Every year I look at the list of best albums of the year on rateyourmusic.com, a reader-voted website. The Down Beat poll gives us a look at what they were thinking back then; the rateyourmusic poll gives us a sense of what's endured.
It's always an idiosyncratic poll, with some definite surprises. It's also an ongoing poll, so while the albums at the top of the poll have accrued enough votes to be safely ensconced there. there can conceivably be fluctuation down at the bottom, BuT we're not going that far. Just the top 50, omitting the recordings that weren't jazz or blues:
1 Giant Steps
John Coltrane
Atlantic
Deserves its ranking, then as now. A major album, a giant step forward in jazz.
2 Blues & Roots
Charlie Mingus
Atlantic
One of the reviewers on rateyourmusic described it as “Arty enough for the avant-jazz types, energetic enough for the swingers,” and that’s not bad. Mingus, like Monk, has gained in stature over the years, and this ranking confirms that.
3 Sketches of Spain
Miles Davis
Columbia
4 The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
Riverside
This was Montgomery’s second album for Riverside, and really the beginning of his domination of the instrument, and the jazz charts, in the 1960s.
6 Soul Station
Hank Mobley
Blue Note
8 Portrait in Jazz
Bill Evans Trio
Riverside
This was Scott LaFaro’s first album with Bill Evans. There would be three more, before LaFaro’s death in an auto accident, which left Evans so devastated he could not play for months. Many consider this the definitive Evans trio.
9 At Last!
Etta James
Argo
11 Change of the Century
Ornette Coleman
Atlantic
12 True Blue
Tina Brooks
Blue Note
Very good stuff, with Freddie Hubbard, Duke Jordan, Sam Jones and Art Taylor, and one example of the idiosyncratic voting of rateyourmusic voters. Not saying that this album shouldn’t be highly rated, just surprised that it is. Tina Brooks had a very short career – this was his only album as leader to be released during his lifetime. Recently, some long-buried sessions have been released, prompting a reconsideration of his essentially forgotten career, and some serious praise from jazz cognoscenti. I guess there are a lot of cognoscenti voting on rateyourmusic.
15 Blues-ette
Curtis Fuller's Quintet
Savoy
Amazing to me that this album is rated so high, and the more acclaimed “Meet the Jazztet” comes in at number 86. Again, not a reflection on the blowing here, but a surprise that the voting has gone that way.
16 Thelonious Alone in San Francisco
Thelonious Monk
Riverside
Monk alone, going with his first takes, and his solo version of “Blue Monk” alone Is worth the price of admission. But the same could be said of every other track.
17 O amor, o sorriso e a flor
João Gilberto
Odeon
It took Stan Getz, in 1961, to launch the Brazilian samba/bossa nova craze, so this album was ahead of the curve. A recent CD reissue as part of a box set of Gilberto and Jobim may in part account for its popularity with the rateyourmusic crowd. There’s a very nice description by one of their reviewers:
Somewhat like the British Invasion in rock in the early 1960s, there was a Brazilian invasion in jazz and pop starting in the late 1950s. And just as the British Invasion can be traced back to two guys – John Lennon and Paul McCartney – the Brazilian invasion can be traced back to João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Gilberto single-handedly created bossa nova from samba, transmuting a rather boisterous dance form into a perfect vehicle for crooning intimiacies and meditations; Jobim supplied the songs, the arrangements, and the orchestra.
19 The Big Beat
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
Blue Note
20 Open Sesame
Freddie Hubbard
Blue Note
21 Mingus Dynasty
Charles Mingus and His Jazz Groups
Columbia
22 Piano in the Background
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Columbia
24 Blues in Orbit
Duke Ellington
Columbia
25 Outward Bound
Eric Dolphy Quintet
Prestige
26 Have Guitar, Will Travel
Bo Diddley
Checker
27 House of the Blues
John Lee Hooker
Chess
28 East Meets West
Ahmed Abdul-Malik
RCA Victor
30 Ella Fitzgerald Sings Songs From "Let No Man Write My Epitaph"
Verve
31 Sin & Soul
Oscar Brown Jr.
Columbia
32 Work Song
Nat Adderley
Riverside
33 Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson
Verve
34 Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill Broonzy
Chess
35 Satchmo Plays King Oliver
Louis Armstrong
Audio Fidelity
37 Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger
Checker
38 Blues & Ballads
Lonnie Johnson With Elmer Snowden
Prestige
39 Travelin'
John Lee Hooker
Vee Jay
40 Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster
Verve
41 Quiet Kenny
Kenny Dorham
New Jazz
43 Them Dirty Blues
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Riverside
44 Otis Spann Is the Blues
Otis Spann
Candid
45 Art Pepper + Eleven: Modern Jazz Classics
Art Pepper
Contemporary
47
Frank Sinatra
Nice 'n' Easy
Capitol
48 Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas
Ella Fitzgerald
Verve
49 Fuego
Donald Byrd
Blue Note
50 That's My Story
John Lee Hooker
Riverside
No comments:
Post a Comment