7 Greatest Jazz CDs

By Christopher Porterfield

BILLIE HOLIDAY LADY DAY: THE BEST OF BILLIE HOLIDAY

Many other singers had better pipes or more agile techniques. But nobody transformed a song into something as deeply personal and affecting--and swinging--as Holiday. In these two discs, her reedy, frayed-at-the-edges voice, teasingly lagging the beat, instinctively breathes the bittersweet essence of the jazz life. What's more, she is surrounded by the finest sidemen of the era (1935-42), including pianist Teddy Wilson and her musical and emotional soul mate, tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

MILES DAVIS THE COMPLETE BIRTH OF THE COOL

In the late 1940s, Davis teamed up for the first of his epochal collaborations with arranger Gil Evans. They assembled an unusual nonet, including a tuba and French horn, and began experimenting with a new kind of writing. The goals: dense, rich sonorities, a "cool," vibrato-free style of playing and a tight meshing of the charts and soloists (among them baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and trombonist J.J. Johnson). Result: a reshaping of the modern jazz aesthetic.

JOHN COLTRANE A LOVE SUPREME

John Updike once said Vladimir Nabokov wrote prose the only way it should be written: ecstatically. That's the way the Coltrane quartet plays here. The four-part suite, composed to celebrate Coltrane's spiritual triumph over drug addiction, ranges hypnotically from a meditative murmur to fierce shrieks, with Coltrane's tenor sax surging to astonishing inventiveness and intensity. The 1964 album staked out frontiers of harmony, rhythm and structure that musicians are still exploring today.

CHARLIE CHRISTIAN THE GENIUS OF THE ELECTRIC GUITAR

In the years B.C. (before Christian), the jazz guitar was mostly a rhythm instrument. In his hands, it emerged as a brilliantly lyrical solo voice, one that echoes in virtually every electric guitarist who has followed. Christian's death from tuberculosis at 25 made him one of jazz's greatest might-have-beens. This four-disc package--largely his 1939-41 appearances as a precocious star of Benny Goodman's combos--proves that he was one of jazz's greatest, period.

CHARLIE PARKER COMPLETE JAZZ AT MASSEY HALL

Pianist Bud Powell was drunk. Parker was playing a plastic saxophone borrowed from a local music store. At one point, bassist Charles Mingus got so angry at trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's antics that he stomped offstage. Yet on this night of May 15, 1953, at Toronto's Massey Hall, the musicians, along with drummer Max Roach, somehow pulled together to give an incandescent, unforgettable performance. Captured in a low-fi taping by Mingus and Roach, the concert showed what bebop--and live jazz--was all about.

DUKE ELLINGTON NEVER NO LAMENT: THE BLANTON-WEBSTER BAND

It was already a superb band, featuring such Ellington stalwarts as Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams and Juan Tizol. But after bassist Jimmie Blanton and tenor-sax man Ben Webster signed on in 1939 and '40, it became the leader's best ever. The compelling evidence is on these three discs, on tracks like Cotton Tail, Ko-Ko, Jack the Bear and Harlem Air-Shaft. Individual glories abound, but the band's chief glory remains the nonpareil jazz composer whose instrument it was: the Duke himself.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG HOT FIVES AND SEVENS Forget the Satchmo who sang and mugged his way through his later decades, wonderfully entertaining as he was. This is Armstrong the force of nature--exuberant, inspired, irresistible. His ringing, soaring trumpet improvisations in the 1920s not only established him as jazz's first pre-eminent and pervasively influential soloist but also propelled jazz from a shambling, collective folk music into an art form. Many versions of these indispensable sides are available; the four-disc set from London-based JSP offers the best remastered sound.