Imagine Swamp Thing, blind in dark glasses, with three horns strung round his neck, all of which he could play at once. Can You Feel the Love Tonight – The Lion King, 4. Its popularity was helped enormously by the cover: Coltrane in close-up, his eyes looking down, deep in thought, his right hand raised to his lips. A Shining example of late-period bebop, and one of the most successful records of Blue Note’s “blue” period.
It’s strange to think that Miles was recording this masterpieces at exactly the same time Elvis was recording “All Shook Up”, but then it’s also bizarre to think that the Bee Gees were recording “Staying Alive” at the same time as The Clash were completing their first album.
There is even a “Jazz For People Who Don’t Like Jazz” playlist on Spotify, even though there are more jazz playlists on Spotify than ever before.
Clark’s death, at 31, was down to both alcohol abuse and heroin dependency. If he was ugly, he was massively ugly.” Nevertheless, this is genius. On its release, Mingus was adamant that people think of this as a folk record (he was beginning to tour as the Charles Mingus New Folk Band), although as he had periodically spent time as a patient in New York’s Bellevue mental institution, people were used to such bizarre outbursts (it’s not a folk record). As the original liner notes suggest, the music is so natural, so innate it is as if Miles had been born of Andalusian gypsies. It also has one of the very best Blue Note album covers, and considering there have been books devoted to the subject, that’s praise.
Includes the massive hit single “Watermelon Man”.
The world’s greatest vocal group gets hip, while Bach never sounded so cool (sorry, Walter Carlos). Hancock’s career has mirrored Quincy Jones’, as he’s had success as a pianist arranger, composer, band leader, producer and solo artist (remember “Rockit”?). The jazz singer’s jazz singer. (On no account buy Alice Coltrane’s version of her husband’s classic; it will disturb the neighbours, give you a piercing headache and quite possibly damage your audio equipment.). Another timeless classic you would want on your wedding playlist. Musically, it’s where modal jazz really hit paydirt, and where linear improvisation came to the fore (Davis playing Samuel Beckett to John Coltrane’s James Joyce), and its tunes have been covered by everyone from Larry Carlton to Ronny Jordan.
Having kept jazz pretty much at arm’s length for the best part of my life, I found myself embracing it as an estranged father might embrace his long-lost kin. The greatest fusion album of all time, one of the best-selling jazz albums, and an alternative soundtrack to 1977.
Right.
Tired of what he felt was rigidity of bebop – Davis had trumpeted in the Charlie Parker Quintet – and unable to emulate Dizzy Gillespie’s quick-fire playing, the man in the green shirt, as he was soon to be labelled got together with arranger Gil Evans. If you’ve ever made lists of your favourite rock songs about California, your favourite punk singles, disco 12 inches, songs with the name of your girlfriend or wife in them; if you read High Fidelity and thought Nick Hornby’s lists were rather pedestrian (didn’t you think he’d be more eclectic?
Recorded with a classic line-up – pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Paul Chambers, trumpeter Lee Morgan, Trombonist Curtis Fuller and drummer Philly Joe Jones – the album consists of four very distinct pieces, each one representing a stage of spiritual development.
It still kicks, decades after it was meant to. Well, just listen to this.
This classic live recording, from 1678 Broadway, New York’s premier bebop club, starts with the voice of Pee Wee Marquette, Birdland’s diminutive MC: “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know we have something special down here at Birdland this evening… a recording for Blue Note records.” His words were famously sampled on Us3’s jazz-hop hit “Cantaloop”.
This is the complete legacy of Art Blakey’s first sextet, the one he formed after Horace Silver, Donald Byrd and Hank Mobley left to set up by themselves. Buy it; it’s one of the few albums all critics agree on (they like it). It was funky and rocky, and owed not a little to Sly Stone (“Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin” in particular), but essentially it was without boundaries, which made it all the more exciting. You're just asking for trouble when you try to come up with a listing of the "Best" of anything, but we polled SoulTrackers for two years for their choices of the greatest soul albums and songs of all time -- one decade at a time. Oh, and nine albums by Miles Davis.
“Mas Que Nada” is to pop bossa nova what “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was to grunge.
Who Knew?) Ellington’s first soundtrack (to Otto Preminger’s classic courtroom drama) is one of the best examples of “crime jazz”, the sort of melodramatic cloak and dagger, big band stuff heard in movies such as The Wild One, Sweet Smell Of Success and The Man With The Golden Arm.
The song vividly showcased Getz’s pure-toned tenor sax and the intimate, burry voice of Gilberto, though as recording progressed it became evident that Gilberto could only sing in Portuguese. Great for first dance songs. Is it Koop’s Waltz For Koop, a Swedish approximation of loungecore jazz, or is it Terry Callier’s Turn You To Love, which is almost deep soul but is released on Elektra’s “classic jazz” label. We have below some of the best slow dance songs ever for you to choose from for your wedding playlist. Strange, right? There we see curls of cigarette smoke climb towards a vaulted ceiling, and saxophones glinting like polished weapons. But I couldn’t. “I chose music and music chose me,” said the passionate and capricious Sao Luis-born singer, whose uncompromising records mix Afro-Latin and pop with jazz and funk. Why not take a load of jazz records you didn’t know instead?
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Weather reports were a jazz supergroup – Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius et al – who turned elaborately arranged songs into FM-friendly hits, “Birdland” included. The trumpeter had first flirted with rock the year before, on Filles De Kilimanjaro (his collaborator Gil Evans shaping the title tune from the chords of Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary”); this, though, was something quite different, a full-length “album” album, an electronic masterpiece that feels like the jazz buff’s answer to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks or Veedon Fleece.
Aerosmith will always be remembered for this song of romance perfection. Having left Miles Davis’ group because he couldn’t cope with the hostility at gigs (he was white, and played in a more subtle way than his colleagues,) Evans formed a trio and, having released two good albums, 1959’s Portrait In Jazz and 1961’s Explorations, spent one Sunday in June 1981 recording what would be his most fitting testament. One of these would be slow dance songs.
These days you can’t read a website or pick up a newspaper without being told that jazz has suddenly started to become popular among 18-25 year-olds. Who could sing like a dream.
Over half a century after the event it is difficult to recapture the shock that greeted the arrival of this record, but it just gave me a headache. “This much I know is trueThat God blessed the broken road”.
This is his legacy. Her first classic. The song can still fill dancefloors today, and has an enduring R&B groove that never dates. There are all kinds of music that you will need at different stages of your wedding. Released in 2014, this gem from James Blunt is just as beautiful as it was back then, right now.
Experts were eager to please; friends couldn’t stop suggesting things. “[His audience] enjoy being offered titles such as ‘Blue Rondo A LA Turk’,” wrote one, “because the implication is there that they understand blues, rondos and even Turks.” This CD contains “Take Five”, one of the most popular jazz records of all time, and deservedly so.
Like the later work of James Joyce, the films of Tarkovsky and “tax harmonisation”, the fact that some things will always lie just beyond the common understanding is something jazz enthusiasts must learn to live with.
Unforgettable – Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole, 2. This man is a guilty pleasure, albeit one enjoyed by many others on this list (and not just the dead ones).
Adolphe Sax may have invented the saxophone, but this man defined it. Welcome to the hydra-headed sax player. Some people’s innate hatred of jazz is simply the result of an unfortunate experience, but then anyone who’s witnessed Art Blakey performing a three-and-a-half hour drum solo is entitled to feel a little peeved (and I speak as someone who has seen one at close quarters).
We pulled out the popcorn as Mary detailed a dramatic episode with a friend turned lover on this hit. Highlights include Anita O’Day’s “Sweet Georgia Brown”, Gerry Mulligan’s “Catch As Catch Can”, Dinah Washington “All Of Me” and Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Monk”. He turned himself into a fashion plate as well as an icon, and his style became so closely associated with jazz that whenever cartoonists try and represent a jazz motif, they simply copy Diz. A timeless beauty that explains how love doesn’t need any words to be expressed.
Underappreciated at the time, this is now afforded classic status.
And what is jazz anyway? Generations continue to jam to this perfect mix of spiritual music with soul. Holiday pleaded with him to get her a “bag”. Parker had a terrible impulse towards self-destruction, and before his untimely death in 1955 (from a heroin overdose: he was 34, although the coroner thought he was 60), became quite adept at burning the candelabra at all ends.
Just in case you didn’t know, this won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for music, which is more than Kid A did.
Soon, jazz started to replace every other form of music in my life. So there I was, in the large HMV near Selfridges on London's Oxford Street, sometime in April 2003, around 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. And the music? As great as any first dance song will ever be.
This beautiful number by Adele would be a great last song to dance to. The title track is based on a Portuguese rhythm, a device Silver’s father had been encouraging him to try for some time (hence the title). I also developed an aversion to “soft jazz” and forswore the likes of Spyro Gyra, David Sanborn and the kind of soporific stuff you always seem to hear on Jazz FM.
This led to jazz with bigger spaces and lighter textures – cool jazz.