# 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?

*By YPB Team · Published April 21, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-blue-note-album-from-the-1960s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **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.
2. **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.
3. **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.
4. **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.
5. **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.
6. **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.
7. **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.
8. **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.
9. **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.
10. **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.
11. **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.
12. **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.
13. **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.

Tags: music, jazz, 60s, classics