Kind of Blue
1959
Davis handed the players sketches on the day and most of what you hear is a first take. Two sessions, and it was done.
★ 9.8
The Albums canon
Sourced and spun.
Every record chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
A Love Supreme
1964
Coltrane recorded it in one December session and meant it as a prayer. On the last movement he plays a psalm he had written out.
★ 9.0
Bitches Brew
1970
Davis gave the players almost no written music, and his producer Teo Macero cut the tapes together afterward with a razor blade.
★ 8.9
Aja
1977
Becker and Fagen ran seven guitarists through the solo on Peg before they kept one, and worked the rest of the record the same way.
★ 8.7
Giant Steps
1960
The title track modulates through three keys so fast that the pianist, Tommy Flanagan, audibly struggles through his solo on the finished take.
★ 8.6
I Put a Spell on You
1965
Simone had trained to be a classical pianist and was turned down by the conservatory. You can hear the Bach in her left hand throughout.
★ 7.9
Mingus Ah Um
1959
Columbia refused to let him record the words to Fables of Faubus, an attack on a segregationist governor, so it appears as an instrumental.
★ 7.6
The Shape of Jazz to Come
1959
Coleman played a white plastic saxophone because it was what he could afford, and half the musicians in New York thought he was a fraud.
★ 7.4
Time Out
1959
Every piece is in an unusual meter. Take Five is in five beats to the bar and was written by the saxophonist, Paul Desmond, not Brubeck.
★ 7.3
Blue Train
1957
Coltrane's only record as a leader for Blue Note, made as a favor to the label's founder while he was under contract elsewhere.
★ 7.1
In the Wee Small Hours
1955
Sixteen ballads in one unbroken mood, recorded after his marriage to Ava Gardner fell apart, and built to be heard in order.
★ 6.9
Maiden Voyage
1965
A concept album about the sea, made by Miles Davis's pianist with Davis's rhythm section, and every title refers to water.
★ 6.8
My Favorite Things
1961
Coltrane picked up the soprano saxophone, an instrument almost nobody played then, and stretched a show tune over two chords for thirteen minutes.
★ 6.8
Rhapsody in Blue
1924
The famous clarinet wail at the start was a joke the player improvised in rehearsal, and Gershwin told him to keep it in.
★ 6.8
Waltz for Debby
1961
Both this and its companion record come from a single Sunday at the Village Vanguard, and glasses and conversation carry through every track.
★ 6.7
Sunday at the Village Vanguard
1961
Scott LaFaro plays the bass as a third melodic voice rather than keeping time. He was killed in a car crash ten days later.
★ 6.6
Birth of the Cool
1957
Recorded in 1949 and 1950 by a nine-piece band with a tuba and a French horn, and not gathered onto one record until 1957.
★ 6.5
Out to Lunch!
1964
There is no piano on it, just Bobby Hutcherson's vibraphone holding the harmony loosely enough that the tunes never quite settle.
★ 6.4
Sketches of Spain
1960
Gil Evans built it around a Spanish guitar concerto, scoring the solo part for trumpet. It took months and nearly broke both of them.
★ 6.4
Speak No Evil
1965
Shorter wrote these while working in Miles Davis's band and said he was thinking about folk tales and misty landscapes with witches.
★ 6.4