Kelly Blue

Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb played as one of the great piano trios. But the bond ran deeper than the bandstand: when Chambers died in 1969, Cobb recalled, Kelly sank into heavy drinking — he had loved Paul — and Kelly himself was gone by 1971.

Jimmy Cobb was the newcomer who had just replaced the previous drummer in Miles Davis's sextet. The Kind of Blue (1959) sessions were cut almost live off the sketches, with barely any rehearsal, and the result became the best-selling jazz album of all time.

Kind of Blue is remembered for its pianist's modal chords, but the one blues track was actually played by someone else, Wynton Kelly. That same year, Kelly also turns up on Coltrane's harmonically brutal Giant Steps — not on the punishing title track, but on the album's one quiet ballad, 'Naima.'

Brought in to rebuild the Jazz Messengers in 1958, Benny Golson recruited the new lineup — Bobby Timmons on piano among them — and wrote most of Moanin'. The tune that ended up defining the record was the title track, written by the pianist he had just hired. Golson was gone within months.

In June 1955 an alto player fresh out of Florida sat in at the Cafe Bohemia and was a talking point within weeks. The record made that summer, Bohemia After Dark (1955), went out under the drummer's name — so Cannonball Adderley's starting point is not a leader date of his own, and his brother Nat Adderley is on it too, on cornet.