John Coltrane · 1959 Spin it Again - He recorded it in 1959 but the world didn't hear it until much later—four tracks of pure solitude with a rhythm section that knew how to shut up.

Jackie McLean · 1964 Spin it Again - McLean in 1964 proves that hard bop didn't end when the modal thing started.

Ornette Coleman · 1960 Spin it Again - Ornette Coleman walked into Rudy Van Gelder's studio in 1959 and proved jazz didn't need harmony to make sense.

Jackie McLean · 1962 Spin it Again - McLean's alto doesn't sit in tune so much as haunt the spaces around it—a fingerprint so distinctive that even at 21, Herbie Hancock sounds like he's accompanying a conversation happening in a language only they understood.

Andrew Hill · 1965 Spin it Again - Recorded nine months before Eric Dolphy died, with Tony Williams at nineteen doing things to a drum kit that still don't have a name.

Horace Silver · 1965 Spin it Again - Sixty years of samples and covers and it still sounds like the original is the only one that got it right.

Hank Mobley · 1960 Spin it Again - The record Leonard Feather accidentally described when he called Mobley a middleweight — turns out that's exactly what jazz needed.

John Coltrane · 1957 Spin it Again - John Coltrane led exactly one Blue Note session, and he spent it playing like a man settling a debt nobody else knew existed.

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers · 1958 Spin it Again - Art Blakey hits the kit like he's settling a debt, and somehow Bobby Timmons' gospel-drenched piano makes that feel like the only reasonable response.

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.

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.