What is the best Blue Note album from the 1960s?

The 1960s were Blue Note Records' golden era, when hard bop, post-bop, and avant-garde jazz all found a home on the label. Which 1960s Blue Note album is the definitive classic?

Out to Lunch!

Eric Dolphy's 1964 Blue Note album is the label's most radical masterpiece — free yet composed, with Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, and Tony Williams in a landmark of avant-garde jazz.

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Speak No Evil

Wayne Shorter's 1964 Blue Note session is a compositional triumph — six originals that synthesize hard bop and modal jazz with cinematic beauty and rhythmic sophistication.

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Maiden Voyage

Herbie Hancock's 1965 Blue Note album is a modal jazz masterpiece — its oceanic impressionism and flowing rhythms created a new model for jazz composition.

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Empyrean Isles

Herbie Hancock's 1964 Blue Note album features 'Cantaloupe Island' and four compositions of extraordinary harmonic and rhythmic invention from one of jazz's greatest pianists.

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Point of Departure

Andrew Hill's 1964 Blue Note album is the most intellectually demanding and rewarding of the label's '60s output — abstract, mysterious, and featuring Dolphy in his penultimate Blue Note appearance.

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The Sidewinder

Lee Morgan's 1964 Blue Note album produced the boogaloo title track that gave the label its biggest commercial hit — irresistibly funky hard bop that bridges jazz and R&B.

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Soul Station

Hank Mobley's 1960 Blue Note album opened the decade with the most perfectly crafted hard bop record ever made — four tracks of flawless musicianship.

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Let Freedom Ring

Jackie McLean's 1962 Blue Note album was a pivotal transition between hard bop and the avant-garde — McLean's raw alto saxophony pressing against conventional chord structures.

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The Real McCoy

McCoy Tyner's 1967 Blue Note album is the first great statement of the pianist's post-Coltrane career — sweeping, percussive, and rhythmically adventurous.

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Go!

Dexter Gordon's 1962 Blue Note comeback album is one of the era's most charismatic jazz recordings — relaxed yet burning, with a big, authoritative sound and unhurried swing.

10/13

Unity

Larry Young's 1965 Blue Note album brought the Hammond organ into the post-bop era — abandoning Jimmy Smith's blues-based style for a more harmonically sophisticated, Coltrane-influenced approach.

11/13

Song for My Father

Horace Silver's 1965 Blue Note album is the most melodically distinctive hard bop record of the decade — the title track's Afro-Cuban groove immediately recognizable to any jazz listener.

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Free for All

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers' 1964 Blue Note album is the hardest-hitting, most ferocious of his many recordings — Wayne Shorter's compositions pushing the band to their absolute limit.

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