A Non-Expert’s Guide to Jazz

Jazz can be daunting – it’s got a 100-year recording history, lots of subgenres, and something of an affected snootiness. So how can you break into the field? Here are 20 recordings to get you started, which tell an oversimplified history of jazz and its various styles.

 

The Complete Set – King Oliver

With origins in ragtime and black musical traditions, the earliest forms of jazz are called ‘Dixieland’, and the undisputed masters were Jelly Roll Morton and a young Louis Armstrong. Armstrong has a great compilation, The Complete Hot 5 and 7s, but it’s four discs long, and that’s daunting to a jazz newcomer. Instead try this more manageable two-disc compilation of Armstrong’s mentor and first bandleader, King Oliver – which still showcases that New Orleans sound just as it started moving north in the mid-1920s.

 

The Ultimate Collection – Billie Holiday

Holiday was the first genius of jazz vocals. Her strongest recording years were in the 1930s and 40s, which this collection showcases. Once LPs became popular in the 50s she recorded many studio albums, but her voice, by then, had lost much of its brilliance (for those who like her later work, though, Lady in Satin, from the late 1950s, is her most popular release). Holiday set the template for all the jazz vocalists who followed, and her recording of “Strange Fruit” has become a classic.

 

The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert – Benny Goodman

During the swing era LPS weren’t yet a thing, but someone recorded the epic performance anyway, and it was released as an album in 1950. Swing was the opposite of Carnegie Hall – dance music, and very non-classical. Goodman was one of the best, and is best-known for “Sing, Sing, Sing”, a 15-minute rendition of which graces this performance as a finale. During the 1930s swing music took the world by storm, and became one of the most popular cultural exports of America – bringing jazz to the world.

 

Charlie Parker With Strings – Charlie Parker

Bebop was the next big movement in jazz: played fast, and “hot”. The saxophonist Charlie Parker was the grand priest of this new movement, and a major figure in the world of the counterculture. This LP-length release from 1950 has the nimble Parker, near the end of his foreshortened life, backed by lush string arrangements. It’s an odd pairing, but a nice intro to the sometimes-challenging world of bop (for the more adventurous Parker fans there’s also the wonderful five-disc collection, A Studio Chronicle).

 

Afro – Dizzy Gillespie

Afro-Cuban jazz became a distinct and important subgenre in the 1950s. Dizzy Gillespie originally found success in bebop. This release, from 1954 and recorded with a mix of American and Cuban musicians, showed that jazz wasn’t done incorporating other global musical traditions – and never would be. Two classic tracks appear that later became standards – “Manteca Theme” and “A Night in Tunisia”, as well as a nice cover of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan”. Gillespie would go on to become a global musical icon.

 

Ella and Louis – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

By 1956 Armstrong was transitioning to jazz singer from jazz cornet player. Of course, the incomparable Fitzgerald had always been a vocalist, and so when the two got together and recorded this album in 1956, backed by Oscar Peterson, they are just here to have fun and breeze through a bunch of favorites and old standards (“April in Paris”, “Can’t We Be Friends”). They recorded an equally enjoyable follow-up (Ella and Louis Again), and Porgy and Bess – all three are available in a three-disc set if you can’t get enough.

 

The Complete After Midnight Sessions – Nat King Cole Trio

World War II broke up most of the big bands in the 1940s. So a new arrangement arrived – the small combo, which is what we usually think of when we picture jazz today: a few musicians on stage, no more than four or five. Nat King Cole is rightfully beloved as a jazz singer, but he deserves more credit as an innovator – especially in helping usher in the small combo in jazz, as heard on this classic recording from 1957. The Complete Sessions are still under an hour, featuring iconic tracks like “Route 66”.

 

Ellington at Newport – Duke Ellington

Not *all* of the big bands died out, though – the best of the best, Duke Ellington’s band, continued. Composing standards since the 1920s, by the late 50s Ellington was well past his prime. The Newport concert revitalized Ellington’s flagging career in a performance that drove the crowd into a frenzy: all captured on the recording. The two-disc release also includes the original release from the 50s – a bit of studio fakery designed to mimic the live performance, which was though lost until the 1990s.

 

Time Out – Dave Brubeck

In response to the prevalent “hot” style of bebop of the 40s and early 50s, there emerged a counter-movement, called cool jazz in the late 1950s. It spawned the first jazz LP to sell a million copies, the landmark of cool and the west coast scene – Time Out. “Take Five” became an iconic hit, but all of the tracks are unusual, as they are recorded in peculiar time signatures. 1959 was a landmark year in jazz, the same way 1967 would be for rock – so many great recordings came out in the same 12-month span.

 

Kind of Blue – Miles Davis

The best of the 1959 releases, Kind of Blue is widely hailed as the best jazz album ever. Trumpeter Davis was a master of a new style called modal jazz, a more complicated and sophisticated type of composition. The album has no false notes – it’s simply perfect, and backed by a jaw-dropping ensemble at the height of their powers (Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, John Coltrane…) with famously minimal preparation – “Flamenco Sketches”, the near ten-minute finale, was recorded in just one take. Awe-inspiring.

 

The Shape of Jazz to Come – Ornette Coleman

The final essential recording of 1959 set up a different genre of jazz – the much-maligned and misunderstood field of free jazz. Free jazz has its members improvise without limitations – untethered from melodies. This can be… challenging… to listen to. This landmark, though, backed by free jazz giants Charlie Haden and Don Cherry, is rather listener-friendly, and Coleman is a name worth getting acquainted with for a jazz novice – a titan of American jazz and Pulitzer Prize winner, to boot.

 

The Blues and the Abstract Truth – Oliver Nelson

Post-bop is a subgenre which has had incredible longevity in jazz, and this early favorite, from 1961, remains a hallmark of the field. Another fabulous ensemble of post-bop masters appears on this recording, notably Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy who each went on to their respective fame (and Bill Evans, again). The playful set even spawned a nice standard, the opener “Stolen Moments” which contrasts a quiet reflective moment to the more up-tempo offerings like the subsequent “Hoe-Down”.

 

A Love Supreme – John Coltrane

Someone had to be second place, and A Love Supreme is, by most regards, the best jazz release after Kind of Blue. Saxophonist Coltrane’s 1964 offering is a gorgeous four-part suite of jazz devotion. Here he created “sheets of sound” in a modal framework – this after he had revolutionized whole fields of music theory and composition, and been a staple of multiple previous genres, especially hard bop. If you need more after this, look into his Giant Steps from 1960 and Blue Train from 1958.

 

Swiss Movement – Les McCann and Eddie Harris

This 1969 live album, recorded at Montreux, was a harbinger of a minor subgenre called soul jazz – jazz inspired by the popularity of soul music. Incredibly the collaboration was improvised, and the two artists hadn’t worked together before. The release became a surprise hit – even reaching second place on the R&B charts, and spawned a popular single “Compared to What”, which opens the set. Neither Harris or McCann had a significant legacy on their own, but when put together they made something magical.

 

The Inner Mounting Flame – Mahavishnu Orchestra

By the late 1960s and early 70s a new subgenre had emerged: jazz fusion. This blended jazz with rock, which by then was eclipsing jazz in popularity, innovation, and influence. One of the best musicians of this movement was guitarist John McLaughlin, who formed the core of Mahavishnu, and put out Flame in 1971. Also note the early use of keyboards – that would become a staple of fusion as it became ever-more popular with releases like Heavy Weather by Weather Report a few years later.

 

Head Hunters – Herbie Hancock

In 1973 Hancock put out this foundational example of the jazz funk subgenre. It is, not surprisingly, a fusion of jazz with the emerging funk sound of the early 1970s – but the album itself is plenty surprising. The arrangements, the instruments, the long, practically Stevie Wonder-style jams: it all adds up to four fabulous tracks of jazz groovin’. For those who want a mellower, less-synth heavy Hancock, try 1965’s Maiden Voyage, which presents a spare vision of piano pieces influenced by the ocean.

 

The Koln Concert – Keith Jarrett

After years of being a key player in the fusion scene, in 1975 Jarrett walked away from all of the fuzz and rock and sat on a stage in Germany at 11:30 at night, with just a piano, recording one of the finest solo piano works ever captured – and the best-selling. Spare, light, and hauntingly beautiful, Jarrett teases out complex and captivating ideas in over an hour of totally improvised vamping and playful experimentation. The opera hall, filled to capacity, shows their enthusiasm after each new creation.

 

Blue Light ‘til Dawn – Cassandra Wilson

Skipping the 1980s (and the unpleasantness that is smooth jazz) we head into the 1990s, with this 1993 release from one of the better jazz vocalists of the past thirty years. As in the 1970s, jazz continues to find inspiration and blend with other genres – and this album has Wilson cover songs by blues master Robert Johnson, Van Morrison, and Joni Mitchell. It showcases the versatility of jazz vocals, as well as Wilson’s notable talent: she went on to win multiple Grammys and recorded a Pulitzer-prize-winning composition.

 

The Bandwagon – Jason Moran

The Village Vanguard is the Shangri-La of jazz venues, and many of the greatest live albums have been recorded there (Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Joe Lovano). This 2003 offering, by Moran, showcases how jazz has to keep evolving. Blending dubbing and sampling, Moran creates a unique sonic experience, as the band improvises over Turkish telephone calls, Chinese stock exchange chatter, and musical references on tracks as disparate as Brahms, Coleman Hawkins, and Afrika Bambaataa. Challenging, but exciting.

 

Promises – Pharaoh Sanders, Floating Points, and the London Symphony Orchestra

The blending of classical and jazz in the late 50s and 60s was called third stream – and there’s a lot of great recordings of it. The blending of classical, jazz, and ambient electronica, though – well, that doesn’t really have a name. Sanders is a giant of the jazz world, and his saxophone ties together this nine-movement suite, released in 2021, at the age of 80. It goes to show that while jazz is no longer the musical powerhouse it once was, it can still produce remarkable works, and maintain relevance, in the present day.

After these 20 albums, you can say 'yes'!