John Coltrane · 1960 Spin it Again - Coltrane changed the harmonic vocabulary of jazz with this record and then basically walked away from it, which is either the most confident or most restless thing a musician has ever done.

Miles Davis · 1959 Spin it Again - Miles Davis got five musicians in a room with almost no rehearsal and they all played like they were thinking out loud, which is harder than it sounds.

Wayne Shorter · 1964 Spin it Again - Wayne Shorter with Miles Davis's rhythm section, no Miles, just four nights of recording until they got it right, and you can hear exactly what that kind of quiet pressure does to a tenor player.

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers · 1961 Spin it Again - Art Blakey hits the kit like he's settling an old argument, and Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter spend six tracks proving him right.

Jimmy Smith · 1960 Spin it Again - Jimmy Smith found that groove where a Hammond B-3 stops sounding like church and starts sounding like the back of a cab at 2am, and he just lived there for forty minutes.

Lee Morgan · 1964 Spin it Again - Lee Morgan walked into Van Gelder's studio with a blues shuffle and a hard bop trumpet and left behind forty minutes that still sound better at midnight than most things sound at any hour.

Bill Evans Trio · 1962 Spin it Again - Bill Evans plays like he's trying not to wake someone up, and Scott LaFaro is dead eleven days after this was recorded.

Eric Dolphy · 1964 Spin it Again - Eric Dolphy had about eight months left to live when he recorded this, and somehow the flute already knew it.

Duke Ellington & John Coltrane · 1962 Spin it Again - Duke Ellington playing like a man with nothing left to prove, Coltrane playing like a man with everything still to say, and somehow they both ended up in the same room on the same night.

Charles Mingus · 1963 Spin it Again - Six musicians playing like they're mourning something they can't name, recorded in one day because Mingus knew it wouldn't get better than that.

Bill Evans · 1959 Spin it Again - Bill Evans in 1959, playing piano like he was working something out privately and just forgot to close the door.

Miles Davis · 1970 Spin it Again - Miles Davis walked into the studio in 1970 with electric guitars and a couple of drummers and just refused to explain himself.

Bill Evans Trio · 1963 Spin it Again - Bill Evans in 1963, late, quiet, the piano doing exactly what a piano should do when there's nothing left to prove.

John Coltrane · 1964 Spin it Again - The Coltrane quartet in the year before everything broke open, playing like they already heard what was coming and decided to take their time anyway.