Right—the holidays are over, the Christmas tree is fuel for the fire, and the worst of the NYE champagne bottle shards have been swept up; it's time to get serious. As in, resolutions.

Over the past few months I've been trying to listen to more jazz. I can't quite remember what started this whole project, but now I won't rest until I've achieved my own transcendental jazz trance.

As it so happens, while checking out the local flea market recently I chanced upon some very relevant box sets, comprising some fifty classic jazz albums.

So here's the plan: at one album per week, that gives me about a year of autodidactic jazz education, plus a buffer at the end for some self-reflection. I don't have a textbook or any other proper guide; I'm just going to listen to the albums, binge some Wikipedia pages, and see where that gets me in a year.

Fair warning: this post is just going to be me brain-dumping my uneducated, undiscerning thoughts on these albums. I don't imagine it will be entertaining or useful in any way for literally anybody else, but hey, you're the one reading it.

Week 1: Louis Armstrong Plays W. C. Handy

Not really knowing anything about these box sets in advance, I embarked on this project with some trepidation that I had signed myself up for fifty weeks of crap. By the end of this album's first track, I was a believer.

The top-notch musicianship and Satchmo's¹ trademark gravelly crooning are already reason enough to listen, but I can't emphasize enough how much fun this album is: the frequent banter between Louis and Velma Middleton is charming, and the whole thing is joyous and downright raucous throughout. I mean, just listen to this laugh:

One thing I don't understand: W. C. Handy was the "Father of the Blues," and most of the songs here have "blues" in the title—obviously there's lots of shared heritage between jazz and blues, but where exactly does that dividing line lie? And what is this exactly?

Favourite track: St. Louis Blues

Week 2: Sarah Vaughan in Hi‐Fi

This one is a slower burn for me: obviously Sarah Vaughan is an incredibly talented vocalist, but this doesn't quite get my blood pumping like the last album; sometimes her melodies go a little too all over the place for my taste. That said, I'd gladly put this on for a nice romantic dinner (skip "Mean to Me" in that case, though).

Also, apparently Miles Davis is playing the trumpet for most of these tracks? We'll get back to him soon enough…

Favourite track: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Week 3: The Jazz Messengers

After Ms. Vaughan's lovely but somewhat sedate tunes, I was hoping for this week to bring a little more energy, and The Jazz Messengers definitely delivered on that front. Wikipedia tells me we're in hard bop territory now, and it's not hard to hear why it might've earned that moniker.

Art Blakey is undeniably a monster on the drums, but some of his solos end up sounding a little… samey to me? Take the first big solo from Infra-Rae: it starts to get repetitive for me in a way that I've never felt when listening to say, Neil Peart. Listen for yourself and see if you agree:

Not too much more to say on this one, other than that I'm glad to have some high-tempo, vocal-free jazz—good music for when you really need to get something done. Oh, and "Carol's Interlude" on this album really reminds me of "Epistrohpy" from another Monk/Coltrane album I have.

Favourite track: Hank's Symphony

Week 4: Lady in Satin

Given that the primary feature here is a solo female vocalist—Billie Holiday—I couldn't help but compare this album to the earlier Sarah Vaughan album. I prefer this one: the lush orchestral backing really helps create a sweeping, dramatic sense of romance, as opposed to Vaughan's lighter, airier mood.

Immediately, one can hear some fragility and rasp in Holiday's voice; she comes across as much more "mature" than Vaughan to my ears. What I hadn't realized was the sad explanation: at the time of the recording, Holiday was in poor health, after having weathered decades of damage from alcohol, hard drugs, and abusive relationships. She recorded this album in February 1958 and passed away barely 18 months later. The critical consensus seems to be that the album packs a huge emotional punch, but that Holiday had lost some of her range and force by this point—I'd like to return to her earlier work and compare for myself.

I suspect this album will also hold a special place in my heart owing to the circumstances of my first listen: not wanting to miss a week, I had copied this album to my phone in advance of a trip to the Netherlands; I listened to it together with my wife on the train as we watched the Dutch countryside go by.

Two miscellaneous closing thoughts:

• It's a dang shame that she never had a chance to sing a Bond theme (and not only because that would up the Billie–Bond count to two).
• Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that there's a crater on Venus named after her.

Favourite track: For Heaven's Sake

Week 5: Kind of Blue

We're into the heavy hitters now—this is one of the few jazz albums I picked up prior to this experiment, based on its universal praise. What is there for me to say that hasn't already been said? It's Kind of Blue—if any album is jazz, it's this one.

From what I've been able to gather online, Kind of Blue is notable for pioneering modal jazz (in response to hard bop). My limited understanding is that in hard bop, melodies were largely driven by quick chord progressions: soloists displayed their incredible virtuosity by continually adapting to the rapidly shifting tonal centre dictated by the chord changes. In contrast, modal jazz uses very few, slow-moving chords—giving soloists more latitude to develop their melodies without being constrained by the strictures of the chord progression. (As for what exactly musical "modes" are and what their significance is, I still don't have a clear understanding.)

I'm sure I'll be listening to and learning from this one for many years to come, along with the rest of the world.

Favourite track: So What

Week 6: Time Out

This album was an immediate revelation for me. I've listened to some great stuff already, but Time Out had me hooked from the first few bars—the opening rhythm of Blue Rondo à la Turk is now permanently tattooed on my brain. Perhaps that's no coincidence; Time Out's primary innovation is its usage of time signatures that were previously uncommon in jazz (e.g., ⁹ ₈ in Blue Rondo à la Turk; ⁵ ₄ in Take Five). If, like me, you're struggling to understand the nuances of ⁹ ₈ rhythm, here's a helpful explanatory video from Wikipedia:

Got it? Good.

Another thing that stood out to me was how… classical this album sounds? Even on my first listen, something here struck me as familiar in a way I hadn't experienced with the earlier albums.

One more embed before we go: Canadian film animator Steven Woloshen produced a short film set to Take Five that I think is pretty neat:

Favourite track: Blue Rondo à la Turk

Week 7: First Time! The Count Meets the Duke

As previously mentioned, I had listened to a grand total of three jazz albums before setting out on this expedition. We've already encountered Kind of Blue; one of the other two was Side by Side—Side by Side was mostly a Johnny Hodges album, but they stamped his better-known bandleader Ellington's mug on the cover, presumably to juice the sales.

I bring all of this up because this week's album features some of the same suspects: Ellington has gathered together his big band (Hodges included), but they're not alone: Count Basie—another big band luminary—is on set with his crew, and out to wage Big Band "Battle Royal" (sic)! The stereo mix is intended to capture the conflict: Basie's group is heard on left channel, while Ellington's is on the right.² To my undiscerning ear, the result sounds as cooperative as it does antagonistic, but that doesn't stop it from being a blast through and through. At peak moments, the brass can get a little screechy; I don't think it's ever over the top but my wife is not on board with it. (E.g., listen to the climax of Battle Royal—it's on the verge of cacophony, but I think it remains on the "impassioned finale" side of the line.)

I've bandied about "big band" above with any proper explanation, so I suppose I ought to fill in some of those details: big band is exactly what it sounds like—a musical ensemble for jazz that consists of at least ten (and often 17 or more) musicians (usually divided into saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and rhythm). Compared to earlier jazz ensembles (which typically comprised 4–5 musicians), big bands were obviously larger, but also had a greater focus on written compositions (owing to the increased difficulty of coordinating solos across a much bigger group). Big bands reached peak popularity in the late 1930s/early 1940s alongside "swing," the subgenre of jazz they usually played. Swing was very popular at dance halls; as you might guess from the name, it features a "swinging" rhythm (usually by accenting the second and fourth beats). Both Duke Ellington and Count Basie were both highly regarded big band leaders who shaped the development of swing (Ellington in particular was also a prolific composer and arranger).

tl;dr:

Big band

Jazz group of at least ten musicians (probably more).

Swing

Subgenre of jazz with a strong emphasis on a "swinging" rhythm; frequently played at dance halls.

Favourite track: Wild Man (aka Wild Man Moore)³

Week 8: Parole E Musica

Eight weeks in, and we've arrived at a dubious honour: this is the first album where the top-billed performer (Helen Merrill in this case) is still alive—as I write this in February 2025, she's a sprightly 95 years old according to Wikipedia. Perhaps more excitingly, we've also got our first duplicate track: we first heard "You Don't Know What Love Is" in week 4 (I give the edge to Merrill).

This album has an interesting gimmick. For each "song," there's two tracks: the first is a spoken word version of the song's lyrics in Italian; the second is the real song (with Merrill singing in English). Is it completely unnecessary and self-indulgent? Yes. Do I love it, and does it make me pretend I'm living on the Amalfi Coast in Ripley? Also yes.

Also, this is the third album to feature a lovely leading lady, and I have a confession to make: while there's no denying the sublimity of Merrill's singing, it's pretty clear to me by now that this isn't what I want out of my jazz—I'd almost always sooner reach for any of the instrumental albums we've heard, or Armstrong's bombastic vocals.

One final bit of trivia for the week: this might be the first you've heard of Helen Merrill, but you surely know one of her son's songs: he wrote the original version of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."

Favourite track: Why Don't You Do It Right