Great Jazz Albums To Get On Vinyl

These are the first batch of jazz records I wrote up for this site.

Most of the choices below belong on a list of the Greatest LP’s Ever, in any genre, and not just as jazz albums. If you are new to jazz or an old fan there should be much to love  — and debate — here. There will be many more jazz records to come, from a wider range of artists, and a deeper set of releases from some of the same artists. Do you really think you only need one Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk record in your life??? But if you are building up your record collection these are amongst the first records you should reach for.

Most of the selections won’t be shockers — the usual suspects are accounted for — Miles, Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Lady Day. But, I like melody and harmony and am not afraid of pretty music. I also have a fondness for the Cool 1950s, the alternately cerebral and earthy 1960s, and the funky 1970s. So, there is one acoustic Herbie Hancock “jazz is art” choice represented while one electric Herbie “jazz can be fun” selection makes the list. There are two Bill Evans masterpieces on here, an entire box set from Chet Baker, and I decided to write up Miles with Gil Evans before I went with Fusion Cocaine Miles (come back over time and some Fusion Miles will be on here).

But, there are also a couple of left field choices to keep things interesting. My initial Cal Tjader choices to write about are far from his greatest albums but I picked two of his sets that have never earned a compact disc reissue and are not on streaming services. This missing music is in itself a great reason to buy, and play, vinyl. Likewise, Sun Ra is bigger today than he was during his lifetime but I went with a mainstream Sun Ra record that was put out by Herb Alpert (!!!) on his A&M label. Sun Ra deserved to be lovingly recorded, and promoted, by a major label just like his peers and not just celebrated as a leftfield oddball.

Considering that both the introduction of the 12′ vinyl LP and jazz itself were stalwarts of the post WWII 20th Century that is when almost all of these records come from. I have one set from 2009 and it brilliantly updates 1950s and ’60s Miles Davis Cool for our current post-apocalyptic hell-scape with (lyrical) avant-garde explorations. There will be more 21st Century jazz coming and I often feature more recent jazz albums in my Put This On Vinyl section.

One of the joys of record collecting, and collecting jazz records in particular, is the brilliance, and feel, of the live-in-the-studio sound captured in the record grooves and the beauty of the sleeve designs. These are art objects worth having in your home even when they aren’t on your turntable.

Finally — want me to cover something I have missed so far? Send in a photo of the LP with your pet and I will review it. Find out more here.

Now, on to shear sonic brilliance…

Bobby Timmons, This Here Is Bobby Timmons

People can end up taking non-stop excellence for granted.

Kraftwerk wisely limited their release of content. If they flooded the market with music, like Tangerine Dream, their music probably would have started being considered commonplace and predictable instead of fresh and innovative.

If listening to non-stop excellence gets dull you can always find an underdog to champion. Not always attaining excellence can be papered over by underdog status.

Jazz, in general, is an underdog genre and you can’t get more underdog than Bobby Timmons, one of the founders of the Soul Jazz style who cut his first LP, This Here Is Bobby Timmons, in January of 1960.

Put This On Vinyl: Chet Baker, The Best Thing For You

There are so many Chet Baker vinyl reissues out there that you might question the necessity of more. You’d be wrong though because The Best Thing For You, which has never seen the light of day on vinyl, is a real peach.

CTI tried to relaunch a temporarily cleaned-up Chet Baker to 1970s audiences with limited success. In 1977, Don Sebesky arranged and produced You Can’t Go Home Again — it is basically a CTI session released on A&M. Full of ’70s jazz stars, the album updated Chet with some fusion, some disco beats, and (blessedly) the balladry of the orchestrated title cut, which is an aching duet with sax legend Paul Desmond.

Baker cut enough numbers at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio during the You Can’t Go Home Again sessions for another album but A&M didn’t see a financial upside to releasing them until after Baker’s death. The tunes collected on 1989’s The Best Thing For You are way more in Chet’s wheelhouse — a small jazz group plays classic standards.

Chet is backed by a fantastic band on this one. The rhythm section has Kenny Barron on keyboards, Tony Williams on drums, and the ubiquitous Ron Carter on bass. The other big news here is Paul Desmond showing up again as Baker’s solo foil. Desmond was near death from lung cancer and its amazing he could even muster the energy to pick up his alto yet the two play beautifully together. That isn’t the same as saying that Desmond was at full strength but if he sounds like he’s fighting to get through his solo during the medley of “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” and You’ve Changed” that is because he was.

The final track is an alternative take of Don Sebesky’s “El Morro,” one of those Flamenco/Classical goes modern jazz things that CTI excelled at. While the other five cuts on The Best Thing For You capture Chet in his comfort zone, “El Morro” shows how well Baker actually could handle himself in an adventurous modern jazz context — the tune, which could have been a train wreck,  is a total gas. The musicians here are different with guitarist John Scofield, flutist Hubert Laws, and Michael Brecker on tenor.

Classical and jazz buyers were early CD adopters so The Best Thing For You never got a vinyl release back in 1989. If anyone out there knows old A&M boss Herb Alpert how about asking him to use his juice to finally put this beauty out on LP where it belongs?

— Nick Dedina

Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster

Downbeat works of art just seem to get viewed as more profound than joyous ones. Place Joy Division’s Closer next to Parliament’s Mothership Connection in the pantheon of great albums, as just one example.

I was thinking about this recently while listening to Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster. This album opens with an extended song of unbridled beauty but, overall, the warm, feel good music on this LP comes off like hanging out with friends on a sunny Sunday morning. That sounds plenty great to me.

Chet Baker, The Complete Pacific Jazz Studio Recordings

I once read a Blind Fold Test interview with a jazz guitarist listening to various inspirations and peers. When they played him Wes Montgomery and George Benson the musician said that everything they played was like ice cream —  everybody loves ice cream — and just because ice cream is delicious doesn’t mean its not good. He added that some listeners want to be in a special club devoted to artists who others don’t “get” — he ended with a sentiment like, “Who the hell doesn’t love ice cream???”

That sums up Chet Baker’s musical style perfectly — everything he played was ice cream. His playing is easy to like — you understand it instantly, and, even people who don’t listen to much jazz at all still listen to Chet Baker (and lately I have seen him included on many lists of favorite artists of younger hip-hop and R&B acts).  Everybody loves ice cream and that universal appeal doesn’t make it bad.

A highly lyrical player, Chet, like the more technically accomplished Stan Getz and Bill Evans, made strong melodies even more beautiful when he played them and then crafted improvised solos that sounded like continuations of the melody. If this was easy to do everybody would do it. Lyricism is an ability. Baker himself was hurt that critics didn’t recognize his major strength — he felt he picked “the right notes to play.”

To this day Baker is often slagged off as an imitator of 1950s Miles Davis — only Miles kept evolving and Chet did not. But, Miles’ super strength was evolving and Baker was born with a gift for melody.  Interestingly, the pronounced Miles influence came a little later  with Chet. To hear the most original playing Chet Baker ever did you need to go back to the very beginning — at the dawn of the 1950s. First, check out his sides with Gerry Mulligan’s pianoless quartet. Then, jump right over to his first batch of recordings as a solo artist, four platters of which are captured on the vinyl box set The Complete Pacific Jazz Studio Recordings Of The Chet Baker Quartet With Russ Freeman.