Verve

The striking New York, N.Y. was a high point for influential jazz composer and arranger George Russell, an early proponent of "modal jazz," which featured fewer chord changes and encouraged soloists to improvise on the melody not on the harmony. For this

Peggy Lee was 32 years old when she walked into the Decca label's recording studios in midtown New York to lay down the tracks for what became the defining Black Coffee. Remarkably, it was the singer's first album, even though she had a swathe of hit sing

This studio recording from 1954, a self-titled album recorded for EmArcy, was later reissued as Sarah Vaughan With Clifford Brown to denote the involvement of one of the top trumpeters of the day. Vaughan 'played' her voice with a musical creativity, as i