2 albums as leader and 17 as sideman (1957–2020), each listed chronologically.
Count Basie & Joe Williams / Dizzy Gillespie & Mary Lou Williams
1958 · Verve Records
Curtis Fuller Sextet, The With Benny Golson
1959 · Savoy Records
1958 · Moanin' and 1 more
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.
1957 · Dizzy In Greece
The titles of World Statesman (1956) and Dizzy In Greece (1957) are not travel whimsy. Gillespie's big band was the first jazz orchestra the US State Department sent abroad as cultural diplomacy, in 1956, and both records are by-products of that assignment — the place names are an itinerary, not a mood.
1959 · Blues-ette
On the title track of Coltrane's 1959 Giant Steps, pianist Tommy Flanagan reportedly hadn't fully absorbed the tune's dense chord changes before the take, and his solo trails off into near silence. The album's signature piece is remembered as much for its accompanist's hesitation as for its harmonic breakthrough.
1959 · 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.
— Statement stmt-jimmy-cobb-on-paul-chambers-2
1983 · Aurex Jazz Festival '83
Wynton Marsalis joined Art Blakey's band as a teenager without having heard a single Blakey record — just playing scales over the chords, not yet knowing that a solo is something you construct, as he admitted at twenty-two. That was the starting point of the man later cast as jazz's traditionalist-in-chief.
— Statement stmt-wynton-marsalis-on-art-blakey
Tommy Flanagan
Paul Chambers
Wynton Kelly
Jimmy Cobb
Art Blakey
Wynton Marsalis