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Jazz for Beginners

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There’s a growing interest in jazz these days from younger listeners. I’m writing a book currently along the lines of ‘A Beginner’s Guide To Jazz’ and one of the sections is around which 25 albums might one recommend to someone who is starting a jazz collection? Knowing that the Massive is both knowledgeable and loves a challenge, I’m throwing this question out to you all for views and to see if we can put together a rough list to help answer this question. All views welcome!

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  1. I daresay you’d feel obliged to include certain things like A Kind of Blue, Time Out, Giant Steps (all 1959-60)…

    I suppose the rest depends on how expansive your book is going to be – whether you feel obliged to painstakingly represent eras and styles, in which case you’d be really recommending albums as a kind of study course rather than ‘hey guys, here’s some accessible stuff the modern hipster ear might dig’.

    The three titles I mentioned would probably be essential in either category!

    Personally, I’m not wild about vocal jazz – it almost feels like a seperate genre – so it would all be instrumental. But that’s just my own taste…

  2. Well, my daughter is doing GCSE music, and part of the syllabus is studying All Blues by Miles Davis,
    so I think you would have to include A Kind Of Blue.
    I would also go for some fusion and include Heavy Weather by Weather Report and Headhunters by Herbie Hancock.

  4. Something by Louis Armstrong
    Something by Ellington
    Charlie Christian / Goodman
    Django
    Charlie Parker
    Miles
    Brubeck
    Coltrane
    Weather Report

    Fill out from there!

  5. Mingus Ah Um is one of the best and most accessible of jazz albums: storming tunes and steeped in the blues – it’s the first one I’d recommend to anyone who wanted to hear jazz for the first time.

  6. some ideas (basically just some popular jazz records I also like)

    Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder
    Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
    Cannonball Adderley – Something Else
    Grant Green – Idle Moments

    They’re all pretty close together in terms of time and geography – if you want a bigger picture I’m sure someone here will be able to recommend some European and later period jazz (Kamasi Washington’s album has enough hipster cred to make it a good place to start for young newbies?

  8. Totally agree with Colin re: 3 absolute cornerstones & all pretty accessible but with plenty of depth. Obvious & well known as it is, there is no escaping Kind Of Blue. I probably listen to it once a week & something seemingly new gets me every time, yet it also works as relaxation.
    I’d nominate a handful of stuff purely on the grounds of being easy to get on with & what I tend to copy for people expressing an interest.
    Stan Getz/ Charlie Byrd – Jazz Samba
    Art Blakey – Moanin’
    Oscar Peterson Trio – Night Train
    Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
    Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder
    Getz Meets Mulligan In Hi Fi
    Art Pepper – Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section
    Hank Mobley – Soul Station
    Coltrane – My Favourite Things ( or if feeling more adventurous Live At The Village Vanguard)
    Dave Brubeck Quartet – Live At Carnegie Hall
    I’d also recommend watching ‘High Society’ if only for ‘Now You Has Jazz’ which breaks it all down & really swings.
    Also recommend ‘ Jazz On A Summer’s Day’ – a gorgeous film obviously, but with a pretty good spread of artists – doesn’t work very well as a soundtrack album though.
    For a more modern flavour & a bit more electric
    Miles Davis – In A Silent Way
    Weather Report – Heavy Weather
    Pat Metheny – Travels
    Snarky Puppy – Ground Up
    Good luck with the book!

  10. I think most people are going for the ‘history of jazz condensed into 25 records’ approach – in which case, of course you need something by Louis, Duke, etc.

    But it’s really up to you, Basker, whether you take the ‘history of’ approach or a ‘personal selection of entry-level goodies-plus’ approach. That is the first and most important decision you have to make!

    Given that this is the information age, can I suggest you have your cake and eat it – by doing this:

    1. Recommend 25 albums as personal choice entry points, including a few noted as being a couple of steps towards the deep end.

    2. ALSO recommend 25 YouTube clips to cover the ‘history of’ aspect, listed in rough chronological order – clips of Louis, Billie H, Duke, Django, Dizzy, Charlie P, Ornette, Mahavishnu, Esborn Svension Trio…

  11. Great suggestions from everyone so far, for which many thanks. The personal choice entry points seem to be fairly common, with some differences, which is good. I think the Ornette Coleman suggestion is valid – it is challenging, but not too scary! ‘Mingus Ah Um’ is a great suggestion. Colin’s YouTube idea is worth a look – I’ll have a dig around. Already ploughed through a load of research, including the excellent Ken Burns stuff (by the way, the 10-disc US version of those DVDs is better than the cropped UK version). I plan to include a section on ‘Jazz at the Cinema’ so JungleJim’s suggestions are great.

    • I hesitated with suggesting ‘Ah-Um’ in my first comment only cos that would mean three from 1959 and one from 1960 in a comment of 4 suggestion! The reader to your guide might end up thinking jazz only existed for a couple of years just before the Beatles.

      Still, it fits with Ken Burns thesis that jazz ended with Ellington’s death… 🙂

      Is the room for Acker Bilk? No, thought not…

  14. Some wonderful suggestions here that tempt me to sit down and do a Spotify playlist.

    But jazz is a music style best heard live. So I’d want to make sure to emphasise that, along with this fabulously rich heritage, there are exciting jazz musicians bearing the torch further in 2017 that you, dear reader, may get a chance to see live in the coming months.

    Like Sweden’s Jan Lundgren who has just released a new album, Potsdamer Platz, with a new band.

    And as was commented above, once interest is aroused, YouTube and Spotify are treasure houses, bursting at the seams with wonderful things.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SThGnrorGW8

      • I get my live jazz fix twice monthly via a (fairly) local pub with an excellent extremely versatile “house band” with guests. Lots of saxophonists and pianists, of course. There are more of them about than any other instrumentalists.
        I’ve seen some great guitarists, a couple of outstanding singers and an excellent harmonica player and, coming up next month will be a highly-rated flautist and then an organ-sax-drums trio.
        The majority of my jazz heroes are mostly dead or hardly ever available in the UK, but I’m acquiring local ones who are amazingly good too.
        You can’t beat good live playing.

  15. I’d be tempted NOT to talk up/recommend current acts, Basker (sorry, Fatz) – it makes your book a hostage to a moment in time. The hot act of now could be a busted flush/emperor’s new clothes of next year. Fudge the issue and say something vague along the lines of ‘great stuff has been coming out of Scandinavia in the 21st Century’ or suchlike.

    Stick with a canon of classics and you, in a sense, future-proof the book (or at least extend its shelf life).

    A classic example of the opposite is the whole chapter given over to PJ Proby in Nik Cohn’s ‘Awopbopaloobop’ (1969) history of pop. Were he to have written that book even two years later, it would have been down to a paragraph, if that.

    • Good point Colin and I like your compromise approach. I just think Baskerville needs to get the message across that jazz is anything but dead.

      However even mentioning a venue where you might hear good live jazz can be dangerous. Even that might be gone in a year’s time.

      • Agree with both comments. In handling the current state of affairs for jazz, my aim will be to highlight the continuing influence of what has gone before on modern music, possibly citing genres (e.g Hip-Hop) rather than highlighting which acts are hot now. Today’s listener can find that out for themselves. I also wish to avoid explaining why jazz comes and goes and still persists and remains popular today – it just is (but not everyone would agree with that view). There are some great exchanges on this thread!

  16. Count Basie.

    Popular figure with the first Mods in the late 50’s and name checked in Absolute Beginners.

    Sounds like the soundtrack to Tom & Jerry cartoons, so absolutely bomb proof

    • Bomb proof indeed, Atomic Basie is the one.

      And remember the raptures we were all in a few weeks ago over Ellington at Newport? Maybe that is the Ellington, which with Basie gets the big band era in. I’m not a huge Glenn Miller fan.

  17. For accessible jazz I’d suggest the following, which haven’t been mentioned above
    Oliver Nelson The Blues And The Abstract Truth
    John Coltrane Blue Train Probably the most accessible Coltrane album, packed with great tunes. Like the majority of Blue Note albums, it benefitted from the label paying for rehearsal time before going into the studio.
    Bill Evans Everybody Digs Bill Evans

  18. Very little to add to this list, apart possibly from Modern Jazz Quartet (Django would be my choice) and Dexter Gordon (Go!). But you’ve got way more than 25!

  19. Here you go:

    Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue
    John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
    Dave Brubeck – Time Out
    Count Basie – The Atomic Mr Basie
    Duke Ellington – At Newport
    Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus
    Eric Dolphy – Out To Lunch
    Louis Armstrong – Best of The Hot Fives And Hot Sevens
    Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto – Getz/Gilberto
    Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
    Errol Garner – Concert By The Sea
    Bill Evans Trio – Waltz For Debby
    Melanie De Biasio – No Deal
    Oliver Nelson – The Blues And The Abstract Truth
    Thelonious Monk – The Genius Of Modern Music Vol 1
    Ornette Coleman – The Shape Of Jazz To Come
    Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert
    Dollar Brand – African Marketplace
    Ella Fitzgerald – Sings The Cole Porter Songbook
    Esbjörn Svensson Trio – From Gagarin’s Point Of View
    Brad Mehldau – Art Of The Trio Volume 3
    Lester Young/Buddy Rich Trio
    John Zorn – Naked City
    The Bad Plus – These Are The Vistas
    Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown

      • I thought about that. A Love Supreme is actually Coltrane’s most popular album, selling more than ten times as much as, say, Giant Steps on release and still way ahead today. It is complex and may be thought of as difficult but it has other qualities that appeal to the listener. It is deep, rich, spiritual and emotional. I think a jazz novice can cope with that.

        Similarly with Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. Their music is surprising on first listen but not unpleasant. Monk’s playing is just as dissonant when he wants to be. Pharoah Sanders may be a step too far.

        I would hope that the Jazz novice would want to be exposed to a broad spectrum of styles over 25 albums, not just the smooth stuff.

        • Only one quibble on that excellent list.
          If you’re going to include John Zorn (and why not), I’d go for something from a bit later like Electric Masada – At the Mountains of Madness. Still pretty abrasive stuff but also more melodic.

      • I agree that Out To Lunch is not necessarily for beginners, but A Love Supreme was one of the first jazz albums I heard and I was blown away by it on first listen.

  20. The elephant in the room is British jazz. (Are the Bad Plus British? Is Zorn? I don’t know – too recent for my knowledge!) Of course, if you’re ignoring the desire to try and be scrupulously representative (and you should), the question becomes ‘Is there a really terrific British album that is a great accessible listen and also stands up as a ‘great work’, regardless of borders. I think McLaughlin’s ‘Extrapolation’ (1969) fits that bill – a real one-off, highly regarded in the reference books etc.

  21. Some modern stuff of british worth, both with crossover appeal:

    Lush Life: B.J Cole and Roger Beaujolais, vibes and pedal steel fuse together dreamily.
    Stramash: Consummate trumpet from Colin Steele with a string section, a jazz quintet and a full scottish folk section with pipes and fiddle, crossing to and fro from jazz to folk to classical.

      • Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grapelli in the ’30s and the worldwide Latin Jazz explosion in the late ’40s – early ’60s were successful crossovers.
        Ditto the African stuff from Hugh Masekela, Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim, Chris McGregor & The Blue Notes/Brotherhood Of Breath etc.

        Kenny G is a crossover between blandness and tedium. Does not compare at all.

        And here’s some Celtic/Jazz crossover. “The Napier Stride” by John Rae’s Celtic Feet. Footage only of interest to TtTE fans.

  23. Nice album, Kind Of Blue. Easy to like, anybody can do it. Definition of jazz? Definition of Miles? I don’t think anybody’s doing anybody any favours pushing this record, not least the newcomers. Bit like saying, this Rumours thingy is all you need for rock, everybody bought it. Better and crucial Miles would be In A Silent Way or Jack Johnson, Kind Of Blue can wait.

    A Love Supreme is a great starting point, it’s got that intensity that separates jazz from Other.

    Point your beginner at the greats: Waller, Armstrong, Ellington, Miles, Mingus, Trane, Ornette, Monk, the Art Ensemble, Zorn. The offshoots can come later.

    OOAA

    • I’d like to defend Kind Of Blue. Yes, it is relaxed and easy on the ear. However, it is deceptive. Its smoothness derives from its modality. The tone and solos arise from chords in a shifting, complex, quicksand of music. It is an album that can quietly and unobtrusively fill a room as background music but also rewards detailed listening. The playing is exemplary, the six musicians resonate together as a collective and as individuals. It is as stylish and as graceful as the West Indian Test team in the seventies. There are very good reasons why it is regularly rated as the best Jazz album ever created other than its popularity with non-jazz fans.

      • Absolutely no reason to feel you need to defend it, Tigg, and everything you say about it is true. Wholeheartedly agree with your articulate nailing of its strengths.

        My point was another: does the leading exemplar really need pushing? You want more Mozart (listen to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik), you want Beatles (Abbey Road*), reggae (Marley live), Dylan (Blonde On Blonde), Barcelona (Messi), etc. ad infinitum. See, even the most cursorory of explorations will lead you here anyway. The general approach to beginners is, I’m afraid, usually patronising and consists of the bleeding obvious. And anyway, someone wanting to get into jazz (or anything) doesn’t need being persuaded that it’s got a cuddly end to it too.

        Then again, not trying to second-guess Baskerville Old Face!

        *or in your case Revolver, point still stands.

        Edith: the irony that we’re discussing Kind Of Blue! Just like the journalists who can’t stop talking about Messi if the subject is Barcelona.

  24. Jazz is a broad church.

    People who say “I don’t like jazz” are probably thinking about something specific they’ve heard that doesn’t appeal to them. Kenny Ball, maybe. Like people who say “I don’t like folk music” whilst they stick a finger in their ear and stamp a foot in a comical manner, they dismiss a vast range of music because of one or two unfortunate listening experiences. Like saying “I don’t like rock” because they heard an Iron Maiden song. Or, “I don’t like pop” because of . . . blah, blah, blah.

    My own experience of “discovering jazz “was absolutely dependent on the route in . . . I had an older school pal in the late sixties who knew I loved music that was guitar based. So he played me four albums which opened up a whole new musical world which was lying just to the side of everything I already knew and loved thanks to pop radio and folk clubs. They were:

    “The Train and the River” by the Jimmy Giuffre Trio featuring Jim Hall

    “Blues for Night People” by Charlie Byrd

    “Jazz Samba” by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd

    “Guitar / Guitar” by Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd

    So, it was a very narrow gateway but I loved it. Sleeve notes, album credits and so on led me to Miles, ECM, Blue Note compilations, Big Band jazz, Monk . . . . and then on to Back Door, Isotope, Snarky Puppy and so on, and so on, and so on. So much good music to discover, so much unappealing music to dismiss (sometimes wrongly), all labelled “jazz” but really just music.

    So what’s me point?! This, I suppose: it’s easy to decide you don’t like a genre of music. That will be because you’ve heard something you don’t like; if only you’d first heard something from within that genre that you did like!

    “Jazz for beginners”. There’s no such thing. If you love music there will be some jazz that you like. The way to find it is to start with what you already know and like.

    • Great story that illustrates that people come to jazz in many different ways and then it clicks into place to the extent that you want to explore a bit more. Not necessarily just the music, but the stories that go with the albums and artistes – sleeve notes really do whet the appetite. The other hook is album sleeves – how many people are attracted to an album just because they love the sleeve (a whole new thread there!).

      • Wise words Peanuts and a great story that I think can apply to many genres of music.

        I wasn’t so keen on “classical” music but then I heard some Aarvo Pärt and found qualities in his music that I liked that were similar to those of other ECM artists.

    • I agree with most of what you say Peanuts, but I don’t think we can ignore the fact that Jazz comes with baggage, and aspects of that baggage can make it pretty daunting to a newbie.
      It’s often perceived as ‘difficult’ and a closed world whose adherents and devotees actively delight in how perplexing (not to say off putting) it can be to ‘outsiders’.
      There is still more than a bit of it being regarded music for chin stroking smart arses – as an aside, my 14 year old delighted in a put-down line from The Mighty Boosh we watched on Netflix the other day as a character quipped ‘ Only Science teachers & mentally ill people listen to Jazz’ – she smirked at me & said ‘ & you’re no Science teacher, Dad’. –
      A bit of hand holding regarding points of entry can only help to steer folk a bit & thanks to YouTube, the days of forking out for albums that impressed in the shop rack but you hated when you put them on at home are behind us.
      🎷🎶

      • Good point. Maybe we should focus on jazz you can dance to, ranging from Glen Miller, Duke, Count, Bennie Goodman, Louis Prima through to The Sidewinder and Headhunters?

  25. No Roland Kirk? He’s certainly one of those who got me into jazz.
    Roland Kirk made albums that were deeply appealing to rock types. Namely, he was a musical virtuoso (he could/would play 3 reed instruments simultaneously), he was a rebel (changed his name to Rahsaan Roland Kirk) during the height of the Black Power movement, he was blind (a disabled- minority yo!) , he made a fucking crazy record where he played all the instruments himself one-man-band-style on one track with no overdubs “Black Root Strata” , and lastly I’ll say his 1967 LP Volunteered Slavery is pretty much an audio painting of the Watts riots… check out his cover of Say A Little Prayer.
    You can ditch your Clash records after listening to this on high volume, like listening to Cliff Richards after Elvis. (On a side note he was the direct inspiration for Jethro Tull’s flute playing, Ian Anderson covering one of his songs on their debut 1968 LP)
    It was Kirk’s anger and eccentricity that surely made him a fantastic gateway drug for Rock fans to Jazz, but perhaps inevitably not one of Jazz’ most respected grand masters.

  26. Just adding support for these contenders:

    Somethin’ Else – Cannonball AdderlyAdderly/Miles Davis
    Atomic Basie
    Dave Brubeck At Carnegie Hall
    Gary Burton and Chick Corea – Crystal Silence
    Ron Carter – All Blues
    Spectrum – Billy Cobham
    Shape of Jazz to Come – Ornette
    A Love Supreme – Coltrane
    Kind Of Blue – Miles
    Bitches Brew – Miles
    Out To Lunch – Eric Dolphy
    Land Of The Midnight Sun – Al DiMeola
    Portrait In Jazz – Bill Evans
    The Art of Tea -Michael Franks
    Desafinado – Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto
    Mountain Dance – Dave Grusin
    Maiden Voyage – Herbie Hancock
    Belonging – Jan Garbarek/Keith Jarrett
    Birds Of Fire – MO
    As Falls Wichita….- Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays
    Sky train – Barry Miles
    So Much Guitar – Wes Montgomery
    Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim
    Solstice – Ralph Towner
    Weather Report – Heavy Weather

  27. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, from the 1920s. The Old Testament Of Jazz, every home should have one, should be on the National Health : you name your cliché, it will still be true. I like this edition on the JSP label : four wonderful disks for not much money.

  30. Thanks Lard. That is well worth knowing about. I see that the Worders were succint and precise in their answer: it’s 12 hours long! That’s not a complaint!

    To their credit, Spotify do serve the jazz lover very well.

  31. We’ve rather skated over jazz vocals in this thread, and the boundaries can get pretty blurred. Just discovered this mob, the Real Group, presumably well known to our Swedish chums. Not suggesting it’s a candidate for BOF’s book, but the precision and control are awe-inspiring.

  32. Jazz vocals are a strangely divisive issue, Mike. My pal, DuCool, who is a serious jazzhead, has no interest at all in jazz singers. But for me, the likes of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Radka Toneff, Sinatra, Tony Bennett etc etc, are major jazz artists.

  35. I haven’t checked for repeats from earlier but here goes :

    Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
    Horace Silver – Song For My Father
    Kenny Burrell – Midnight Blue
    Jimmy Smith – Back At The Chicken Shack
    Duke Ellington – Ellington at Newport
    Count Basie – The Atomic Mr Basie
    Charles Lloyd – Forest Flower
    Sonny Rollins – Volume 1 (Blue Note)
    Errol Garner – Concert By The Sea
    Miles Davis – Filles de Kilmanjaro
    John Coltrane – Giant Steps
    Shelly Manne – My Fair Lady
    Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Ugetsu
    Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Rollins – Sonny Side Up
    Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie – Town Hall NYC, 1945
    Gerry Mulligan – Concert Jazz Band
    Stan Getz – Sweet Rain
    Benny Goodman – Carnegie Hall Concert
    Bill Evans – Waltz For Debby
    Clark Terry & Bob Brookmeyer – Complete Studio Recordings
    Don Ellis – Electric Bath
    Dexter Gordon – Doin’ Allright
    Charles Mingus – Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus
    Duke Ellington – Blanton Webster
    Oliver Nelson – Blues and The Abstract Truth
    Gil Evans – Out Of The Cool

    I think that’s 26 but it’s in 7/4 time.

  36. Thanks so much to everyone for their ideas. The list of 25 I’ve been thinking about is:

    Louis Armstrong – The Complete Hot 5 and Hot 7 Recordings
    Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
    Miles Davis – Birth Of The Cool
    Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Out
    John Coltrane – Blue Train
    John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
    Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
    Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz To Come
    Duke Ellington – Ellington At Newport
    Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Moanin’
    Cannonball Adderley – Somethin’ Else
    Dexter Gordon – Go!
    Thelonious Monk – Genius Of Modern Music, Volume 1
    Sarah Vaughan – Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown
    Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus
    Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto – Getz/Gilberto
    Erroll Garner – Concert By The Sea
    Ella Fitzgerald – Sings The Cole Porter Songbook
    Charlie Parker & MIles Davis – Bird & Miles
    Eric Dolphy – Out To Lunch
    Paul Desmond – Desmond Blue
    Art Tatum – Piano Starts Here
    Bill Evans Trio – The Village Vanguard Sessions
    Chet Baker – Baby Breeze
    Duke Ellington – Far East Suite

    I don’t think there’s too much of a challenge here for someone coming to jazz for the first time. It’s been interesting to see everyone’s views and that the bulk of this list seems to coincide with the views of others here. Like all lists, everyone will have their own view and that’s ok.

    This thread has been really helpful and informative and I’ve picked up a number of tips that I’m now exploring (E.S.T. really are wonderful). Thanks once again to everyone for contributing. Feel free to keep pitching in!

    • I think the list is probably subliminally saying to people that jazz lived between 1949-65, or something like that – with Louis’s Hot 5/7 its grandfather.

      • There’s also a huge gap between Louis and Miles – Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were pretty busy in the 1930s/1940s, for instance. But you have to start and stop somewhere. If BOF’s 25 limit is self-imposed he could always add a few. And he could add some ‘now try this’ lists to cover the missing decades.

        • Without doing the maths, I think the majority of all the suggestions kick around 1959-60 or a couple of years either side. but that’s fine. To me jazz now IS a historical form. Personally, I can’t be doing with any of this Snarky Skronky stuff or people adding hip-hop beats and crashing about and all the rest of it, and Seb Roachford and his wacky haircut. EST just about got away with adding the electronica, I suppose, but it annoyed me – they were at their best – and still fresh – as an acoustic trio (I saw them in concert three times, yes, even in Northern Ireland…). They didn’t need any of the crap added.

          Other people have said – honestly – that John McLaughlin in the early 70s was ‘the last great innovator’ in jazz, and I agree. His innovations concerned the musical language involved rather than cross-genre messing about for the sake of it. Everything supposedly new after Mahavishnu, to me, has just been messing about.

          • What you need, Colin, hell, what everybody* needs, is a decent brush with John Zorn. He works hard and covers am amazing amount of ground left and right of jazz. Some might even say he’s not, y’know, jazz at all. Too abstract/many-dimensional/clever by half.

            They’d be wrong. He knows the tradition and expands on it. Use your own ears and find out. I’ve seen him live 3 times, yes, even here in Wuppertal. It’s actually an honour to be alive at the same time as he is. Yep, that good.

            *Not probably recommendable for beginners.

            • Oh my goodness, Afterworders – I feel a list coming on.

              Yes, it’s the chart you’ve all been waiting for: the duco01 Top Ten Favourite John Zorn Albums. Hurrah!

              1. The Mysteries
              2. Testament of Solomon
              3. Transmigration of the Magus
              4. Bar Kokhba
              5. Alhambra Love Songs
              6. In Lambeth
              7. At the Gates of Paradise
              8. The Mockingbird
              9. Pellucidar
              10. O’o

              Eagle-eyed readers will note that all my selections come from the tame, polite, chamber music end of Zorn’s oeuvre. None of the wild-ass Electric Masada stuff. But that’s just the way I roll. Yer likes what yer likes.

              • But is John Jazz?
                According to Wiki, he plays classical, jazz, klezmer, surf, ambient, rock, improvised and metal music.

                That profile remind me of another musician that you and I have a lot of time for: Bill Frisell.

                Jazz, chamber, country, soundtracks.. He wriggles away from any straighforward categorisation.

                The music he created inspired by the work of rural photographer Mike Disfarmer

                and the archive footage of the Great Flood

                are stupendous.

                Is Bill Jazz? Does KFD care?

                • Let’s be frank here, KFD: journalistic bollocks shorthand suggests
                  classic = contains a few violins
                  surf = might involve a twangy guitar
                  metal = the guitar is distorted
                  rock = the guitar player wigs out
                  ambient = drifts on swathes of low-level synth
                  chamber = small ensemble with cello
                  etc. His remit IS wide-ranging.

                  Being Jewish, he does do a bit of Klezmer!

        • Really, Basker, you could easily make a case that a couple of years either side of 1959 contain all the jazz that a ‘beginner’ needs. If they like that, they will explore further themselves; if they don’t like that, they might as well just stop there.

    • Great list, though I still think “The Koln Concert” should be there – if you have to stay at 25 I would lose Bill Evans as he is well represented on “Kind of blue”. Indeed, in Ashley Khan’s book he shows how Evans was Miles’ guide in moving into the world of modal improvisation.

  37. Some of the obvious stuff will be there, but I’d say these vocal ones need to be there.

    Falling In Love Is Wonderful – Jimmy Scott. One of the greatest vocal albums ever made by anyone
    The Wham Of Sam – Sammy Davis Jnr. Overshadowed unfairly by Frank ‘n’ Dean, this album is a cracker.
    Lady In Satin – Billie Holliday. She needs to be there, she just does.

    I have a real thing for Charlie Mingus. Mingus Ah Um is a great intro to him, though The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is probably better.

    Probably mentioned but A Love Supreme by John Coltrane

  38. I know some jazz purists don’t like them, but beginners wouldn’t have any objections to compilations. There are plenty of great and very cheap best of Blue Note albums out there, The House That Trane Built is an excellent overview of Impulse Records (although the box set is not cheap, the single CD is). Paul Murphy Presents The Return Of Jazz Club stays true to the spirit of the 1980s Jazz Club volumes 1 and 2, LPs which got me into jazz.

    http://acerecords.co.uk/paul-murphy-presents-the-return-of-jazz-club-1

    The excellent Beginners Guide To Latin Jazz is mostly jazzers playing jazz with an Afro Cuban or Brazilian influence.

    If you are going further afield than the USA there are plenty of South African, Cuban and Ethiopian compilations worth considering.

  39. Many excellent suggestions above. I would recommend this handful :

    Miles Davis – Kind of Blue

    John Coltrane – Ballads

    John Coltrane – Blue Train

    Duke Ellington, Max Roach, Charles Mingus – Money Jungle

    Alice Coltrane – Journey in Satchidananda (she is unfairly presented as a jazz extremist – this is one of the grooviest, deepest records I have ever heard)

    Louis Armstrong – Best of the Hot 5s and 7s

    Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington (in fact, you could do worse than pick 25 LPs of people playing Duke Ellington songs)

    Ella Fitzgerald – The Cole Porter Songbook

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