Greatest, Essential & Best Jazz Albums

Every year I figure I'll finally get into Jazz, and every year it ends with an anticlimactic fizzle. This year however, was a success. Here are a few sites recommending albums and songs that I found helpful. First 3 are album recommendations then after that are song recommendations. If you follow the links to the song recommendations you can actually hear all 100 recommended songs from Jazz24. Plus I've put my album recommendations after the links. I suppose I'll update this page from time to time as I listen through more of the albums.

Top Jazz Albums Lists

Matador's 25 Essential Jazz Albums

Daily Telegraph 100 Best Jazz Recordings

Amazon's 100 Best Jazz Albums

New Yorker's 100 Essential Jazz Albums

Penguin Guide to Jazz Core Collection

Jazz: A Critics Guide to the 100 most important Records (New Yorker)

100 Jazz Records that Shook the World

NPR's 50 Essential Records for Curious Jazz Listeners

Songs

Jazz 24s 100 Quintessential Jazz Songs

Top 100 Radio Jazz Song Essentials

Top 100 Radio Jazz Instrumental Essentials

My Recommendations

Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
The first Jazz album I bought and instantly accessible. The atmosphere is fantastic, latenight chilled out jazz, and the lineup for this albums is unbeatable. Miles Davis on trumpet, Coltrane on Sax, Bill Evan on Piano.

Duke Ellington Live at Newport
Upbeat atmosphere that will make you grin. Ellington was playing Newport at a time when his career was beginning to flag. After the first song people began to get up and leave so he called for one of his old standards. When the solo began one of the ladies couldn't contain herself any longer and jumped up to dance, Ellington responded and just kept the solo going, for a long time. The crowd called for four encores.

The Koln Concert - Keith Jarrett
Contemplative atmosphere, Solo piano improvisations but melodic as opposed to a lot of the dissonant avant garde jazz. The first track is increidible. Someone has said that he set the piano on fire with his playing. There are some truly beautiful moments in that first track, and the speed with which he plays at times defies belief.

Critics Recommendations (Chronological Album Timeline)

A Love Supreme (1964) - John Coltrane
Melded the hard bop sensibilities of his early career with the free jazz style he adopted later

Takin' Off (1962) - Herbie Hancock

The Great Summit/Reunion (1961) - Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington

Bill Evans Trio: Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961)

Bill Evans Trio: Waltz for Debby (1961)
this is actually a second CD of live material taken from the same session as the above Sunday at the Village Vanguard

Sketches of Spain (1960) - Miles Davis

The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) - Ornette Coleman
Free Jazz

Ah Um (1959) - Charles Mingus

Kind of Blue (1959) - Miles Davis
Modal Jazz

Moanin' (1958) - Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers

Somethin' Else (1958) - Cannonball Adderley
with miles davis & art blakey

Everybody Digs Bill Evans (1958) - Bill Evans

The Birth of the Cool (1957) - Miles Davis
Cool Jazz (post bebop)

Blue Train (1957) - John Coltrane
Hard Bop

Saxophone Colossus (1956) - Sonny Rollins

Ella & Louis (1956) - Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong

Concert by the Sea (1955) Erroll Garner
live trio performance

Live at the Cafe Bohemia (Vol I) (1956) Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - 
horace silver on piano
Live at the Cafe Bohemia (Vol II) (1956) Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - 
horace silver on piano

Bird & Diz (1950) - Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie 
Bebop
(Thelonious Monk on Piano)