Fred Kaplan

Fred--I love reading your stuff in Slate on both defense and jazz, and I just recently discovered your jazz blog. I'm a jazz novice, and I have a question that arises out of my relative ignorance and desire to know more about jazz. I saw somewhere else (http://www.muzieklijstjes.nl/FredKaplanTop100Jazz.htm) a list that purports to be your list of the top 100 jazz albums of all time. There are some compilation albums on the list, but none from Dizzy Gillespie. I've read that Dizzy may have been the greatest jazz artist never to have put out a great jazz album, but I wonder whether you think that some of his complation albums (e.g., The Verve Big Band Sessions) might deserve to be on a "greatest ever" list.Thanks.Leiv

Leiv - Thanks for your nice comments. Spread the word. There WAS one Gillespie disc on that list of the Top 100 Jazz albums of the 20th Century - "Diz & Roy," his sessions with fellow trumpeter (and one-time mentor) Royl Eldridge. It also included a few albums by Charlie Parker that might just as well have been credited to Dizzy. If I were to do the list over again, incorporating recordings that were made in the 1900s but released after I drew up the original list (and maybe I will sometime for Stereophile), I might also include the Gillespie-Parker Town Hall concert of 1945 (on the Uptown Jazz label)...Fred Kaplan