What the Best Jazz Albums Actually Teach You

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0500

In the fall of 2009, I was forty-three years old and had never owned a jazz record. I don’t say this with any particular pride or shame. I say it because it’s the relevant fact for what comes next.

A colleague was cleaning out his office (he’d taken a job elsewhere) and left a stack of old records by the door with a sign that said “take what you want.” I took Saxophone Colossus because I liked the way Sonny Rollins looked on the cover. He had the posture of a man who had arrived somewhere and wasn’t going to explain it. I took it home to my study in Indianapolis, put it on at eleven at night while I was finishing a piece about pattern recognition in expert decision-making, and intended to not quite listen.

Sonny Rollins on Sunday Evening Review

What the Best Jazz Albums Actually Teach You