#1644 Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life

Stevie’s Magnum Opus. This is the pop music equivalent to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, it’s proto-progressive R&B. A generously filled double album that has no padding, each track brilliantly crafted with jazz-funk numbers, ballads, innovative exploratory jam-like pieces as well as storming hit singles. It’s a masterpiece and Wonder is clearly a genius. Featuring the …

#371 Miles Davis – Porgy and Bess

This is one of those legendary jazz albums – of which Miles Davis delivered several – that reaches far beyond the initial sound and textures of the music. Davis and his collaborator Gil Evans, not only reimagined George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, but reclaimed it. A ‘black opera’ performed by and for the black community …

#1435 Various Artists – Running The Voodoo Down: Explorations In Psychrockfunksouljazz 1967-80

This is a truly beautiful piece of vinyl. A psychedelic eye in the record centre with spattered luminous green on one side and purple on the other, cosmic album art and a full poster-size insert with extensive sleeve notes. (Check out my Instagram for pics of all) It's clear a labour of love by the …

#245 Tim Buckley – Morning Glory: The Tim Buckley Anthology

These days Father Tim tends to be eclipsed by the magically raw talents and tragically short life of Son Jeff. Tim Buckley was the angelically-voiced icon of the alternative folk rock scene in the late 60s/early 70s. Until he too died tragically young from an accidental heroin overdose at the ridiculously young age of 28. …

#360 Miles Davis – Kind of Blue

This is THE jazz album. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing for Allmusic.com so accurately puts it, it’s the “Citizen Kane of jazz”. But exactly what is it about it that makes it so special? There’s the sheer craftmanship of the musicians Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, James Cobb and Wynton …

#631 The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced

Arguably one of the most creatively dynamic, musically mould-breaking, and multi-genre influencing debut rock albums of all time. I bought my LP copy when I was about 15 or 16 from the much-loved and much-missed Andy’s Records in Norwich. My slice of vinyl is the 1980 German stereo reissue of the UK release. Not to …

#65 Chet Baker Sextet – Chet is Back!

Giving Miles Davis a run for his money in terms of who’s ‘coolest’, this is an album of pure jazz perfection. A stunning recording, from RCA Italia in 1962, it features 8 BeBop jams from trumpeter Baker and his band. These jams are loose in terms of their wonderfully swinging rhythm, but the band are …

#940 Charlie Parker – Ornithology

Another of my grandfather’s jazz records, and another by a jazz legend and Be Bop master. Charlie Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time (cf. John Coltrane). His fast improvised playing is astonishing, it’s like standing under a waterfall of music, being showered left, right and centre with melodic lines, from the deliciously …

#936 Jaco Pastorius – Jaco Pastorius

I must confess I’d never heard of Jaco Pastorius, which was clearly an omission of gigantic proportions. To add insult to injury, despite owning this CD (one of 25 in a box set of jazz classics that I bought in Paris a few years ago) I’d never got round to listening to it. I might …