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These are the top 50 jazz artists of all time according to Dave’s Music Database. The term “jazz” is used to incorporate instrumental jazz performed by small ensembles, big band jazz, vocal jazz, and traditional pop. That means this list includes musicians, singers, and band leaders. The list was determined by aggregating 17 best-of lists. Those acts appearing on 3 or more lists were re-ordered based on overall status in Dave’s Music Database.
On August 1, 1942, the American Federation of Musicians went on strike against the major American recording companies over disagreements regarding royalty payments. This meant no union musician could record for any record company, WK but it did not prohibit performances on live radio shows or in concert. WK While the move was seen as advantageous for musicians who wanted payment each time their songs were played in jukeboxes or on radio, PBS FCC chair James Fly suggested the 60% of the country’s radio stations could go out of business. DB
As the ban approached, numerous artists rushed to get in last-minute recordings in July 1942. Among them were Count Basie, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, and Glenn Miller. WK
When this stockpile was exhausted, record companies turned to older recordings – some as far back as the dawn of the recording era in the mid-1920s. One of the most successful releases was Harry James’ “All Or Nothing at All”, which featured Frank Sinatra before he became famous. WK
After October 27, 1943, special recordings known as V-Discs were exempt as they were intended for the armed forces and not the general public. WK In addition, some record companies, including Decca and Capitol, caved that 1943 while Victor and Columbia, the two largest companies, held out until November 11, 1944. WK
One unintended consequence of the strike was the hastening of the swing era’s decline and the rise of the “sing era” as the music industry shifted from a focus on big bands to singers. WK The ban only applied to musicians; singers were not union members. Therefore, they could still record a cappella songs consisting of vocal quartets or soloists backed by choruses. PBS As historian Peter Soderbergh put it, “Until the war most singers were props. After the war they became the stars and the role of the bands was gradually subordinated.” WK
For more important days in music history, check out the Dave’s Music Database history page.
January 22, 2019 marked the 10-year anniversary of the DMDB blog! To honor that, Dave’s Music Database announced its own Hall of Fame. This twelfth class of music maker inductees is comprised of the top jazz acts (see the full top 50 list here). That includes traditional pop and vocal jazz singers as well as jazz musicians and bandleaders. These are the top 20 from that list, minus previous inductees
Ella Fitzgerald,
Benny Goodman,
Billie Holiday,
Glenn Miller, and
Frank Sinatra.
This is an aggregate of 30 lists (see sources at the bottom of the page) focused on the best jazz songs of all time. Many of these were not originally jazz compositions and have higher-ranked versions in Dave’s Music Database. As such, the listings here are not necessarily the most popular versions of the song, but the one attributed specifically to a jazz artist.
Click here to see other genre-specific song lists.
1. Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong “Summertime” (1957)
2. Dave Brubeck “Take Five” (1961)
3. Duke Ellington “Take the ‘A’ Train” (1941)
4. Coleman Hawkins “Body and Soul” (1940)
5. Thelonious Monk “‘Round Midnight” (1947)
6. Miles Davis “So What” (1959)
7. Louis Armstrong “What a Wonderful World” (1967)
8. Stan Getz with Joao Gilberto “The Girl from Ipanema” (1964)
9. Dizzy Gillespie “A Night in Tunisia” (1946)
10. Cannonball Adderley “Autumn Leaves” (1958)
11. Benny Goodman “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” (1938)
12. Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit” (1939)
13. Frank Sinatra “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)” (1964)
14. Ray Charles “Georgia on My Mind” (1960)
15. Erroll Garner Trio “Misty” (1954)
16. Glenn Miller “In the Mood” (1939)
17. Miles Davis “All Blues” (1959)
18. John Coltrane “Acknowledgement (A Love Supreme, Part I)” (1965)
19. John Coltrane “My Favorite Things” (1960)
20. Miles Davis “Blue in Green” (1959)
21. Weather Report “Birdland” (1977)
22. Fats Waller “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (1929)
23. Duke Ellington “Sophisticated Lady” (1933)
24. Duke Ellington & John Coltrane “In a Sentimental Mood” (1962)
25. Bessie Smith & Louis Armstrong “St. Louis Blues” (1925)
26. Duke Ellington “Mood Indigo“ (1931)
27. Louis Armstrong “West End Blues” (1928)
28. Count Basie Orchestra “One O’Clock Jump” (1937)
29. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers “Moanin’” (1958)
30. Etta James “At Last” (1961)
31. Benny Goodman “Stompin’ at the Savoy” (1936)
32. Duke Ellington “Satin Doll” (1953)
33. John Coltrane “Giant Steps” (1959)
34. Dizzy Gillespie “All the Things You Are” (1945)
35. Louis Armstrong “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (1933)
36. Artie Shaw “Stardust” (1941)
37. Dizzy Gillespie “Salt Peanuts” (1945)
38. Duke Ellington “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing” (1932)
39. Glenn Miller “Moonlight Serenade” (1939)
40. Louis Armstrong “I Got Rhythm” (1932)
41. Dizzy Gillespie “Manteca” (1947)
42. Peggy Lee “Fever” (1957)
43. Cab Calloway “Minnie the Moocher” (1931)
44. Ella Fitzgerald “The Man I Love” (1959)
45. Ella Fitzgerald “Mack the Knife“ (1960)
46. Artie Shaw “Begin the Beguine” (1938)
47. Ella Fitzgerald “Night and Day” (1956)
48. Herbie Hancock “Watermelon Man” (1962)
49. Duke Ellington “Caravan” (1937)
50. Count Basie “April in Paris” (1955)
51. Paul Whitman with George Gershwin “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924)
52. John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman “Lush Life” (1963)
53. Louis Armstrong “Sweet Georgia Brown” (1955)
54. Billie Holiday “God Bless the Child” (1941)
55. Louis Armstrong “All of Me” (1932)
56. Ella Fitzgerald with the Daydreamers “How High the Moon” (1947)
57. Art Tatum “Tea for Two” (1939)
58. Natalie Cole with Nat “King” Cole “Unforgettable” (1991)
59. Glenn Miller “The Nearness of You” (1940)
60. Norah Jones “Don’t Know Why” (2002)
61. Charlie Parker with Miles Davis & Dizzy Gillespie “Ko-Ko” (1945)
62. Louis Armstrong “When the Saints Go Marching In” (1939)
63. Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong “Cheek to Cheek” (1956)
64. Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton “King Porter Stomp” (1923)
65. Billie Holiday “The Way You Look Tonight” (1936)
66. Fats Waller “Honeysuckle Rose” (1935)
67. Ella Fitzgerald “Someone to Watch Over Me” (1958)
68. Ray Charles “Come Rain or Come Shine” (1960)
69. Henry Mancini with Audrey Hepburn “Moon River” (1961)
70. Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” (1938)
71. Bill Withers with Grover Washington, Jr. “Just the Two of Us” (1981)
72. Dizzy Gillespie “I Can’t Get Started” (1945)
73. Louis Armstrong “I’m in the Mood for Love” (1935)
74. Billie Holiday “Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)” (1945)
75. Benny Goodman “Moonglow” (1934)
76. Louis Armstrong “Hello Dolly!” (1964)
77. Benny Goodman with Mildred Bailey “Darn That Dream” (1940)
78. Woody Herman “Blues in the Night (My Mama Done Tol’ Me)” (1941)
79. Pee Wee Hunt “Twelfth Street Rag” (1948)
80. Nat “King” Cole “Mona Lisa” (1950)
81. Woody Herman “Laura” (1945)
82. Nat “King” Cole “Straighten Up and Fly Right” (1944)
83. Artie Shaw “Dancing in the Dark” (1941)
84. Bobby McFerrin “Don’t Worry Be Happy” (1988)
85. Lionel Hampton “Flying Home” (1942)
86. Frank Sinatra “One for My Baby and One for the Road” (1949)
87. Dinah Washington “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” (1959)
88. Ella Fitzgerald “But Not for Me” (1959)
89. Tommy Dorsey “Opus One” (1943)
90. Charlie Barnet & His Orchestra “Cherokee (Indian Love Song)” (1939)
91. Duke Ellington “Perdido” (1942)
92. Chet Baker “My Funny Valentine” (1953)
93. Woody Herman “I’ll Remember April” (1942)
94. George Benson “On Broadway” (live, 1978)
95. George Benson “This Masquerade” (1976)
96. Stan Kenton “Artistry in Rhythm” (1944)
97. Herb Alpert “Rise” (1979)
98. Stan Getz & Charlie Bird “Desafinado” (1962)
99. Louis Armstrong “Potato Head Blues” (1927)
100. Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France “Nuages” (1940)
Frank Sinatra once described Elvis Presley, the man who in 1959 was responsible for nearly half the sales at RCA, as a “deplorable, a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.” TO Apparently the Grammys agreed with Ol’ Blue Eyes. In 28 categories, Sinatra was nominated the most – 12 times. Elvis and his fellow rock musicians, received no nominations. As Variety magazine said, the complete absence of any rock titles was “a demonstrative brushoff to the prevailing trend in the pop field.” TO
The Grammy Awards were established in 1958 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The “Grammy” nickname is short for gramophone. The awards focused on “artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence instead of album sales or chart position.” LF “The award itself is a gold gramophone, symbolic of the first home record players, on a black base.” LF
525 people from the music industry attended that first ceremony on May 4, 1959 at a banquet ceremony at Los Angeles’ Beverly Hilton Hotel. Shockingly, there was no music on the program. The event was not televised. Paul Weston, the Grammy president, was still lining up presenters during dinner.
700 people filled out ballots. While prognasticators assumed Sinatra would be the big winner of the night, he was nearly shut out, only winning Best Album Cover for Only the Lonely. Instead, the night’s top honors went largely to non-rock-oriented pop titles. Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” won Record and Song of the Year. Henry Mancini’s television soundtrack The Music from Peter Gunn, which had topped the LP chart for 10 weeks, took the prize for Album of the Year. Mancini would become a Grammy regular, winning a total of 20 awards before his death in 1994.
Volare
Some of the other winners of the night included Ella Fitzgerald (Best Female Vocal Performance, Best Individual Jazz Performance) and Count Basie (Best Performance by a Dance Band, Best Jazz Performance Group). Despite Grammy leaders claim that the awards were about “artistic merit,” they handed out three awards to The Chipmunks. Check out a full list of the first year’s winners here.
Sales (in millions): 0.5 US, -- UK, 0.5 world (includes US and UK)
Genre: jazz
Tracks, Disc 1:
Song Title(Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks). Chart information is for original studio releases.
Click for codes to singles charts.
Benny Goodman Introduction (recorded 1950) [0:22]
Don’t Be That Way(Edgar Sampson, Benny Goodman, Mitchell Parish) [4:12] (3/12/38, 1 US)
If Dreams Come True(Edgar Sampson, Benny Goodman, Irving Mills) [2:34] *
Big John’s Special(Horace Henderson) [3:41]
* unique to Complete Legendary Carnegie Hall Concert
Total Running Time: 101:04
Rating:
4.650 out of 5.00 (average of 4 ratings)
Quotable: “One of the greatest concerts ever captured on record.” This “belongs in every serious music library.” – Scott Yanow, All Music Guide
Awards: (Click on award to learn more).
About the Album:
Band leader and clarinetist Benny Goodman, “touted as the ‘King of Swing’ at his peak,” NRR was “the first real jazz musician to capture a mass bourgeois white audience in America.” AZ He was also the first to stage a full jazz concert at Carnegie Hall. SY His publicist, Wynn Nathanson, initially suggested it as a publicity stunt, but after “his film Hollywood Hotel opened to rave reviews and giant lines, he threw himself into the work.” WK It sold out its capacity 2,760 seats at the then-high top price of $2.75 a seat. WK
This “belongs in every serious music library, capturing Benny Goodman and the swing era in general at its height.” SY His “fantastic performance at Carnegie Hall” AZ started with three contemporary numbers, then played a history of jazz, and then a jam session on Honeysuckle Rose, “which found sidemen of the orchestras of Duke Ellington and Count Basie interacting with Goodman's star.” SY Later some “trio and quartet numbers were well-received and a vocal on Loch Lomond by Martha Tilton provoked five curtain calls.” WK
“This concert has been regarded as one of the most siginificant in jazz history” WK and “one of the greatest concerts ever captured on record.” SY This was “a turning point in the way jazz is judged by outsiders.” SY It had “finally been accepted by mainstream audiences.” WK “It is hard to believe that tapes of this momentous event were kept in a closet, forgotten until rediscovered by accident in 1950” SY by Benny’s sister-in-law in a closet in his apartment. WK
The performance “captures Goodman and his orchestra at the peak of their performance.” AZ He is “fronting top performers and appearing before an energetic audience.” NRR His “stellar bandsmen were joined by Lionel Hampton and members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington ensembles for this famous festival of jazz during the height of the swing music era.” NRR
“There are many, many high points, including exciting versions of Don’t Be That Way and One O’Clock Jump, a tribute to the 20 years of jazz that were then on record; …exciting performances by the Trio and Quartet; and, of course, Sing, Sing, Sing with Gene Krupa’s creative (if not too subtle) drumming and Jess Stacy’s remarkable ad lib piano solo.” SY
Three of these songs are featured in the DMDB book The Top 100 Songs of the Pre-Rock Era, 1890-1953, albeit not the versions by Goodman. Ben Selvin had a chart-topper with Blue Skies in 1927, Red Nichols took I Got Rhythm to #5 in 1930, Coleman Hawkins had a #13 hit with Body and Soul in 1940.
Notes:
When issued on CD in 1999, the original Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert was expanded (track listing reflects that) and retitled The Legendary Carnegie Hall Concert.
Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US + UK)
Airplay/Streaming (in millions):
-- radio, 1.075 video, -- streaming
Awards:
Click on award for more details.
About the Song:
Count Basie and his Orchestra crafted this instrumental jazz “landmark of the big band Swing Era” NRR around a head arrangement, an approach in which a song was developed through rehearsal and memorized without being written down. NRR The approach let musicians focus on the rhythmic drive NRR which was the main thrust of Basie’s and other Kansas City dance bands. Such songs were known as “stomps” and “shouts” or, in this case, a “jump”. TC
The approach also allowed soloists a lot of freedom. In “One O’Clock Jump”, extraordinary players like Lester Young, Herschel Evans, and Buck Clayton are allowed a showcase their interplay of brass and reeds. NRR
Basie was the first to chart with the song in 1937. The following year, Harry James and Benny Goodman had top 10 versions with it. However, the song has become known as “Basie’s signature theme, and the band played it at the end of their performances for more than 50 years.” NPR As a demonstration of this instrumental’s staying power and ability to cross genres, country group Asleep at the Wheel won a Grammy in 1978 for best country instrumental performance. TY Neil Peart, the drummer with progressive rock group Rush, used it to conclude his solos in concert from 2002 to 2004. WK
Resources:
TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 370.
