I'm Adam Manus, and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear at

podcast. Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to give you seven essential jazz piano albums. Only seven. Dude, we can't do this. This is going to be too hard. Not six, not eight, but seven. Oh, you're killing me. But I have to say, too, we're not actually going to give them to you. We're just going to give you the names of them.

You're going to have to go scurry and find them on your own. Peter Martin is personally going to play them for you. And then hand-deliver them to your house. That's right. Okay, so this comes from a blog post that I actually just wrote this week. I've had several lists like this over the years. I used to give students like a list of kind of essential listening.

But this one is really. I used to give students like a list of kind of essential listening.

But this one is really, I put a disclaimer at the top, and you can see this if you go to open

studio network.com slash blog. A little self-promotion. A little promotion. What up? But this, you know, this disclaimer, so I want to put this disclaimer here.

Yeah. Highly subjective, many obvious omissions and in no particular order. I don't know. I think this is the definitive list. No, it is not. Do you not listen to what that man is saying. Listen to me. Although these are seven objectively great jazz albums. They're great. You know what? Somebody might say, you know what? I hate number four, but I love all the other. So we can't put that, you know, all I'm saying is this is just two guys' opinions. It's really just one guy's. Hopefully you agree. I had nothing to do with this. I'm going to put that disclaimer out there. But I want to just put that out there because I don't want anyone saying, how come you left off such and such? Obviously, there's more than seven great jazz pianists and more than seven great jazz. So some things were left off. So these are just seven essential ones out of many. Okay. Wow. Half the podcast is just disclaiming what we're about to say. That's pretty good. I know. And you'll hear it. No. Are we not done? Okay. Okay. I'm going to start on number one, Art Tatum, Piano Starts Here.

Who? Who now?

Art Tatum.

So, you know, part of the reason I started the list is it's a great album title, Piano Starts Here,

the list starts here.

But this record is very personal to me.

This was sort of the first solo piano record as a child that I really connected with.

My father had this record. It was played around our house a lot because my parents listened to it. I thought it was horrible or I just didn't pay any attention to it, whatever. But at a certain point, just the sound just connected me, connected with me in a way that was just so powerful. And I was like, wow, I want to do that. Even while at the same time saying, wow, I'll never be able to do that, I wanted to do that, you know.

Yeah. Man, the first time, when I bought this album, I think I was 19 or 20 years old.

I was in a very delicate place in my playing.

You know what I mean?

Not a great one for that. Not a great one.

And I just remember listening to it and thinking like, damn, damn.

Yeah.

Damn.

But now I listen to it and I say, damn.

...