Put something on.

Sketches instead of charts, scales instead of chord mazes. It gave players room to breathe and became the record non-listeners own anyway.

Listen for: How little anyone hurries.

Columbia · Modal jazz

A four-part devotional suite recorded by a quartet at the peak of its telepathy. It reframed what a jazz album could be about.

Listen for: The bass figure the whole suite is built on.

Impulse! · Spiritual jazz

Elegy, gospel shout and political fury on one record, arranged with the density of a big band and the heat of a small one.

Listen for: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat — grief written as harmony.

Columbia · Post-bop

Odd meters sold to a mass audience without condescension. Proof that a rhythmic experiment can also be a standard.

Listen for: Counting in five and forgetting you're counting.

Columbia · Cool jazz

The Messengers were a finishing school with a house sound: blues, gospel and drums that push rather than keep time.

Listen for: Blakey's press roll shoving the band into the next chorus.

Blue Note · Hard bop

Jazz musicianship over a groove built for the body. It set the template for decades of jazz that isn't afraid of a backbeat.

Listen for: The bass line carrying the harmony on its own.

Columbia · Jazz-funk

A leader date where the sideman happens to be Miles Davis. Two horn players with opposite temperaments, perfectly balanced.

Listen for: Autumn Leaves arriving from a completely unexpected door.

Blue Note · Hard bop

No piano, no fixed changes, and a title that turned out to be a forecast rather than a boast.

Listen for: Melody surviving without a harmonic net.

Atlantic · Free jazz

Compositions so awkward on purpose that the band needed dozens of takes — and the difficulty is the point.

Listen for: The title track's tempo doubling every other chorus.

Riverside · Bebop