I have a readers poll to find the best live jazz albums:
Loading ...You can get these albums from Amazon.com – Amazon.co.uk
I have also split jazz albums by decade to help you find albums that fit your tastes as jazz evolves from the early days through swing, bebop, hard bop and cool through to fusion and more modern jazz.
I have polls to find the best live jazz albums for the following artists: – Louis Armstrong – Count Basie – John Coltrane – Miles Davis – Eric Dolphy – Duke Ellington – Dizzy Gillespie – Billie Holiday – Charles Mingus – Thelonious Monk – Charlie Parker – Lester Young –
Ella in Rome The Birthday Concert is a live album by Ella Fitzgerald.
It was recorded on April 25, 1958 in Italy with a jazz trio led by Lou Levy. The last track Stompin’ at the Savoy has Ella backed by the Oscar Peterson trio. It was released ion 1988.
This was Ella’s 41st birthday.
Continue reading Ella Fitzgerald Ella In Rome The Birthday Concert 1958
What are the best live jazz albums? Below you will find a readers poll where you can vote and see the results.
Jazz thrives in a live environment and famous recordings go back to the 1930s. Playing in front of a crowd can inspire soloists to push themselves to their limits.
When I started this blog, I had no idea how many live jazz albums there are. Coming from a rock background, I’m used to artists having a handful of live albums but the best known jazz artists have forty, fifty or more.
This is one of the reasons why people who aren’t jazz enthusiasts and just want to dip their feet into the water find jazz a difficult genre to get to grips with and need some guidance.
Yes there are the big names – Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington – but I think most non-enthusiasts would struggle to name more than about a dozen acts and would certainly struggle to name a few artists by genre like bebop or hard bop or fusion. Continue reading What Are The Best Live Jazz Albums?
Sunday At The Village Vanguard is a live album by the Bill Evans Trio.
It was recorded at the Village Vanguard, New York City on June 25, 1961 and released later the same year.
Continue reading Bill Evans Sunday At The Village Vanguard 1961
The Complete Concert Carnegie Hall 1938 is a live album by the Benny Goodman Orchestra.
It is an extended version of an album that may be better known as “The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert”.
It was recorded at the Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938.
Continue reading Benny Goodman The Complete Concert Carnegie Hall 1938
Mingus At Antibes is a live album by Charles Mingus.
It was recorded at the Antibes Jazz Festival in France on the 13 July 1960 and it was finally released in 1976.
Average Amazon Customer Rating – %%AVERAGERATING%% Stars
Jazz At Massey Hall is a live album by The Quintet. It is a recording of the concert at Massey Hall in Toronto 15 May 1953.
This begs the question “who are the Quintet?”
Just possibly the greatest assembly of jazz talent ever put together on one stage… Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach.
I understand that this was the last time that Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker ever recorded together because of bad feelings between them.
An extended recorded version of this concert has also been released with 14 songs but half of them don’t include Parker and Gillespie. The purist in me thinks that you should go straight for the longer concert but it’s live Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie that attracts me.
Average Amazon Customer Rating – %%AVERAGERATING%% Stars
Live At The It Club is a live album by jazz piano great Thelonious Monk and his band.
It was recorded on October 31 and November 1, 1964 and was finally released in 1982.
In 1998 it was extended to include virtually the complete performance. I’ve read that the tape for one song was flawed.
Playing on this album are:
Thelonious Monk – piano,
Charlie Rouse – tenor sax,
Larry Gales – bass,
Ben Riley – drums.
Average Amazon Customer Rating – %%AVERAGERATING%% Stars
Ellington At Newport is a famous live album by Duke Ellington and his band. It was recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 and was released later the same year.
In 1999, a CD was released that brought us the complete recordings spread over two CDs together with some bonus songs.
By the 1950s, big bands had gone out of fashion and Duke Ellington no longer had a recording contract. This re-energised his career and is one of the most famous “live” jazz albums.
The most famous part of the album is the 27 bar saxophone solo in Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue by Paul Gonsales and that was recorded into the wrong microphone, going out to Voice of America listeners but not properly captured on the Columbia recording. It obviously needed to be fixed.
It turns out that the original At Newport album was not as we thought. It’s said that only about 40% of the album came from the live performance with the remainder recreated in the studio to correct playing and recording problems and with crowd noise mixed back in to create the live atmosphere.
Modern recording techniques finally meant that the performance could be recreated from the original tapes of both of the recordings made for Columbia Records and the Voice Of America radio show and that’s what happened in 1999 when the CD emerged.
Average Amazon Customer Rating – %%AVERAGERATING%% Stars