Warming up after a freezing dog walk 

So you’re in front of a roaring fire with a hot chocolate and your pooch snoring beside you. Sounds cosy? It’s even more so with the sounds of a classic Blue Note album filling the room. What can be more classic than Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father”? Inspired by the pianist’s Cape Verdean heritage and the music heard on a recent trip to Brazil, it’s the perfect winter warmer. Now available on 180g vinyl. 

Watching the rain pattering against the window

Rather than complaining about the rain why not pop on a Blue Note Classic Vinyl album and match the rhythms of the music with the drops on the window. We think avant garde jazz works the best. Try it with Cecil Taylor’s perfectly stormy 1966 album “Unit Structures” recorded with Jimmy Lyons and Ken McIntyre on saxophone, Eddie Gale on trumpet, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva on bass, and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Avant garde rain jazz to lose yourself in. 

Meditating on a frosty cobweb 

Recorded in 1964 for Verve, clarinetist Tony Scott’s “Music for Zen Meditation and Other Joys” 

was seminal both in terms of world jazz and new age music. It was one of the first jazz albums to include the Japanese Koto (of Shinichi Yuize) to be used extensively by future new age musicians. It also featured Hozan Yamamoto’s shakuhachi (bamboo flute) used more recently by Shabaka Hutchings. Segue into Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson, Carlos Niño’s ”Openness Trio” album for Blue Note from 2025 and use that icy thread weaved by the master spider as your anchor to inner peace. 

Reading “War & Peace”  

Some Other Stuff

Avant garde jazz is the most intellectualised of all the music’s genres so it makes sense that it’s the music to reach for when you want to dive into a challenging novel. New Yorker Grachan Moncur III took the trombone into the post bop and avant garde era with two outstanding albums for Blue Note “Evolution” (1963) and “Some Other Stuff” (1964). Recorded at Van Gelder Studio with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Cecil McBee and pianist Herbie Hancock “Some Other Stuff” has all the rhythmic and tonal freedom to get your grey matter working. 

Getting a party started with friends

By the end of the 1960s, Blue Note artists were primarily creating jazz for the head rather than the feet. That changed during the George Butler era of the label as jazz funk and fusion attracted a new crowd of dancers and DJs. The artist most closely associated with the new direction was trumpeter Donald Byrd. Of his classic Mizell Brothers produced jazz funk albums for Blue Note “Spaces & Places” was the best known. The title track, “Wind Parade’ and “Dominoes” are the perfect way to get the party started. 

Planning your spring holiday

Ok so we do love the winter but it can drag on a bit. By the end of January we start making plans for those Spring camping trips to the coast. What better way to get you in the mood for starry nights under canvas than a bit of bossa nova jazz. Recorded in 1966, with arranger Gil Evans and producer Creed Taylor, singer Astrud Gilberto’s  “Look to the Rainbow” is an appropriate title for a record that evokes sunshine after the rain. 

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Andy Thomas is a London based writer who has contributed regularly to Straight No Chaser, Wax Poetics, We Jazz, Red Bull Music Academy, and Bandcamp Daily. He has also written liner notes for Strut, Soul Jazz and Brownswood Recordings.

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