourteenth out of 95 countries, between Ireland and Canada. Tanzania ad Zimbabwe are at the bottom, 94 and 95 respectively. Plus, the US position at fourteen is actually up two spots from the previous report, dated 2017-19.

Deaths Due to Tyranny
In the popular imagination, Adolf Hitler is the greatest mass murderer in history. His name and political philosophy are properly conflated with the genocide of six million Jews. But he’s not the greatest mass murderer in history. Hitler is exceeded by Joseph Stalin, and Stalin in turn is exceeded by Mao Tse Tung. See this, from an article published in the Washington Post in 2016:

“Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.”

Lynching
Lynching was one of the many crimes inflicted on African Americans during slavery and the Jim Crow era. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is particularly focused on lynching, and their own web site cites “more than 4,400 lynchings of Black people in the United States between 1877 and 1950.”

Two numbers may put 4,400 in perspective

  • The Trail of Tears, just one incident in Native American experience, according to Prof. Patrick Allitt in The American West: History, Myth, and Legacy, “cost the lives of upwards of 8 thousand Cherokees”.
  • The Civil War, fought to liberate African American slaves, resulted in 655,000 combat deaths.

The Bottom Line
–Maybe we’re not as unhappy as we think.
–When considering political mass murderers, Communists top the list.
–Does African American suffering while real enough, deserve more perspective? Maybe the greater wrongs inflicted on other groups deserves consideration. Maybe there should be more recognition of efforts made to right the wrongs against African Americans.