Jazz & Blues Music Lists

The journey home for Thanksgiving can be challenging and frustrating, fraught with bus loads of college kids, crowded planes and slow-moving traffic. Fortunately, music eases frustration, so here are five jazz songs to lift your travel-weary spirits.

Attempting to make your way into jazz is never easy, but the jazz writer and cultural critic Gary Giddins has rendered it a bit more approachable. His new book, Jazz, is a new guide for novice listeners and longtime fans alike. Giddins picks five songs from his list of 101 entry-way jazz recordings.

All Songs Considered's list of the 50 most important recordings of the decade begins with composer John Adams and runs through Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

All Songs Considered's list of the 50 most important recordings of the decade continues with Kelly Clarkson to Jay-Z.

All Songs Considered's list of the 50 most important recordings of the decade continues, from OutKast to Sigur Ros.

All Songs Considered's list of the 50 most important recordings of the decade continues, from Britney Spears to Amy Winehouse.

All Songs Considered's list of the 50 most important recordings of the decade continues, from Norah Jones to Jason Moran.

In January 2010, NPR will launch a year-long exploration of 50 great voices in recorded history. The series isn't an attempt to catalog the so-called "greatest" singers. Instead, we hope to discover and re-discover awe-inspiring vocalists from around the world and across time. We asked you to nominate artists for the series and we received thousands of options. NPR and a panel of experts are in the process of whittling them down to about 100 singers — a mix of familiar names and surprising discoveries. Explore some of the nominated voices below, choose five favorites you think should be included in the final 50 and tell us why.

It's early November, and for many in America, that means that when we go outside, we're likely to get wet. Whether we're dodging sprinkles, showers or downpours, November is part of a rainy season. Hear five songs from vocalists inspired by rain, including Gene Kelly, Patricia Barber and Mahalia Jackson.

Caustic, ugly, gurgling, putrid filth that wanders a post-apocalyptic landscape — with jazz influences!

Throughout the '80s and early '90s, John Zorn and Bill Laswell were at the epicenter of extreme music. Bands like Painkiller and Last Exit took the ferocity of '60s free-jazz improvisation and matched the intensity — and blast beats — of death metal. The result is like being bludgeoned by a swarm of killer bees.

There are thousands of apple varieties — even a new breed called "Jazz." Much like the music that lends its name to this autumn delight, Jazz is a hybrid. The time is ripe for planning that apple-picking day trip, so get the caramel ready for five crisp, fleshy jazz tunes related to a certain favorite fall fruit.

Ninety years ago, one of the greatest bandleaders and drummers in jazz was born in Pittsburgh, Penn. That man was Art Blakey. For more than 30 years, he led The Jazz Messengers, a band which became a sort of graduate school and springboard for some of the greatest jazz players of all time.

In January 2010, NPR will launch a year-long exploration of 50 of the great voices in recorded history. Once a week, Morning Edition or All Things Considered will air a profile, essay or report about one of the world's most esteemed voices. But we don't know yet whose voices they'll be, which is where you come in.