From the moment Impulse! Records announced itself in the early 1960s, with bold orange-and-black spines and gatefold sleeves that opened like manifestoes, it positioned jazz as a living, restless argument about freedom in experimental music, not meant for the background or any other polite tradition. Impulse! documented sound and captured a moment when Black musicians were insisting — with increased urgency — that their art reflected the complexity of a world pressing on them.
Often called “the house that Trane built,” Impulse! earned that shorthand honestly. John Coltrane’s run on the label remains one of the most consequential stretches in American music — full of searching, spiritual jazz unafraid of discomfort. But to reduce Impulse! to Coltrane alone is to miss the scope of its ambition. (It’s also why you won’t see any Coltrane selections below; he was covered in a previous edition of this series.) The label understood jazz as a lineage and a provocation, equally invested in honoring mastery and breaking form apart to see what new shapes might emerge. The music sounded like sermons without pulpits, questions posed with no easy answers attached.
All these years later, Impulse! endures: The music still carries spiritual weight, social critique and ecstatic joy. We asked writers, musicians and other scene observers to tell us what tracks they would play to make a newcomer fall in love with Impulse! Records. Read on, listen to their picks in our playlists and drop your own favorites in the comments.
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Yusef Lateef, ‘Sister Mamie’ (Live at Pep’s)
Ashley Kahn, jazz historian
Elemental and deliriously exotic as any jazz tune I know, bordering on otherworldly. If my last name were Lucas, this is what the band would have been playing in the “Star Wars” cantina scene. “Sister Mamie” is a soulful, modal workout with Lateef, Detroit’s intrepid ethnomusicologist and global music explorer, stretching out on the Indian shehnai, the New Orleans drummer James Black providing tasteful, dance-inducing bass hits and cross-stick shots, and the bassist Ernie Farrow (Alice Coltrane’s brother) locking in the tune’s insistent ostinato. The hidden hero: the forgotten pianist Mike Nock’s left hand effecting a deliciously dissonant drone. John Coltrane studied the shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan, who played the double-reed instrument cleanly and precisely; here, Lateef exploits its nasal tone and bends its microtonal, vocal capability. Each successive solo — shehnai, Richard Williams’s trumpet, piano, back to shehnai — brings the music closer to home, back to the blues, to what would wow a Philadelphia jazz-bar crowd on a summer Monday night in 1964 (where and when this was recorded.)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Archie Shepp, ‘A Prayer’
Haseeb Iqbal, D.J.
Archie Shepp’s 1973 song “A Prayer,” from the album “The Cry of My People,” pierces me with six and a half minutes of emotion: pain coupled with a sense of hope, emphasized by an introduction of tense theater. These feelings seem deeply reflective of the times. Shepp was one of the most fearlessly political activists in jazz throughout the ’60s, using his background as an anarchist playwright to connect with the struggle of Black people throughout the civil rights movement. The avant-garde mentorship he received from John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor — combined with his journey back to Africa, bringing the knowledge of the homeland to the American jazz landscape — lays down the foundation for this enchanting song. “A Prayer” feels like a rippling sonic poem that oscillates between peace and suffering, blending gospel vocals alongside orchestral horns, African polyrhythms and folkloric tones with a big-band style. It is a radical mixture of sounds — something that was emblematic of a post-Woodstock musical landscape in New York and beyond, where fusion was evoking a broader palette of emotions among wider audiences.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Sonny Rollins, ‘Blessing in Disguise’
Keanna Faircloth, writer and podcast host
On the album “East Broadway Run Down,” released in 1967, Sonny Rollins reconnects with the bassist Jimmy Garrison and the drummer Elvin Jones, and “Blessing in Disguise” opens by asking the listener to settle into trust. Listen for how quickly the trio locks in: Garrison’s grounded pulse, Jones’s elastic time, and Rollins’s phrases circling the groove rather than pressing against it. The theme repeats like a mantra, quietly hypnotic, as if reminding everyone involved to stay focused amid uncertainty. Nothing here feels rushed. Instead, the music breathes with the patience that comes only from lived experience, when all you can do is navigate the difficulty without fear.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Irreversible Entanglements, ‘root⇔branch’
Ariella Villefranche, curator, producer and photographer
Have you ever heard something that makes you wish you could play an instrument, so you can try to repay the emotions you felt? This song is that for me. I have had the privilege of touring with this band and photographing this energy shift — and the only way I know how to give it back is to try to capture it. “Let’s fly, let’s get free,” says the poet and vocalist Moor Mother. It’s a journey to free your mind and your heart. The bass, the horns, the drums — everything here feels like a celebration of life. This song is dedicated to Jaimie Branch, and though I did not have the honor of knowing her, I feel the love and presence in those that honor her legacy. And I am blessed to be able to listen to the music, and to the way the community keeps her name alive.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Shirley Scott, ‘Girl Talk’
Marcus J. Moore, writer
“Girl Talk” is the song you play when it’s time to close up shop — after the band’s burned up the early and late sets, and the staff is flipping chairs onto tables. It feels like 2 a.m. in the winter, Scott’s organ simmering while Mickey Roker taps a sauntering rhythm on the drum. Not quite gospel and not quite the blues, it sounds like a quiet chat devoid of spectacle. Scott settles into a relaxed groove, her phrasing sly and patient, curling around the beat unhurried. Conceptually, the song flips the title on its head: “Girl Talk” is communion, a robust dialogue suggesting that intimacy itself is the message. Equally restrained and confident, Scott’s not trying to prove anything. Because when you’re “the Queen of the Organ,” you don’t have to. She’s inviting you in, trusting that the conversation will carry itself.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Michael White, ‘Spirit Dance’
Nabil Ayers, author, podcast host and record label executive
“Spirit Dance” is one of the songs I play for people who tell me they don’t get jazz. The opener on the violinist Michael White’s 1972 debut album runs just over three minutes, and the words that come to mind — sweet, welcoming, melodic — aren’t usually associated with the free music of the era. The freedom here lives in an endearing, catchy melody, an upbeat, percussive groove, and the sheer joy in White’s playing. But don’t let the structure fool you. His two-minute violin solo is anything but restrained, building to a piercing, squealing crescendo. When I listen at a decent volume, the experience turns physical as much as audible, and I wince and fear for my balance. Then the groove regains control, the melody returns, and White brings us back down to earth.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Milt Jackson with the Ray Brown Big Band, ‘Enchanted Lady’
Andrew Jervis, radio show host and curator
The house that Trane built has some weird and wonderful nooks and crannies. Stashed in an overlooked corner is “Memphis Jackson,” a 1970 album by Milt Jackson with the Ray Brown Big Band. Amid the “straight-ahead swinging” tunes, as described in the liner notes, is the dreamy Jackson-penned joint “Enchanted Lady.” Light-years ahead, the track sounds like a blueprint for instrumental cinematic hip-hop, delicately propelled by the shuffling drums of Paul Humphrey, who would later appear on Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” It wouldn’t be hard to mistake this for a Madlib production, but it’s Ed Michel pulling together the all-star band. Howard Roberts’s and Fred Robinson’s guitar licks add a soulful lilt, and the harmonized horns never fail to push me into head-nod heaven. There are more obscure releases in the Impulse! catalog, but none as pleasing as this.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Ahmad Jamal Trio, ‘The Awakening’
Syd Schwartz, writer
I’ve recommended Ahmad Jamal’s “The Awakening” to jazz skeptics for years. Every single one came back converted. That kind of consensus is rare. While his 1970 Impulse! labelmates pushed toward dense avant-garde outer reaches, Jamal offered a different revolution: the power of the unplayed note. Alongside the bassist Jamil Nasser and drummer Frank Gant, the trio became a lean, percussive engine where space and sound drive in equal measure.
Miles Davis obsessed over Jamal’s use of space, and this title track demonstrates why: What’s left out carries as much weight as what’s played in. Decades later, producers like Pete Rock and DJ Premier heard that architecture and recognized something timeless: hooks that would fuel classics by Nas and Common. Cross generations, genres and cultural divides, and disagreement is guaranteed. But put on “The Awakening,” and suddenly everyone’s nodding along to the same groove.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Tom Scott with the California Dreamers, ‘Today’
John Morrison, writer
Released on the heels of 1967’s “Summer of Love,” the saxophonist Tom Scott’s “The Honeysuckle Breeze” was not meant to be a work of nostalgia. Combining bebop with the aesthetic trappings of psychedelia, the album captured a very particular moment in time. The psychedelic culture that once brewed underground would permeate every aspect of America. Above all, “The Honeysuckle Breeze” is a document of the cutting edge of ’60s pop music. While the covers of “Naima” and the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” are strong, the album reaches its high point with its rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “Today.” Sampled for Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” the song’s staying power has stretched over half a century because of the two bars of magic that Pete Rock extracted from Scott’s closing solo. It’s deliciously ironic that “Today” would play the greatest role in ensuring the album’s timeless quality.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Gato Barbieri, ‘Encuentros’
Barbie Bertisch, D.J. and record label co-founder
Thirty seconds into “Encuentros,” el Gato introduces the sounds of Andean folklore — charango, quena, bombo. They transport me to childhood school plays and folk festivals in my native Argentina and make me homesick. The ensemble, a real who’s who of South American players, quickly coalesces and the song explodes in celebration. It is alive. Barbieri’s tenor sax soars above this euphonic assembly. His voice — his other instrument — reacts to the magic of the moment.
Barbieri, a Rosarino who cut his teeth in Buenos Aires with Lalo Schifrin, was inspired by John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler, widely known as the DNA of Impulse! Records: the new wave of jazz. On this album, el Gato returns to his homeland fresh off a Grammy win for Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” and newly signed to this forward-thinking imprint, to fuse his past and present, captured on tape. “Encuentros,” to me, is his vuelta olímpica.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Roy Haynes Quartet, ‘Moon Ray’
Sara Serpa, vocalist and composer
I really enjoyed revisiting this album — one of the drummer Roy Haynes’s albums as a leader from 1962 — which still feels remarkably fresh and full of energy today. “Moon Ray,” in particular, is completely reinvented by this band. The clarity and creativity of the arrangement stand out. The piece opens with a short, mysterious introduction and features Rahsaan Roland Kirk on multiple horns, Tommy Flanagan on piano and Henry Grimes on bass. Kirk’s solo using his dual-horn technique, playing the manzello and tenor saxophone simultaneously, is incredible and fun to sing along to. The shifting bounce between a two-feel and a swinging four-feel throughout the tune highlights each musician and showcases the strength of the group as a cohesive musical team.
I love Flanagan’s piano solo following Kirk’s dual-horn passage, along with Haynes’s drum solo over Grimes’s walking bass. This album is also a good reminder of how Haynes was a great bandleader. And if you’re feeling weighed down by the current state of the world, singing along with this tune might just be a small but welcome way to heal your soul, at least for a moment. It was for me.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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The Comet Is Coming, ‘Super Zodiac’
Larry Mizell Jr., radio show host
There’s a moment halfway through the 2019 Tiny Desk performance by the London cosmic jazz blasters The Comet Is Coming. It’s a small thing, literally, but it’s when what appears to be a green toy insect, a denizen of the knickknack-laden NPR office decor, goes ass over teakettle right off the shelf — as “King Shabaka” Hutchings’s superhumanly muscular sax spell conjures visions in the whirling red flame ignited by the keyboardist Dan “Danalogue” Leavers and drummer Max “Betamax” Hallett. That session led me to the handful of EPs and albums they released, and it’s the front-row-for-the-supernova ferocity of “Super Zodiac,” from the 2019 Impulse! release “Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery,” that has shaken the most off my own shelves at home. Between his work with this outfit and Sons of Kemet, both sadly defunct, Shabaka never has to pick up the sax again. But our world is all the better for the soul he poured into it.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Phil Woods, ‘Greek Cooking’
Samuel Ngahane, event curator and D.J.
When “Greek Cooking” came out in 1967, the producer Bob Thiele thought jazz-meets-Greek music would be the next big thing. He was wrong.
But we were blessed with an unlikely experiment: Phil Woods, a bebop alto saxophonist firmly in the Charlie Parker tradition, paired with Greek musicians, including the bouzouki player Iordanis Tsomidis, in a candlelit studio with ouzo flowing and hashish in the air. Most of the album wanders into exotica kitsch territory, but the title track is when it clicks. Set in 3/4 time, its folk-derived groove locks in early with drums that hit like they have something to prove. Everything else falls in line: The bouzouki rides time elastically, the bass holds it together, and Woods supports the momentum rather than forcing it. Woods later called it “a bad penny,” a record that won’t stay buried. Good. That’s exactly what us crate diggers are after.
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Oliver Nelson, ‘Stolen Moments’
Yunie Mojica, artist and event producer
Oliver Nelson is a triple threat (writer, arranger and saxophonist) who doesn’t always receive the credit he deserves, yet he’s obvious to those who know. This tune offers the best of both worlds: a small group that sounds like a big band. With just four horns and a simple melody, it delivers harmony, dynamics and a sound that’s full-bodied, much like a glass of wine! It’s the kind of track you return to, discovering new layers and flavors each time. After the melody, we hear solos from Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Eric Dolphy (flute) and Nelson himself (tenor sax). The rhythm section swings with Paul Chambers, Gil Evans and Roy Haynes providing brushwork throughout. Every solo is concise, with lines of rhythm, harmony and a playful sense of freedom, without wandering into outer space. If you ever wonder what straight-ahead jazz is, this is it.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Archie Shepp, ‘Quiet Dawn’
Camille Thurman, saxophonist, vocalist and educator
Archie Shepp’s album “Attica Blues” is one of my all-time favorites. It is the rightful showcase of not only his mastery of the saxophone, but also his inventiveness and palette as a composer — blending free-style improvisation with straight-ahead, avant-garde, soul and spoken word. The album features a big band with strings, but in various styles. It’s a perfect blend of everything, showcasing the many spectra of Black music all in one place.
One of my favorite tracks is “Quiet Dawn,” which features Waheeda Massey and was written by Cal Massey. You hear the beautiful orchestration of the piece, with the melody doubled by the trumpet and the voice of Waheeda, who was just a child at the time of the recording, singing the melody with all those shapes and chromaticism with ease (it blew my mind). There’s an innocence and a beauty to the melody, while there’s a rawness to the sound. Shepp comes in, wailing with an urgent, raw sound that weaves between the song’s melodic beauty, creating that contrast. It’s the full spectrum of Shepp’s genius.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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Elvin Jones & Jimmy Garrison Sextet, ‘Oriental Flower’
Jared Proudfoot, event curator
Like a lily blooming to expose its fragrant center. That’s how Impulse! introduced John Coltrane’s rhythm section — McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison — as individual bandleaders in the early ’60s. McCoy led the way with “Inception” in 1962, then Elvin and Jimmy followed with “Illumination!” in ’64. “Oriental Flower,” off the latter album and featuring Tyner, conveniently soundtracks the metaphor.
A brash fanfare opens — Elvin’s cymbals crash and McCoy’s signature parallel fourths get passed around the band, perhaps protecting what lies within. The opening’s nascent exploration of Eastern sounds makes the unfurling all the more beautiful when it arrives: breathtakingly sweet, swinging piano lines propelled forward by gossamer-light brushwork. Post-modal breakthrough, pre-“A Love Supreme,” this is pure mid-60s searching by some of the best to ever do it: one foot in tradition, the other reaching toward something spiritual and undefined.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The post 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Impulse! Records appeared first on New York Times.
