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hit the decks

By Drury Brennan

When I was 11, I attended Miles Davis’ last performance. The very next morning, I arrived at the spontaneous conclusion that I was to begin my lifelong obsession with collecting records. The first two vinyl discs I purchased at a local Hollywood store were Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and The Big Beat by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. All of this pointless rhetoric is to ensure you, the reader and eager music beaver, that I, Drury Brennan, 11 years later, can assuredly recommend choice albums in jazz for you to purchase/nefariously procure for situational enjoyment. I thus offer you

Salacious selections for situational applications.

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10 albums to play for your semi-intelligent friends who know some jazz, but when you play these, they’ll forever pencil you in their Rolodexes as “jazz wizard”:

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  1. Sun Ra/ The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra vols. 1&2 (ESP-Disk)
  2. Max Roach Percussion/ Bitter Sweet (Impulse!)
  3. Anthony Braxton/ 3 Compositions of New Jazz (Delmark)
  4. Art Ensemble of Chicago/ Les Stances A Sophie (import)
  5. Dewey Redman/ Ear of the Behearer (Impulse!)
  6. Miles Davis/ Complete Plugged Nickel box set (Columbia)
  7. Ron Carter/ Uptown Conversation (Atlantic/Embryo)
  8. Cecil Taylor/ Silent Tongues (Arista/ Freedom)
  9. Howard McGhee/ Howard McGhee vol.2 (Blue Note)
  10. Eric Dolphy/ Stockholm Sessions (Enja)

10 albums for playing at a small party with impressionable, conservative people who don’t like getting rowdy (but love great music):
  1. Miles Davis/ Kind of Blue/ Some Day My Prince Will Come (Columbia)
  2. Charlie Parker/ Best of the Savoy Years (Savoy)
  3. Ella Fitzgerald/ Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook (Verve)
  4. Sara Leib/ It’s Not the Moon (http://www.saraleib.com)
  5. Erroll Garner/ Rhapsody (Altlantic)
  6. Ahmad Jamal/ Live at the Pershing vols. 1&2 (Argo)
  7. Oscar Peterson/ Night Train (Verve)
  8. Cal Tjader/ Soul Sauce (Verve)
  9. Pat Metheny/ As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (ECM)
  10. Chet Baker/ Gerry Mulligan Complete 10” Collection (Blue Note)

10 albums suitable for a party with your weird “bohemian” friends who don’t get rowdy (but instead imbibe more substances than you thought humanly possible) :

 
  1. 1. Jack McDuff Live at the Jazz Workshop/ Moon Rappin’ (Prestige/Blue Note)
  2. Eric Dolphy/ Out To Lunch (Blue Note)
  3. Miles Davis/ Miles Live at Fillmore (Columbia/Legacy)
  4. Oliver Nelson/ Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!)
  5. Grant/ Green Alive! (Blue Note)
  6. George Benson/ Bad, Bad Benson (CTI)
  7. Grachan Moncur/ III Evolution (Blue Note)
  8. Lee Morgan/ The Sidewinder (Blue Note)
  9. George Duke/Billy Cobham/ On Tour In Europe! (Atlantic)
  10. Roy Ayers/ Ubiquity He’s Coming (Polydor)

10 albums that are excellent...soundtracks to coming home from the Chicago cold and makin’ some good ol’ hot love:

 
  1. John Coltrane Quartet/ Ballads (Impulse!)
  2. Nina Simone/ Wild is the Wind/ High Priestess of Soul (Mercury)
  3. Jackie & Roy/ Lovesick (Verve)
  4. Chet Baker/ Let’s Get Lost (import)
  5. Gerry Mulligan/ Night Lights (Mercury)
  6. John Coltrane & Duke Ellington/ eponymous (Impulse!)
  7. Charles Mingus/ Mingus Ah-Um (Columbia)
  8. Billie Holiday/ Songs for Distingué Lovers (Verve)
  9. Charlie Parker/ Yardbird (Pickwick)
  10. Sarah Vaughan/ The Cabu Collection (Masters of Jazz)

10 albums for when you’re alone, you feel alone and you’d like to be left alone:

  1. Pete La Roca/ Basra (Blue Note)
  2. Yusef Lateef/ Eastern Sounds (Prestige)
  3. Joe Henderson/ Inner Urge (Toshiba)
  4. Herbie Hancock/ Blow-Up Soundtrack (MGM)
  5. Keith Jarrett/Jack DeJohnette/ Standards vol. 1 (ECM)
  6. Don Cherry/ Orient (import)
  7. Brad Mehldau/ Art of the Trio vol. 4 (Warner Bros.)
  8. Thelonious Monk/ Alone in San Francisco (Riverside/ OJC)
  9. Andrew Hill/ Judgement! (Blue Note)
  10. Chet Baker/Gerry Mulligan/ Carnegie Hall Concert (Sony/CTI)

 

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