Thanks to Jack, this nice list to guide your CD acquisition.

While finishing “Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector. First, I asked Schaap to assemble the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. Such attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but “who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of the current situation,” in which music is often bought and downloaded from dubious sources. Schaap bemoaned the loss of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes and booklets. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.”

What follows is a list compiled with the help of my New Yorker colleague Richard Brody. These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music’s century-long history. Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally. We have tried not to overdo it with expensive boxed sets and obscure imports; sometimes it couldn’t be helped. We have also tried to strike a balance between healthy samplings of the innovative giants (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane, etc.) and the greater range of talents and performances.

Since the nineteen-seventies, jazz has been branching out in so many directions that you would need to list at least another hundred recordings, by the likes of Steve Coleman, Stanley Jordan, Joe Lovano, Jacky Terrasson, John Zorn, David Murray, Avishai Cohen, Béla Fleck, Eliane Elias, Roy Hargrove, Dave Douglas, Matthew Shipp, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Fat Kid Wednesdays, and many, many others. There is a suggestion below of the dazzling scope of contemporary jazz, but the focus is on the classic jazz that is Schaap’s specialty.

This reminds me of an earlier effort, the three-part series “Jazz Masterpieces” by Terry Teachout, published in Commentary magazine in November and December 1999 and January 2000. The focus of that list was specific tracks, rather than albums, but I did indeed buy all the CDs, ripped them, and assembled the tracks into an album of my own. Those three articles are worth reading, but access is to subscribers or by purchase.

Enjoy.

Or so this post says. And I’m listening to one now. Pretty good.

I first became aware of the Modern Jazz Quartet late in high school. MJQ, as fans titled the group, was established in 1952 by Milt Jackson (vibes), John Lewis (piano, musical director), Percy Heath (bass), and Kenny Clarke (drums). Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1955. It was a great group and lasted for years. They disbanded in 1974, but reunited for some concerts in later years.

Here’s a John Lewis composition, “Django”:

And another: “Bags’ Groove” (Bags was Milt Jackson’s nickname).

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Thanks to Jack from the Netherlands for suggesting this:

For more like that, do a YouTube search on Olivier Lancelot. And here’s Stephanie Trick playing James P. Johnson’s Carolina Shout:

The Netherlands, of course, is the great biking nation—and Steve of Kafeneio has a good post about how he found a Dutch bicycle that’s made in the California. And why not? If there are the Pennsylvania Dutch, why not the California Dutch. (PS: I know that the Pennsylvania “Dutch” are in fact “Deutsch”—I’m in the process of reading Page Smith’s fascinating two-volume book A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution.)

Decided to do an errand, so walked to the Pacific Grove Library to return a book. Total time walking: exactly one hour. Not only was library closed (César Chávez Day), but they had also locked the drop-in box. So I carried the book back home. Not a bad walk, though: sunny, slightly cool, light breeze. I listened to Hank Jones.

Here he plays “Willow Weep for Me,” Carnegie Hall, 6 April 1994:

Chick Webb was born and raised in Baltimore, but moved to New York when he was 17. He is the father of swing drummers—Buddy Rich says that Webb was the “daddy of them all” and claimed Webb as a major influence.

His band did “band battles” at the Savoy ballroom, against such bands as the Benny Goodman Orchestra and the Count Basie Orchestra. In 1935 Chick Webb hired a teenage singer who showed considerable talent and promise: Ella Fitzgerald.

You can read a brief bio of Chick Webb, along with the lyrics of a song he wrote with Lester Young, “Stomping at the Savoy.”

The story of Webb and Fitzgerald:

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Anita O’Day was one of the great women jazz vocalists, singing with any number of bands and small groups: the Gene Krupa Band, the Woody Herman band, and Stan Kenton’s Jazz Orchestra. The Wikipedia article at the link is excellent.

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I really like Cal Tjader, who’s known mainly for Latin Jazz. He’s definitely worth listening to. He started out working with David Brubeck, whom he met in college (San Francisco State), who introduced him to Paul Desmond. Tjader primarily played the vibraphone, but also played drums, bongos, congas, timpani, and the piano.

“Soul Sauce” was one of his big hits.

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Chico Hamilton was born in 1921 and has an impressive reputation as a jazz drummer. Wikipedia notes his innovations:

Chico’s impact upon jazz includes the introduction of two unique and distinct sounds: first in 1955 with his Original Quintet which combined the sounds of his drums, the bass of Carson Smith, the guitar of Jim Hall, the cello of Fred Katz, and the flute of Buddy Collette; and the second in 1962 with his own drums, the bass of Albert Stinson, the guitar of Gabor Szabo, the tenor sax of Charles Lloyd, and the trombone of George Bohanon.

Here is the first quintet performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958:

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Duke Ellington, 1899-1974, is without a doubt among the greats of music, not simply of jazz. Probably the most prolific composer of the 20th century, he also kept his band going long after most jazz bands had folded because of the changing musical scene. He was also technically advanced—not just in music, but in recording technology. He studied and experimented and knew more about microphone placement than many sound engineers. (This is one reason his early recordings sound so much better in audio terms than those recorded by others.) He also was able to visualize (audialize?) unusual ways of matching musical timbres, the first version of Mood Indigo being a prime example. And he was a masterful pianist—try to score a CD of his solo tracks.

Your library will surely have a great selection of his music, and you owe it to yourself to listen to a lot of it, over and over. Following is just a sampling.

Satin Doll

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Very interesting:

A fantastic study has just been released by open-access science journal PLoS One that investigated the neuroscience of jazz improvisation.

Jazz musicians were put inside an fMRI brain scanner and were asked to do complete a number of different musical exercises using a specially adapted magnet-friendly keyboard.

The musicians were asked to demonstrate musical scales, a pre-practised fixed piece, and an improvisation exercise while their brains were scanned.

A summary of the study by the John Hopkins medical school team gives the main results:

The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests.

The researchers also saw increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which sits in the center of the brain’s frontal lobe. This area has been linked with self-expression and activities that convey individuality, such as telling a story about yourself.

Some years ago, psychiatrist Sean Spence suggested that Jazz music may have been born owing to the ‘the father of Jazz’, Buddy Bolden, having schizophrenia and suffering from associated frontal lobe impairments.

Spence argued that reduced frontal lobe function meant that Bolden could only improvise, as he didn’t have the cognitive control to stick to pre-learnt pieces.

At the time improvisation was considered a sign that you couldn’t play ‘proper music’ well enough, but Bolden took improvisation to a new level with wondrous flights of fancy and, as the legend goes, jazz was born. That’s not the whole story of course, but it’s possible an ingredient.

While these new findings don’t give us much of a lead on whether this might have been the genuine beginning of jazz music, it’s interesting that the idea that reduced frontal lobe function ‘frees up’ the over-inhibited playing of set pieces, is consistent.

As suggested by Jack in the Netherlands, today we feature Fapy Lafertin and Stochelo Rosenberg, two current practitioners of Gypsy jazz, aka Jazz manouche, which traces its lineage back to Django Reinhardt. The Son has CDs of Fapy and also of the Rosenberg Trio, so he’s familiar with this branch of jazz.

First is Fapy Lafertin and Tchavolo Schmitt jamming with Note Manouche:

And Fapy Lafertin and Tim Lkuphuis playing a fine old Hoagy Carmichael tune:

The Rosenberg Trio is well known, and here’s a fine example. And here’s Stochelo Rosenberg at home in his trailer:

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They’ve brought more of the collection on-line:

The British Museum has relaunched its website and made a large part of its collection available to view online.

Around 275,000 of the museum’s more than seven million treasures spanning two million years of history have already been uploaded to the new site, and the remaining items will follow over the coming months.

Matthew Cock, head of new media at the British Museum, told vnunet.com that the website was originally built in the mid-1990s and had evolved in a rather piecemeal fashion.

The museum decided to rebuild the site from the ground up to offer visitors a more complete experience of the world famous institution.

The initial batch consists of a large number of prints, drawings and other flat items, as well as information from the curatorial database used by the museum.

Additional images of 3D objects will be uploaded over the course of the next two years.

“The website is not merely a source of information about the museum, but a real insight into the collection and a natural extension of our core purpose,” said Mary Pitt, project manager of the internet services department at the British Museum.

The online shop has also been more tightly integrated into the site, and now offers ticketing and membership sales alongside a range of items for sale.

Vialtus Solutions, previously Pipex Business, helped the British Museum to bring the project to fruition.

The site runs on a six-server hosting platform, including two data servers, two web servers, one search engine server and one Internet Security and Acceleration server.

The new site also includes an educational section for kids, with online tours and explanations and an ‘ask the experts’ feature which enables kids to write in with questions.

The reference in the title is to Ira Gershwin’s lyrics to “A Foggy Day (in London Town)”:

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Ahmad Jamal, born 1930, is a great jazz pianist, putting out his first album in 1951. Great stuff. This first clip (from 1959) is “Darn That Dream,” a Jimmy van Heusen composition—and Jimmy van Heusen is a story in himself. (I recall reading a profile of Jimmy Van Heusen and his work with Frank Sinatra in a recent New Yorker (I think), but damned if I can find it.)

And here Ahmad Jamal Trio with Gary Burton:

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Jimmy Yancey was a great boogie pianist, but with a different sound—including ending every piece in E-flat. I was surprised to read that he and his wife recorded the first album ever made by Atlantic Records, though I did know that we have his music thanks largely to Ahmet Ertegun (a fellow alumnus, I believe). More info here, including photos. Amazon has quite a few CDs. In particular, I recommend the CD Atlantic Jazz Keyboards, which includes performances by a variety of musicians on the Atlantic label. The first track is Jimmy Yancey playing “How Long Blues“, which is my prime request should I have a memorial service or funeral thing: a really great piece.

Five O’Clock Blues:

And one more.

Thanks to Constant Reader for this next number.

Slim Gaillard (piano and guitar) and Slam Stewart (bass) and friends..

Barney Kessel was one of the great jazz guitarists. I saw him in concert (along with Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd) when I lived in Iowa City, a great pleasure. Wikipedia:

In the 1950s, he made a series of albums called “The Poll Winners” with Ray Brown on bass and Shelly Manne on drums. He was also responsible for the prominent guitar on Julie London’s definitive recording of “Cry Me a River“. Also from the 50s, his three “Kessell Plays Standards” volumns contain some of his most polished work.

Kessel was also a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown in the early 1950s. The guitar chair was called the hardest gig in show business since Peterson often liked to play at breakneck tempos. Herb Ellis took over from Kessel after a year or so.

And here he is with Herb Ellis:

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Bill Evans is one of the great jazz pianists, and I had the pleasure of seeing him in a (sold-out) concert at Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa (the same venue where I saw another great jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson—whom The Eldest greeted as he arrived late from the airport).

Evans struggled with a drug problem for many years, but still managed to produce some great music, most of which is still available on CD.  Here he is playing Victor Young’s classic “My Foolish Heart”:

“Waltz for Debby” is a musical portrait of Evans’s niece and one of his best-known tunes:

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