The Five Most Important and/or Best Selling Jazz Records
by John Lawrence
#1 The Essential Charlie Parker (Verve Records)
You can't understand what jazz is all about until you appreciate Charlie "Bird" Parker. He totally revolutionized jazz. There was jazz before Charlie Parker and jazz after Charlie Parker, but no one almost singlehandedly reconstructed the art form. The most important figure in 20th century music and art, Charlie Parker was one of the most creative people who ever lived and performed in the world's most creative art form despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that he was a junkie, an alcoholic and died at the age of 34 from failure of every major organ in his body.
The album mentioned above is not available today but the closest thing to it is The Best of Charlie Parker - the Millenium Collection which has most, but not all, of the same tunes.
In addition to being the most creative and best improvisor of all time, Charlie Parker was a great composer, something for which he has not been given the credit that he deserves. Compositions such as Anthropology, Confirmation, Donna Lee, Ornithology, Ko-Ko, Yardbird Suite and many more.
#2 Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
This is the best selling jazz album of all time. Miles, the Prince of Darkness, has assembled a fantastic group including Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, all major players at the top of their form. Miles was always looking for something new, and this album represented a departure from the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. The music was based on simpler "modal" harmonies rather than the chord structures of bebop which at once made it more accessible to the public and more melodic. It was also easier to improvise on as the same scale was used for much of the tune.
Kind of Blue was easy to comprehend, easy to take either as music played by the greatest improvisors of the day or simply as background music at a dinner party. That's probably why it sold so well.
#3 Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Clifford Brown was, in my opinion, the best trumpet player ever to play jazz. I would put him ahead of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. He epitomized jazz trumpet playing just as Charlie Parker epitomized the jazz saxophone. Tragically he died in a car accident at the age of 25 on a rainy night going from one gig to another. Brownie was one of the few jazz musicians of that era who was "clean," that is, he didn't use drugs. Like Charlie Parker, he was also a great composer. Brownie was a very melodic and emotional player and his improvisational constructions always made sense. He was technically unlimited on the horn. All his contemporaries mourned his passing. It was probably the greatest loss of a promising artist ever.
Clifford Brown formed a quintet with one of the greatest drummers of the time, Max Roach, in 1954. The saxophonist on the album was Harold Land, and the pianist was Richie Powell who also died in the car accident as did Richie's wife, Nancy, who was driving the car. Brown died on his wife, LaRue's, birthday. It was also their second wedding anniversary. They had had one child, Clifford Brown Jr.
Brown's compositions, Joy Spring and Daahoud, have become classics and jazz standards. Brown epitomized to me the essence of jazz trumpet playing. The album is simply called "Clifford Brown and Max Roach" although any album by Clifford Brown is worth listening to. The original album was on EmArcy records, but it is currently available on CD as an import.
#4 My Favorite Things - John Coltrane
Coltrane was only second to Charlie Parker as a jazz saxophone player, in my opinion. With this album, Coltrane took a popular tune, made it his very own and recorded a jazz classic that became one of the best selling jazz albums of all time. This music is at once very accessible to the general public and the highest quality jazz, a rare and potent combination, similar to that attained in the "Kind of Blue" album.
I can say it no better than Stuart Broomer: "This 1960 recording was a landmark album in John Coltrane's career, the first to introduce his quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones and the first release on which he played soprano saxophone. It also provided him with a signature hit, as his new group conception came together wonderfully on the title track. It's an extended modal reworking in 6/4 time that brought the hypnotic pulsating quality of Indian music into jazz for the first time, with Coltrane's soprano wailing over the oscillating piano chords and pulsing drums. The unusual up-tempo version of Gershwin's "Summertime" is a heated example of Coltrane's "sheets of sound" approach to conventional changes, while "But Not for Me" receives a radical harmonic makeover. This is an excellent introduction to Coltrane's work."
A movie about John Coltrane's life and music called Chasin' Trane came out in 2017
#5 The Sidewinder - Lee Morgan
Lee Morgan was another tragic jazz figure, one who also died too young. Like many young musicians who passed through the Art Blakey training camp, Lee became hooked on heroin, and, as a result, became a down and out junkie after a promising start as a protege of Clifford Brown. However, like Miles Davis who was also strung out on heroin for awhile, Lee made a comeback.
From Death of a Sidewinder by W.M. Akers:
"On an icy night in 1967, one of the world’s greatest trumpeters didn’t own a trumpet. His horn was in the pawnshop, along with his winter coat, sold to pay for heroin. Three years after releasing one of the most successful jazz albums of the 1960s, Lee Morgan was in the depths of a drug habit that had consumed him for nearly a decade. Even if he’d had a trumpet, he was so out of practice that he could barely play."
Lee descended into junkiedom, hocking his horn, sleeping in bars on pool tables, stealing TV sets for money for heroin. That's when he met Helen.
After Lee regained his chops, thanks to Helen, he was back in the recording studio for Blue Note. During a break he went into the bathroom and had an inspiration. He wrote the music for "Sidewinder" on a sheet of toilet paper. Then the band immediately recorded it to fill out the album, and it became one of the greatest selling jazz albums of all time. The Sidewinder title track cracked the pop charts in 1964, and served as the background theme for Chrysler television commercials during the World Series.
If Helen acted like a mother, she was also his manager, collecting his money, booking dates and paying his band. She was ever-present when he played live — something that, as the methadone treatment took effect, he was doing more and more — sitting right next to the stage, sunglasses on, her purse clutched in her lap.
Helen's "mothering" eventually produced a counter reaction in Lee who went through a "period of change." He became politically active, was in tune with Malcolm X. He also started sharing his knowledge of jazz in New York City public schools. He also began dating another woman. She replaced Helen in the front row seat at Lee's gigs
From Death of a Sidewinder:
Just as Clifford Brown had mentored him in Philadelphia, Morgan began teaching music in New York schools, sharing his deep technical knowledge of jazz with the next generation of musicians. Eating in a restaurant in Harlem with one of his young pupils, Perchard writes, Morgan took out his trumpet to illustrate a point. The sound of the horn crackled through the packed restaurant, and the man at the next table was not amused.
“Man, what you doing playing here?” he demanded. “Who you think you are, Miles Davis?”
“No, motherfucker, I’m Lee Morgan.”
It was a cold, wintry night in a dive called Slug's Saloon when Helen showed up. There was an altercation between her and Lee. Lee threw her bodily out in the snow without her coat. However, she had her purse and in her purse she had a gun. Reentering the club, Lee came at her again. That's when she shot him. Lee might have survived, but the ambulance couldn't get there in time on a cold snowy, traffic-snarled night. He bled to death. Helen spent only three months in jail probably because the jury saw it as self defense. But that was the demise of Lee Morgan at age 33.
Lee Morgan is the subject of a 2016 documentary I Called Him Morgan by Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin. The film premiered September 1, 2016 at the 73rd Venice Film Festival and was released in the US on March 24, 2017.
There You Have It
Three of the five artists mentioned here died too young. Even Coltrane was only 40 when he died of liver cancer. Miles Davis lived to the ripe old age of 65. All of the above artists were African-Americans.Three of the above albums were best sellers and so are quite accessible to the general public. The other two sold moderately to well. To really understand and appreciate jazz, you really have to listen to these albums and these artists. There are other groundbreaking albums and also other albums which have sold well. The above five albums are not all inclusive, but they will get you started with a basic understanding and knowledge of jazz. Next time - the next five groundbreaking and important jazz albums.
