Downbeat, the American jazz magazine is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. I’m an online subscriber. Downbeat is my monthly jazz bible. It’s great for in-depth articles, interviews, record reviews, the legendary blindfold test and much more.
To mark the occasion, it has commissioned a poll of readers, critics, and veterans (not quite sure who veterans constitute in this context) to produce a listing of “the 90 greatest jazz artists of all time” The full listing appears in Downbeat’s April edition.
Inevitably these choices have and are designed to provoke debate. DB’s subsequent edition is already replete with readers pointing to numerous omissions.
Here are my thoughts on Downbeat’s Top 90;
1. Mount Rushmore status.
Among the 90 jazz giants who made the cut five are awarded Mount Rushmore status, essentially as jazz gods. The five who look out on the rest from the lofty peak of Mount Rushmore are,
- John Coltrane
- Miles Davis
- Duke Ellington
- Dizzy Gillespie
- Charlie Parker
Hard to quarrel with these choices but isn’t the case equally strong for Louis Armstrong, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins?
Downbeat Magazine Exerpt
2. Where are the women?
Sadly, but unsurprisingly there are only eight women who make the cut. They are,
- Carla Bley
- Betty Carter
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Billie Holliday
- Nina Simone
- Bessie Smith
- Sarah Vaughan
- Mary Lou Williams
Each of these, in my view warrant inclusion. It is interesting that six of these choices are vocalists (there is only one male singer who made the cut, you guessed it, Frank Sinatra). Only Carla and Mary Lou were composers and instrumentalists.
Two quotes illustrate this point.
Terri Lyne Carrington (who didn’t make it into the 90) recently observed that “There’s been an unwritten narrative that men play music and women sing it” Last year Carrington published “New Standards” a long overdue volume of compositions by female jazz musicians with an accompanying album of the same title.
Carla Bley who died this year and is, rightly included is quoted in a DB interview as follows,
‘I feel like I should be in a cage with a sign on me that says, “She wrote the music”’.
I am obviously aware that for much of its 120 year life span jazz has been dominated by men and the traditional jazz culture has been male dominated. However, DB’s focus on dead jazz greats inevitably reduces the focus on outstanding women musicians from the contemporary jazz scene. In which case the following may well have a good claim for inclusion,
- Melissa Aldana, sax
- Barbara Dennerlein, organ
- Nubiya Garcia, sax
- Regina Carter, violin
- Nikki Iles, piano, composer
- Maria Schneider composer, big band leader
- Emily Remler, guitar
- Barbara Thompson, sax
- Flora Purim, vocalist
- Dee Dee Bridgewater, vocalist.
- Mary Halvorson, guitar
- Zoe Rahman, piano
- Cecile McClorin Savant, vocalist
- Terry Lyne Carrington, drums,
- Alice Coltrane, piano, harp
Downbeat Magazine Exerpt
3. The great and the dead
Only eight of the chosen 90 are still alive. And of these only Jason Moran and Christian McBride are under 60. This gearing towards deceased jazz greats inevitably narrows the chances for inclusion by younger, living jazz musicians. It also cuts across DB’s editorial policy of featuring new generation jazz musicians.
4. The USA dominates.
While no one can doubt that America created jazz and that jazz has a good claim to be America’s pre-eminent indigenous art form, it does seem to me that in 2024 to see only two non-American inclusions in such a list- the very present John McLaughlin and the late Django Reinhardt- is an astonishing oversight. This suggests both a worrying insularity on behalf of the DB electorate and a failure to reflect and celebrate the fact that jazz is now a world music, played and listened to right to across the globe.
5. The Missing
Here are 10 jazz musicians that I would have included.
- Lee Konitz, sax
- Joe Lovano, reeds
- Paul Chambers, bass
- Scott Lafaro, bass
- Courtney Pine, reeds
- Martial Solal, piano
- Buster Williams, bass
- Gary Burton, vibes
- Tubby Hayes, reeds
- Bill Frisell, guitar
- Kenny Clarke, drums
It would be great to hear your thoughts on the top 90 and any omissions that you would identify.
The Playlist
My playlist features tracks that Downbeat associates most strongly with each of their top 90. No disagreements there and hopefully much for you to enjoy.
I leave the last word to great vocalist Sheila Jordan
“For most of my career I’ve been singing for snacks.”
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