Strange Fruit
1939
A Bronx schoolteacher's poem about lynching, sung in a single spotlight, still the bravest three minutes on record.
★ 9.6
The Songs canon
Sourced and sung.
Every song chosen by hand, with the recording to play it.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
So What
1959 · From Kind of Blue
Two chords and all the space in the world, Davis proving that less was the most radical idea in jazz.
★ 9.2
West End Blues
1928
Armstrong's twelve-second opening cadenza announced that jazz had a soloist, and everything since has been the answer.
★ 9.1
Rhapsody in Blue
1924 · From Rhapsody in Blue
Ross Gorman slurred the opening clarinet as a joke in rehearsal, and Gershwin kept the wail for Aeolian Hall.
★ 8.7
Take Five
1959 · From Time Out
Morello kept soloing in five, so the quartet built him a tune in 5/4; Desmond wrote the theme.
★ 8.7
A Love Supreme, Part 1: Acknowledgement
1965 · From A Love Supreme
Garrison's four notes, then Coltrane overdubbing the chant nineteen times, one December day at Van Gelder's.
★ 8.6
Stardust (1927)
1927
Carmichael whistled the tune to his band at Gennett and cut it fast; Parish added the lyric two years later.
★ 8.3
Take the "A" Train
1941
Strayhorn turned Ellington's subway directions into a theme song; Ray Nance's trumpet solo got copied note for note ever after.
★ 8.2
My Favorite Things
1961 · From My Favorite Things
Coltrane picked up the soprano saxophone Miles gave him and stretched a Rodgers and Hammerstein waltz past thirteen minutes.
★ 8.1
Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)
1937
Louis Prima's tune, Krupa's tom-toms, and a performance long enough to fill both sides of a twelve-inch 78.
★ 8.0
Giant Steps
1960 · From Giant Steps
Recorded May 5, 1959, with the band reading it cold, and those third-related key changes remain jazz's hardest exam.
★ 7.8
Round Midnight
1947 · From Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1
Monk wrote it around 1940, cutting it for Blue Note in 1947; no jazz composer's tune is recorded more.
★ 7.8
The Girl From IpanemaAstrud Gilberto
The Girl From Ipanema
1964
Never a professional singer, Gilberto sang at the 1963 session because she spoke English; Record of the Year followed.
★ 7.8
God Bless the ChildBillie Holiday
God Bless the Child
1941
A quarrel with her mother over money, by Holiday's own account, gave the song its title line and its steel.
★ 7.8
Body and Soul
1939
Hawkins barely states the melody, improvises two choruses instead, and the 1939 Bluebird side pointed jazz toward bebop.
★ 7.7
Feeling Good
1965 · From I Put a Spell on You
Written for a Newley and Bricusse musical, it opens with nothing but her voice before Hal Mooney's horns land.
★ 7.7
A Night in TunisiaDizzy Gillespie
A Night in Tunisia
1946
Written at a Kelly's Stables piano in 1942 under the title Interlude, with a bass line that refuses to walk.
★ 7.6
All Blues
1959 · From Kind of Blue
A twelve-bar blues in 6/8, take two the only complete one, and Paul Chambers' bass figure underneath everything.
★ 7.6
Minnie the Moocher
1931
Calloway forgot the words on a Cotton Club broadcast, by his account, and the hi-de-ho call and response was born.
★ 7.6
Ain't Misbehavin'
1929
Waller sold every song in Hot Chocolates for five hundred dollars, then cut this one alone for Victor.
★ 7.5
Singin' the Blues
1927
No vocal, the melody withheld until the final chorus, and Beiderbecke's cornet solo transcribed note-for-note by Fletcher Henderson's orchestra.
★ 7.4
Sinnerman
1965 · From Pastel Blues
Simone learned it at her mother's revival meetings and stretched it past ten minutes of piano vamp and handclaps.
★ 7.4
Goodbye Pork Pie HatCharles Mingus
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
1959 · From Mingus Ah Um
Lester Young died two months before the session, and Mingus answered with a slow blues named for his hat.
★ 7.4
Mack the KnifeBobby Darin
Mack the Knife
1959
Richard Wess's arrangement climbs a semitone verse after verse, and Darin rides the tension to his only number one.
★ 6.9
Mood Indigo
1930
Ellington inverted the horns, trombone high and clarinet low, and the overtones invent a fourth instrument that is not there.
★ 6.9
Black and Tan Fantasy
1927
Miley's growl trumpet, Nanton's plunger-muted trombone, and a Chopin funeral march closing out the 1927 Victor side.
★ 6.9
Moonlight Serenade
1939
Composed under Joseph Schillinger's tuition, and the band was playing it as a theme before it had a title.
★ 6.7
Begin the BeguineArtie Shaw
Begin the Beguine
1938
RCA called it "a complete waste of time", hid it on a B-side, and Shaw's clarinet sold six million anyway.
★ 6.6
One O'Clock JumpCount Basie
One O'Clock Jump
1937
A head arrangement built section by section, Lester Young and Herschel Evans trading solos, Basie's theme song ever after.
★ 6.6
Linus and Lucy
1964
A piano vamp, Budwig's bass, Bailey's drums, taped in San Francisco in 1964 and welded to Peanuts ever since.
★ 6.6
Livery Stable Blues
1917
Barnyard imitations from clarinet, cornet and trombone, waxed for Victor in February 1917: the first jazz record commercially released.
★ 6.4
Stolen Moments
1960
A sixteen-bar theme, twelve-bar minor blues solos, and Dolphy, Hubbard and Bill Evans in Van Gelder's room.
★ 6.4
Moanin'
1960 · From Blues & Roots
Pepper Adams' extended baritone solo, and a whole blues album Mingus cut in one February 1959 session.
★ 6.4
Shhh, Peaceful
1969 · From In a Silent Way
Three electric pianos over a single February 1969 session, and Macero's edit brings the opening back to close it.
★ 6.2
Birdland
1977
Zawinul named it for the club where he heard Basie, Ellington and Miles, then made an instrumental a hit.
★ 6.1
How High the Moon
1951
Twelve guitar parts and twelve vocals, by Paul's own count, layered in a Queens apartment studio; nine weeks at number one.
★ 6.1
Cantaloupe Island
1964 · From Empyrean Isles
Hubbard on cornet, Van Gelder engineering, June 1964; Us3 later looped Hancock's vamp into the Top 10.
★ 5.9
Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair
1959 · From Nina Simone at Town Hall
Sharp and Karpeles collected this Scottish ballad in the Appalachians in 1916; Simone slows it to near-stillness at Town Hall.
★ 5.6
Tiger Rag
1918
Cut for Victor in March 1918, over 136 versions by 1942, and New Orleans still argues over who wrote it.
★ 5.0
After You've GoneMarion Harris
After You've Gone
1918
Cut for Victor in July 1918 by the singer billed as Queen of the Blues; jazz kept it.
★ 4.3
Some of These Days
1911
Tucker's maid pressed Shelton Brooks's song on her in 1910, and it stayed her signature for the rest of her career.
★ 3.7