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.

Louis Armstrong: 16 Most Requested Songs [1994, Columbia/Legacy]
With his innovations long since institutionalized, Armstrong's Ambassador of Jazz period is often accused of lost spark. Four songs on this budget set from the mid-'50s had been in his repertoire so long that they're also featured in the box, and you needn't back-to-back them to hear the difference--where earlier he was exploring his gifts and establishing his rights, here he's recreating his triumphs, revving set pieces into what has come to be understood as "Dixieland," preparing effects that no one on either side of the footlights doubts will be forthcoming. And forthcome they fucking well do. No man as strong as Louis Armstrong entertains out of contempt--he lives to give pleasure, and he's so confident in his love for this material that he can do anything he wants to it. "Rockin' Chair" and "That's My Desire" are as funny as death and sex, which he knows damn well they're about. "Black and Blue" isn't funny at all. A

Charlie Haden: The Ballad of the Fallen [1983, ECM]
Voicing the great Spanish and Latin American revolutionary themes that Carla Bley has arranged for a norteamericano liberation orchestra, this testifies to the inestimable beauty and value of cultural autonomy, and by extension cultural cross-fertilization. It's assured but never immodest, elegiac but never maudlin, and Haden's two originals partake of the spirit. Bley's seem inconsequential, though, and the freestyle improvisations (kept in check until side two) generate little pleasure or meaning--except unintended questions about the ultimate relevance of late-capitalist avant-gardism to anti-imperialist struggle, not to mention disparate meanings of freedom in vastly disparate economic situations. A-

Herbie Hancock: Sound-System [1984, Columbia]
Future Shock was a pretty good album despite its dink quotient; this is a better album despite its schlock quotient. Where's-the-melody is beside the point, because even when they're just hooks the melodies seem a little obvious, without the physical or intellectual bite of the rhythm tracks (nowhere mightier than on the amazing "Metal Beat," recommended to those who think Trevor Horn is into something heavy). And me, I doubt Herbie should be playing more "jazz"--several of the false moments here are provided by Saint Wayne Shorter himself. The African exotica of Foday Musa Suso and Aiyb Dieng, on the other hand, sounds right at home. As does the South Bronx exotica of D.St. A-

Abdullah Ibrahim: The Very Best of Abdullah Ibrahim [2000, Music Club]
Cape Town-born pianist Dollar Brand won Down Beat polls in the '60s, when his idols Monk and Ellington were still active, because beneath his enticing fusion of modernist ambition and African authenticity he had at his disposal a store of simple tunes and beats Americans had never experienced firsthand. These later recordings, which begin with his second exile in 1976 and continue through the defeat of apartheid, no longer sound exotic-1985's "Mandela" we can now hear as pure township jazz, a jaunty classic put through its paces by a horn section featuring Carlos Ward's alto and Ricky Ford's tenor. I mention those names in part because the notes neglect to; Ibrahim couldn't have made his impact without American sidemen and frontmen feeling along with him, as several of the solo pieces here bear out. Nevertheless, the fusion was his idea, and his prophecy. After all, what young jazzman today would turn up his nose at the history encapsulated in a jaunty tune? A-

Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society: Mandance [1982, Antilles]
Despite Jackson's Blood pedigree and predilection for electric plectrists, I'm hard-pressed to describe this as "rock" or even harmolodic funk, because while Jackson is the master of every drum rhythm from march to free time, the feel of the record is more swinging than funky, with heavy doses of Tony Williams force-beat. What it really adds up to is a fusion album on which the soloists are forced to think concisely by compositional structures that are more than cute riffs. Guitar hero: Vernon Reid, who also gets to play banjo. A-

Keith Jarrett: Fort Yawuh [1973, Impulse]
The first acoustic jazz record I've made an effort to like in years, and it was worth it. Side two is easy--Paul Motian draws you into "De Drums," and Jarrett's "Still Life, Still Life" is instantly pretty and gets better. But side one sounds like the usual new jumble for at least ten plays until suddenly Dewey Redman establishes himself as heir to Ornette, just like the highbrows say he is. Redman's Ear of the Behearer is my next project. A-

The Jazz Passengers Featuring Deborah Harry: Individually Twisted [1997, 32 Records]
A friend of Roy Nathanson since long before this band began a decade ago, I've loved the Passengers on stage, where the saxophonist kept the interactions grooving like the comic actor he also is, and found their records arty. Here the artiest track is Elvis Costello's (and bassist Brad Jones's) long-lined "Aubergine," the runner-up "Imitation of a Kiss," originally the pick to click on In Love, counted the Passengers' pop move in 1994 because it had lyrics. From Nathanson and Harry's slantwise opener to Blondie's loopy closer, from David Cale's mock-'40s exotica to Nathanson's jump blues homage, its pleasures are various and manifest, and if they're over the head of the average Costello completist, that's because this pop move isn't aimed at any kind of average. Starting with the girl singer, it's real musicians tweaking real sophistication into something genuinely cooler--and warmer. A-

The Lounge Lizards: Voice of Chunk [1989, 1-800-44CHUNK]
Determined to become the thinking man's David Sanborn by hook or by crook, John Lurie swallows his indignation and elects to market himself--you achieve retail access by dialing the label name on your home telephone. And dial you might. His tone is as rich as his tunes, his solos are lifelike, his musicians thrive as individuals, his musicians function as a unit, and his arty moves kick in with a satisfying thwock. As usual, free jazz meets Henry Mancini meets Kurt Weill meets Peter Gordon meets the Ramada Inn. But the pomo patina has worn away--he's lyrical and catchy rather than "lyrical" and "catchy." Biting and funny he never put quotes around. A-

Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman: Song X: Twentieth Anniversary [2005, Nonesuch]
Right, the same damn jazz album--same damn fine jazz album--he/they released in 1986. Only the 18 minutes of bonus tracks, which include Ornette blowing changes and playing bebop, would make a damn fine EP. Instead, they sit there at the very beginning, saying, "We are the loam from which Song X will arise forthwith." A

Marc Ribot: Muy Divertido [2000, Atlantic]
Less enchanting than the first one, in part because it's not a surprise and in part because the tunes are a touch duller and the playing is a touch broader. But the idea of subjecting presalsa to the affectionate indignities of a small, bent jazz ensemble remains muy divertido. And once you internalize the material--by Ribot's beloved Arsenio Rodriguez and several other Cubans, with Ribot's own "Las Lomas de New Jersey" and "Baile Baile Baile" holding their own--you'll love the vamp-ups, the is-that-a-jokes, the getting loud but not that loud. A-

The Tony Williams Lifetime: Emergency! [1969, Polydor]
Williams is probably the best drummer in the world. He worked with Miles Davis for many years, and then split off to form a group of his own. This music is basically jazz, but heavily influenced by the electronic distortions of rock. I hope to write about Williams some more sometime. Meanwhile, this double-lp is a stunner. A