For many of us, when it is played live is the best way to hear jazz. The unbridled spontaneity of brilliant musicians at the very top of the game, improvising and spurring each other on to greater creative heights.
It was what Norman Granz, the man behind the Jazz At The Philharmonic concert series believed. He loved hearing ‘jazz in the moment’, and his concert series, collected on some of the world’s best live jazz albums, allowed so many to hear jazz for the first time outside of smokey clubs and in concert halls.The JATP concerts were regularly recorded and they are well represented here, none finer than the 1946 concerts featuring and, the old school and the new school. Then there’s Gene Krupa & Buddy Rich at JATP in 1952 sharing the mother of all drum battles.But it’s also jazz played in the setting of an intimate club that is wonderful. “Dinah Jams” with Dinah Washington and Clifford Brown was a great album, but it wasn’t live! Neither was “Max Roach and Clifford Brown at Basin Street,” mentioned in a previous comment.
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One more album is “The Very Best of Christmas Jazz” which features 14 artist including Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans and many others. Here are Top 3 the most popular Christmas jazz albums.
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My adds:Ellington at Carnegie Hall, January 1943 — indispensable for the first and only complete recording by Duke of his symphonic masterpiece “Black, Brown and Beige.” Also, though Jimmie Blanton and Ivie Anderson were gone, most of the members of his greatest band were still there.Diz and Bird: Never liked the 1953 Massey Hall album much, but their 1947 Carnegie Hall performance and 1951’s “A Night at Birdland” are indispensable.Brubeck: The 1970 Berlin Philharmonie record with Mulligan is his greatest live album. I miss:– The Kai Winding Septet at Cleveland (1957)– The Colorado Jazz Party (feat.
Joe Newman, Carl Fontana, Teddy Wilson etc. Etc.)– Harry Edison: Sweets at the Haig (1953)– Zoot Sims: Baden-Baden – June 23, 1958– Oscar Pettiford: Germany 1958/1959– Quincy Jones: L’Alhambra -Paris (1958)– The European All-Stars 1961(in Berlin, feat. Albert Mangelsdorff, Hans Koller, Tete Montoliu etc.)– Charlie Barnet: Live at Basin Street East (1966)– Highlights in Jazz (feat. Doc Cheatham, George Kelly ety) (1985)– The Clarke-Boland Big Band: Live at Ronnie Scott’s (1969)– The Hanna-Fontana Band: Live at Concord (1975)– The Real Earl Hines (1966)– The Red Norvo Combo: The Second Time around (1975)– Charlie Ventura: Bop for the people (1949)– Alex Welsh: In Concert (1977)These are some of my favorites.