I’m a day late for acknowledging the 77th birthday of the wonderful, important pianist George Cables, but still wanted to take the opportunity to shine a light on a few of the many wonderful moments in his discography. This was not an easy list to narrow down, and I strived for variety, both musical and chronological. Please feel free to spotlight some of your own favorites in the comments.

If Pat Martino’s career had ended with his brain hemorrhage in 1980, when he was in his mid-30s, he would have still secured his place in history through dozens of recordings documenting the jaw-dropping technique that impressed people so much that it almost obscured the extraordinary depth of his authority with soulful blues playing. That he managed to defy the odds and relearn how to play from that point is the stuff of legend, a story that has been widely documented in the world of neuroscientific medicine but is one of the most underrated heroic stories in the jazz canon. Though he is now no longer with us, his second act was also remarkable and I’ll always be grateful for his inspiration and for the fact that he got to enjoy so many additional years of playing and corresponding accolades.

The world is a less soulful, interesting, and spirited place without Dr. Lonnie Smith walking among us. I will leave the broader personal eulogizing to others better-suited, but since I’d already been working on this list I wanted to share it, both for some balm, hopefully, for the Turbanator’s fans and as a point of entry for this towering figure, NEA Jazz Master, and one of the greatest organists ever to walk the planet.

Curtis Fuller, who we lost this past weekend, is my favorite trombonist in the history of music. His playing is at once soulful, grooving, lyrical, harmonically adept, and technically agile and he was an underappreciated composer and bandleader to boot. I often find myself steering students towards his work to demonstrate how obstacles limiting one’s ability to “shred” needn’t prevent one from sounding great on fast tempos and/or in the company of those who can play with greater technical ease. In his case, in most of the recordings to which I steer people (including 1-9 on this list) the obstacles in question are due to the inherently cumbersome nature of his instrument, but it’s worth noting how much great music he made after he had surgery to remove a lung. For years I assumed that was a weird rumor because I kept going to hear him perform and marveling at how a sixty-something (and then seventy-something) year old trombonist could sound so good even with two working lungs. As a physically impaired jazz musician myself, this elevated Curtis even further in my own pantheon of inspiring figures.

In honor of and appreciation for drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath’s acknowledgment and accolades at last week’s NEA Jazz Master induction ceremony, I’ve been listening to a ton of Tootie. He has a distinctive voice on the drums and has been so active for the last 60+ years that it’s quite difficult to narrow down just ten tracks. And as a live performer, what a dynamic charming force he is. I was fortunate to see him at the helm of two remarkable performances by The Whole Drum Truth ensemble for which he was the leader and visionary, bringing together drum giants like Ed Thigpen, Ben Riley, Louis Hayes, and others to show audiences just how much music can be made without pitched instruments.

There is so much Monk that has inspired me that I could have easily had a Top 10 for his Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, and Columbia studio recordings, one for his live performances, one for his sideman work – you get the idea. Ultimately, as with the Mingus list, I chose ten tracks that I love and that covered enough ground that most of what I love about Monk is in there somewhere. So here they are, in chronological order.

I am, for the third time, teaching a course on the music of Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus for Wesleyan University’s Graduate Liberal Studies program, and as in the previous iterations, it gives me the impetus to listen to a LOT of their music, often falling back in love with things I already dug but…