Top 10 Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time

Recorded in a single session on December 9, 1964, A Love Supreme is John Coltrane's four-part suite expressing spiritual devotion -- representing the pinnacle of hard bop and post-bop jazz and selling over 1 million copies, extraordinary for an avant-garde work. The album's iconic four-note bass motif and Coltrane's 33-minute devotional improvisation have made it the most studied and analyzed jazz recording in the academic curriculum of jazz conservatories worldwide.

The first jazz album to sell one million copies, Time Out was recorded in 1959 and built entirely around unusual time signatures -- Take Five in 5/4, Blue Rondo a la Turk in 9/8 -- that Dave Brubeck had encountered while touring the Middle East and South Asia for the US State Department in 1958. Columbia Records initially refused to release it, believing unconventional time signatures would doom its commercial prospects; instead it remained on the Billboard chart for 97 weeks.

The album that introduced bossa nova to the world won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1965 -- the first jazz album ever to do so -- and made The Girl from Ipanema, sung by Astrud Gilberto, one of the most played songs in the history of radio. Stan Getz's cool tenor saxophone and Joao Gilberto's intimate guitar and vocal style created a recording of such understated elegance that it has sold continuously since 1964 and remains the definitive document of Brazilian jazz.

Recorded in May 1959 -- the same year as Kind of Blue and Time Out -- Mingus Ah Um is Charles Mingus's masterpiece of the hard bop era, incorporating gospel, blues, and bebop into a compositionally sophisticated whole that anticipated everything from fusion to free jazz. The tribute Better Git It in Your Soul, recorded in a single take with Mingus shouting encouragement to his musicians, is considered one of the most exhilarating performances in jazz history.

John Coltrane's 1960 album introduced Coltrane changes -- a harmonic innovation of rapidly cycling key centers a major third apart -- that was so harmonically advanced that pianist Tommy Flanagan visibly struggled to improvise over the chord progressions in the studio. The title track cycles through three key centers (B, G, and E-flat) in four measures at a tempo of 286 beats per minute, and mastering Coltrane changes remains the defining test for advanced jazz musicians six decades later.

Recorded on June 22, 1956 at Hackensack, New Jersey, Saxophone Colossus contains St. Thomas -- a calypso melody from the Virgin Islands that Rollins heard from his mother -- performed with such authority and wit that critic Gunther Schuller wrote it represented the peak of Rollins's powers as a thematic improviser. The album's title was coined by critic Ira Gitler and stuck permanently to Rollins, who continued performing into his 80s.

Miles Davis's double album recorded in August 1969 and released in March 1970 sold 400,000 copies in its first year -- unprecedented for avant-garde jazz -- and invented jazz fusion by overlaying electric keyboards, electric bass, wah-wah trumpet, and multiple rhythm instruments over dense, swirling improvisation. Davis assembled 13 musicians for sessions he directed with hand signals rather than written scores, creating a recording process as innovative as the music itself.

Duke Ellington's 1956 Newport Jazz Festival performance -- where tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves played 27 consecutive improvised choruses on Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, inciting the crowd to dance -- is the most famous concert in jazz history and put Ellington, then considered past his prime at 57, on the cover of Time magazine and back at the top of the jazz world. The live recording sold over 100,000 copies and is the only live jazz album to reach the US Top 10.

Charles Mingus's 1963 album is a six-part extended composition for a ten-piece ensemble that merges flamenco, soul, and free jazz into a continuous 38-minute work -- the most ambitious single composition in jazz history at the time of its recording. Mingus included liner notes written by his psychiatrist analyzing the album as a document of his psychological state, making it one of the first albums to explicitly connect music with mental health and emotional therapy.

Recorded in a single session on December 9, 1964, A Love Supreme is John Coltrane's four-part suite expressing spiritual devotion -- representing the pinnacle of hard bop and post-bop jazz and selling over 1 million copies, extraordinary for an avant-garde work. The album's iconic four-note bass motif and Coltrane's 33-minute devotional improvisation have made it the most studied and analyzed jazz recording in the academic curriculum of jazz conservatories worldwide.

The first jazz album to sell one million copies, Time Out was recorded in 1959 and built entirely around unusual time signatures -- Take Five in 5/4, Blue Rondo a la Turk in 9/8 -- that Dave Brubeck had encountered while touring the Middle East and South Asia for the US State Department in 1958. Columbia Records initially refused to release it, believing unconventional time signatures would doom its commercial prospects; instead it remained on the Billboard chart for 97 weeks.

The album that introduced bossa nova to the world won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1965 -- the first jazz album ever to do so -- and made The Girl from Ipanema, sung by Astrud Gilberto, one of the most played songs in the history of radio. Stan Getz's cool tenor saxophone and Joao Gilberto's intimate guitar and vocal style created a recording of such understated elegance that it has sold continuously since 1964 and remains the definitive document of Brazilian jazz.

Recorded in May 1959 -- the same year as Kind of Blue and Time Out -- Mingus Ah Um is Charles Mingus's masterpiece of the hard bop era, incorporating gospel, blues, and bebop into a compositionally sophisticated whole that anticipated everything from fusion to free jazz. The tribute Better Git It in Your Soul, recorded in a single take with Mingus shouting encouragement to his musicians, is considered one of the most exhilarating performances in jazz history.

John Coltrane's 1960 album introduced Coltrane changes -- a harmonic innovation of rapidly cycling key centers a major third apart -- that was so harmonically advanced that pianist Tommy Flanagan visibly struggled to improvise over the chord progressions in the studio. The title track cycles through three key centers (B, G, and E-flat) in four measures at a tempo of 286 beats per minute, and mastering Coltrane changes remains the defining test for advanced jazz musicians six decades later.

Recorded on June 22, 1956 at Hackensack, New Jersey, Saxophone Colossus contains St. Thomas -- a calypso melody from the Virgin Islands that Rollins heard from his mother -- performed with such authority and wit that critic Gunther Schuller wrote it represented the peak of Rollins's powers as a thematic improviser. The album's title was coined by critic Ira Gitler and stuck permanently to Rollins, who continued performing into his 80s.

Miles Davis's double album recorded in August 1969 and released in March 1970 sold 400,000 copies in its first year -- unprecedented for avant-garde jazz -- and invented jazz fusion by overlaying electric keyboards, electric bass, wah-wah trumpet, and multiple rhythm instruments over dense, swirling improvisation. Davis assembled 13 musicians for sessions he directed with hand signals rather than written scores, creating a recording process as innovative as the music itself.

Duke Ellington's 1956 Newport Jazz Festival performance -- where tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves played 27 consecutive improvised choruses on Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, inciting the crowd to dance -- is the most famous concert in jazz history and put Ellington, then considered past his prime at 57, on the cover of Time magazine and back at the top of the jazz world. The live recording sold over 100,000 copies and is the only live jazz album to reach the US Top 10.

Charles Mingus's 1963 album is a six-part extended composition for a ten-piece ensemble that merges flamenco, soul, and free jazz into a continuous 38-minute work -- the most ambitious single composition in jazz history at the time of its recording. Mingus included liner notes written by his psychiatrist analyzing the album as a document of his psychological state, making it one of the first albums to explicitly connect music with mental health and emotional therapy.