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13 May 2008

The New Yorker’s 100 essential jazz albums

David Remnick of the New Yorker offers this list of 100 essential jazz albums. Note that many of them are not albums but mammoth multi-disc retrospectives covering vast spans of time. It would be interesting to see what a list like this would look like if you decided to only include actual albums of original material: i.e., all things like “Dexter Gordon, Our Man in Paris (Blue Note, 1963)” and no “Django Reinhardt, The Classic Early Recordings in Chronological Order (JSP, 2000; tracks recorded 1934-39)”. Is there a case to be made for a jazz album qua album? Probably a better one than can be made for rock records.

—Rob Horning

11:14 am | Permalink | Comments (3)

Not a bad list, but its way too hard to pick 100 essential jazz records. Everyones would be completely different.

Comment by john Bohannon — May 13, 2008 @ 1:54 pm

While I agree with the complaint about compilations, I say this in the New Yorker‘s defence:

a) The history of jazz extends well before the era in which the LP became the primary vehicle for releasing music. For example, most of the music on that Django Reinhardt comp. was probably released originally on singles and EPs.

b) Jazz is an essentially live form of music, being based on improvisation. So while there are certainly essential recordings, it can sometimes be hard to find an essential album by an essential performer.

Comment by bill pernell from Apopka, FL — May 13, 2008 @ 7:25 pm

Any list is going to be incomplete by just about any reader’s standard but this one is outrageously incomplete for a lack of Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
:P to you New Yorker

Comment by Linton from Samcheok, South Korea — May 14, 2008 @ 8:26 am

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