1959: The Year that Changed Jazz
This BBC Four documentary examines four jazz albums released in 1959, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, Dave Brubeck's Time Out, Charles Mingus's Mingus Ah Um, and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. Honestly, I can take or leave the latter two records, but the reverence that Davis' and Brubeck's albums receive here genuinely allows you to better understand the records.
This is just the coolest music ever made.
Keith Jarrett - The Köln Concert (1975)
The best-selling piano album of all time is a live recording of an improvisational solo piano performance by Keith Jarrett in Cologne, Germany on January 24, 1975. In a concert organized by 17-year-old Vera Brandes, Jarrett took the stage of the Opera House in Cologne at the unusually late hour of 11:30pm, after the regularly scheduled opera had finished.
Jarrett, exhausted from travel and excruciating back pain which had kept him awake for several previous nights, arrived at the venue to find the wrong piano. Instead of the concert grand piano which he had specified, a baby grand piano used for opera rehearsals had been delivered. The piano was of inferior tone and timbre, and the sustain pedals were malfunctioning.
Performing in a back brace, Jarrett adjusted his style to fit the qualities of the piano. You can Google around for more musically learned descriptions of what transpired next—it is truly the stuff of legends. ECM Records recorded the concert and released it that year.
The Köln Concert has has sold more than four million copies to date.