109. Julie London / Julie is Her Name (1955)

Julie London's range and the timbre of her voice is one that sits very well with me. Ensconced within her silky mezzo soprano is a space filled with sumptuous partials and overtones that make a single note sound like a chord. Her voice and my wife's are quite similar so when I listen, I sense something familiar. In the classic debut Julie is Her Name, London's young voice is the main attraction and backed often by only a guitar. Her phrasing and timing leave you on the edge of your seat, wondering where the next phrase will fall ("It Never Entered My Mind"). She's always playing this way with the lyrics and her timing, while Barney Kessel anxiously holds back comping. Later in her career, she fronted a big band whose eloquence and power gave her smoldering vocals and lovelorn ballads some extra emotional impact. But here it's all Julie. The album opens with the quintessential "Cry Me a River," and moves through 12 other standards and ballads including aforementioned, quirky "It Never Entered My Mind," and the beautiful "Laura." There's also a second volume, which is just as bit as this first volume, two records that should be on every jazz lovers shelf.

42. Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio (1952)

For the most part, this disc is all about Lester, who performs admirably but is noticeably shakier and lacks that bright, bursting energy he exhibited a few years earlier. He frequents the lower register in soft, emotionally inflected lines that give the ballads a uniquely personal treatment. It's unmistakably Lester on every track and there is some very keen playing ("I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)" is just one example, or a close approximation of the man we once knew in "Just You, Just Me") but in other places I hear him struggle with timing and the impact of the inventiveness is lost. The dramatic ascents and nose dives he used to do so well seem to sputter like an injured bird, rather than a stunt pilot. Young usually takes the first chorus, and sometimes afterwards I swear I can hear Peterson and Kessel emulating his style on their instruments, playing several "even" bars before throwing the rhythmic weight of the next phrase off to one side and rushing in after it. Even if he isn't in the same form as the recordings from 1946-1949, he's still Lester Young and when it works, it's untouchable.