Blue Note Classics

Cannonball's masterpiece, and the strange thing about it is that Miles Davis is here as a sideman, on Cannonball's record, not the other way around. Miles plays with a muted, conversational warmth that suits the session perfectly. Art Blakey is the engine. "Autumn Leaves" is the track everyone knows and for good reason: Cannonball's tone is so full and joyful it almost sounds like he's grinning while he plays. The blues feel is strong throughout. Hank Jones plays with that reliable elegance he brought to everything. What makes this record feel special is how relaxed it is: nobody is trying to prove anything, everyone is just playing well together, and the music breathes.

The title track has one of the most recognizable bass lines in jazz history, a simple, bouncing groove that Lee Morgan rides over with a confident swagger that sounds effortless and isn't. This was Morgan's commercial breakthrough and the label's best-selling record, which surprised everyone at Blue Note including Alfred Lion. But the rest of the album holds up too. Joe Henderson on tenor is the perfect foil: where Morgan is breezy and assured, Henderson has an edge and an angular quality that keeps every track from getting too comfortable. Billy Higgins swings with a lightness that makes everything float. Barry Harris is understated and exactly right. "Gary's Notebook" is the hidden gem. This record makes you want to stand up.

This is the Blue Note record that sounds like nothing else on the label. Dolphy had his own language on every instrument he played, the alto, the bass clarinet, the flute, and on this session recorded in February 1964 just months before he died, he plays all three with a freedom and precision that's still astonishing. "Hat and Beard" (named for Thelonious Monk) opens the album and establishes immediately that this will not be comfortable music. Tony Williams was 18 years old when this was recorded and plays like someone who has been doing it for twenty years. Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone adds an otherworldly shimmer. Richard Davis is as much a melodic voice as a rhythmic one. Freddie Hubbard brings a more conventional hard bop sensibility that creates interesting tension against Dolphy's wilder lines. This record holds up as one of the most forward-looking jazz albums ever made, period.

This is the Wayne Shorter record that doesn't get talked about as much as Speak No Evil or JuJu but probably should. The lineup is extraordinary, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Freddie Hubbard, and a fuller ensemble than Shorter usually brought into the studio. The title track is a large-scale piece that feels orchestral even with a small group. Shorter's writing here is reaching for something more cosmic than his earlier Blue Note work, the harmonics are denser, the structures less conventional. Grachan Moncur III on trombone adds a weight and a strangeness that suits the material. This album rewards patience. It doesn't open up on first listen the way Speak No Evil does, but once it gets in you it stays.

The title track is one of the most beautiful slow burns in jazz, Green plays the melody over a Duke Pearson arrangement and the whole thing unfolds at about half the speed of a normal jazz record. Joe Henderson's solo entrance is a genuine event. Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone gives the record a warm, slightly hazy quality that perfectly matches the title. Grant Green was maybe the most underrated guitarist of the Blue Note era: clean, soulful, rooted in the blues without being limited by it. This album is one of the best arguments for his greatness. The long takes on the two key tracks let everyone breathe and stretch, and nothing feels wasted.

Art Pepper was doing something different on the West Coast while all the hard bop action was happening in New York, and this album captures him at his most lyrical and most confident. The record was made in two sessions: one with Miles Davis's rhythm section (Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones), and one with the Russ Freeman trio. Both sessions are excellent but the Garland/Chambers/Jones date is something special, those three were so locked in from playing with Miles that they turn everything into an event. Pepper's alto tone is sweeter than the East Coast players, more vulnerable-sounding, which gives his solos a different kind of emotional weight. He plays like someone telling you about something that hurt. "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" are the ballad high points.

By 1958 when this was recorded, Bud Powell had been through a lot: electroshock treatments, years of instability, periods where his playing was a shadow of what it had been. This session catches him on a good day and the result is a reminder of what made him the definitive bebop pianist. His right hand runs lines of extraordinary complexity and speed while his left hand comps with a sparse, broken voicing that no one else ever quite copied. "Time Waits" (a blues) and "Cleopatra's Dream" are the two originals and both became standards. Paul Chambers and Art Taylor stay out of the way in the best possible sense. When Powell is on, nobody sounds like him. He sounds like he's on here.

Teddy Edwards is one of the West Coast players who never got the credit he deserved. He was playing a loose, blues-inflected style in the late 1940s that had real bebop sophistication, and by the time this album was recorded he was fully formed and completely himself. The title track is gorgeous: a slow, smoky tenor feature with Billy Higgins playing brushes in a way that makes the whole room feel small and warm. Leroy Vinnegar's walking bass is rock solid. Joe Castro comps with intelligence and restraint. Edwards plays with a slightly husky quality, not rough, just lived-in, and his ballad playing in particular has a directness that gets under your skin. A neglected classic.

Art Blakey recorded a lot of live sessions but rarely as a sideman, and having him behind Kenny Burrell's guitar group at the Five Spot in 1959 creates an unusual energy. Blakey doesn't play for the guitar, he plays the way he always plays, which is with total conviction and zero restraint, and Burrell has to meet him at that level. Tina Brooks on tenor is the revelation here: one of the most underrecorded musicians of the hard bop era, he plays with a raw directness and unusual melodic instincts that make you wish he'd made more records. The live setting captures a loose, cooking energy that studio sessions rarely catch. Duke Jordan is steady and swinging. This one deserves more listeners.