I once heard an interview in which Sting described his first encounter with Jazz. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that he wasn’t quite sure if he liked it when he first heard it, but he knew a lot more was going on than what he heard. This parallels my own first experiences with Jazz. I wasn’t sure why I liked it. It was not always melodic. The beat was not necessarily something you could dance too. It was quite different from Pop and Rock, which had been the mainstays of my adolescence. However, I knew that there was some deeper meaning beneath the surface that engaged my mind in ways other music hadn’t. Jazz occupies a unique space in the musical canon.
One of the characteristics that I admire most about jazz is that it can be admired from both afar and close up providing completely different experiences. From a distance, it makes near perfect “background music”, for lack of a better expression. It can fill the silence without interference. You can read to it, study to it, eat to it, converse to it, and sometimes even sleep to it. All the while, it enriches the environment but never impedes upon it. And yet, if you stop to listen to it, and I mean really listen to it, it pulls you in and completely consumes you with its complex layers of sounds and rhythms that intertwine together to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Like a piece of good literature, jazz does not always reveal its full genius in the first read. To really appreciate good jazz, you have to listen several times separating the layers in your head and bringing them back together again.
Now I am far from an aficionado. While I know I like a lot of the jazz of the fifties, I’d be hard pressed to cite the characteristics that separate bebop from hard bop or cool from modal. I just know what I like, and in jazz, there are no apologies for likes and dislikes. This list includes cuts from most of my favorite jazz recordings, and I rely on these songs again and again when entertaining. I just love the mood and ambience they create; sophisticated, urban and cool. Try them out and see if you don’t agree. Everyone on this list is a legend: Miles, Coltrane, Brubeck, Mingus, Monk and more. If you’re not that familiar with jazz, I think this makes a great introduction some of the classics.
I start this list with Miles because for me, all jazz really starts with him. I am an unabashed believer that Kind of Blue is, unequivocally, the best jazz album ever recorded. I know that some would argue for The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Coleman, but Kind of Blue is perfect from the first note to the last. I start with So What because it is the perfect way to begin an evening of entertaining; slow, smooth, blue, and cool. Miles makes several appearances on this list as does Coltrane and Brubeck, two more of my favorites.
Enjoy.
- So What – Miles Davis
- Autmumn Leaves – Cannonball Adderley
- Take Five – Dave Brubeck Quartet
- Killer Joe – Art Farmer & Benny Golson
- Jordu – Clifford Brown and Max Roach
- Moanin’ – Art Blakely & The Jazz Messengers
- Happy Little Sunbeam – Chet Baker
- Blue Train – John Coltrane
- The Sidewinder – Lee Morgan
- Better Git It in Your Soul – Charles Mingus
- Blue Rondo A la Turk – Dave Brubeck Quartet
- Move – Miles Davis
- Mr. P.C. – John Coltrane
- Black Codes – Wynton Marsalis
- Cheese Cake – Dexter Gordon
- Summer Time – Miles Davis & Gil Evans
- I’m Old Fashioned – John Coltrane
- Alice in Wonderland (Take 2) – Bill Evans
CD Alternatives
Since these songs represent the best CDs in my jazz collection, anyone of them will create much of the same mood as this collection, but if I had to recommend the top three, they would be Kind of Blue by Miles Davis
Miles & Co. Radio Station at Pandora (Listen for Free)
