Nice to see a jazz thread, after rock and classical, jazz is my favourite music, me and my wife probably have at least a couple of hundred jazz albums between us, mainly old vinyl, quite a lot of Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Art Tatum, Herbie Hancock, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz, Lee Morgan, that sort of stuff, safe classic jazz and nothing too weird or extreme, some contemporary/improvised/abstract jazz is just hideous, but when it’s good, jazz for me is better for the soul and for chilling out to at the end of a long day than any other genre in music.
We actually have tickets to see the Brecker Brothers Band at the famous Blue Note club in Greenwich Village in a couple of weeks, I really always loved Randy Brecker’s music, and it’s been an ambition of mine all summer to go along to Blue Note, so now I am in NYC I’m going to go there once in a while, though this city has literally 100’s of jazz clubs open 7 nights a week, been to a few of them with friends, live music for me has always been where it’s at.
Lists of favourites aren’t really something I like doing, as great music I forgot about always gets left off, so every list is essentially flawed, but here are a few classic jazz records that have been very important to me over the years...I think ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis remains the benchmark album by which all other jazz artists have to be judged, which maybe a predictable thing for me to say as it’s pretty widely regarded as maybe the best jazz album ever made on many critics/fans lists, but IMO it happens to be true....since you only asked for 10, I’ll try to keep it to around that number...
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
Stan Getz – Sweet Rain
John Coltraine - Blue Train
John Coltrane/Thelonious Monk – Live at Carnegie Hall
Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Out
Charlie Parker – Complete Savoy and Dial Master Takes
Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder
Thelonious Monk – Live at the It Club
Art Blakey – Mosaic
Bill Evans – Sunday at the Village
Dizzie Gillespie – Afro
Erroll Garner – Concert by the Sea
Keith Jarrett – The Koln Concert
Miles Davis – Bitches Brew