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By David Remnick
May 12, 2008
Photograph by William Gottlieb / Redferns / Getty
While finishing “Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz
broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be
useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums,
more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of
quarrelling for the collector. First, I asked Schaap to assemble
the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. Such
attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but
“who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving
people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of
the current situation,” in which music is often bought and
downloaded from dubious sources. Schaap bemoaned the loss
of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital
age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes
and booklets. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from
Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis,
and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.”
This article appears in the print edition of the May 19, 2008,
issue.
David Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998
and a staff writer since 1992. He is the author of “The Bridge:
The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.”
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