


We have tried not to overdo it with expensive boxed sets and obscure imports sometimes it couldn’t be helped.
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Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally. These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music’s century-long history. What follows is a list compiled with the help of my New Yorker colleague Richard Brody. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.” Schaap bemoaned the loss of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes and booklets. Such attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but “who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of the current situation,” in which music is often bought and downloaded from dubious sources. First, I asked Schaap to assemble the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. While finishing “ Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector. Photograph by William Gottlieb / Redferns / Getty
