Merry Christmas everyone!
Here’s a compilation list of our choices for the Best Jazz Albums of 2013 from our three prior Best of the Year posts. A click on the links in each title will take you to the Amazon or CD Baby page for each album (a great way to spend those gift cards you may have gotten from Santa).
From Best Jazz Albums of 2013 (So Far)
- The Bespoke Man’s Narrative – Aaron Diehl (Mack Avenue)
- Border Free – Chucho Valdes and the Afro-Cuban Messengers (Jazz Village)
- Grace – J.D. Allen (Savant)
- In A World of Mallets – Jason Marsalis (Basin Street Records)
- Live Today – Derrick Hodge (Blue Note Records)
- Magnetic – Terence Blanchard (Blue Note Records)
- No Beginning, No End – Jose James (Blue Note Records)
- Songs From This Season – Tim Green (True Melody Music)
- That Nepenthetic Place – Dayna Stephens (Sunnyside Records)
- Woman Child – Cecile McLorin Salvant (Mack Avenue Records)
From Best Jazz Albums of 2013 – The Second Half
- Aquarius – Nicole Mitchell’s Ice Crystals (Delmark)
- Creole Soul – Etienne Charles (MRI)
- I Wanna Be Evil (With Love to Eartha Kitt) – René Marie (Motéma)
- Liquid Spirit – Gregory Porter (Blue Note)
- No Morphine; No Lilies – Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom (The Royal Potato Family)
- Out Here – Christian McBride Trio (Mack Avenue)
- Saturday Morning – Ahmad Jamal (Jazz Village)
- Soul Brother Cool – Cyrus Chestnut (WJ3)
- Tootie’s Tempo – Albert “Tootie” Heath (Sunnyside)
- Wolfgang – Warren Wolf (Mack Avenue)
From Best Jazz of 2013 – A Few More Good Things; Plus!
- Black Lace Blue Tears – Eugenie Jones (CD Baby)
- Black Radio II – Robert Glasper (Blue Note)
- Latin Jazz/Jazz Latin – Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet (Patois)
- Understanding – Wallace Roney (HighNote)
- Willie Jones III Plays the Max Roach Songbook – Willie Jones III (WJ3)
And 5 great 2012 albums that we missed until 2013:
- Here We Go Again – Renee Yoxon (Self-Release)
- In The Spur of the Moment – Justin Robinson (WJ3)
- It’s All Good – Ed Cherry (Posi-Tone)
- Portraits – Shamie Royston (CD Baby)
- Yo – Roberto Fonseca (Concord Jazz)
Tracks from all of the albums listed here will be featured on Curt’s Café Noir WebJazz Radio, starting on December 27, 2013 and into January 2014 as part of our Year End / New Year programming. Click HERE to go to the station and listen. It’s Free!
May you all have a happy, prosperous and jazz filled 2014!
Curt's Jazz Cafe 