The Best Live Jazz Albums: #2 – #1

2) Sonny Rollins – A Night at the Village Vanguard

Recorded in November, 1957 at the Village Vanguard, New York City, NY

“Good afternoon everybody. Boys and girls, this is Uncle Don.”

-Sonny Rollins on A Night at The Village Vanguard,  introducing himself to the audience in a sardonic reference to the children’s radio show ‘Uncle Don’

A few months ago, I was reading an article by Joe Posnanski on the subject of band names (Joe usually writes about sports, but he is a compelling writer on any subject), and his article concluded that Metallica was the best band name of all time, because the name represented their sound perfectly. He reasoned that if an unfamiliar listener imagined what a band called “Metallica” might sound like, well, it would sound like Metallica.

By Joe’s definition, the majestic tenor player Sonny Rollins has a great nickname. He is known as the Saxophone Colossus, and in that moniker you can visualize everything about him: his sound, his prescence, the way he holds his instrument. On record, he is rarely less than his name suggests, and on A Night at the Village Vanguard, he is somehow more, a giant of the burnished horn.

Rollins is an interesting figure. Many critics argue that he is the most compelling individual soloist in jazz history, and I concur that he seems to have more to say with every solo than anyone else. He is a major horn stylist, possessed of the prototypical tenor sound and a flawless technique. Yet his approach is resoundingly self-critical, and his relentless desire for improvement has resulted in more than one hiatus from the music (the figure of the jazzman on the bridge, blowing his horn into the wind – that’s him). Rollins is maybe the most eminent living jazz musician, one of the few innovators in the music to reach his biblical lifespan. As a player, he has not changed his technique much in fifty years, yet he has played in many different settings and styles, and his vast reservoir of musical knowledge allows him to, in critic Stanley Crouch’s words, “summon the entire history of jazz” in his solos.

Rollins’ abilities as a live performer, and his commitment to his audience, are legendary.  In 1986, he broke his foot by jumping off stage during a concert, and played the next tune, “Autumn Leaves”, from a supine position before seeking medical attention.

A Night at the Village Vanguard captures Rollins at his very best (at anyone’s best, really), “strolling” through two sets with bass and drums (on the first set, bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete La Roca; on the next, Wilbur Ware and the hyperactive Elvin Jones). By eliminating the keyboard, Rollins essentially has the floor to himself for two hours, and what follows is the most powerful live jazz performance ever captured on record. His playing is tremendously muscular, his line of attack so well-developed and full of ideas that one wonders how he could possibly sustain it as long as he does.

Standards like “I’ve Got You Under my Skin”, “Old Devil Moon”, and “What is This Thing Called Love”, which should yield few surprises, are flattened by Rollins’ intense improvisations that, for their unpredictability, stay remarkably close to the original melodies. If it is relatively easy to dismantle a tune from the “outside”, as players of free jazz often do, it is much harder to do it from the “inside”, the way Sonny does it. Not since Bird invented it has bop sounded so new and full of possibilities.

The Saxophone Colossus sounds like this.

—–

1)  Bill Evans – The Complete Live at the Village Vanguard, 1961

Recorded on June 25^th, 1961 at the Village Vanguard, New York City, NY

Well, here we are, at the end of the road. Bill Evans’ The Complete Live at the Village Vanguard is the greatest live jazz album of all time. This survey has taken me two months to complete, and while I debated the ranked positions of many of these records for much of that time, this one was always at the top of my list.

This three-disc set contains the afternoon and evening sets performed by the Bill Evans Trio (Bill Evans, piano; Scott LaFaro, bass; Paul Motian, drums) at the Village Vanguard on June 25^th, 1961. The trio play a few Gershwin standards, but focus largely on a lovely set of original ballads and mid-tempo pieces. There is nothing more striking in the entire jazz repertoire than “My Foolish Heart” or “Waltz for Debby”, as played here.

Evans plays in a classical-impressionist style, bringing a delicate lyricism and a blushing beauty to these pieces that is incomparable. Motian is a sensitive accompanist, shading his playing with fine brushwork on the snare and cymbals, snapping his brushes to provide a soft backbeat during the ensemble passages. LaFaro plays an ancient (circa 1825) bass instrument with a warm, deeply resonant tone, his counter-melodic runs balancing the light piano work with handsome swallows of sound. The group interplay is perfect – perfect.

Bill Evans would never lead a better group. Ten days after this performance, Scott LaFaro was killed in a car accident. Instead of moving on, Evans simply stopped recording for two years, and succumbed to a deep depression that would stay with him, more or less, until the end of his life. When he re-surfaced in 1963 with a new bassist, Scott Gomez, there was something missing in his playing that would never be regained.

When I first heard this music without understanding its context, I imagined that the Vanguard must be a place that overlooks a trellised garden, with the band playing to an audience seated in the shadows of a late afternoon sun. That was what the music evoked for me.

Little did I know that the Vanguard is a cramped basement club, with scarlet-colored walls lined with pictures of many of the musicians who have played there. Bill Evans’ picture is there. Piano players sometimes touch his image for luck before taking the stage, as if he was a patron saint. For his extraordinary body of work, he isn’t far off.

So long.

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: #5 – #3

5) Benny Goodman – At Carnegie Hall – 1938 (Complete)

Recorded in June, 1938 at Carnegie Hall, New York City, NY

On the night of January 16^th, 1938, clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman walked onto the stage at Carnegie Hall, promptly bowed to the audience, and with his band, proceeded to change jazz history forever.

Carnegie Hall, then as now, was one of the most important performance venues in the world for “serious” classical musicians, and as a burgeoning popular music, jazz had never been featured there before. Jazz didn’t need Carnegie Hall to be a great art form, but it did need Carnegie Hall to achieve symbolic acceptance by mainstream, white audiences. Up to that time, the performance of American’s indigenous music had been relegated to black nightclubs, barrooms, and dance halls. After Benny Goodman’s landmark concert, swing music would come to be embraced by an entire generation of listeners, white as well as black.

Benny Goodman, the classically-trained “King of Swing”, was the ideal ambassador to introduce jazz to a wider audience, not only because of his respectability and his popularity as a radio star, but also because of his authenticity as a performer. Coming out of Chicago, Goodman was the first white bandleader to integrate his band by performing with musicians like Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, and Charlie Christian, and by working from charts by black bandleaders like Fletcher Henderson. He also possessed a blistering “hot” tone on the clarinet that differentiated him from the “sweet”, colorless technique of other white instrumentalists of the day. At Carnegie Hall, Benny and his band brought this “authentic” sound to expectant white audiences – many of them teenagers- and blew them away.

The concert starts with three tracks by Goodman and his Big Band. The opener, “Don’t Be That Way”, establishes an exciting tempo immediately, with Benny’s pealing clarinet and Gene Krupa’s bombastic kit work getting the audience stirred up (listen to them roar after Krupa’s brief solo). The third track, Count Basie’s classic, “One O’clock Jump” is a remarkable piece, purely evocative of a rollicking Kansas City barroom. Goodman then brings in various ensembles to play a “Twenty Years of Jazz” retrospective, followed by another big band track, “Life Goes to a Party”.

The real excitement begins with a sixteen-minute jam on “Honeysuckle Rose” featuring Count Basie and his legendary horn men (Lester Young on tenor saxophone, Johnny Hodges on alto, and Harry Carney on baritone), where the hot solos seem to go on forever. After the jam, Goodman pares the band down to a trio/quartet format for four tracks, before calling the big band back to the stage for tracks with singer Martha Tilton. After Tilton’s charming “Loch Lomond”, the audience clamors for an encore, and Goodman, in a rare announcement, sheepishly tells the audience that they have no encore prepared.

After the small group assembles for a few final tracks, the big band reappears a final time for the concert’s climax: a legendary, twelve minute rendition of Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing”, one of the defining performances of the swing era, and one of the most well-known songs in the history of popular music.

There are few experiences like listening to this concert for the first time; seventy-five years old and shrouded in a layer of surface noise, the glorious music from this concert – maybe the greatest jazz concert performance of all time – still shines brightly.

4) Duke Ellington – The Complete Ellington at Newport 1956

Recorded in July, 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival, Newport, Rhode Island

The Duke began the LP era lost in a bit of a wilderness. The popularity of big band music was in decline, and despite a hectic schedule of touring and recording, the greatest of all American composers and bandleaders was struggling. He had lost his two most important collaborators, writing partner Billy Strayhorn and star soloist Johnny Hodges, who had each elected to pursue solo projects. He no longer enjoyed an affiliation with a major record label, and his band was struggling financially (during this time, he accepted engagements to play at skating rinks and high school dances just to remain solvent). Ellington was also 57 years old in 1956, and despite his prolific output, many observers wondered if he had reached the end of the road as a popular entertainer. Little did they know that the Duke’s best work was yet to come.

When Ellington accepted an invitation to play at George Wein’s 3^rd annual Newport Jazz Festival, expectations were modest. Although Duke had composed a three-part “Newport Festival Suite” designed to be the highlight of the 3^rd evening of the festival, he was hardly the festival’s biggest draw; more popular artists like Dave Brubeck (who had recently been honored on the cover of Time Magazine), Miles Davis, The Jazz Messengers, The Modern Jazz Quartet, and Louis Armstrong had all preceded the Ellington band on Newport stages, and poor weather conditions had dampened the crowd’s enthusiasm by the time Duke and his men were ready to take the stage.

To make matters worse, four members of Duke’s band could not be found in time for their opening timeslot, so the band played three numbers – a stately “Star Spangled Banner”, “Black and Tan Fantasy”, and “Tea for Two” before ceding the stage to other performers. Only when the band reassembled at the end of the 3^rd night did the weather clear, and Ellington’s fortunes begin to change.

Joined by a formidable lineup that included Johnny Hodges, who had come back into the fold earlier in the year, trumpeters Clark Terry and Cat Anderson, and tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Duke Ellington took the stage two hours later and began the second programme with Strayhorn’s rousing “Take the ‘A’ Train”, then launched into his lovely “Festival Suite”. However, audience reaction was unenthusiastic. Duke then called for a Harry Carney feature, the tantalizing “Sophisticated Lady” and a vocal number, “Day In, Day Out”. What happened next would make jazz history.

With curfew approaching, and the audience reacting politely if coolly to Ellington’s program, Duke announced that he was going to “play some of (his) 1938 vintage”, and called for a two-part number, “Dimuendo and Crescendo in Blue:. The band kicked off ‘Dimuendo’ at a fast tempo, pulling the festival crowd to the edge of their seats. When Paul Gonsalves -“Mex” to his bandmates – stepped forward to solo between the two compositions, pandemonium ensued. Gonsalves played a miraculous 27-chorus solo that was compelling enough to draw the audience into the aisles; a beautiful, platinum-blonde woman in a black evening dress began dancing to the delight of the crowd, and the audience patter turned into a full roar by the conclusion of Gonsalves’ six minute solo. When Gonsalves finished, he could barely breathe, and nearly collapsed; Duke took a two chorus solo of his own, and ended ‘Crescendo” with a wild, high-pitched solo by Cat Anderson. The audience didn’t sit down for the rest of the night.

On record, one can hear the audience absolutely howling for the band to continue past midnight curfew. Ellington proceeds to introduce Johnny Hodges for two exciting features, “I Got it Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” and “Jeep’s Blues”, and the audience reaction is so enthusiastic that George Wein prompts him to take the microphone to calm the previously apathetic crowd, on a track actually called “Riot Prevention”. When Duke attempts to end the programme after one encore, the audience reaction is overwhelming; they sound as if they are set to storm the bandstand. Instead, Duke plays two more numbers, as Wein apparently begged him from the side of the bandstand to end the show. Finally, over the plaintive notes of “Mood Indigo”, Duke says, “You’re very beautiful, very sweet, and we do love you madly!”, eliciting a sustained response as the crowd understands the prolonged encore is finally at an end.

It was a career-defining event. The next day, the whole country was talking about Ellington’s remarkable performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Columbia Records immediately signed him to a new recording contract, and released a recording of the concert, “Ellington at Newport”, which became the best selling record of Duke’s career. Time Magazine put him on their cover. He reunited with Billy Strayhorn, and for the next fifteen years until his death, was an internationally recognized star. The concert would define the career of Paul Gonsalves, too;  forever after, he would be introduced to audiences as “The Star of Newport”.

One final note: Gonsalves played his remarkable 27-chorus solo into the wrong microphone at the time of the concert. As a result, the original “Ellington at Newport” record, though exciting, featured performances that were alternately over-dubbed or barely audible. In 1999, Voice of America located a recording in their archives from the microphone Gonsalves was mistakenly playing into. “The Complete Ellington at Newport” combines this recording stereoscopically with the old record to produce a complete version of the original concert, as played live, with ten missing tracks. Listening to it, one’s heart races…

3) Miles Davis – The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965

Recorded in December, 1965 at the Plugged Nickel, Chicago, Illinois

You had to wonder when Miles was going to make his appearance on this survey, and here he is, with an eight-disk set that documents two historic nights with his second great quintet at the Plugged Nickel. These recordings capture Miles immediately before his transition to electric/fusion music, and in fact these recordings can be seen as an essay on the theoretical ending point of bebop. Miles and his quintet seemed to strive towards an event horizon as they worked through the late 1960’s, and it is clear that they did reach a point of no return with the jazz presented on these recordings, a point from which chord-based improvisational music could not emerge intact. In moving forward – radically forward – Miles looked backwards too, working almost exclusively with standards from his mid-50’s period on these discs. He takes repertory material like “My Funny Valentine”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Stella by Starlight”, and “Walkin’”, and completely reworks it into extended performances in which harmony, melody, and the nature of musical communication itself is fundamentally changed.

Drummer Tony Williams, whose technique of metric modulation contracts and expands the listener’s perception of time in these performances, famously recounted that he and his bandmates had agreed, en route to the venue, to challenge the audience by playing “anti-jazz, anything we wanted”, but this anecdote, while illuminating, threatens to make a nonsense of what was actually taking place. The quintet (Davis, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and the rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Williams) had been building towards free music with successive all-original albums, and for these performances they elected to revisit Miles’ old songbook to emphasize the transformative qualities of their approach. On Live at the Plugged Nickel, the structures of these compositions are stretched to the point of disintegration, as the band draws out ever more exotic improvisations from familiar themes. The quintet’s inventiveness on a tune like “Milestones” is particularly impressive, with Miles extending the melody beyond its familiar range, yielding new sound possibilities. If, as Jackie McLean once said, free jazz is like “a great, big room” (see my earlier post, Jazz Impressions), then the music on these recordings is the spiral staircase between the levels of orthodoxy and freedom.

The individual performances on these discs are sublime. There is a mercurial quality to Davis’ improvisations here; in places, he sounds wounded, his statements comprised of slurs, cries, and sputtered phrases. At other times, he sounds dark and magisterial, his explorative voicings striking out of the dark background of Carter’s bass notes, and the ting-ting-a-ting-a-ting of William’s off-centered pacing. Shorter sounds authoritative too, his complex, yawing solos possessing all of the elusive and introspective qualities of his best work. He has a striking tenor sound, and it is a continual delight to hear him bend and strain his notes against Hancock’s adorning piano work.

Live at the Plugged Nickel represents a communion between creative artists at the peak of the form. To hear bop at its breaking point is to experience grace under pressure, one of the finest distillations of advanced improvised music on record.

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: #10 – #6

10) Louis Armstrong – Satchmo at Symphony Hall, 65^th Anniversary: The Complete Performance

Recorded in November, 1947 at Boston Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

In 1947, Louis Armstrong had just concluded an uneven 12-year big band recording relationship with Decca, a time in which his technique as a trumpeter and vocalist had fully matured, while his popularity had been surpassed by other Swing leaders. In 1947, his starring role in the film New Orleans reestablished his stature as the most significant individual soloist of his generation, and he formed a new mid-sized group, The All-Stars, that would stay intact, with changing membership, for the next two decades.

Louis Armstrong and His All Stars premiered at New York’s Town Hall with a famous concert in May, 1947. Six months later, he was at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where he recorded with arguably his best ever lineup: trombonist Jack Teagarden, clarinetist Barney Bigard, pianist Dick Cary, bassist Arvell Shaw,  drummer Sid Catlett , and singer Velma Middleton. This two-disc reissue of the concert includes the complete early and late sets, including introductions by Armstrong, all captured in striking high fidelity.

Louis and his All Stars play beautifully, opening each set with his theme, “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South”, and closing with the mournful, “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues”.  For maybe the first time in Armstrong’s recording history, he is playing with musicians whose talents are complementary to his special brilliance, and as a result, his performance is inspired. “Stars Fell on Alabama”, a swooning “Body and Soul”, “On The Sunny Side of the Street”, and the poweful “Black and Blue” are among the most sublime articles in the entire Armstrong catalog.

9) The Art Blakey Quintet  – A Night at Birdland, Volumes 1 & 2

Recorded in February, 1954 at Birdland, New York City, NY

“Ladies and Gentlemen, as you know, we have something special down here at Birdland this evening…”

So begins Pee Wee Marquette’s announcement to introduce this legendary live set. Revisiting this album prior to review, I had to put my laptop away and simply lose myself in this joyous music. In a survey filled with superlatives, I can only relay the greatness of this album by discussing its significance to me as a listener.

A Night at Birdland, Volume 1 was one of the first jazz albums I ever purchased, after ( I think) Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, and John Coltrane’s Blue Train. From the start, my imperative was to build a representative jazz collection by starting with hard bop records, and then expanding my interests forwards and backwards, to the equally unapproachable worlds of avant garde music and pre-war jazz. While I was attracted by the cool modality and classicism in the Miles albums, and by the dynamism in Trane’s early masterpiece, it was not until I heard A Night at Birdland that I was awakened to the true power of improvised music.

From the opening announcements to the closing “Lou’s Blues”, Blakey’s Quintet (not yet called the Jazz Messengers) plays masterfully. Horace Silver, the most gifted of Hard Bop composers/pianists, contributes several pieces; his strident technique stands up well against Blakey’s thunderous kit work. “The new trumpet sensation” Clifford Brown and altoist Lou Donaldson form a thrilling front line, Donaldson sounding very Bird-like (appropriate, given the setting), while Brownie earns his wings, solo after brilliant solo. The trumpeter’s graceful double-time passage on “Once in a While” – a tune which is reminiscent of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” – is remarkable, one of his finest moments on record. The other high points are a definitive interpretation of “Night in Tunisia”, where Blakey introduces the tune by telling the audience that he was present when Dizzy Gillespie composed the theme on the bottom of a garbage can – seriously! – and tremendously exciting versions of “Split Kick” and Horace Silver’s “Quicksilver”.

I could go on, but the music speaks for itself, as it spoke to me. Still one of my all-time favorite records.

8) The Charlie Parker Quintet – Jazz at Massey Hall

Recorded in May, 1953 at Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada

From Birdland to Bird. Perhaps the most famous concert in jazz history has a fascinating backstory:

In 1953, Canadian promoters signed five of bebop’s biggest stars – altoist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell, bassist Charles Mingus, and drummer Max Roach – to perform at Massey Hall. The five men had never played together before, and would never do so again. The Massey Hall Concert would also represent the now-estranged Parker and Gillespie’s last meeting on record.

Two members of the Quintet almost didn’t make it: the troubled Bud Powell had been released from a mental hospital a few months before the concert date, and allegedly was so sick or inebriated that he had to be escorted to and from the piano at Massey Hall. The heroin-addicted Charlie Parker missed his flight to Toronto earlier in the day, and his whereabouts were unknown until he appeared as the band was ready to take the stage, a plastic alto saxophone in his hand (legend has it he borrowed the plastic horn on short notice, because he had pawned his brass horn for drug money). On the recordings, he can be heard introducing “Night in Tunisia” to the Anglophone audience in French, his thought process uncertain.

The Quintet performed a set of bop standards, because they had not rehearsed prior to the concert, and had failed to establish a setlist prior to the performance. Some tracks were recorded without Parker and Gillespie for some reason; an encore was also played without Bud Powell. They played to a half-full house at Massey Hall because the concert had inadvertedly been scheduled the same night as a Rocky Marciano – Jersey Joe Walcott heavyweight championship boxing match. After the concert, the group members, and most of the audience, headed to a bar across the street to watch the fight. Because of the poor turnout, the promoters were unable to pay the musicians for their work, a transgression that would greatly embarrass the Canadian jazz establishment (Gillespie recalled that when he attempted to cash his check, it “bounced like a rubber ball”).

The concert was recorded by Charles Mingus’ Debut Records, but the recording failed to capture Mingus’ bass or Max Roach’s drum work, so their parts had to be overdubbed in the studio prior to the release of the concert recording. Debut originally released five tracks from the concert, but different versions of the concert recording are available, including versions with and without the overdubbing, and versions that include additional material with and without the hornmen.

For all of the myths that have accrued around the Massey Hall concert, the extant recordings (in any form) make for a wonderful listening experience. If Parker and Powell barely made it to the session, their performances on record are exemplary. If the material was played by rote, it nonetheless represents an excellent distillation of the bebop repertory. This is an essential live recording, and a captivating performances that rises above its controversies.

7) John Coltrane – The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings

Recorded in November, 1961 at the Village Vanguard, New York City, NY

“I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he’d be broke, I’d bring out a different song and immediately he’d receive all the money he needed.”

-John Coltrane

Many listeners to Coltrane’s music attribute a religious or spiritual significance to his work – and to the man himself – that is hard to explain. Listening to this remarkable set of recordings- about 4 hours of music in total- a set of descriptors comes to mind that may be difficult for the reader to assimilate. The music has qualities that I can only describe as otherwordly, righteous, and yes, holy. Trane certainly understood that there were spiritual aspects to his work, and genuinely believed in his horn as a voice that could communicate ideas that transcended spoken language.

Analyzing these qualities in Coltrane’s music takes us down an impossible path, one that, for me, is also almost too personal to write about. Focusing on the music, then…

The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings mark an important transitional point for Coltrane, between the scalar innovations of his Atlantic records, and the harmonic expressiveness of the work that would have its apotheosis in the landmark album A Love Supreme. Here, he assembles his Great Quartet (Tyner, Garrison, Jones) for the first time, adding Eric Dolphy, oboist Garvin Bushell, and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Dolphy is an important collaborator, his dark bass clarinet sound lending the material a polytonal richness and depth that contrasts with Trane’s relentless, hard-edged improvisational drive.

Coltrane deliberately chose to exclude recently recorded studio material from this programme. If the audience anticipated “My Favorite Things” and “Giant Steps”, what they got instead were multiple readings of the explosive new blues, “Chasin’ the Trane”, the Eastern-sounding new compositions “India” , “Brasilia”, and “Spiritual”, the olde English standard “Greensleeves”, and his striking ballad, “Naima”. Trane’s soloing is remarkably developed and resilient on these sides, his extended improvisations filled with overblown phrases, throttled shouts, massive outpourings and intricate clusters of notes. Some of his solos go on for up to ten minutes at a time, evidence of his legendary endurance. The rhythm section provides a lush harmonic background, Jones’ polyrhythms and Tyner’s bright piano vamps working beautifully against the horns. Trane and his group do not speak to the audience, who listen with what I would imagine is silent reverence. Improvised sacred music.

6) Keith Jarrett – The Koln Concert

Recorded in January, 1975 at the Cologne Opera House in Cologne, Germany

How to describe Keith Jarrett’s solo piano masterpiece? I don’t really have the words.

The Penguin Jazz Guide calls The Koln Concert “an epoch in modern jazz”, but it is the feedback from purchasers on Amazon.com that I find most compelling.

One reviewer says, “I have loved this album ever since my father used to put it on the turntable to help my brother and I fall asleep at night.” Another calls it “music from nowhere”, noting that Jarrett’s melodies surface from the abstract world of his imagination, and disappear just as swiftly. A third reviewer says, “I can’t imagine ever tiring of it, and those who have heard it will know what I mean”. Others lament that they can’t recapture the experience of hearing it again for the first time. Collectively, the reviews speak to the intensity with which The Koln Concert, the best-selling piano album of all time, is beloved by its many fans.

Jarrett produced this album – 70 minutes of improved music – under very difficult circumstances. The opera house staff provided a battered piano for the performance that had poor sound in the upper and lower registers, requiring Jarrett to work largely in the middle register. The pianist arrived to the concert hall suffering from insomnia and wearing a supportive brace for a bad back, and the concert didn’t start until 11:30pm, as the venue had an earlier Opera performance scheduled. The resultant recording captures Jarrett fighting his instrument and struggling with his physical limitations, yet somehow producing an extraordinarily beautiful record that is still mesmerizing listeners decades after it was recorded.

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: #15 – #11

15) Shelly Manne – At the Black Hawk, Volumes 1 – 5
Recorded in September, 1959 at the Black Hawk Jazz Club, San Francisco, CA

As we continue our survey of the best jazz albums ever made, I should note, with some regret, that drummer Shelly Manne’s At the Black Hawk is one of only two Cool Jazz albums to make this list (Dave Brubeck’s Jazz at Oberlin at #21 is the other). In searching for live recordings that would be representative of most styles and eras of jazz, I simply found that there are few compelling examples of live Cool Jazz on record. Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz are absent from this list, as are Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, who famously performed together at The Haig as a pianoless quarter, and who I had very much wanted to include.

As a result, Shelly Manne’s group stands in for an entire school of musicians, and for the West Coast jazz community that popularized the Cool style, which is ironic because Manne, despite his renown as a great West Coast leader, was actually born and raised in New York, and his quintet on At the Black Hawk is comprised of two East Coast hornmen, a Midwestern bassist, and an English pianist. This goes to show that the geographical divide between proponents of the Hard Bop and Cool Jazz schools was somewhat illusory; Cool Jazz flourished in California because like-minded musicians collected there, from far and wide, to embrace the new music.

If the West Coast provenance of At the Black Hawk is questionable, the music is purely evocative of a California sunset. Across five discs, available separately, the quintet lays down some of finest mainstream work ever captured on record, playing in a laid back yet profoundly swinging style, anchored by Manne’s four-square rhythms. Highlights include a stately reading of Frank Rosolino’s “Blue Daniel”, luminous versions of Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not” and “Step Lightly”, and two extended, original blues, “Vamp’s Blues” and “Black Hawk Blues”. The group closes each set with the lively theme, “A Gem from Tiffany”. The spoken introductions by Manne and the atmospheric audience noise enhance the immersive feeling of these recordings.

14) Ahmad Jamal Trio – Complete Live at the Pershing Lounge
Recorded in January, 1958 at the Pershing Hotel, Chicago, IL

The pianist Ahmad Jamal was, for many years, known primarily for his stylistic influence on Miles Davis, who adapted his spare, minimal approach to improvisation, and whose modal innovations were a logical extension of Jamal’s capacious technique. Despite the million-selling Live at the Pershing Lounge, his importance as a composer and innovator continues to be debated, and his eminence as a senior master has been hard won. I would assert that Jamal is one of the most influential pianists in post-war jazz, perhaps second only to the late Bill Evans.

This album, an expanded set of twenty ballads from three sets recorded at The Pershing, captures Jamal and his trio- the short-lived Israel Crosby on bass and Vernell Fournier on the traps- at their best. The group imparts each song with a sense of stillness that comes from their sensitive interplay, while Jamal’s pointillism introduces moments of silence that punctuate and extend each song harmonically, like moonlight scattered across the surface of a pond. “Poinciana” and “But Not for Me” are just two of the highlights from this legendary performance.

13) Albert Ayler – Live in Greenwich Village: The Complete Impulse Recordings
Recorded March, 1965 – February, 1967, at the Village Vanguard, Village Gate, and Village Theater.

Despite being a compilation of live recordings, Live in Greenwich Village is a document of extraordinary power that will bewilder and captivate any listeners who have not experienced saxophonist Albert Ayler’s music. The songs here are, by turns, joyous and furious, heraldic and apocalyptic, wild and serene. Ayler is heard on both the tenor and alto horns, and he shares his huge vibrato with brother Donald, who plays the trumpet on most tracks. Two basses and a violin provide a rich harmonic foundation for Ayler’s stunning improvisations, which rampage across the folk melodies of his compositions, incorporating a spectrum of highly emotive sounds: a sad, wailing timbre, loops of unconstrained honking and overblown screeching, and passages of sweet, highly textural playing.

While the construction of these songs is radical and unpredictable, the compositions are intensely melodic, drawing from ancient sources like Civil War-era marches, gospel hymns, and the music of New Orleans funeral processions. Songs like “The Truth is Marching In”, “Spirits Rejoice”, and “Angels” are filled with grand ensemble playing, swelling with emotion and and messianic purpose. Other songs, like the pretty “Alpha is the Omega” or “Light in Darkness” could almost be nursery rhymes, for their simplicity. Finally, moments of real sadness emerge in places; “For John Coltrane” reminds the listener that the late leader’s handprints are all over this music. Trane was the Father to Ayler’s Holy Ghost, and there is genuine sorrow in a song that laments the departed figurehead of avant-garde jazz. Albert Ayler would join Coltrane in the afterlife soon after these recordings were made. In 1970, he drowned himself in the East River.

12) Wynton Marsalis – Live at the House of Tribes
Recorded in August, 2005 at the House of Tribes Community Theater, New York City, NY

Wynton Marsalis has been the most prominent individual leader in modern jazz since his famous debut as a “young lion” of the neo-traditional movement in the early 1980’s. He is a controversial figure within the jazz community, at least as famous for his revisionist teachings and outspoken rhetoric as he is for his brilliant trumpet technique. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1997 for a three-hour, classically-influenced oratorio called Blood on the Fields, and more recent projects have seen him gradually move away from the small-combo playing of his youth and towards scenarios where his aptitude as a composer and his appeal as a crossover star are showcased instead.

This is a flawless live recording that reflects none of Wynton’s controversies or diversions, and that is precisely what I like about it. Recorded for Blue Note records at a small and intimate theater space in New York, Live at the House of Tribes finds Marsalis with his working quintet, playing a tremendously exciting set of standards to an appreciative audience. In this setting, he perfectly demonstrates the qualities that made him a star: formidable technique combined with a relentless creativity that can transform the most basic repertoire material into something magical. Take, for instance, “Green Chimneys”, a lesser-known Monk tune recorded by its author in two dull iterations. Here, it is remade into a sixteen-minute stunner, the trumpeter unleashing a momentous, five-and-a-half minute solo that gets the small crowd shouting. Saxophonist Wessel Anderson is nearly as powerful, unleashing a roaring three-minute solo of his own that nearly lifts the roof off. The rest of the setlist – a collection of standards closed by the raucous New Orleans-inspired “2nd Line” – is no less exciting.

Put all the drama aside. This is one of the very best live recordings ever made.

11) Arne Domnerus – Jazz at the Pawnshop, 30th Anniversary Edition
Recorded in December, 1976 at the Stampen (Pawnshop) Jazz Club, Stockholm, Sweden

Arne who? To European jazz fans, he will be familiar as Dompan, the great Swedish saxophonist and clarinetist. To everyone else, Domnerus’ inclusion on this list, and his lofty ranking, may come as a bit of a mystery. What it comes down to is this: this three-disc set of everything recorded at the Stampen a week before Christmas in 1976 is inarguably one of the greatest live recordings in jazz history.

Domnerus and his quintet, including famed pianist Bengt Hallberg and bassist Georg Riedel, play music in a swing-to-bop style here, including numerous standards popularized by Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, as well as some modern standards (Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, played at breakneck speed, is a standout). The ensemble playing is terrific, the band swinging mightily on the uptempo numbers, and Domnerus is an effective soloist. His sound resembles Benny Goodman on the clarinet, and he possesses a warm and feathery tone on the tenor horn. Listen to his intricate line on “Over the Rainbow”, or his playful solo on “High Life” and you’ll get a sense of what a versatile stylist he is. Hallberg is impressive, too, incorporating stride and Bud Powell influences into his playing; his mastery of the Ellington material is thrilling.

The overall mood across these sets is vibrant and joyous, with the well-preserved crowd noise contributing to the festive atmosphere of the recording. The audio fidelity is faultless throughout; each instrument registers superbly, and listened to on headphones, the sound is as clear as if you were there in person. It is appealing to imagine being tucked away at a cozy corner table at this buoyant club, enjoying a hot, mulled drink to brace against the winter cold, while tapping a foot to this exceptional music.

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: #20 – #16

20) Kenny Dorham – ‘Round About Midnight at the Café Bohemia (Complete)
Recorded in May, 1956 at the Café Bohemia, New York City, NY

Kenny Dorham’s classic hard bop album marks the halfway point of our survey of the greatest live recordings, and does so with distinction. This is straightforwardly swinging music – seventeen tracks, balanced between up-tempo numbers like the brooding “Mexico City” and a finger-snapping “Night in Tunisia”, and striking ballads, of which “Autumn in New York” is unquestionably the most memorable.

Dorham’s trumpet sound is characteristically handsome on this set, whether sharpened to tackle “K.D’s Blues” (reminding one of his background as a founding member of the Jazz Messengers) or softened to a murmur on a melancholy reading of “Round Midnight”. Tenor saxophonist J.R. Monterose is of great interest here too, his narrow, inflected tone an effective counterpoint to the leader’s golden timbre.

19) Thelonious Monk – Live at the Jazz Workshop
Recorded in November, 1964 at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, CA

While conducting an interview, a journalist once challenged Thelonious Monk’s dissonance by alleging that he played “all the wrong notes”. The iconoclastic pianist replied, “The piano don’t have no wrong notes.”

As one of the progenitors of the musical revolution called Bebop, Monk was unquestionably a visionary leader, yet the perceptions that surround his life and work remain contradictory. Although his improvisational style and repertoire remained unchanged throughout his twenty-five year recording career, it took audiences and critics half as long to nominate him as a “genius of modern music”, and by the end, his work had been so completely sublimated by the jazz community that he sounded conventional, if not old-fashioned. His inimitable style incorporated stride piano, gospel influences, and the blues, but his contemporaries characterized him as a primitive who played with a “childlike” understanding of technique. Monk was a brilliant and prolific composer who studied Stravinsky and Bartok, and his records document his essential wit and intelligence, yet critics routinely questioned his acumen and even his sanity. To this day, the most venerated of all jazz pianists still sounds like no one else in the history of the music but himself.

Selecting just one live recording from Monk’s catalogue is difficult. The recently unearthed recording of his 1957 Carnegie Hall concert merits serious attention; as long as Buddy Bolden’s wax cylinder recordings languish, as yet undiscovered, in a New Orleans attic, With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall may be considered the most important “rediscovery” in jazz history. The Riverside albums Misterioso and Thelonious in Action, both of which document a 1958 performance at the Five Spot with gunslinger Johnny Griffin, are also good alternatives.

However, I believe that the Columbia two-disc set Live at the Jazz Workshop captures Monk and his working quartet at their very best. If Charlie Rouse was not the most distinguished horn player to accompany Monk on record, he was at least his most durable and sympathetic collaborator, as the two men played together for nine years. Here, the group burns through Monk’s catalogue with familiarity and ease, delivering definitive versions of “Epistrophy”, “Well, You Needn’t”, “Straight, No Chaser”, “Hackensack”, and more. The audio fidelity is excellent, with Monk forward in the mix so that his interplay with the rhythm section is heard with detail and clarity. An outstanding live set.

18) The Ornette Coleman Trio – At the ‘Golden Circle’ Stockholm, Volumes 1 & 2
Recorded in December, 1965 at the Gyllene Cirkeln Jazz Club in Stockholm, Sweden

Speaking of iconoclastic musicians! I have tried to avoid using the clichéd jazz writer’s phrase, “at the peak of his powers” to describe a musician to this point in my survey. However, At the Golden Circle captures Ornette at the pinnacle of his improvisational mastery. The precociousness of his Atlantic recordings is gone, and he is not yet toying with the large-scale “harmolodic” experimentalism that would characterize his later work. What remains is a concentrated, dark, incessantly swinging set of free jazz.

Ornette peals and wails his way through nine original compositions (plus alternates), his timbre on the plastic alto horn as emotive, as ugly, and as raw as ever. The absence of a second lead horn gives the leader plenty of space to blow (and fiddle), and he takes advantage, stomping his winter boots all over these tracks. The dense metrical foundations established by bassist David Izenson and drummer Charles Moffett serve to propel Ornette’s dour melodies, their bass notes and battered cymbals combining to produce agitated rhythms that are detached from any discernible time signature. A song like “Faces and Places” is so hard and cold that it is not difficult to imagine the performance taking place outside the doors of the Golden Circle, on a street corner in the winter night, with steam pushing through the bell of the horn.

What may be hard to imagine, for listeners unfamiliar with Coleman’s work, is how his unsparing melodies, and his tough, acerbic tone can get inside your head. Put the coffee on, give these records a couple hours of your time, and you’ll find yourself compelled by a musician with remarkable creative powers.

17) Greg Osby – Banned in New York, 1998
Recorded in 1998 at Sweet Basil Jazz Club, New York City, NY

That this is a live quartet session produced by Blue Note records tells you surprisingly little about this record. First of all, we’re talking about the new Blue Note Records, and for that matter, a quartet comprised of young musicians (Jason Moran, piano; Atsushi Ozada, bass; Rodney Green, drums) who are on the vanguard of the modern jazz scene. Secondly, the recording quality on this session does not reflect the classic “Blue Note sound”. Osby’s group is recorded on a stage side portable tape player, and the audio quality is predictably grainy and one-dimensional. Lastly, this album is packaged as an “official bootleg”, and so comes with very little in the way of post-production, packaging or liner notes. Not the classic Blue Note treatment.

So why recommend this album, let alone give it such a lofty position ahead of Monk and Mingus’ best efforts? Because this is simply one ferocious hour of jazz from one of the most exciting leaders in modern music. Greg Osby, the innovative free/fusion saxophonist at the head of this lineup, dominates Banned in New York, his Wayne Shorter-influenced burr ranging up and down six standards from Monk, Parker, Ellington, and Sonny Rollins. Not since the Saxophone Colossus himself has a saxophonist packed so many musical ideas, so much information, into each solo, and Osby does so with directness that is almost startling. There are hardly any breaks between songs here, and few opportunities for rest. This is dynamic music that packs a real punch.

16) Errol Garner – Concert by the Sea
Recorded in September, 1955 at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Pianist Errol Garner’s signature record is also one of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time. Garner plays a set of eleven tracks, mostly mid-tempo standards, with bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil Best. Although the recording quality is relatively poor, Garner’s tender and romantic piano sound comes through cleanly. On a track like “Autumn Leaves”, he plays with an almost symphonic intensity, adorning the melody with rich, percussive flourishes before breaking into a chiming, lightly swinging cadence. On a classic reading of “April in Paris”, Garner plays at an indolent pace, incorporating bouncing stride rhythms and luxurious harmonies into his playing. Other standouts include “Teach Me Tonight” and the finger-snapping “Red Top”. The appeal of this record to generations of jazz lovers is unmistakable. Garner is a remarkable technician, and Concert by the Sea is his finest moment on record.

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: #30 – #21

30) Eric Dolphy – Live at the Five Spot, Volumes 1 & 2
Recorded in July, 1961 at the Five Spot Café, New York City, NY

Very little evidence remains of one of the most remarkable partnerships in the history of avant garde jazz. Multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy and the young virtuoso trumpeter, Booker Little, are represented together on just three recordings, spanning seven months. On the studio albums Far Cry and Out There, the two hornmen move beyond the conventions of bop, into realms of increasing freedom and harmonic complexity. As an alternative to the dissonant sounds of Ornette Coleman’s pioneering quartet, which was active around the same time, these albums showcase work of unexpected grace and fragility, demonstrating that “the New Thing” could contain playing of non-traditional beauty.

However, Dolphy and Little’s famous two-week summer residency at The Five Spot, accompanied by the venerable rhythm section of pianist and composer Mal Waldron, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Ed Blackwell, is where their true collaborative potential is finally revealed. Although both volumes document only one night of their residency, these recordings capture the group in peak form. Dolphy’s gushing improvisations – astringent bleating on the alto saxophone, deep yawning on the bass clarinet- contrast with Booker’s golden tone, inherited from the late Clifford Brown. The group works through six, extended original compositions and one standard, “Like Someone in Love”, where the source material is pulled and shaped like molten glass into something unrecognizable.

One final note for newcomers to these recordings. New York was so hot and humid in the days leading up to this recording date that the piano is jarringly out-of-tune. As a consequence, Waldron’s commanding solos and off-center comping have a strange quality that somehow portends the atonality that would be introduced into the music over the next five years. Booker Little wouldn’t live to see those developments; three months after these recordings were made, he died of kidney failure.

29) The Modern Jazz Quartet – The Complete Last Concert
Recorded in November, 1974 at Avery Fisher Hall, New York, NY

At the time of this concert, the MJQ’s last performance before an eight-year hiatus, its members – pianist John Lewis, bassist Percy Heath, drummer Connie Kay, and the “Wizard of the Vibes”, Milt Jackson – had been playing together for twenty years. Although the group was often derided by jazz critics as being pretentious and bland (playing what former drummer Kenny Clarke called “eighteenth century chamber music”) the reality was altogether different. If the MJQ presented themselves as sophisticated and urbane, these qualities reflected their focus on the quality and integrity of their music, rather than on the excesses of performance art.

John Lewis, the nominal leader of the MJQ, pioneered what is known as “third-stream music”, a progressive combination of jazz harmonies and rhythms with compositional elements of Western classical music, and he was as comfortable with bebop as he was with Bach. On The Complete Last Concert, the group plays to its influences before an adoring audience, performing elegant versions of songs by Gershwin, Gillespie, and Monk, before expanding the program with their own material (the lovely “Django” and “Skating in Central Park”), and an eleven-minute performance of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez”. The concert setting – Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, the home of the New York Philharmonic – somehow seems the perfect place for these musicians to make their final curtain call.

28) Dexter Gordon – Homecoming
Recorded in 1976 at the Village Vanguard, New York City, NY

“There was so much love and elation… After the last set, they’d turn on the lights and nobody would move.”
-Dexter Gordon, regarding his Homecoming residency at the Village Vanguard

After 15 years of living as a musical expatriate in Europe, the great tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon came home for good in 1976. Although he had been one the best-loved leaders of the bebop era, his sojourn had diminished his standing with American audiences. He returned as a musician more obscure and less central to the music than when he had left.

All of that changed with Dexter’s residency at New York’s most important jazz club, the storied Village Vanguard. Columbia’s two-disc recording of Gordon playing with trumpeter Woody Shaw and his group captures a senior musician reasserting his eminence over the nascent jazz scene. Gordon sounds masterful as he propels his way over and across ten tracks, his commanding sound prototypical to his instrument. The selection of the notable tenor standard, “Body and Soul” as the last song of the set must have been intentional; with it, Gordon places himself in a grand lineage with Coleman Hawkins, the first great tenorist and the man who altered the course of jazz improvisation with his legendary recording of the song in 1939.

27) Ella Fitzgerald – Twelve Nights in Hollywood
Recorded in May, 1961 and June, 1962 at the Crescendo Club, Los Angeles, CA

Ella was frequently at her best in concert, and the two dozen or so live recordings in her discography demonstrate the consistency with which she was able to charm audiences with her effortlessly cool performances. If other singers performed the same material with more feeling, no other singer ever performed with such an elite combination of perfect pitch, flawless intonation, and crystal-clear diction. She also approached her work with professionalism unmatched by her contemporaries, and this endeared her to audiences. If Billie Holiday was a tragic figure, Sarah Vaughn a demanding diva, and Anita O’Day a tough, road-hardened junkie, then Ella Fitzgerald was always an icon of congeniality and girlish charisma.

Of her live recordings, this four-disc set released by Verve Records in 2009 finds the singer at her mature best. In 1961 and 1962, she was right in the middle of her famous Songbook recordings for Norman Granz, and her performances at the Crescendo Club capture all of the warmth and bright humor of those records. The difference, for me, is that Twelve Nights records Ella with a small group, instead of with her usual orchestral backing. As a result, it is possible to hear her with a clarity that brings her performance a pleasing immediacy and depth. Her self-effacing spoken introductions show how this master entertainer, who early in her career was deemed too homely to be a lead vocalist, could utterly command an audience.

26) Michel Petrucciani – Solo Live
Recorded in February, 1997 in Frankfort, Germany

Michel Petrucciani’s life and his body of work deserve more space in writing than I can allow here. A French jazz pianist who suffered from a bone disease that stunted his growth and quickened his life span, Petrucciani was also an extraordinarily gifted performer who idolized Duke Ellington and played with something like Keith Jarrett’s technical range. This recording, released after Pettruciani’s death in 1999, is a document of special emotional power. His melodies are endlessly listenable as he communicates in passages that are alternately dazzling and sublimely beautiful. Petrucciani’s star seems destined to rise posthumously, as often happens to jazz musicians, and this concert recording may one day be considered among the most essential of post-modern jazz recordings.

25) Charles Mingus – Mingus at Antibes
Recorded in July, 1960 at the Jazz a Juan Festival, Juan-le-Pins, France

The fiery performance by the Charles Mingus Quintet at the Jazz a Juan Festival has undoubtedly stood out in the memories of those who were there to hear it live. Mingus’ Africanized brand of boisterous and discordant music, replete with blustering horns (Ted Curson, Booker Ervin, and Eric Dolphy), vocal shouts, charging tempos, and Mingus’ own thundering bass lines rocked the small festival situated in the breezy warmth of the Cote d’Azur. The recording of that performance is preserved in the exciting album Mingus at Antibes, released years later, after the leader’s death. The set opens with “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting” from the Blues & Roots album, and closes with “Better Get Hit in Your Soul”, immortalized on Mingus Ah Um. Bud Powell guests on the one standard, “I’ll Remember April”, and his presence may be considered the orthodox calm in the middle of the storm of noise and energy the group whips up around him. Vital music.

24) Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Bright Moments
Recorded in June, 1973 at Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA

Where to place Rahsaan Roland Kirk within the pantheon of jazz history? Like Albert Ayler, Kirk often played a whimsical, sing-song brand of avant-garde jazz, and his multi-instrumentalism brings a quality to his performances that often recalls the wildness and gimmickry of street performers. At other times, Kirk’s music can seem downright conventional, full of references to Dixieland and Swing music, genres that Kirk seems to hold genuine affection for. Finally, Kirk was something of a pop artist later in his career, working with artists like Quincy Jones on a catalogue of fusion-funk music that edged perilously close to the contemporary work of smooth jazz artists like Grover Washington.

The truth is that there was room in Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s vocabulary for all of the above. The blind soloist-leader also embraced poetry, philosophy, and the tenets of the Black Power movement. He played and recorded prolifically, going so far as to make his own instruments (the “black mystery pipes” that appear on some of his records are fashioned from a garden hose), and salvaging his technique even after a stroke partially paralyzed him. Kirk was simply a man with lots to say to those willing to embrace his polymath artistry.

Bright Moments is a two-disc set recorded by Kirk and his working group at his favorite venue, the intimate Keystone Korner Jazz Club. Kirk is jubilant, and the recorded performance, spanning two nights, is infused with his humor and ecstatic spirit. The songs, while not conventional in structure, are very enjoyable on an almost childish level. Full of shouts, sparkling chimes, and the keening sounds of saxophones, flutes, and stritches, hearing these songs is akin to listening to favorite Christmas songs pulled through a vortex into the wilds of old New Orleans. The overall effect is magical, and the live audience is clearly loving it.

23) Cecil Taylor – Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come
Recorded in November, 1962 at the Café Montmarte, Copenhagen, Denmark

I experienced an epiphany while listening to Cecil Taylor’s music very late one night. I had always struggled with aspects of avant-garde jazz, until I learned to stop listening for melody and conventional form in the music, and instead think abstractedly of its shape, and how it moved over time. While listening to Taylor’s Conquistador!, for example, I pictured rain falling on a forested hillside, hearing Taylor’s scattered atonal notes and the horn players’ lithe solos as drops and rivulets against the din of percussion. At other times, I pictured the music ink falling on paper, or used Taylor’s own analogy that his style captured the motion of a dancer leaping in mid-air.

Listening to Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come has always recalled a heavy storm at sea. Contextually, this is the only recording to document Taylor between 1961 and 1966, a formative time for him and his corps. The Penguin Jazz Guide, reviewing the album, refers to the alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons as “a man caught in a squall, and fighting his way through it and over it”, and this visualization, for me, represents this music perfectly. Taylor’s flurries of notes fall percussively, relentlessly, like driving rain. Every few minutes, Lyons charges through the tempest with hard, twisting solos that either punch right through or turn back on themselves. Andrew Cyrille doesn’t play a steady beat, but creates an unstoppable, concussive rhythm with snare and cymbals, propelling the music forward like a boat riding a storm surge. This is very challenging music that will be difficult for listeners new to Cecil Taylor’s extreme style, but those who take the time to hear the movement and interplay in this music will be rewarded.

22) Joe Henderson – State of the Tenor, Volumes 1 & 2
Recorded in November, 1985 at the Village Vanguard, New York City, NY

Joe Henderson, known as “The Phantom”, was an elder statesman in jazz by the time these recordings were made. The tenor saxophonist first came to prominence in a series of explorative post-bop recordings for Blue Note Records in the sixties, but he had recorded infrequently in the intervening years. This session at the Village Vanguard, as its authoritative title would suggest, is something of a report on the resurgent state of acoustic jazz by a forgotten master.

Unlike Dexter Gordon, whose “comeback” album I discussed earlier in this post, Henderson’s place on the modern scene is not atop the mantle. He possesses a raw, introspective, slightly throttled sound on tenor, and the unpredictable tack of his solos are often compounded with terse, clipped harmonic statements that lend his playing a dark and elusive quality, as if he was a shadow or appropriately, a “phantom”.

On this two-disc set, Henderson plays with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Al Foster. The pianoless trio format recalls Sonny Rollins’ celebrated recordings at the same venue of decades earlier. Henderson here sounds just as direct, and if not as muscular, and the rhythm section lays back, allowing Henderson the spotlight. As the saxophonist painstakingly builds his solos over the intelligent bop programme, his authority as a major stylist becomes obvious. Henderson may well be the last word on the state of acoustic jazz in the 1980’s.

21) The Dave Brubeck Quartet – Jazz at Oberlin
Recorded in March, 1953 at Oberlin College, Lorain County, OH

Dave Brubeck passed away last week at the age of 91. I am happy to be able to recognize one of his most iconic works here. Jazz at Oberlin, recorded at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, is a genuinely important recording in the popular history of jazz.

What follows is an account of the concert by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns of the concert and its aftermath, from the book Jazz: A History of America’s Music:

“…Snow blanketed Tappan Square in downtown Oberlin, Ohio, and the students headed for the big Romanesque-style chapel named for the abolitionist president of Oberlin College, Charles Grandison Finney, bundled against an icy wind. The Dave Brubeck Quartet was to appear there that evening, and as the concertgoers filed through the doors, stomping snow from their boots, slipping out of coats and scarves, settling into the yellow-oak pews, neither they nor the musicians waiting nervously backstage were quite sure how the evening would go. Jazz concerts on campuses were still relatively rare in the East, and Brubeck had been told he might find the audience in Finney Chapel especially unresponsive, since it was sure to include music students from the Oberlin Conservatory – serious musicians, he was warned, who ‘don’t understand jazz’.

“At Oberlin that evening, (the Dave Brubeck Quartet) outdid themselves. The audience- including the conservatory students- responded with ovation after ovation. The concert was recorded, and the album that resulted helped build enthusiasm for Brubeck. He was signed by Columbia, the nation’s biggest label…. And soon found himself the leader of the most popular jazz group in the country.”

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: #40 – #31

40) Stanley Turrentine – Up at Minton’s

Recorded February, 1961 at Minton’s Playhouse, Harlem, NY

This two-disc set, recorded professionally by Blue Note Records, catches ‘Mr. T’ near the beginning of his career as a leader. Although Turrentine was better known for his work in the soul jazz and crossover idioms, its nice to hear him “Up at Minton’s” playing bluesy hard bop. The set list is comprised of reliable standards (“Yesterdays” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” are taken at mid-tempo, and “Summertime” is played as a soulful ballad to end the programme) and a couple of solid originals. Turrentine’s handsome tenor sound plays well against the acoustic lineup, which features guitarist Grant Green, another soul jazz favorite, and Horace Parlan on piano.

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39) Betty Carter – The Audience With Betty Carter

Recorded December, 1979 at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA

Betty Carter is the most virtuosic singer in the history of jazz music, and this is her masterpiece. Across two hours of music, Carter scats with Sheila Jordan’s intelligence, vocalizes with Nina Simone’s depth and range,  and sings with Ella’s diction and poise. On this self-produced album, she is recorded with a rhythm section of piano, bass, and drums, as if she were the lead horn in a small bop combo.

Carter’s song choices demonstrate her ability to mix vocal standards with daring originals and advanced post-bop material. The opening number, “Sounds (Moving On)” lasts 25 thrilling minutes, and her deconstructive version of “My Favorite Things” is much closer in feeling to Coltrane than The Sound of Music.

Of Betty Carter, fellow jazz vocalist Vanessa Rubin said, “Most singers develop along the lines of imitation, assimilation, and hopefully innovation. Not many can boast having achieved the latter. None would argue that Betty did.”

This album is her most innovative statement.

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38) Charlie Ventura – Complete 1949 Pasadena Concert

Recorded May, 1949 at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Pasadena, CA

Charlie Ventura, now a sidenote in jazz history, was a popular tenor saxophonist whose style combined a swing background with an early bop vocabulary. Despite his relative obscurity, Ventura’s charisma and professionalism are evident throughout this exciting concert, from the humorous opening introductions through the fine set of 17 standards. The way he and West Coast trumpeter Conte Candoli trade licks, they almost sound like Bird and Diz lite, where in other places, the octet whips up a real frenzy, eliciting an excited response from the audience. “Body and Soul”, the tenor classic, is a highlight, with Boots Musilli’s crusty baritone sax giving good weight to Coleman Hawkin’s signature tune. A few songs feature the elegant vocalist Jackie Cain; she sounds very beautiful on “Over the Rainbow”.

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37) The Red Garland Trio – At the Prelude

Recorded in October, 1959 at the Prelude Jazz Club, Harlem,NY

The underappreciated pianist Red Garland is best known for his mid-1950’s associations with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. This two-disc live package, on which Garland and two obscure sidemen cover 23 barroom standards– all three sets from one night at the Prelude- catches him after that association had ended. By this time, Red’s graceful playing had fully incorporated the spaciousness of Ahmad Jamal, but here we find him really swinging at a sophisticated, uptempo pace. On extended numbers like “Mr. Wonderful” and “Prelude Blues”, the band really jams, and although they cover several Count Basie tunes, it is the classic “One O’Clock Jump”, played in a near-stride style, that gets the audience buzzing. A great live set from Prestige.

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36) Lee Morgan – Live at the Lighthouse

Recorded in July, 1970 at the Lighthouse Café, Hermosa Beach, CA

This three disc set, recorded by Blue Note Records at the well-known Hermosa Beach venue, finds trumpeter Lee Morgan and his young quintet speaking a new language. Morgan, who is best known for a series of exemplary hard bop records for Blue Note, had progressed into freer, more advanced territory by this time. Morgan revisits material from his mid-60’s repertoire, like his classics “The Sidewinder” and “Speedball”, but they are played with a tension and non-linear drive which reminds the listener of Miles’ Second Great Quintet, circa 1965.

The originals, some of which were composed by tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin (who would go on to join Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters after Morgan’s death), are complex modal pieces, with all but two of the thirteen tracks occupying the group for longer than 13 minutes. If the music is adventurous, Morgan’s sound on the trumpet and flugelhorn is consistently attractive, and Harold Mabern on piano has a bright and lyrical touch. Hearing Lee Morgan – who was murdered less than two years after this date was produced – introduce his bandmates to the audience is a nice inclusion.

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35) Jimmy Smith – Groovin’ at Smalls’ Paradise

Recorded in November, 1957 at Smalls’ Paradise, New York City, NY

Groovin’ at Smalls’ Paradise isn’t so far ahead of Jimmy Smith’s other albums for Blue Note, but the master of the B3 Hammond Organ has to be acknowledged as one of those most skilled and influential blues players in jazz history, and this record features some great trio performances.

Now remastered and delivered in a two-disc set by Blue Note, Groovin’ features Smith with guitarist Eddie McFadden and drummer Donald Bailey jamming at length on a set of burning standards. The highlight is undoubtedly the funky blues “After Hours”, but there are great versions of “Indiana” and “Walkin” too. Because Smith doesn’t have to contend with horns here, the whole album is awash in his warm, pedaled reverb, with McFadden’s guitar lines cutting through to nice effect. Great sound.

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34) Oscar Peterson – The Legendary Live at the Blue Note

Recorded March, 1990 at the Blue Note, New York City, NY

This album was a tough call. Oscar Peterson, the big Canadian who is recognized as the most technically demanding pianist of his generation, and the mantle bearer to Art Tatum, has a huge discography. Over his long career, he was a big festival draw, and almost always played in trio settings, so there are a long run of live trio albums to choose from.

From the discography, I have chosen this four-disc set, on which Peterson reunites with guitarist Herb Ellis and bassist Ray Brown, men with whom he’d been playing for more than thirty years. In 1990, Peterson was 65, and this special concerts catches him at the height of his majesty. He plays with a formality and elegance that suggests a recital more than a club date, but the empathy between Peterson and his rhythm section is what elevates this programme. Within a few years, Peterson suffered a stroke, and was never able to return to the dynamic playing captured here.

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33) Sun Ra – Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vols. 1-2

Recorded June, 1970 at Fondation Maeght (Art Museum), Saint-Paul de Vence, France

Of Sun Ra’s claim to be from the planet Saturn, jazz writer Brian Morton stated, “This is one of the great metaphors of Black American music. If you are a black man from Birmingham, Alabama, how much more ‘alien’ does this planet need to be?”

This is space music of the highest order from a misunderstood and visionary big band leader. For jazz listeners who find Sun Ra’s music unapproachable, this live recording from a museum in France may be a disappointment. All of the stranger elements of the Arkestra’s sound are present: eerie, atonal horn solos, passages of abstracted digital music, vocal chanting, and aggressive ensemble playing.

But listeners who don’t see past these aspects of Sun Ra’s Arkestra are missing some exciting and frequently intelligent music. Nuits de la Fondation is recorded in excellent fidelity, and features nine tracks over two hours of mesmerizing and creative music. Saxophonist John Gilmore is excellent as usual, and the big band passages are more cohesive and “traditional” in sound than one might expect. This set still requires an open mind, but will reward adventurous listeners.

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32) Brad Mehldau – Art of the Trio, Volumes 2 & 4

Recorded in 1997 and January, 1999 at the Village Vanguard, New York City, NY

Although these albums were recorded a year and a half apart, they are two of a kind. On these collections of standards recorded by pianist Brad Mehldau with his long-time partners Larry Grenadier (bass) and Jorge Rossy (drums), the trio seems to summon ghosts from the basement walls of the legendary East Village club. Playing standards by Monk, Coltrane, Miles, Cole Porter, and (ahem) Radiohead in a cerebral style that incorporates space and interplay to hypnotize the listener over long passages, the trio’s work can sit comfortably alongside the greatest recordings to come from the Vanguard’s small stage. Mehldau is now a major star, and his Art of the Trio recordings should increase in critical esteem over time.

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31) Count Basie – Count Basie at Newport

Recorded in July, 1957 at the Newport Jazz Festival, Newport, Rhode Island

Of the numerous recordings that capture Count Basie at clubs and festival dates, this lively album from the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival is probably the best. Although Basie was 53 at the time of this recording, he and the band swing relentlessly throughout the thirteen track set. Basie anchors a lineup of all-star alumni, men with big personalities who were all leaders in their own right: Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, the Texas Tenor Illinois Jacquet, and blues singer Jimmy Rushing (who is featured nicely here). As they race through Kansas City classics like “Lester Leaps In” and “One O’Clock Jump”, the band really gets the festival crowd worked up. The introduction by promoter John Hammond, a sharper emcee than Newport regular Father Norman O’Connor, is a nice addition.

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums: Introduction

The 40 Best Live Jazz Albums

“You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.”

                                                                                                                           -Wayne Shorter

Jazz musicians have been struggling for freedom from musical limitations for fifty years or more. In the 1960’s, when avant-garde musicians “liberated” the music from the conventions of harmony (John Coltrane), tonality (Cecil Taylor), and melody and rhythm (Ornette Coleman), many traditionalists responded by reminding the modernists that jazz was already free.

Jazz embodies the American ideals of freedom and democracy because it requires players to listen to one another, and to play with empathy. Open communication between members of the group is integral to the music’s cohesion, internal logic, and, yes, its creative freedoms. One of the ironies of the avant-garde revolution in jazz was that, as musicians abandoned the basic structures within the music, they became more and more dependant on each other in performance. For example, a free drummer no longer simply holds down the beat… he is responsible for driving a performance by reacting to the other instruments. Instead of playing in 4/4 time, he plays to the other musicians, and this involves more focus and a greater acuity for what everyone else is playing. It requires a more complex approach to the music than playing in a more traditional idiom. In Wayne Shorter’s language, if free jazz represents the opportunity for group members to “buy a ticket to nowhere”, then they still must be careful to arrive at the same destination.

The reason I bring up the avant-garde, aside from wanting to share an interesting Wayne Shorter quotation, is because I see a great parallel between the struggle for freedom within jazz music and the concept of the live jazz album. If improvisational music is all about empathy, then music played in front of a live audience has to be considered the environment in which the art truly thrives. Jazz musicians – all of them, without exception – play with more vitality and spontaniety when challenged by a live audience. Sonny Rollins once compared playing live to having “sex with the audience”, while lamenting that recording in a studio was like “cyber sex” by comparison. Live settings, and club dates in particular, often give musicians the chance to try to new things, to stretch out, to take creative risks. Even in the era of digital recordings, there is a limited appetite for this approach in the recording studio. But in a club, hell, people are relaxed, they’re drinking, its getting late… if the group wants to do a thirty-minute take of “I’ll Remember April”, that’s not a problem.

When live performances are captured on record – whether the group was professionally recorded or not – the results can be captivating. The best live jazz recordings frequently find jazz musicians at their most focused and workmanlike, while also catching a creative interplay that is not present except in the most inspired studio work. And fifty- or sixty-years on, live albums are often highly evocative of the time and place in which they were amde. The audience chatters, glasses tinkle in the background, the phone rings… these could be sounds from the Café Montmarte, in snowy Copenhagen, or of the Five Spot, in New York’s Bowery, on a sweltering Summer night. Either way, the listener is hearing the sounds of a bygone area. For the jazz listener, live recordings represent the apotheosis of the art form.

What follows is my ranking of the Top 40 Live Jazz Albums of All Time. I have been careful to include examples from all styles and eras of jazz. With that in mind, a few notes:

-Unfortunately, pre-war live recordings are uncommon, as the technology was typically insufficient (both in terms of fidelity and duration) to capture musicians in a live setting. As a result, the earliest album to make the list dates to 1938.

-I have included only one entry per artist (leader). I have done this to eliminate personal bias, and to try to make this ranking as representative as possible. However, sidemen may appear on more than one album.

-Compilation albums, specifically those with two or more leaders on one album, were generally not included (sorry, “Jazz at the Philharmonic”). I have also not included albums that were recorded in part at a studio (that includes Wes Montgomery’s “Smokin’ at the Half Note”, and Cannonball Adderley’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”, both excellent albums).

-Note that some major artists are not included, as they simply do not have a notable live album in print. This regrettably includes Sidney Bechet, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, and others.

-By contrast, some lesser-known musicians have produced exceptional live albums. I’m looking at you, Arne Domnerus. This is part of the fun in creating this kind of a list.

-After consideration, I decided to put together a ranked list. This approach will be decidedly contentious. If you disagree with my picks, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Next up: #40 – #31.