THE COOLEST JAZZ RECORDS by Joe Goldberg
The Very Best of Bird. Charlie Parker's best sides, the Dial sessions, newly released by Warner Brothers on a double LP. (web pick: Yardbird Suite: Ultimate Charlie Parker)
'Round About Midnight (Columbia). Miles Davis and John Coltrane on their first album, making the most influential jazz since Armstrong.
European Concert (Atlantic). The Modern Jazz Quartet's finest hour, a two-LP set featuring leader John Lewis' "Django," generally thought to be MJQ's best work, and nonmember Ray Brown's "Pyramid," which was. (web picks: 40 Years and Django)
Duke Ellington is the Great American Composer, as well as one of the coolest men who ever lived. But he might not have achieved what he did without the recordings he made in the late Twenties with the short-lived trumpeter Bubber Miley, co-composer of the seminal Duke classics "East St. Louis ToodleOo," "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "The Mooche." See Hot in Harlem - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra (1928-29) (MCA). Ellington's best period is supposed to have begun in 1940, but check into the small group recordings he made just before under the names of sidemen Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, and Cootie Williams. (web pick: Very Best of)
The Complete Genius (Bluenote). The iconoclastic Thelonius Monk, perhaps the purest jazz musician we've had, at his greatest. (web picks: The Columbia Years and The Complete Prestige Recordings)
Sidney Bechet was jazz's most rhapsodic soloist, as shown on his versions of "Summertime" and "Blue Horizon." Try Sidney Bechet Jazz Classics, Volumes 1-2 (Bluenote). (web pick: see Ken Burns' Jazz)
Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez entered the jazz lexicon when cut by Miles and Gil Evans. Its finest realization remains Jim Hall's on CTI, done with Paul Desmond and Chet Baker.
The Tatum Group Masterpieces - Art Tatum & Ben Webster (Pablo). Perhaps the most erotic jazz record ever made.
Crosscurrents (Capitol). The most cerebral, hence coolest, jazz group was pianist Lennie Tristano's, with sax accompanists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.
Count Basie made some records with sidemen he called the Kansas City Seven (1939, 1944), which featured saxophonist Lester Young occasionally on clarinet. The best of these is "I Want A Little Girl"; even the worst is superb. Originally cut for Commodore, the KC7 sides have since been sold to Columbia and licensed out repeatedly. Check liner credits.
Dizzy Gillespie with Don Byas recorded the ultimate single, "I Can't get Started." A better jazz record doesn't exist. Now available on the Smithsonian twofer Evolution of an American Artist: Dizzy Gillespie.