I’ve taken some time to explore the 75 best albums of 2019 according to the British publication, Uncut, as well as their top 30 reissues and some top rated albums from the January 2020 issue.

The purpose?  To see how much jazz one can find in some of the better quality music in the rock, alt country, Americana, and World music genres.   Interestingly, I find a lot.  Whether or not you call it jazz, I can’t really say, considering how fluid this genre is these days.  You be the judge.  But there does seem to be a lot of ‘jazz sensibility’.   And there is some real jazz as well.

The real jazz is John Coltrane and Britain’s Tubby Hayes.  No dispute there!

Just as ‘real’, from my perspective, are tracks from London, England’s The Comet is Coming (Shabaka Hutchings)  and Nerija, the former rated by Uncut as #4 in the best albums of 2019.

More controversial—but still pretty ‘jazzy’ are Sessa, Sandro Perri, Brittany Howard, Van Morrison, Gruff Rhys, Solange, and Mappe Of (from Whitby, Ontario).

But jazz or not, there is no question that you’ll hear a lot of great music on this episode.