1958 was a big year for Jazz albums. With the release of Go , the Hipton Hipnotes put themselves firmly on the musical atlas and set themselves up for a lifetime of confusion with their rivals, the Hipstone Hiptones. 1959 was arguably an even bigger year, except in the ways in which it wasn't, obviously, as Alton Sultan and the Returning Officers emerged from the woodwindy shadows to release their first four volumes. But it was this - their fifth and final release - that set their legacy in liquid stone. Ironically none of the original 'officers' actually returned to make this record, with bandleader Sultan forming a new ensemble consisting of members of the aforementioned Hiptones and Hipnotes, many of whom weren't themselves entirely sure which of the outfits they had previously been in. None of that was to bother Alton Sultan who bravely wielded whatever instruments he could get his hands on in front of anyone brazen enough to play along with him - and the results ...

  Today's classic release is the third and final album from Philadelphia's favourite son Andrew Feces, recorded posthumously before his untimely suicide in 1999. The author-turned-doctor-turned-author(again)-turned-saxophonist is in the free-est of freeform modes here, exploring, as only he can, a range of moods and textures ranging from jazz-fusion to fusion-jazz to fusion-fusion.  If only he'd learned to play the saxophone, this might've been a bemusing collection of harpsichord music and Feces might still be with us today.   Discographicalz Braggadocious (1994) The Alacrity of Spasticity (1997) Toxicography (1999)  

No hypothetical vinyl collection would be complete without this Jazz standard from 1958. What happens when you get a 23 piece big band in the same studio as a 27 piece swing band, 30 session musicians and a single microphone? This. This happens. Legend has it that any Jazz musician alive in the late 1950s who didn't play on this recording is either lying, mistaken, or not alive in the late 1950s. At one point there are 37 trumpets, 12 clarinets and an Absinthe-filled double bass, all playing concurrently and all in different keys and time signatures. The standout track is the Marimba solo 'Cool Cheese', possibly the only solo in history on which over 100 people played and three lost their lives. Classy.