As a general rule I avoid “top N” lists and assorted classifications for movies, music, or books. The loss of information from the artificial constraint of N choices and the lack of context for the choices make these lists exercises in futility.

Nevertheless, here’s a list of my top 17 jazz albums. 

Why are these my top 17 jazz albums? Simple: these are the ones that live in a playlist called “Jazz for iPod”, which is included in all iPods and the iPad, and when I finally bite the bullet and buy an iPhone, will be included in that too.* The order is that of the playlist, and isn’t informative:

1. Keith Jarrett: The Koln Concert

2. Keith Jarrett: Standards, Vol. 1

3. Dave Brubeck: Time Out

4. Dave Brubeck: Jazz Goes to College

5. Dave Brubeck: Quiet as the Moon

6. Jacques Loussier Trio, Güher and Süher Pekinel: Take Bach

7. Jacques Loussier Trio: Bach - The Brandenburgs

8. Jacques Loussier Trio: Plays Debussy

9. Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, and Ray Brown: What’s Up?

10. Oscar Peterson Trio: Live at the Blue Note

11. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

12. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue

13. Miles Davis: Porgy and Bess

14. Gary Burton Quartet: Passengers

15. Dave Grusin: Happy Anniversary Charlie Brown

16. Return to Forever: Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy

17. Chick Corea: Electric Band

(Yes, it gets eclectic towards the end.) This is not the only jazz on those iPods/iPad. I also have a number of mood-specific jazz lists and a couple of automatic lists (new and unheard jazz, old and not recently heard jazz) populating the machinery.

But those are the 17 albums that over time I have decided I always want on me. In other words, using revealed preference, those are my Top 17.

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* There are similar, longer, must-include playlists for Bach, Baroque, Sacred, Classical, Chopin, Romantic and Modern (might as well call it “Liszt and Rachmaninoff”), and Opera, and a small one called Nostalgia (Pink Floyd, Emerson Lake and Palmer, The Who, Queen, etc: music from my teens).