The “best” jazz album, according to David Crosby
Although he began his illustrious career as a member of The Byrds, the late great David Crosby led a lengthy and multifaceted career brimming with fruitful collaboration. Crosby was lucky enough to work with some of the leading figures of the singer-songwriter surge, including Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and, of course, Bob Dylan, who gave the Byrds their first number-one hit, ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’.
His most successful and long-lasting act, however, was as one-third of Crosby, Stills and Nash, who toured on and off for half a century. Sadly, the group was plagued by petty feuds for much of their time together, but according to Nash, he and Crosby had begun to settle their differences just before the latter’s death in January 2023.
Although Crosby’s associated style was rooted in folk rock, his taste spread far and wide. Intriguingly, accompanying the vast majority of folk and singer-songwriter material in his record collection was a vast expanse of jazz and classical music.
“My current music collection has probably more singer-songwriters than anything else,” Crosby told SPIN in 2021 when discussing his elder years’ music taste. “But there’s a lot of jazz, a lot of folk music, and a lot of world music, and a lot of classical.”
“I resist the idea of genres and labels as being really significant,” the singer continued, touching upon his distaste for any form of conformity in music. “I don’t think they are. Trying to say it’s this kind of rock or this particular flavour is really deceptive. I think it’s just people trying to label things so they don’t have to think about it. It gives them a tag, something they can label. It’s generally, I think, more that they don’t think about it.”
During the conversation, Crosby picked out some of his favourite records, two of the five coming from the jazz-fusion legends Steely Dan. “Stunning writing. Stunning production, stunning singing, outstanding playing, but songs,” he said, first picking out the 1977 album Aja. “Unbelievable goddamn songs. It’s too good. They’re all fantastic.”
Discussing Gaucho, Steely Dan’s 1980 masterpiece, Crosby supplied a similarly glowing review: “Best goddamn writing anybody was doing or has done. Nobody’s topped it.”
Despite this unbeatable praise for Steely Dan, Crosby also revealed his love for the more heavily jazz-oriented fusion group Weather Report. Selecting the New York group’s seventh studio album, Heavy Weather, as another current favourite, Crosby praised it as one of the genre’s prime highlights. “It’s one of the best jazz albums that anybody ever made,” he asserted.
Listen to ‘Birdland’, one of the best-known tracks from 1977’s Heavy Weather, below.
