Dorothy Ashby · 1968 · She married the harp to a funk rhythm section and made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

Ahmad Jamal · 1970 · Ahmad Jamal playing like he's solving a puzzle in real time, and the puzzle keeps changing shape.

Gil Scott-Heron · 1971 · Bernard Purdie, Ron Carter, and a man who refused to sing.

Antonio Carlos Jobim · 1970 · Creed Taylor took Jobim to New York and got a stoned masterpiece out of him.

Ella Fitzgerald · 1959 · Few singers could handle both the comedy and the heartbreak of a single Gershwin clause like Ella could, and Riddle gave her a ballroom to prove it.

Duke Ellington · 1956 · A single 27-chorus sax break turned a near-disaster into jazz immortality—and the crowd noise still gives you chills.

Nala Sinephro · 2021 Spin it Again - Nala Sinephro wrote, performed, recorded, and produced every note of this debut — the result is an album that sounds less like a document and more like an atmosphere.

Bill Evans · 1979 Spin it Again - Bill Evans with Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera, plus horns, recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1978 — this is the album that proves Evans could still lead a quintet into sublime territory without losing the intimacy that defined him.

Bill Evans Trio · 1981 Spin it Again - A 1981 record from Bill Evans Trio that rewards close listening.

Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble · 1994 Spin it Again - Gregorian chant meets free jazz saxophone inside a stone monastery. It should not work. It still does.

Nina Simone · 1965 Spin it Again - After a decade of classical training at Juilliard, Nina Simone finally let the devil into her piano.

Shabaka and the Ancestors · 2020 Spin it Again - Shabaka Hutchings went to South Africa and let the musicians write half the album. The result is a conversation across oceans.

Sons of Kemet · 2018 Spin it Again - Shabaka Hutchings named every track after a Black woman and titled the album after an insult to the royal family. You get the picture.

Louis Armstrong · 1957 Spin it Again - At 57, the greatest jazz musician alive sat down with a 32-year-old piano powerhouse and made something that sounds like a late-night conversation between friends who don't need to show off.

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong · 1959 Spin it Again - Ella and Louis turned Gershwin's opera into a jazz conversation that still sounds like a late night in 1957.

Éliane Elias · 2014 Spin it Again - She recorded the rhythm section live in New York and the strings in Prague — then somehow made the whole thing sound like one room.

Jan Garbarek · 2006 Spin it Again - Garbarek proves that restraint can be the loudest statement.

Yusuf Lateef · 1963 Spin it Again - A 1963 record from Yusuf Lateef that rewards close listening.

Charles Mingus · 1959 Spin it Again - Mingus stopped writing for anyone's approval the night he learned the bass could lead.

Bill Evans · 1975 Spin it Again - A 1975 record from Bill Evans that rewards close listening.