So now we get to my slate of best albums for the BCC Best Albums Project. As I explained in my inaugural post, I’ll lay out my criteria, then the albums and why they meet my criteria. I’ll also link most of them to Spotify (or, if they don’t exist on Spotify—and they don’t all exist on Spotify—on like YouTube or something if I can find them there).
Anyway, my criteria. Or, rather, my criterion: I’m picking albums that blew my mind. Often it was on the first listen. Sometimes it was on a subsequent listen. Other than my first choice, I’m not going to put them in any particular order. And also, they’re not necessarily indicative of what I listen to: I tend to listen almost (though not entirely) exclusively to jazz; I definitely listen to classic jazz, but I also listen to contemporary jazz. Sometimes I’ll click on a Spotify algorithmic choice. Sometimes I’ll find a random record that I have to have (there’s at least one of those on this list). Every Monday WDCB lists three new (generally jazz) albums one of the DJs is enjoying and, if they’re available on streaming, I listen to them.
I don’t tend to listen over and over to any particular album or song. The other year, I’d listened to my most-listened-to song on Spotify Wrapped 11 times over the course of the year. And I’m absolutely not a person who stopped listening in high school or college—while there are a couple albums from the period on my list, I basically don’t listen to any of the metal, hard rock, classic rock, or alternative rock I favored back then.
So with that, my best albums:
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, The Art of Fugue. This is my number 1 album, and the only one I’m going to number. I discovered this album from a Slate article. The article was jaw-dropping, and the album (which I think I bought on iTunes that day) was even more jaw-dropping. This is an amazing composition by Bach, one that I expect to hear played by a quartet (be it string, saxophone, or something else). Hearing one person play it on piano, with all of the weaving, the theme and counterpoint, that Bach composed is absolutely a tribute both to the composition and to Aimard’s virtuosity. I enjoy many recordings of this piece, but this particular album absolutely destroyed me and my conception of what one person with ten fingers can do.
Miles Davis, On the Corner. A couple things here: first, I’m a huge Miles fan. Second, this is one of my exceptions to the no-high-school-stuff statement I made above. I probably own 15 or 20 Miles CDs and records, and could probably fill my Best Albums list with just his music (though I’ve arbitrarily made a rule that I’m not doing more than one album per artist, a rule I’m only now telling you about). And honestly, if you’re choosing a Miles fusion album, Bitches Brew or In a Silent Way are more sensible choices. But this is the one that really hit me. I listened to it as I was transitioning from rock-oriented music to funk. And the liner notes explain that Miles was deliberately incorporating James Brown, in hopes of reaching a younger audience. But he was also listening to a cellist houseguest play Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites and that same person introduced him to 20th century German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. And you can hear that avant-garde influence, but also, the record is just a party.
A party that Miles drops you into the middle of. The needle (actually or metaphorically) starts mid-measure, in the middle of a staccato drum pattern and a guitar lick. They go for a while until soprano sax comes in, with some trumpet hits in the background. And it only gets funkier after that. Like so much that Miles recorded, it really doesn’t sound like anything that came before it, and also not much like anything that came after.
And, speaking of Bach’s cello suites:
Pablo Casals, Cello Suites. Because of the liner notes to On the Corner, I was curious about the Cello Suites. And while I was in college, I went to a CD store in Provo where I found a Pablo Casals CD in the used CD bin, for $1 iirc. The sound quality was pretty terrible, but the playing was transporting. My sister played cello and I loved the sound of the instrument. And even through an unremastered, scratchy bargain CD, Casals’s playing came through. (Full confession: what I’ve linked to isn’t the album I had. I suspect that the one I had was some since-deceased bargain record label. But this is the same recording, only my CD had fewer tracks; it was probably an hour rather than 2 1/2.)
Joshua Redman Quartet, Spirit of the Moment: Live at the Village Vanguard. My freshman year of college, I was a saxophone performance major. Theoretically I listened to jazz, though in practice, I mostly preferred jazz fusion. Still, I had a handful of straight-ahead jazz albums, including Redman’s second album, Wish. Only I didn’t love Wish (largely, I think, because I didn’t really get it). After I got home from my mission, I ran into one of my sax-playing friends from my freshman year, and he raved about Redman’s playing. I honestly didn’t entirely believe him until I listened to this album. It is acoustic jazz, and also it is funky. You can fell the groove, and the whole band (including especially Redman) sounds relaxed and effortless, even though what they’re doing is far from easy or effortless. This album started my love affair with Joshua Redman’s music, and for a long time, he was my favorite musician, bar none.
The Bad Plus, The Rite of Spring. I love me some Rite of Spring. (I even got to see the Joffrey Ballet dance a reconstructed version of the ballet!) And also, I kind of credit the Bad Plus with actually getting me into jazz; a trio, their schtick in the early 21st century was that their pianist really didn’t know popular music, so they’d do covers of pop songs in a tremendously avant-garde jazz manner. (FWIW, I saw them once at the Village Vanguard and I saw them play for free in NYC right after I took the bar exam.)
They mostly dropped the pop music thing. But then they went and released a version of the Rite of Spring. And it’s mostly played straight; they’re not jazzing it up. But they’re doing it live, a piano, bass, and drums (plus some electronics at the beginning) instead of a full orchestra. And you know what? It works. It’s another of those virtuosic performances that is absolutely mind-blowing.
Tower of Power, Monster on a Leash. Confession: a lot of this album is cheesy. But the Oakland-based ToP is known for its Oakland funk and its perfect horn section. They have better albums, honestly (including their 40th and 50th anniversary live albums, but did I mention that my arbitrary rules exclude live albums, notwithstanding that I broke that rule for Joshua Redman?), but this was my introduction to the band. My senior (or maybe junior) year, the high school assistant band director, probably sick of us listening to hard rock, turned a bunch of us on to Tower of Power. And it was another lifechanging introduction. The funk, the horns that don’t even pretend to make a mistake, and those bari sax figures? Honestly, any Tower of Power is good, but this worked for me as an introduction and gateway to the band.
Buddy Guy, Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues. I discovered Stevie Ray Vaughn in high school, a couple years after he died in a tragic helicopter crash. (In fact, it’s probably worth including his In Step, which I had on tape in high school, as another of my best albums.) SRV was my entrée into blues, which took me through B.B. King and the Blues Brothers, and at some point hit Buddy Guy (who I got to see at Blues Fest this summer!). I got this CD in college, and it was on constant rotation. See, when I got into metal and hard rock, it was for the guitar solos. But it turns out a good blues guitarist is way more interesting (imho) than a rock guitarist. And Buddy Guy is in the upper echelon of blues guitarists.
Chick Corea, Three Quartets. This is another high school flashback. While Miles was my first love, jazz-wise, Chick Corea (who played with Miles) was right up there. And Michael Brecker plays tenor on this album. (I was introduced to Brecker when my sax teacher lent me a bunch of his records to listen to.) Both were pretty big fusion players, but this is a straight-ahead acoustic album, intricate compositions by Corea with incredible playing by everybody. Even though I technically listened to fusion, I remember playing this CD, loud, in my dad’s car as I drove to parties at friends’ houses. And the album ends with a drum-sax duet on Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation.” It took me years to truly enjoy and appreciate Charlie Parker, but I loved this version of his composition.
Steve Lehman, Sélébéyone. US3’s “Cantaloop” came out while I was in high school. A hip-hop song that sampled Herbie Hancock (who should be on here too, but we’re starting to get long, but you should definitely listen to Herbie and Art Blakey too!) and had a live trumpet. I didn’t listen to much hip-hop, but that song was absolutely perfect. But a lot of the album felt like filler, so I can’t really put it on my best albums list. Still, that funky jazz-hip hop feel works really well here, and it works equally well on Guru’s Jazzmatazz vol. 1 (which is probably a better overall album, one I first heard in my freshman dorm) and A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory (which I heard much later, but anybody who has Ron Carter on bass has greatness, so let’s add this to my list too).
A lot of this hiphop/jazz fusion focuses on hard bop/soul jazz from the 60s and 70s, and for a reason: that funk fits really well as and with funk samples and a great flow.
But Sélébéyone is something else entirely: the jazz is not funky—it’s tremendously avant-garde, notes and harmonies and rhythms that would be entirely appropriate in an experimental club. And the rap? There are two rappers, one who raps in English and the other in Wolof. The jazz and the rap fit together, not because the groove fits perfectly, but because each is playing in the outer edges of accessible. This one is weird, and perhaps the least accessible of the albums on my list, but it is entirely worth the time and effort to engage with.
William Russo, Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra. Here’s the one that’s not on Spotify. (Spotify has a later composition, Street Music: Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra, but it’s a different three pieces.[fn]) A few months ago, the Harold Washington Library was deaccessioning its record collection; any record in the room you could buy for $1. By the time I got there, most were gone, but I felt like $9 for 9 records was fair. And this one intrigued me. It was on the Deutsche Grammophon label, so I figured it had to be interesting, at least. And it really is–it’s an orchestral piece with a four-piece blues band (including blues harp). It’s experimental, and I can’t figure out if it 100% works, but the more I listen to it, the more I like it. (Unfortunately, my YouTube link doesn’t have Side B, which has the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra playing music from West Side Story, which is not experimental but is also excellent!)
And, depending on how you count, that’s at least ten albums. I could keep going, and if I wrote this tomorrow, I’d almost definitely give a different list. (I wanted to include Mary Halvorson and Kurt Rosenwinkel and I should really include Lucky Thompson and I wish I had a particular album, rather than a series of songs, for Gary U.S. Bonds.) But, though it has glaring omissions, I think I’m pretty happy with this list.
[fn] After writing this, I put Street Music on on Spotify. And it seemed long, and the closing them sounded really familiar. And when I looked, I discovered that Spotify has combined the two albums, only they didn’t include Side B of my record on Spotify either. So I guess I didn’t need to post the YouTube link. Oh well.