Not bad for a tyro, but this hot 100 left me slightly cold

I am not a regular reader of GQ, but I picked up the latest issue out of curiosity as to what its editor, Dylan Jones, thinks are the 100 best jazz albums ever recorded.

Top 100 lists are now a commonplace of the rock press, but are not quite so frequently compiled for jazz, and this made interesting reading. Jones, by his own admission, is new to the subject, but it isn't a bad beginner's list, although his selections, as one might expect, reflect at least as much interest in style as substance.

Diana Krall's Love Scenes is a likeable enough album but hardly essential listening, and the same goes for The Michael Franks Anthology.

Many of the inclusions are predictable. Ranking Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue at No.1 is almost obligatory since the album is routinely cited as the most influential in jazz history, and Davis and John Coltrane feature prominently throughout the list. Davis makes up almost 10 per cent of the total with nine albums listed, and although I don't think I would have picked Tutu, Jones is right to single out Davis' fine soundtrack to Louis Malle's Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud - a masterpiece which tends to be overlooked.

The rankings are eccentric. The Complete Hot Five And Hot Seven Recordings by Louis Armstrong is obviously an essential inclusion, but belongs in any rational top five - not at 74 in a top 100.

The list did, however, send me back to some old favourites I hadn't played in a while, most notably The Atomic Mr Basie, one of the most impressive collaborations between an arranger and a jazz ensemble ever recorded, which Jones ranks at 82.

In 1957, when the album was first released, the mushroom cloud image on the cover could have been argued to be in dubious taste, but there is no arguing with the power of the band.