Best of Jazz Music: The Best Jazz Albums of All Time
Contents
We’re looking at the best of jazz music and compiling a list of the best jazz albums of all time. Join us on this musical journey!
Introduction
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States. It emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from blue notes, ragtime, work songs, and spirituals. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and jazz dance emerged. The best known practitioners of this style were Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday.
In the 1930s bebop emerged, led by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Bebop departed from swing’s comfortable conformity to past musical styles instead opting for musical experimentation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s but achieved its greatest popularity in the 1950s with artists such as Miles Davis, Chet Baker and Stan Getz. Hard bop was an extension of bebop that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues and gospel music into a harder edged sound than bebop. Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” (1964) is representative of hard bop’s mainstream popularity during the 1960s.
Free jazz was developed in the late 1950s to early 1960s by Ornette Coleman who reject changes to harmony or tempo while maintaining an emphasis on improvisation. Avant-garde jazz was pioneered by Pharaoh Sanders and Cecil Taylor who pushed beyond free jazz’s structural restrictions towards new soloing techniques or multi-instrumental dialogue respectively while also adding aspects of Eastern music such as drones or modality into their work..
Best Jazz Albums of All Time
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical traditions, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime.
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
If there’s one album on this list that you need to hear, it’s this one. A perfect blend of cool and modal jazz, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue is an essential record for any fan of the genre, and is widely considered to be one of the best jazz albums of all time. Featuring legendary performances from pianist Bill Evans and saxophonist John Coltrane, this is an album that truly deserves its place in the pantheon of greats.
John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
Recorded in one four-hour session in December 1964, A Love Supreme was issued early the following year on Impulse! Records. It became one of the most influential and critically acclaimed jazz albums of all time, and is often considered Coltrane’s magnum opus.
A Love Supreme’s spiritual underpinnings (the album is a prayer for guidance and thanksgiving, and is dedicated to “the Creator”) and use of modal jazz (a method of improvising based on scales rather than chords) were both groundbreaking at the time, and served as a major influence on the course of jazz in the 1960s and beyond. The album’s four-part suite — “Acknowledgement,” “Resolution,” “Pursuance” and “Psalm” — is a masterpiece of economic yet emotionally devastating improvisation, anchored by Coltrane’s searing saxophone playing and the tight interplay between him and his bandmates: pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.
Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music
This is a compilation album of Thelonious Monk’s recordings for Blue Note Records, released in two volumes in 1951 and 1952. It is the first LP release of Monk’s music and includes his first four recordings from 1947: “‘Round Midnight”, “Well, You Needn’t”, “Ruby, My Dear”, and “Epistrophy”.
Pianist Thelonious Monk was an enigmatic personality and one of the most individualistic Jazz musicians of the 20th century. His playing was often rough-hewn and unorthodox but always drew from a deep well of blues feeling and intellect. This 2-LP set contains his first four Blue Note recording sessions from 1947. These performances, which feature such early sidemen as Howard McGhee, Milt Jackson, and Coleman Hawkins, are largely responsible for establishing Monk’s reputation as a major creative force.
Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come
Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come is one of those rare albums that completely redefines its genre. When it was released in 1959, Coleman’s freewheeling mix of blues, R&B, and bebop changed jazz forever, and his revolutionary approach to harmony and melody inspired generations of musicians. On tracks like “Free Jazz” and “Lonely Woman,” Coleman and his band push the boundaries of jazz, creating something entirely new. The Shape of Jazz to Come is an essential album for any jazz fan.
Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
Mingus Ah Um is one of those rare albums that is equally revered by critics and fans alike. It is considered by many to be Mingus’ finest work, and it is certainly one of the most influential jazz albums of all time.
Originally released in 1959, Mingus Ah Um features some of the greatest jazz musicians of the era, including John Handy, Jimmy Knepper, Shafi Hadi, and Charles McPherson. The album features nine original compositions by Mingus, each one a masterpiece in its own right.
If you are a fan of jazz music, then you need to own this album. It is simply one of the best jazz albums of all time.
Conclusion
So there you have it – 50 of the best jazz albums of all time. This list was certainly not easy to put together, but it was a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy our selections. Do you agree with our choices? What would you add or remove from the list? Let us know in the comments below.
