First, a few caveats. The 10 best jazz albums ever are not necessarily the same thing as anyone's 10 favourites; I'm sure there are people who accept the pre-eminence of Armstrong and Parker, for example, without counting them among their personal delights. And, in this era of doubles and box sets, too, the word album has to be flexibly interpreted.
But, most of all, it's the perspective of time that perhaps gets closer to the truth than anything else. When the musicians on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue recorded this masterpiece, it was just another session during a busy time and they were surprised at the acclaim that quickly gathered round it; 40 years on, its status seems beyond dispute. For that reason, though I think Brad Mehldau's latest, Elegiac Cycle, may be a masterpiece, only time will tell.
In any exercise as frustrating as this, though, there are always a few albums that select themselves. Kind of Blue is one; the unity of purpose shared by Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane is a marvel and though Davis wasn't the only one to discover modal improvisation, he certainly pushed jazz further down that road with Kind of Blue. Armstrong's Hot 7s album is another; the sublime trumpet solos on Potato Head Blues and Willie The Weeper still move after 70 years. Likewise Duke Ellington. His early 40s band was a personal peak for him, since the orchestra was packed with talent, including Cootie Williams, Ray Nance, Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster.
Likewise, too, Charlie Parker, who towered over his contemporaries the way Armstrong did over his. This time, given the often chaotic nature of his recording career and the release of the results to the public, it will have to be a box set - The Complete Charlie Parker on Verve, despite the fact that the 1947 Carnegie Hall concert with Gillespie, Diz'n'Bird at Carnegie Hall, has five majestic tracks by the pair..
Sonny Rollins has to be there as well. It's a toss-up between Way Out West, the Vil- lage Vanguard sessions and Saxophone Co- lossus; Blue Seven, among the most remarkably sustained pieces of thematic improvisation ever recorded in jazz, tilts it for the latter.
Neither can Coltrane be left out. Both Giant Steps and Coltrane Jazz have a freshness of discovery about them, and there's a hypnotic quality that still connects on My Favourite Things, but probably the sheer intensity of A Love Supreme puts it foremost.
Similarly, Bill Evans can't be ignored. He did so much to open up jazz trio work that he is still a benchmark for the format, as well as being a major voice in jazz piano. If it has to be one album, then it must be Sun- day at The Village Vanguard, which is also part of The Complete Riverside Record- ings box set. The single album includes the final playing hours of the trio with Scott La Faro and Paul Motian; their last performance, Jade Visions, is a haunting piece which gains added poignance from the fact that its composer, La Faro, was killed in a car crash ten days later.
And Keith Jarrett. As a solo performer, he's amazing, a veritable gusher of ideas from some limitless well of invention. But it's the Standards Trio, where the discipline imposed by the material and his colleagues, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, channels those ideas without destroying their originality or fecundity, that remains in the mind; again, it's a toss-up between almost any of them, but maybe it lies between Stan- dards Volume 2 and The Cure, with the latter getting the nod. Dizzy Gillespie also earned his spurs as a bandleader. Maybe the greatness of his late50s orchestra, with Lee Morgan, Quincy Jones, Phil Woods, Billy Mitchell, Benny Golson, Ernie Wilkins, Frank Rehak, Melba Liston and Wynton Kelly, with arrangements by Liston, Golson, Wilkins and Jones, gets overlooked. Not here; Birk's Works is in there.
The last choice is the most difficult. It means leaving out Lester Young, Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Larry Young, Woody Shaw, Clifford Brown, Art Pepper, Gil Evans, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Benny Carter, Lennie Tristano, Warne Marsh, Coleman Hawkins, George Russell, Fats Navarro, Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, not to mention younger trailblazers like Steve Coleman, Mehldau, Dave Douglas and Mark Turner. And lots of others.
So who gets in? Charlie Mingus. Again, it's a choice among superlatives, this time between Mingus Ah Um, Mingus Dynasty and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and though the last one is generally considered his masterpiece, I go for Mingus Ah Um, with Booker Ervin, John Handy, Shafi Hadi, Jimmy Knepper, Horace Parlan, Mingus and Danny Richmond - a great band.
Finally, some personal blind spots; therefore no Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton and Albert Ayler. Oh, and did I forget Dave Brubeck?
Readers are invited to nominate their 10 favourite jazz albums by voting in the Improvised Music Company Century Jazz Poll.
The Irish Times On The Web is participating in this poll and those who wish to vote online can do so at www.ireland.com/dublin
The results will be announced in the ESB Dublin Jazz Week programme to be launched late in August and entries will be eligible for the Century Jazz Poll competition, three winners of which will receive the complete set of the 20 most popular CDs from Tower Records.