jazz top 100 albums (50-73)

"Straight, No Chaser" is a jazz standard composed by Thelonious Monk. It was first recorded on Monk's Blue Note Sessions in 1951. It has been recorded numerous times by Monk and others and is one of Monk's most covered songs.[1] It is a 12-bar blues in B♭ which, like one of his other B♭ blues, "Blue Monk", makes creative use of chromatics in the melody. Miles Davis recorded a famous version on his Milestones album, in which the tune is played in F rather than B♭.

Number 71

Marian McPartland I COULD WRITE A BOOK

The instrumental version of "Along Came Betty" was composed by Benny Golson and first appeared on Art Blakey's album entitled Jazz Profile in 1954. The composition was inspired by a woman of the same name that the composer was dating at the time. A vocal rendition of the song was performed as early as the mid-'50s by singer and songwriter Jon Hendricks, and this vocal version was reissued on a compilation in 1999 entitled Bebop Singers. "Along Came Betty" features bebop's hyperkinetic hipness with a bluesier feel and a funkier beat.

Along Came Betty
https://www.youtube.com/watch…

What makes this great is that it it totally unspectacular... but it is moving, tasteful and perfect.

Secondo "Conte" Candoli (July 12, 1927–December 14, 2001) was an American jazz trumpeter based on the West Coast. He played in the big bands of Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Dizzy Gillespie, and in Doc Severinsen's NBC Orchestra on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He played with Gerry Mulligan, and on Frank Sinatra's TV specials. He also recorded with Supersax, a Charlie Parker tribute band that consisted of a saxophone quintet, the rhythm section, and either a trumpet or trombone.

Flamingo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5aeWdqrBbs

Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for composing the music for "Stardust", "Georgia on My Mind", "The Nearness of You", and "Heart and Soul", four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.

American composer and author Alec Wilder wrote of Carmichael in American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 that he was the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented" of the hundreds of writers composing pop songs in the first half of the 20th century

Stardust
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2fbOAyNOpM

Parole e Musica: Words and Music was recorded in Italy with Umiliani's orchestra in the early 1960s while Merrill was living there. The LP features the unusual additions preceding each song, of spoken translations of eloquent Italian word lyrics, complementing the ballads and torch songs. The album has an atmospheric edge in the style of a street busker, provided by a solo musician backing up Merrill's performance, which is brooding, smoky, increasingly foreboding, regretful, mournful, desolate, and finally, melancholy yet hopeful. The many standard songs are elevated to classic status by Merrill's perfect phrasing, sublime high notes, and emotionally flawless renditions.

Esoteric LP from the 1960s of Jerry Newman's famous direct-to-disc live recordings in Harlem of Gillespie fronting, Thelonious Monk, Don Byas, Kenny Clarke, Kenny Kersey, Joe Guy, Nick Hinton. "and the House Band at Monroe's".

Lullaby of Birdland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFdETRF87o0

Leonard Harold "Lenny" Breau (August 5, 1941 – August 12, 1984) was an American guitarist and music educator. One of the most admired guitarists of his generation in musician's circles in the United States, he was known for blending many styles of music including: jazz, country, classical and flamenco guitar. Breau, inspired by country guitarists like Chet Atkins, used fingerstyle techniques not often used in jazz guitar, and with his use of the 7-string guitar and approach to the guitar like a piano, opened up new possibilities for the instrument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch…

McCorkle was born in Berkeley, California. She studied modern languages at the University of California, Berkeley. McCorkle began singing professionally after hearing recordings of Billie Holiday in Paris in the late 1960s. She nearly became an interpreter at the European Commission in Brussels, but moved instead to London in 1972 to pursue a career in singing. While in the UK, she made two albums which, although well received, enjoyed only limited circulation.

In the late 1970s, McCorkle returned to the United States and settled in New York City, where a five-month engagement at the Cookery in Greenwich Village brought her to wider public attention and elicited rave reviews from critics.

During the 1980s, McCorkle continued to record; her maturing style and the darkening timbre of her voice greatly enhanced her performances. In the early 1990s, two of the albums McCorkle made for Concord Records, No More Blues and Sábia, were enormously successful and made her name known to the wider world. She was recorded by the Smithsonian Institution which at the time made her the youngest singer ever to have been included in its popular music series. McCorkle played Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls five times and Carnegie Hall three times, and was featured soloist with Skitch Henderson and the 80-piece New York Pops in a concert of Brazilian music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy4xsY1TQZk

Joe Albany (born Joseph Albani; January 24, 1924 – January 12, 1988) was an American modern jazz pianist. He was among the few white pianists to have played bebop with Charlie Parker.

Albany was the focus of a 1980 documentary titled, Joe Albany... A Jazz Life. His daughter Amy-Jo wrote a memoir about her father called, Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales from Childhood. The book was adapted for the screen and released in 2014 as the biopic Low Down

https://www.youtube.com/watch…

He made his first sides in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings (which would later also be called the Ahmad Jamal Trio, although Jamal himself prefers not to use the term "trio"): the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist, at different times Eddie Calhoun (1950–52), Richard Davis (1953–54), and Israel Crosby (from 1954). The Three Strings arranged an extended engagement at Chicago’s Blue Note, but leapt to fame after performing at the Embers in New York City where John Hammond saw the band play and signed them to Okeh Records. Hammond, a record producer who discovered the talents and enhanced the fame of musicians like Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Count Basie, also helped Jamal’s trio attract critical acclaim. Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–55) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup. The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the "House Trio" at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me, which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal's well known song "Poinciana" was first released on this album.