Collection: Jazz Essentials

If you are building a collection from scratch, or filling the obvious gaps, this is where to start. These are the records the music is built on: the Blue Note hard bop sessions, Coltrane on Impulse!, Mingus at his most ambitious, the Verve songbooks, Miles across half a dozen reinventions. All of it on current pressings, so the vinyl is clean, quiet and ready to play.

We keep this section to the records that earn the word essential, not a warehouse of everything in print. Some are standard reissues, some are the audiophile series worth paying up for. Where a title comes in more than one pressing, the product page tells you which one you are getting and why it is here.