“A Caddy for Daddy”  Hank Mobley  A classic, timeless, quintessential mid-sixties cover from the oft-quoted Blue Note graphic designer Reid Miles.   Here’s something as beautiful on the inside as on the outside.  Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Bob Crenshaw and Billy Higgins at the top of their form.  Artists of the highest order creating in a world of their own.  Turn someone on today.  Here’s the swinging, rumprolling title cut:  A Caddy For Daddy

(51 votes, average: 4.27 out of 5)

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Quiet Kenny   New Jazz Records   (1959)  Kenny Dorham, trumpet, vocals; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums.

(37 votes, average: 3.59 out of 5)

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“J’aime danser sur le Jazz”  Vogue Records  A French compilation of swing jazz with Sidney Bechet, Buck Clayton, Coleman Hawkins and others.   Many were ex-pats living in France during the forties and fifties.

(45 votes, average: 3.98 out of 5)

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Art Blakey  Salute to Birdland  EmArcy Records EP (1954)  Buhaina the master, with  Bernard Griggs, Joe Gordon, Gigi Gryce and Walter Bishop!  Tracks are: Minority, Salute to Birdland,  Eleanor, Futurity 

(54 votes, average: 3.78 out of 5)

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Harry Carney with Strings (1954)  Clef Records  Arranged by Ralph Burns.  Cover illustration by David Stone Martin!  Carney on baritone and bass clarinet with fellow Duke Ellington sidemen including:  Ray Nance on trumpet and violin; Tony Miranda on French horn; Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet and tenor sax;  Leroy Lovett on piano; Billy Bauer on guitar;  Wendell Marshall on bass; and Louie Bellson on drums.  (You won’t find this album if you search for it by its original title.  That’s because its tracks have been folded into a Ben Webster CD called Music for Loving.  The last eight tracks on the second disc make up the Carney album.

(38 votes, average: 3.63 out of 5)

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“Intro To Jazz”  San Francisco Jazz Records (1957) Local Bay Area jazz bands.  There’s nothing Jazz about this guy on the cover!

(37 votes, average: 3.68 out of 5)

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In the early 60’s Riverside Records put together two beautiful pin-up puzzles filled with some of Jazz’s greatest musicians playing songs from the American Songbook.  Six records of the music of Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern (top) and George Gershwin, Harold Arlen and Irving Berlin (bottom) interpreted by Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans,  Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins. Wes Montgomery, Blue Mitchell and on and on.  Having these six records would be a fine foundation for any collection.  And look at these women – moanin’, rollin’, writhin’, groovin’ and movin’ with the music!

(75 votes, average: 4.53 out of 5)

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Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen  “Hit Parade”  Pye Records (UK)  Featuring “Midnight in Moscow”

(46 votes, average: 3.78 out of 5)

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“Fill Your Head With Jazz”  25 All-Time Giants of Jazz   A groovy, two-record compilation from the vaults of Columbia Records.  I had this as a kid and it introduced me to a lot of these cats.  I pulled it out this past winter to play the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross vocal of “Moanin'” for my friend.  Sadly, in my excitement, I laid it on the radiator and the remaining disk got baked and warped into an ashtray.  And I don’t smoke.  Now I’m really moanin’!

(39 votes, average: 3.62 out of 5)

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Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis with the Paul Weeden Trio  “I Only Have Eyes For You” Prestige Records  (1963)

(35 votes, average: 3.34 out of 5)

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