150. Wayne Shorter / Juju (1964)

Shorter's second LP for Blue Note finds him branching out as a composer and even experimenting with a different sound from his reed. There's no Lee Morgan in this group, but the rest is the same as on Night Dreamer. On the opening "Juju" he uses a harsher tone and plays stretchy, contemplative phrases that explore his interpretation of a chant-like African melody through the repetition of its few tonalities. The rhythm section pins down the whole thing, and often with Shorter sketching and resketching the vaguest of melodic ideas, it's Reggie Workman and McCoy Tyner who indicate where the melody actually is. In a word, spooky. Elvin Jones gets behind it (seemingly several times at once) and it works. The group's dynamic for much of the album is the same as it was with Coltrane's band, and it's instructional to listen to Juju's tracks mixed at random with Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard. Try that and tell me what you think. The fabled Workman-Tyner-Jones unit is like one animal, it has one sound, and it's a very distinctive one. Then you've got the tenor on top of that, either the master or his understudy, and either way it's magic. Like Night Dreamer before it, Juju clearly originates in blues and bop, but turn around and you'll find that shoreline quickly vanishing behind you.

70. John Coltrane / Crescent (1964)

I love this album because it is so moody. Only during "Bessie's Blues" does he lighten up, although not for very long. I guess it's fitting that it comes from a different session. Jones sounds like rain to me, even when using sticks. He shuffles, clicks, clacks, swooshes, and bangs, just like a thunderstorm. It's the perfect accompaniment to Coltrane's moody tenor, and rhythmically speaking, gives him a long leash. Tyner contributes in a similar fashion, creating a colorful backdrop of notes that sound very much like the sheets of rain in a storm. The last track is pretty much all Jones, called "The Drum Thing." Contrasting with Trane's more exploratory work, these performances are almost rigidly disciplined. He doesn't abandon what he learned in the intervening years, he just applies it differently. The result is a more mature formulation of the post-bop he was doing during for Prestige, richly imagined and deeply reverent of its roots. It's something of a calm before the storm in the Coltrane canon, considering that the next year witnessed A Love Supreme and the year after, Ascension.

58. John Coltrane / My Favorite Things (1961)

Coltrane's fluidity and eloquence with modal jazz hit a stride during these sessions, and the resulting albums (including also Coltrane Plays the Blues, Coltrane's Sound and Coltrane Legacy) are watershed recordings in the Coltrane oeuvre. And who better to support his statement of purpose than Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner? Tyner's creative inversions and voicings rain down with a lush selection of harmonic possibilities and the mystically driven Jones shuffles through several rhythms at once, giving Coltrane maximum flexibility for his improvisations. Steve Davis plays wonderful bass, sometimes suggesting a single static harmonic element while Coltrane and Tyner wrap blizzards of changing ideas around it. The music is pleasant and listenable, infused equally with strains of Eastern ragas and the blues. Coltrane's soprano sax is haunting and delicate, assertive but not an overriding presence. It's remarkable that such individualistic music comes from a set without a single original. "But Not For Me" deftly reharmonized with Coltrane changes, and his long tenor solo is one of my favorite choruses from any musician, hands down.