Youngblood

Elvin Jones' 1992 album Youngblood was stocked almost entirely with then-unknown young players. One of them, 19-year-old trumpeter Nicholas Payton, would go on to lead his own Gumbo Nouveau and become one of the defining voices of New Orleans jazz — the veteran drummer's record turned out to be the start of someone else's career, not a victory lap.

Joshua Redman was set to enter Yale Law School in 1991 when he won the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition instead and abandoned law. The following year, before releasing anything under his own name, he turned up as an unknown sideman on Elvin Jones's Youngblood (1992).