Jazz 100
Top Jazz Albums
The Best Jazz Ever Released Digitally
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Welcome to Jazz 100, where the aim is to bring you the very best jazz ever released digitally. Here you will find jazz lists based on comprehensive statistical surveys, the primary aim being to present a healthy balance of critical and popular opinion. As such, casual listeners should find it a useful place to start when setting out to build the ultimate jazz collection. Both lists are regularly updated.

The Top Jazz Albums (Pre-1980)
Jazz 100 was launched on the internet in 2002, pre-dating the rise of the mega-music sites that have emerged since. The aim was to take any statistical info available and somehow mesh the numbers to come up with the ultimate jazz collection for the casual listener. To overcome the fact that the single-artist long-playing album didn't exist until the late-1940s, the site had to make a few purely subjective calls.

It would be jazz blasphemy to leave out the amazing music made by a handful of artists in their most productive and vibrant periods. Jazz 100 suggests listeners seek out a well-chosen single disc (or download) collection of master takes only, that is both available and sounds pretty good. The titles you see in these cases may only be something like Charlie Parker's 'Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings', still available in a multitude of choices. The choice is entirely up to you, but let the buyer beware.

The Top Jazz Albums (Post-1980)
A big problem with any sort of "all-time best" list based on statistical information is that albums made after the 1970s tend to have little or no chance of making the cut. For this reason the site maintains a Top 100 devoted to post-1980 albums. At the beginning of every year, the statistical sums are re-done to see what has changed. This list is very volatile, with year to year changes sometimes quite dramatic.

It is tough for modern jazz musicians to compete with the classics of the past. Up until the 1960s, jazz was still a commercial giant that attracted most of the best musicians. But rock music is here to stay, and jazz survives today as a niche genre only. But it survives as niche genre that still has a vibrant heartbeat, saturated with the emotion that made the classics the wonderfull music that it is and will forever be.
Classic
Concerts
Ken Burns
Jazz
Penguin
Guide
History of Jazz
Classic
Film
Charlie Parker Film
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