Random A-List for Set: Jazz

Jazz, including fusion, excluding vocals.

Here are 12 A-list albums, selected at random from Set: Jazz. Use your Reload button to get more.

Carla Bley: European Tour 1977 [1978, Watt]
Although the basic concept--Kurt Weill Meets Ornette Coleman for Indiscreet Ellingtonian Frolic--is a little abstruse, this actually does reward the sort of close listening that earns so many theoretical payoffs. Perhaps amusement is the reward a little too often, however. I like a joke as well as the next fellow, but a few emotional expositions do help assuage one's conscience. A−

Ornette Coleman: Body Meta [1978, Artists House]
Hidden in Coleman's dense electric music are angles deep enough to dive into and sharp enough to cut your throat. This isn't quite as dense or consistent as Dancing in Your Head--"Fou Amour" does wander. But "Voice Poetry" is as funky as James Chance if not James Brown. And "Home Grown" is as funky as Robert Johnson. A−

Miles Davis: Miles Davis in Concert [1973, Columbia]
Although it takes a while to get into gear, this two-record set, "recorded live at Philharmonic Hall, New York" by an unidentified six- or seven-piece band, has more going for it rhythmically than On the Corner. On side three, the bass throbs like jungle drums, and except for occasional guitar introjections only Miles's trumpet and organ get to work on top of the pulse. Pretty narrow in function, I admit, but what do you want from urban voodoo? A−

Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition: Album Album [1984, ECM]
Like so many of the best-liked new jazz albums, this one pays heartfelt respects to the carnivalesque--if you really wanted to, you could dance to it. But you'd probably rather listen, because at the same time it's highly composed, often dividing tunes into several distinct sections, and superbly played--John Purcell and Howard Johnson damn near keep up with master saxophonist David Murray. And beneath it all, tipping the balance between rowdy and civilized, is a Manfred Eicher mix that makes the record sit more like chamber music than DeJohnette could possibly have intended. A−

Thelonious Monk: Ken Burns Jazz [2000, Columbia/Legacy]
I like every album he ever made, and they do vary sonically. But Monk's piano is so distinct that from 1947 "Night in Tunisia" rewrite to 1971 "Nice Work If You Can Get It" decon this collection moves as one thing. Like Basie, Monk is a minimalist master of silence and space. But where Basie's few notes imply the full-bodied riff he's prepared for the band, Monk writes the way he plays. His tunes are spare, misshapen things that seemed bizarre in the '40s and eccentric in the '50s--and that now sound like they've always been there. Except for the late "Green Chimneys," every head singled out here is a known classic, equally potent and idiomatic whether Monk trips around trio or solo, corrals Rollins or Coltrane, or slips a little something to the boon companion of his icon years, tenor man Charlie Rouse. And then there are the wickedly timed and modulated comps that mine his sidemen's staunchest efforts. So humorous. So pointed. So on the fractal. A+

Thelonious Monk: Standards [1989, Columbia]
Released more than three decades ago and only purchased by me when I was buckling down to the longish 2009 Monk essay I dubbed "Not So Mysterioso," this Sony cherrypick comprises 10 Monk nonoriginals, only a few Tin Pan Alley fare on a par with closers "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." But in the mood for subclassic Monk one evening, I pulled it out four or five days before I decided I had to write this one up and have played it every day since. The material is mostly solo or quartet stuff, with Monk's longtime sax man Charlie Rouse stepping in here and there, and, right, this very "Tea for Two" was on our wedding tape 50 years ago. But at least half the selections aren't in my pop recall memory the way "Nice Work" and "Deep Blue Sea" are, and it turns out that this doesn't matter in the slightest. It's by no means on a par with, say, Misterioso, one of my favorite albums ever. And true, it tinkles more than it bangs. But when I feel like some Monk less complex and demanding than, say, Brilliant Corners, it's sure to come to mind. A+

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 [2017, Saga/Sam]
A pricey French import that targets serious fans like me, so why not you? Recorded down by the riverside in Weehawken because Monk wasn't together or perhaps even interested enough to get to France, this unsynchronized 1959 "soundtrack" for a sexed-up Roger Vadim rip of the 1782 novel of the same name offers no new compositions but several this-time-onlys as it deploys the exceptional rhythm section of bassist Sam Jones and drummer Art Taylor and on some tracks a second saxophonist named Barney Wilen to texture Charlie Rouse's breathy imperturbality. Toward the end comes a brief improvisation entitled "Light Blue" that later resurfaced as "Round Lights" and a brief reading of the Charles Tindley hymn "We'll Understand It By and By" by the same pianist who spent two teen years woodshedding with a gospel show. And then there's the bonus disc, which really is for fans only, like the one I know who can't get enough of the 14-minute "Light Blue (making of)," which consists entirely of Taylor trying to get the tune's bluntly off-kilter beat straight. A−

Thelonious Monk: Standards [1989, Columbia]
Released more than three decades ago and only purchased by me when I was buckling down to the longish 2009 Monk essay I dubbed "Not So Mysterioso," this Sony cherrypick comprises 10 Monk nonoriginals, only a few Tin Pan Alley fare on a par with closers "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." But in the mood for subclassic Monk one evening, I pulled it out four or five days before I decided I had to write this one up and have played it every day since. The material is mostly solo or quartet stuff, with Monk's longtime sax man Charlie Rouse stepping in here and there, and, right, this very "Tea for Two" was on our wedding tape 50 years ago. But at least half the selections aren't in my pop recall memory the way "Nice Work" and "Deep Blue Sea" are, and it turns out that this doesn't matter in the slightest. It's by no means on a par with, say, Misterioso, one of my favorite albums ever. And true, it tinkles more than it bangs. But when I feel like some Monk less complex and demanding than, say, Brilliant Corners, it's sure to come to mind. A+

David Murray: Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club, Volume 1 [1978, India Navigation]
Rarely do I find much use for jazz that not only abandons theme but disdains melodic development, as both "Obe" (which runs 18 minutes) and (more modestly) "Nevada's Theme" do here. But Murray's saxophone and Lester Bowie's trumpet speak polymorphically enough to sustain simple interest, and to make up for the futuristic abstractions there's "Bechet's Bounce," a gently satiric, fiercely infectious Dixieland romp. A−

James Blood Ulmer: Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions [2001, Label M]
Ulmer's singing has always been Delta, but on the blues album of his life Vernon Reid hooks him up with Willie Dixon, and the three unmatched neoprimitivists make roughslick music together. Not all the best tracks are Dixon songs: here's to old-time DJ Holmes Daylie's "Too Lazy to Work, Too Nervous to Steal," John Lee Hooker's whistled "Dimples," the eight-minute "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" turbocharging over the dull memory of the nine-minute "Walking Blues." And if Dixon ever heard anything like the harmolodics Ulmer lays on "Little Red Rooster" and "I Love the Life I Live," Pete Cosey was God. A−

David S. Ware: Surrendered [2000, Columbia]
Although I don't keep tabs on postpunk's favorite free saxophonist, this is much the most confident of the three albums I know. With virtuosity and ease, he and a quartet balanced by pianist Matthew Shipp naturalize the sturm und drang of the post-Coltrane '60s. It's got a pulse, it's got a voice, it's got some heads. It's got unflagging energy. So what's to be scared of? A little noise? A−