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Bulletin Board Members' Picks

By AAJ Staff
March 3, 2015
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Since we started the Building a Jazz Library (BAJL) series, we've assembled more than sixty collections, and that number continues to grow. We thought it might be interesting to see what readers would recommend, so we asked AAJ Bulletin Board members to provide a short list of recordings they considered essential, and the 159 different lists that came in over a six-month period added up to a tremendously diverse collection of music.

The following thirteen recordings (listed in rank order) were most frequently mentioned by readers in their BAJL lists. Most of them were released over the ten-year period from 1956-65, which appears to be the concensus Golden Age of jazz among those who voted. Curiously, this list closely resembles a collection of Masterpieces selected by the AAJ editorial staff, and you can read more about each individual record there.

Miles Davis
Kind of Blue
Columbia
1959

John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Impulse!
1964

John Coltrane
Giant Steps
Atlantic
1959

Charles Mingus
Mingus Ah Um
Columbia
1959

Sonny Rollins
Saxophone Colossus
Prestige
1956

Eric Dolphy
Out to Lunch
Blue Note
1964

Ornette Coleman
The Shape of Jazz to Come
Atlantic
1959

Herbie Hancock
Maiden Voyage
Blue Note
1965

Bill Evans
Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Riverside
1961

John Coltrane
Blue Train
Blue Note
1957

Oliver Nelson
Blues and the Abstract Truth
Impulse!
1961

Wayne Shorter
Speak No Evil
Blue Note
1964

Louis Armstrong
Complete Hot Fives and Sevens
Columbia / Legacy
2000

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