#2
John Coltrane
Complete 1961 Village Vanguard

#3
Miles Davis
Live at The Plugged Nickel

#4
Charles Mingus
Live At Antibes

#5
Duke Ellington
Live at Newport

#6
Sonny Rollins
At The Village Vanguard

#7
John Coltrane
Live at Birdland

#8
Wes Montgomery & Wynton Kelly
Smokin' at the Half Note

#9
Erroll Garner
Concert By The Sea

#10
Gillespie, Parker, Powell, Mingus and Roach
The Quintet-Jazz at Massey Hall, Volume 1

When Miles brought his second great quintet to the Plugged Nickel in Chicago shortly before Christmas 1965 for a two night engagement, the quintet had already been recording together for a number of years. So, it is interesting, that with the exception of "Agitation," Davis chose rather to concentrate on radical explorations of his old band book. "Walkin'," "My Funny Valentine," "I Fall In Love Too Easily," "If I Were a Bell, "Stella By Starlight," and "So What" dominate the sets and are presented in multiple forms.

All of the performances have characteristics that were turning from transitional to Davis status quo. The tempi tended to be fast, different time signatures were employed in each piece, the arrangements were less about the head and more about the solo body of the songs. All of the pieces performed at the Plugged Nickel were a look at the old stuff through radically different glasses, glasses that Davis had been working on since the dissolution of the first great quintet and sextet in 1958.

There were many live Mile Davis recordings to consider for this number 3 space in this list. But, none of those other discs, and there were many fine ones, captured Davis at the absolute ground zero of his creativity. Prior to these recordings, Davis had already begun to move into the looser constraints of modal composition with "Mile Stones" and then Kind of Blue. He continued this tend with the early second quintet recordings, E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Nefertiti. Miles was moving in a freedom direction with compositional discipline and restraint. The Plugged Nickel recordings represent Davis' effort to return to the classics and recast them in the new mode he was creating. The results were-- and are-- fantastic.

Writer's Note: Having recently completed a survey of the Top Ten Best Live Rock Albums, I have learned a couple of valuable things. One is a list of this sort should be presented in descending order starting with number 10 and descending to number 1. Second, it is better to poll a group for their opinions and develop the list from an analytical (or pseudoanalytical) evaluation of the results. This is how the Top Ten Best Live Jazz Recordings were selected. I polled the writership of All About Jazz, combined the results and ranked the recordings. For recordings that tied in number of votes, I arbitrarily selected the order (I had to exert editorial control somewhere!).

Live Jazz is perhaps the most natural creative state in music. Performing jazz means a musician must create a work of art on the spot, composition in real time. In this series, I hope to highlight historic events where this invention has not been merely successful, but transcendent.