Lists are really the bane of a reviewers existence. Not only can you spend your whole day compiling lists of best so and so, and then defending why Artist X should be on the list but not Artist Y, but then some other reviewer drops a slightly different list of greatest Jazz albums, for instance. A morass of conflicting opinions and options. David Remnick of the New Yorker contributes his top 100 Jazz albums which would be a pretty excellent place to start a music library with.
While finishing “Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector. First, I asked Schaap to assemble the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. Such attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but “who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of the current situation,” in which music is often bought and downloaded from dubious sources. Schaap bemoaned the loss of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes and booklets. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.”
What follows is a list compiled with the help of my New Yorker colleague Richard Brody. These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music’s century-long history. Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally. We have tried not to overdo it with expensive boxed sets and obscure imports; sometimes it couldn’t be helped. We have also tried to strike a balance between healthy samplings of the innovative giants (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane, etc.) and the greater range of talents and performances.
[From Online Only: 100 Essential Jazz Albums: Online Only: The New Yorker]
I won’t bother with all one hundred, but here a few of my favorites on this list
“The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings” (Louis Armstrong)
“The Essential Bessie Smith” (Bessie Smith)
“Money Jungle” (Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach)
“The Classic Early Recordings in Chronological Order” (Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli)
“Handful of Keys” (Fats Waller)
“Bird: The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve” (Charlie Parker)
“The Complete RCA Victor Recordings: 1947-1949” (Dizzy Gillespie)
"A Love Supreme" (John Coltrane)
"Mingus Ah Um" (Charles Mingus)
"Saxophone Colossus" (Sonny Rollins)
"The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings" (John Coltrane)
