Just for fun, Iron Yuppie's ten best jazz albums:
1. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue. The choice may seem cliched, but after hearing over three-hundred jazz albums, this one still stands atop the pedestal in terms of musicianship, mood, and vision.
2. John Coltrane: Blue Train. Although Coltrane is better known and appreciated for his more avant-garde recordings, this Blue Note album features a plethora of infectious melodies and some of the most accessible soloing 'Trane ever committed to record.
3. Charles Mingus: The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. Mingus Ah Um is the conventional choice for old Charles, but Black Saint is arguably the most cohesive and artistically-adventurous statement in jazz history. Mingus employs an eleven-piece band in order to explore the recesses of his psyche, and the results are challenging but highly rewarding.
4. Herbie Hancock: Empyrean Isles. A simultaneously catchy and abstruse album, Isles takes many of the lessons of Miles's "Second Great Quintet," of which Herbie was a member, and places a unique stamp on them.
5. Miles Davis: Nefertiti. This is the moment when arguably the most talented jazz band ever assembled, Miles's Second Great Quintet, reached its apex. The volume and tempo are dialed back a bit, but the shifts in mood and the interplay between the rhythm and lead sections are nothing short of astounding.
6. Roland Kirk: The Inflated Tear. This album is brimming with personality. Melodic and soothing in places, it is also eccentric and frenetic in others. Kirk is a master of his instrument.
7. Thelonious Monk: Genius of Modern Music, Volume 1: Monk was always unique, and, despite the many precedents and standard tunes that this album established, no other artist has ever replicated Monk's off-kilter, angular playing and compositional style.
8. Wayne Shorter: Juju. Like Empyrean Isles, this album and its main artist are cut from the cloth of Miles's Second Quintet. Here, Wayne simply presents a cohesive set of impeccably written and performed songs.
9. Andrew Hill: Black Fire. Hill is often overlooked in discussions of jazz greats, but he was one of the most individualistic and gifted composers of his generation. His later work with Blue Note favored mellow, arty arrangements, but Black Fire turns up the tempo and lets its players really cut loose.
10. McCoy Tyner: The Real McCoy. Tyner is perhaps best known as John Coltrane's pianist, but on this, one of his first efforts as a bandleader, he allows his piano to step to the front of the arrangements. Like Shorter's Juju, the compositions are stunning throughout.
Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth is a recent acquisition of mine that I suspect will creep onto this list at some point.