The Best Jazz Albums of the '60s

Recorded in one December 1964 evening at Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs studio with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, then released on Impulse! early the next year. Acknowledgement opens on a gong and ends with Coltrane chanting the title phrase in unison with the bass figure — a four-part prayer that still swings. The quartet performed the suite live just once, at Antibes in 1965.

January 1960 is the date Atlantic put on it, which is why the record that closed the '50s opens this decade — the cut is by original release year, and the '50s list left it here on purpose. The title tune's chord cycle became the tenor audition piece for sixty years, but Naima is the keeper: held tones floating over shifting pedal points, tenderness from the same mind that built the obstacle course.

Mingus hired his own psychotherapist to write the liner notes, and Bob Thiele let an eleven-piece band rebuild itself through tape edits and overdubs — orchestral ambition nobody else brought to Impulse! in 1963. The opening movement, rendered Track A- Solo Dancer on Spotify, stacks Charlie Mariano's overdubbed alto above a heaving ensemble vamp until the band sounds like one straining body. Mingus called it his best record.

Cut on Christmas Eve 1964 with Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter from Miles's quintet plus Elvin Jones and Freddie Hubbard, then shelved by Blue Note until 1966. Shorter's lines slide by half-steps into resolutions you never see coming; Infant Eyes builds a ballad from three nine-bar phrases and refuses to pad them to twelve. Spotify's plain 1987 Blue Note copy keeps the original six-track sequence.

Hancock was twenty-four when he built a nautical concept album on suspended chords that never quite resolve, with Freddie Hubbard out front and the Miles rhythm section of Ron Carter and Tony Williams underneath, Blue Note, 1965. Dolphin Dance closes it on a melody that keeps changing key beneath its own feet — the tune every piano student eventually hits like a wall. Spotify carries the plain five-track edition, no remaster tag.

Five originals recorded February 25, 1964, with Bobby Hutcherson's vibes where the piano should be and Tony Williams drumming at eighteen. Hat and Beard, the Monk portrait, lurches along on a bass-clarinet riff that stumbles on purpose and lands anyway; Dolphy died four months after the session, so this is the last word. Spotify's copy is plainly titled but every track carries a 1999 Van Gelder remaster tag — no unremastered edition exists there.

Teo Macero assembled two side-long pieces from a February 1969 session by splicing the tape until the music looped back into itself — the edit is the composition. Shhh / Peaceful floats on Tony Williams's hi-hat for eighteen minutes while three electric keyboards shimmer around John McLaughlin's guitar. Border case, flagged openly: this is the doorway into fusion, ranked here because the moment of walking out of jazz still belongs to jazz.

A soprano saxophone, an E minor vamp, and a Rodgers and Hammerstein waltz stretched past thirteen minutes: the title performance made Coltrane's new quartet a commercial concern and put the straight horn back into jazz. Atlantic issued it in 1961, and Spotify's plain four-track copy renders the Cole Porter tune as Everytime We Say Goodbye, one word. My Favorite Things is the modal experiment you can hum.

Gil Evans scored Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez for a brass orchestra that moves like weather after Miles brought the piece home from Los Angeles. The adagio runs sixteen minutes of flugelhorn over castanets and harp with barely any improvising, and Columbia sold it as jazz anyway, 1960. Spotify's plainly titled edition appends Song of Our Country and two alternate Concierto takes to the original five-track program.

A boogaloo bass line cut in December 1963 paid Blue Note's bills for years — The Sidewinder crossed onto the pop albums chart and Morgan's twenty-four-bar blues ended up under a Chrysler ad during the 1965 World Series. Barry Harris comps like a second drummer while Billy Higgins rides the backbeat. Streaming offers only the Rudy Van Gelder Edition, one alternate Totem Pole take appended; no plain official copy exists.

That Cape Verdean bounce came from a Brazil trip and from Silver's Portuguese-born father, whose photograph fronts the sleeve; Steely Dan later lifted the opening bass figure for Rikki Don't Lose That Number. Song for My Father sets Joe Henderson's tenor against the leader's jabbing left hand. Blue Note released it in 1965 — Spotify dates the album 1964 and appends four bonus tracks from earlier quintet sessions.

Seven players, one arranger's record: Nelson wrote six variations on blues form for a band holding Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard and Eric Dolphy, cut for Impulse! in February 1961. Stolen Moments opens on a minor-blues harmonization so rich the tune became a standard on its own. The plain six-track edition streams with a 1961 copyright line — a rarity in this reissue-choked catalogue.

Two quartets, one per stereo channel, thirty-seven minutes in a single take: Ornette's December 1960 Atlantic experiment handed a movement its name whether he wanted that or not. Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard hold the right channel, and the collective sections collide like traffic before single voices walk out of the wreck. Spotify's official Atlantic copy drops the Collective Improvisation subtitle, credits Coleman alone and adds First Take. Free Jazz still divides rooms.

Atlantic wanted a whole album of the gospel-shout side of Mingus's book, so he cut six pieces in February 1959 that the label released in March 1960 — by this list's release-year rule it lands here, left off the '50s list deliberately. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting turns a Baptist service into a nine-piece horn riot, Jackie McLean's alto testifying over the shouts. The streaming edition appends four alternate takes.

Just piano and guitar: Evans and Jim Hall for United Artists in 1962, under Toni Frissell's cover photograph of a woman floating in dark water. Their My Funny Valentine runs fast, the lead trading hands every few bars until accompaniment and solo stop being separate jobs. Chosen over Portrait in Jazz, which streams as the alternate-stuffed Keepnews Collection; this ten-track 2002 Blue Note copy adds four extras to the six-track LP.

Back from the wilderness years, Gordon walked into Van Gelder's studio in August 1962 with Sonny Clark, Butch Warren and Billy Higgins and made the most relaxed tenor record Blue Note ever issued. Cheese Cake swings at a lope, Gordon quoting show tunes mid-solo and landing behind the beat like it owes him money. Streaming has only the Rudy Van Gelder Edition; its six tracks match the original LP exactly.

Riverside flew Montgomery to New York in January 1960 and paired him with Tommy Flanagan's trio; the thumb-picked octaves on West Coast Blues, a waltzing blues, rewired how the guitar gets played, and every player since owes the record a tithe. The only official Spotify copy is Craft's Remastered 2025 edition — its eight tracks match the original LP, and the plain-titled alternative is a grey-market press.

Impulse! built it from a February 1969 session: one thirty-two-minute piece plus a coda, grown out of the two-chord soil of A Love Supreme. The Creator Has A Master Plan rolls Leon Thomas's yodel over Sanders's overblown tenor until serenity and shriek keep trading places — the record that opens the spiritual-jazz road this list hands to the '70s. Border case by temperament, jazz by every measurable fact.