So what would be on your top list of 3 best albums?

For me it would be-

Oscar Peterson's 'Night Train'
John Cotrane's 'Crescent'
Miles Davis 'Kinda Blue'

1) Green Day - International Superhits (for the one song, but I can't live without that one song)
2) A Box set of Bach's preludes and fugues
3) Any of the 3 you chose!!!

Hi David, not sure choice number 2 could be regarded as an album but interesting choices. Green Day? Are they a punk band? Reminds me of a litty ditty i read recently- The Segovia Pistols


In the good old days of
punk, when concert-goers
considered themselves lucky to
escape without being covered
in spit, and without brain
damage caused by excessive
pogo-ing, a punk band were
playing at no less a venue than
the Royal Albert Hall.
Backstage, the guitarist
was tuning his instrument,
and had been doing so for 45
minutes. A stage hand was
watching with interest.
Eventually, out of sheer
exasperation, the stage hand
went over to the guitarist, and
said: “Do you know, we had
Andres Segovia here last
week, and he tuned in less
than 2 minutes.”
The punk looked up.
“So,” he replied, “perhaps he
didn’t give a s**t.”
(Anecdote comes to you
courtesy of jazz guitarist
Herb Ellis, via Martin
Taylor’s superb and inspira-
tional autobiography, “Kiss
and Tell.”

Yes, Green Day is a punk band, but their ballad (compulsory for any punk or rock band) is singing with guitar and strings

My tastes change quite rapidly so these proberly won't be my top3 in a few months time:

Night Train (Oscar Peterson)
The complete atomic Mr. Basie (Count Basie)
Uptown (Duke Ellington)

Tenorclef - That single MP3 I had of A night in Tunisia was so good that i recently bought the whole album of Our Man in Paris.
Excellent album!!!!

Hi Duke, the 'Willow weep for me' is a great track as well from 'Our man in Paris'. Glad to see somebody else likes the classic 'Night Train' by Oscar Peterson. Ellington is fantastic, i love so many of his songs, Thelonious Monk did a great album called 'Theo plays Duke Ellington' this would of been on my top 3 as well but it could'nt compare it with O P's blue fingers on Night Train which i really dig.

The relase of the paris album I got had two bonus tracks on, 'Our love is here to stay' and 'Like someone in love' The latter was played just by Bud with bass and drums. I find Bud's left hand viocings interesting since most pianists were using more contempory 'rootless' voicings by this period. However, Bud is still using the basic 'shell' voicings from the early bop era which I think can be really effective at times and are often neglected these days.

Duke Ellington is probably my greatest influence (hence my choice of screen name). He is moslty noted for his composing and band leading skills but I am also fascinated by his piano style (which i believe influenced monk). Duke used alot of dissonsance and triad movement ands used chords alot in his improv rather than single right hand melodies. The fact that his style wasn't 'mainstream' gets my interest. After Duke, Oscar Peterson has also been a great influence on my playing.