A holiday album in the classic Perry Como mold, Season's Greetings is warm and relaxed, with lush renditions of "Winter Wonderland," "The Christmas Song," "O Holy Night" and seven other Christmas favorites.

Sonny Stitt - Prestige First Sessions (1992) {Prestige PCD-24115-2 rec 1950-1951}
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© 1950-51, 1992 Prestige Records / Fantasy | PCD-24115-2
Jazz / Bebop / Bop / Saxophone

Sonny Stitt is heard in his early prime throughout this CD, sticking to tenor on all but two of the 24 selections. Few could play bebop with Stitt's sincerity, quick reflexes and large vocabulary. He swings hard throughout the performances, most of which feature him as the only soloist. Three dull vocals aside (by the forgotten Teddy Williams and Larry Townsend), this gapfilling CD is highly recommended to fans of classic bebop.

Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis & Sonny Stitt - Jaws & Stitt at Birdland (1954) {Roulette Jazz ‎CDP 7975072 rel 1991}
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© 1954, 1991 Roulette Jazz / EMI Records | ‎CDP 7975072
Jazz / Bebop / Saxophone

Sonny Stitt (sticking to tenor on this set) sat in with fellow tenor Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' trio (which also includes organist Doc Bagby and drummer Charlie Rice) for a spirited and typically competitive jam session. Since Davis and Stitt had different sounds (one has little difficulty telling them apart) and were equally skilled, their collaboration is a draw. In addition to three standards, this CD has five basic originals. The original LP's four numbers are joined by four equally heated selections from the same date that were previously put out by the Phoenix label. Easily recommended to bebop collectors.

Part of the ultimate audiophile Prestige stereo reissues from Analogue Productions — 25 of the most collectible, rarest, most audiophile-sounding Rudy Van Gelder recordings ever made. All cut at 33 1/3 and also released on Hybrid SACD. All mastered from the original analog master tapes by mastering maestro Kevin Gray.

Lennie Niehaus - Vol. 2: Zounds! (1956) {Contemporary OJCCD-1892-2 rel 1997}
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© 1954-56, 1997 Contemporary Records / Fantasy | OJCCD-1892-2
Jazz / Cool / Bop / West Coast Jazz / Saxophone

This formerly rare Contemporary set was reissued on a 1997 OJC CD. Lennie Niehaus, best known for his scores for Clint Eastwood films in the 1980s and '90s, was an excellent cool-toned bop altoist back in the '50s who spent time working with Stan Kenton. For this album, he is heard on two different occasions providing arrangements and alto solos for octets. With such fine players as either Jack Montrose or Bill Perkins on tenor, Bob Gordon or Pepper Adams on baritone, and other top West Coast jazz musicians, Niehaus primarily performs cool jazz. The inventive charts (which on the later date utilize a French horn and a tuba) and the superior, concise solos make this a set well worth acquiring by fans of the West Coast jazz sound of the '50s.

Miles Davis - The Complete Amsterdam Concert (1957) {Celluloid 668232}
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© 1957 Celluloid France | 668232
Jazz / Cool / Hard Bop / Trumpet

This two-LP set is a real rarity, a performance by trumpeter Miles Davis while he was in Europe in late 1957. Joined by drummer Kenny Clarke and three excellent French players (tenor saxophonist Barney Wilen, pianist Rene Urtreger and bassist Pierre Michelot), the same unit with which Davis recorded a French soundtrack during this period, the quintet jams through ten songs from Davis's repertoire. Although all of this music (around 56 minutes worth) could have been put on one rather than two LPs, this hard-to-find set is recommended for the rare opportunity to hear Miles Davis stretching out with these musicians.

George Lewis - Jazz In Classic New Orleans Tradition (1995) {Riverside OJCCD-1736-2 rec 1951-1953}
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© 1951-53, 1995 Riverside Records / Fantasy | OJCCD-1736-2
Jazz / New Orleans Jazz / Clarinet

This involves bandleader and drummer Paul Barbarin, a nearly exact New Orleans contemporary of Lewis and one of the great originals in the music. The band is familiar enough by now, and the ability to extract the maximum expression from the most minimal of settings has rarely been better documented than here, coupled to an above-average standard of recording. Heard side by side, Lewis and Barbarin underline many of the contradictions that underlay the revivalist movement.

Ella Swings Lightly is a 1958 studio album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, recorded with the Marty Paich Dek-tette. Ella also worked with Marty Paich on her 1967 album Whisper Not. The album features a typical selection of jazz standards from this era, songs from musicals like Frank Loesser's If I Were a Bell, and a famous jazz instrumental vocalised by Ella, Roy Eldridge's Little Jazz. This album won Ella the 1960 Grammy award for the Best Improvised Jazz Solo…

Art Tatum & Ben Webster - The Art Tatum Group Masterpieces (1956) {Pablo Japan, VDJ-28009, Early Press}
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© 1956, 1987 Pablo Records / Victor Japan | VDJ-28009
Jazz / Mainstream Jazz / Swing / Stride / Piano

The quartet set with tenor-saxophonist Ben Webster. Webster lets Tatum fill the background with an infinite number of notes while emphasizing his warm tenor tone in the forefront on a variety of melodic ballads and standards. The combination works very well.

Peggy Lee - Black Coffee (1956) {Verve Master Edition B0003093-02 rel 2004}
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© 1953-56, 2004 Decca / Verve / UMG | B0003093-02
Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Torch Songs / Vocal Pop

Peggy Lee left Capitol in 1952 for, among several other reasons, the label's refusal to let her record and release an exotic, tumultuous version of "Lover." Lee was certainly no Mitch Miller songbird, content to loosen her gorgeous pipes on any piece of tripe foisted upon her; she was a superb songwriter with a knowledge of production and arrangement gained from work in big bands and from her husband, Dave Barbour (although the two weren't together at the time). The more open-minded Decca acquiesced to her demand, and watched its investment pay off quickly when the single became her biggest hit in years.

Ray Draper - Tuba Sounds (1957) {Prestige OJCCD-1936-2 rel 2000}
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© 1957, 2000 Prestige / Fantasy | OJCCD-1936-2
Jazz / Hard Bop / Tuba

One of the first tuba players to lead his own recording session in a bebop setting, Ray Draper was only 16 when he recorded the music on this CD reissue, his debut. Teamed in a sextet with trumpeter Webster Young (also making his recording debut), altoist Jackie McLean, pianist Mal Waldron, bassist Spanky DeBrest, and drummer Ben Dixon, Draper fits in pretty well.

Two full albums from the man who was an important influence on California country giants Merle Haggard and Buck Owens! The first album is pure genius from the young Tommy Collins – an early figure on the Bakersfield scene, and an artist who almost single-handedly shaped the sound of the west coast scene with his Capitol Records material included here! Collins had a wonderful way of updating older hillbilly modes – traces of Texas and Arkansas, moved over to postwar Cali – where things got tightened up, became a bit more confident, and were given a razor-sharp sound by the excellent Capitol production. Every tune here is a classic – and many have a sense of double-entendre that rivals the hippest R&B work of the period, but with a very different sound overall – on titles that include "You Better Not Do That", "How Do I Say Goodbye", "It Tickles", "You Gotta Have A License", "Smooth Sailin", and "Whatcha Gonna Do Now".

Musicians like to observe that for all his notoriety as the wellspring of bebop, Charlie "Bird" Parker's music was loaded with the blues. Swedish Schnapps is as good a place as any to make that connection with Parker's music, including as it does two of his most enduring bop heads based on the blues, "Au Privave" and "Blues For Alice." While you wouldn't mistake either composition for a Muddy Waters tune, both relate Bird's off-kilter accents and serpentine melodicism at walking tempos that let you hear what's actually going by, instead of leaving you astonished but bemused. To really drive the point home, there's "K.C. Blues," which finds the altoist at his hollerin' best, and "Lover Man," certainly one of the bluesiest 32-bar standards around.

Kind of Blue isn't merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it's an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album. To be reductive, it's the Citizen Kane of jazz – an accepted work of greatness that's innovative and entertaining. That may not mean it's the greatest jazz album ever made, but it certainly is a universally acknowledged standard of excellence…