Herbie Hancock · 1974 Spin it Again - Herbie in '74, still one foot in jazz and one foot somewhere murkier, and you can hear him deciding which direction to walk.

Weather Report · 1977 Spin it Again - Jaco Pastorius walked into a jazz-fusion session in 1977 and made the bass the whole conversation, and nobody's really argued with him since.

Dave Brubeck Quartet · 1959 Spin it Again - Dave Brubeck put jazz in 5/4 time in 1959 and somehow the squares bought it, which tells you something about the song and something about the squares.

Milt Jackson · 1957 Spin it Again - Milt Jackson's vibes hitting that pocket where bebop gets tired enough to mean something, and Miles just sitting there like he already knew.

Thelonious Monk · 1957 Spin it Again - Monk wrote the title track so knotty his own band couldn't play it clean, so they spliced together two takes and called it done, and somehow that's the most honest thing on the record.

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.

Harry Partch · 1952 Spin it Again - Harry Partch built his own instruments just to make sounds Western tuning wouldn't allow, and this is the record where that stubbornness finally had somewhere to go.

Moondog · 1969 Spin it Again - A blind man in a Viking helmet stood on a Manhattan street corner for twenty years and still made something quieter and stranger than anything recorded inside a studio that decade.

Herbie Hancock · 1974 Spin it Again - Hancock took the electric funk he was building on Head Hunters and tightened every screw until there was almost no room left to breathe, which is exactly the point.

Bill Evans · 1958 Spin it Again - Bill Evans alone at the piano in 1958, holding one bass note for eleven minutes while the right hand just wanders, and somehow that's enough.

Weather Report · 1975 Spin it Again - Zawinul spent 1975 making jazz feel like it had somewhere to be, and for once it did.

Herbie Hancock · 1973 Spin it Again - Herbie Hancock walked out of Miles Davis's band and into a funk club, and nobody who was there that night ever fully recovered.

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.

Miles Davis · 1969 Spin it Again - Miles Davis turned the volume down so low in 1969 that you had to lean in, and once you did, you couldn't hear anything else the same way again.