Sun Ra - Jazz In Silhouette

Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um

Any more voters from 1959, or does thrice pay for all? 

John Abercrombie                    Electromagnets                   Herbie Mann                     Wayne Shorter

Apprentice                              Don Ellis                             Material                            Smoke

Arcana                                   The Fents                            Mathematicians                 Soma

Ariel                                       Bela Fleck & the Flecktones   Matrix                              Spaces

Carla Bley                               Flying Island                        Bernie Maupin                  Tony Spada

Blood, Sweat & Tears               The Fourth Way                   McLuhan                          Spyro Gyra

Brecker Brothers                      Friends                               Medeski, Martin & Wood    The Stark Reality

Michael Brecker                        Bill Frisell                            Pat Metheny                     Steely Dan

Gary Burton                             Gamalon                             Barry Miles                       Streetdancer

Donald Byrd                             Genre                                The Mistakes                     Daryl Stuermer 

Larry Carlton                            Gold                                   Morning Sky                     Sun Ra

Chase                                      Golden Avatar                     Alphonse Mouzon              Tesseract

Chicago                                   Good God                           October                            Steve Tibbetts

Child's Play                              Jerry Goodman                    Oregon                             Keith Tippett Group

Clareon                                   Grits                                   Ozone Quartet                   David Torn

Stanley Clarke                          Group '87                            Paranoise                         Ralph Towner

Billy Cobham                            Dave Grusin                        Jaco Pastorius                   Tribal Tech

Ornette Coleman & Prime Time  Jan Hammer                        Players                             A Triggering Myth

Steve Coleman                         Herbie Hancock                    Power Tools                      Tuatara

Alice Coltrane                           Jon Hassell                          Julian Priester                   Tunnels

John Coltrane                           Eddie Henderson                  Probe 10                          James Blood Ulmer

Bill Connors                              However                             Proteus                            Under the Big Tree

Copious                                   Bobbi Humphrey                  Radio Piece III                   Vertu

Chick Corea                              Iliad                                   Return to Forever              James Vincent

Larry Coryell                             Ronald Shannon Jackson      Richie Duvall & Dog Truck   The Viola Crayola

Miles Davis                               Alphonso Johnson                Jeff Richman                     Vital Information

Defunkt                                    Shawn Lane                        David Rose                       Chad Wackerman

Jack DeJohnette                        Mingo Lewis                        David Sancious                 Ken Watson

Al Di Meola                               John Macey                         Pharaoh Sanders               Weather Report

Dixie Dregs                               Maelstrom                           Santana                           Lenny White

Deodato                                   Mahavishnu Orchestra          Carlos Santana                  Tony Williams Lifetime

Dreams                                    Sam Malone                        Satchitananda                    Woodenhead

George Duke                             Mandrill                              Schleigho                          Larry Young

Dennis Chambers                      Michael Manring                   John Scofield                     Frank Zappa

 

   

136 artists in total. Let me know if there's anyone I've missed out.  

    

                                        

Me neither, and I voted for the album that Miles ahead of the rest too.  I can promise this series of polls gets much better later on though with 136 more artists still to come and with the Steely Dan and Pat Metheny years to look forward to. 

Charles Mingus was a last minute addition. I was Umming and Ahing about including that album. 

Yes, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is in London, but Louis Balfour's Jazz Club only exists in the imagination of the writers of The Fast Show. 

The Cecil Taylor Quartet - Looking Ahead!

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out

The Chico Hamilton Quintet - Gongs East!

Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um

Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come

The Horace Silver Quintet - Finger Poppin' With the Horace Silver Quintet

*Les Baxter isn't even "regular jazz" - and like Brubeck, Coleman and Mingus - he won't ever record an album considered to be Jazz Fusion.

There's two main reasons why I began this series of polls from the year 1959:-

1. Because that was the year as I was born.

and

2. I couldn't possibly consider leaving out Miles Davis' classic Kind of Blue album.

And on the subject of Les Baxter, I have more albums by him than any other artist - 32 in total - so he was another "must" for inclusion. 

Rest assured that when we finally reach the 1970's, ALL of the poll albums will be Jazz Fusion, although they won't necessarily be all American. 

^Haha but that's not actual "reasons". I have more Morricone albums than anyone else in my collection. I wouldn't include him in a "Classic Exotica Albums"-poll simply because I own a lot of his albums. Just like I know Les Baxter doesn't belong in Jazz Fusion, I would know that Morricone doesn't belong in Exotica. 

+of course you could leave out Kind of Blue - as it's Classic Modal Jazz and not Classic Jazz Fusion.

The issue is, none of this is "Jazz Fusion". Miles Davis at this point is playing "Modal Jazz", Mingus is playing "Post-Bop", Brubeck is into "West Coast Jazz", and Shorter is playing "Hard Bop". There is no such thing as "fusion" at this point. Not even vaguely.

It's like making a list of rock and roll albums from 1959 and saying Chuck Berry, Bill Hailey, Ricky Nelson and Elvis are prog.

"Jazz Fusion" as a definable genre doesn't come into existence until 1967 or later, when jazz players like Larry Coryell whipped out their guitars and amps and bring rock music into what previously was a wholly separate entitiy, jazz. Of fusion, Coryell noted of this next generation of jazz players, "We loved Miles but we also loved the Rolling Stones." Miles Davis himself was profoundly affected by Hendrix. Corea, McLaughlin, Hancock all come around in the late 60s.

I could skip straight from the year 1959 to the year 1967 when Jazz Fusion really began, but then I'd be missing out on some classic jazz albums, such as Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" album, which is coming up next and John Coltrane's classic "A Love Supreme" album from 1965. to name just two. 

That's no problem at all. Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll label the following jazz polls from 1960 to 1966 as simply "Classic US Jazz" and post them in the General Music forum, before switching the poll titles to "Classic US Jazz Fusion" from 1967 onwards, so as not to cause any further con-Fusion. 

No, not quite. It means both Santana the band and Carlos Santana solo will be included, even though he's Mexican by birth. 

his 1959 album called Moanin' is a reference in all jazz books, even if it's (hard) Bop 

One could add Gil Evans' Progressive Big Band (for whom Blakey was drumming at the time) but I don't think I have heard Gret Jazz Standards, his 1959 release

.

^ I'd take that Bill Evans album over a few others in this poll. But I think he got better - or rather released better albums in the early 1960's... 

...so I decided to put it on when I was typing this. It's pretty great and probably more memorable than I remembered:)

Grumpyprogfan wrote: For those who don't like the choices, quit complaining and make your own poll.

I complain as much I feel like about a 1959-"classic fusion" poll. PA is a music site and this is a forum for discussion. When I notice something I've have knowledge about that is presented in a wrong or nonsensical way - I will comment. It's just how I am. 

...But now I got nothing more to complain about, as PP changed the title to something that no longer hurts my eyes (and mind):)

I left out Bill Evans and Art Blakey because I didn't think anyone would vote for them. Big mistake! 

Jimmy Smith's "The Sermon"

Kind Of Blue

SleepingFinger wrote: I have to go with Kind Of Blue as my personal favorite. Another 1959 release that I find interesting is Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen- Poetry For The Beat Generation. Beatnik poetry over jazz may not be for all tastes, but it’s certainly an interesting time capsule of that era. At least in my opinion. : )

On that note, I was thinking about Ken Nordine's excellent 1959-album NEXT. His spoken delivery is jazz in itself and the backing ensemble is a full jazz orchestra and different jazzband constallations 

Hi,

I have to agree here with this, as it ends up being a massive HISTORY of the story of JAZZ, and something that we are not capable of seeing and kinda put together with rock music with the hope/intent of creating a more inclusive and complete "history" of the art form, which would really help define what became known as "progressive music" later, and even later what became known as "progressive rock", a suggestion that a lot of the music was about the rock music more than it was about being "progressive" in my book. 

Nicely done and stated DE.

I would have added, I think, that folks in jazz taking on more rock elements were a natural event, since it was all over in radio, and selling like pancakes. I'm not sure that most classical/jazz musicians out there, would not have heard and seen any of it, and getting it added was just a matter of minutes, not even "time". The only sad thing of it all is how the classical music places have fallen by wayside, for rejecting the jazz and rock music from that time. The Portland version has been close to not making it due to finances. And when I talked to the conductor at the time, and suggested some Frank Zappa ... he went ... who is Frank Zappa? .... all I said is no ticket from me!