A Beginner’s Guide to the eclectic jazz of Jeff Parker

Jeff Parker had a good 2024. The prolific jazz artist released a fantastic live album, The Way Out of Easy, as well as performing on the debut by frequent collaborator Anna Butterss, Mighty Vertebrate. And in addition to those noteworthy Best Jazz of 2024 contenders, Parker likewise lent his talents to records by Church Chords, Amaro Freitas, Nicole Mitchell & Ballaké Sissoko, and Marquis Hill. Not to mention touring with Tortoise.

It’s entirely understandable why Parker’s a go-to collaborator. A versatile artist who’s helped to shape the sound of contemporary jazz in America as well as being a fixture in the ’90s and early ’00s post-rock scene in Chicago, Parker moves between genres with fluidity and flexibility. His guitar playing is rhythmic and melodic, but rarely traditional, often balancing the groove of jazz fusion with elements of hip-hop or experimental electronics. His music isn’t always easy to pin down, but it’s often forward-thinking and infectious.

With an ample back catalog spanning over three decades, Jeff Parker has released dozens of records with various projects. And a first-timer’s journey into his body of work can be both challenging and rewarding. We put together a guide to some of the best Jeff Parker albums to hear first in order to help you on your journey, including solo records, live albums, bands and side projects—jazz, post-rock and everything in between.

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Suite for Max Brown (2020)

Jeff Parker’s second release for International Anthem, Suite for Max Brown, is many things. It’s a wide-ranging work of contemporary jazz fusion that incorporates elements of hip-hop, electronic music and even an update of a John Coltrane piece. It’s also a tribute to Parker’s mother, the titular Max Brown, who appears on its cover art. And perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this list, it’s his most immediately accessible album, intertwining moments of sampladelic jazz-funk with spiritual-jazz ballads and extended fusion grooves. Where moments like his affectionately hazy reimagining of Coltrane’s “After the Rain” (one of his mother’s favorites) shows a reverence for its source material, the frantic “Go Away” feels more in tune with his background in Chicago’s malleable post-rock underground, riffs layering over each other in a way that feels more like math rock than a hard bop ensemble. But make no mistake, there’s nothing cold and calculating about any of this. Suite for Max Brown is a warm and inviting record made with love and undeniable groove.

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Tortoise – TNT

The earliest recordings in Parker’s catalog are with the Ernest Dawkins New Horizons Ensemble, a Chicago jazz group, but not long thereafter he joined Tortoise, one of the early pioneers of post-rock—or at least one branch of that nebulously defined sphere of music. And while Tortoise is decidedly not a jazz group, it’s by all means an influence on what they do, along with dub, krautrock, and composers such as Ennio Morricone. TNT was Parker’s first album with the group, and it’s perhaps unsurprisingly one of their most fluid albums, full of gorgeously arranged tracks that feel composed yet loose. TNT is an album that’s about showcasing the chemistry and intricacy of the whole of the ensemble, yet Parker’s guitar performances are also front and center throughout much of the album, like with the title track, which is built around his mellifluous repeating riff, with Rob Mazurek’s trumpet solos swirling in around it.

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Isotope 217º – The Unstable Molecule (1997)

In the 1990s, three members of Tortoise—Parker, John Herndon and Dan Bitney—formed a kind of experimental fusion group along with trombonist Sara Smith, bassist Matt Lux and Parker’s frequent collaborator Rob Mazurek. That group, Isotope 217º (degrees optional), released three excellent records, the third of which, Who Stole the I Walkman?, even features a pixilated image of Parker himself on the cover. Yet their debut, The Unstable Molecule, is a significant piece of music in how it interconnects the Chicago post-rock scene with jazz—it feels like it could have been the first International Anthem release nearly two decades before it existed. The album also features one song that actually reappears on a Tortoise record, “La Jetee,” as heard on TNT (which appears several times on this guide). But these 31 minutes are a fertile ground for space-age grooves and otherworldly funk, whether via the extra-proof bitches brew of “Kryptonite Smokes the Red Line,” the crime-montage tension-builder “Beneath the Undertow,” funk jam “Phonometrics,” or the low-key ballad “Prince Namor,” the latter two of which are splendid showcases for Parker’s versatile guitar playing, whether deep in the pocket or letting a chord gently ring out.

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Forfolks (2021)

Forfolks is a Jeff Parker solo album in the most literal sense. It’s just him, playing guitar without any full-band accompaniment. And as such, there’s perhaps no better release to get an unfiltered showcase of his guitar performances. He employs drones and loops of his own guitar to add dimension and atmosphere, broadening the dimensions of these sparse pieces, but even at their most skeletal, there are some gorgeously warm and nourishing moments here. “Ugly Beauty” is as close to a traditional jazz ballad as Forfolks has to offer, while “Four Folks” juxtaposes playful arpeggios against a droning backdrop, which lends a certain tension to an otherwise gentle piece of music. And once again, “La Jetee” makes an appearance, in considerably different form than as recorded by either Tortoise or Isotope 217, offering a bridge back to some of his earlier material while reimagining it entirely.

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (2022)

As with so many great jazz musicians over the years, some of the best moments of Jeff Parker’s catalog are live recordings, two of which feature recordings from a residency at the now-closed Enfield Tennis Academy in Los Angeles. The more recent of the two, The Way Out of Easy, was released just a few months ago, but 2022’s Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is the (just slightly) stronger of two fantastic live albums. Mondays comprises pieces captured during three different live sets, two in 2019 and one in 2021, with drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson (also of Parker’s band The New Breed), though the band is so hypnotic and psychically connected that they could have all been part of the same set. Much like The Way Out of Easy (whose one exception is “Freakadelic”) the group never veers into deeper funk or fiery free jazz, instead opting for a gorgeously atmospheric approach that favors ambience as much as chemistry, each of these four twenty-minute tracks thoroughly gorgeous and mesmerizing in how each moving part adds up to a stunning whole. That they’re not drawn from existing recorded material makes it even more remarkable—a breathtaking series of ethereal grooves given life on the spot.

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Next Steps: Jeff Parker’s first release for International Anthem, The New Breed, is something of a companion album to Suite for Max Brown. Released four years beforehand, it’s named for a clothing store that was previously owned by his father and features a similar blend of electronic- and hip-hop-influenced fusion as its 2020 successor. Also, last year’s The Way Out of Easy is a phenomenal live set that’s just as strong as Mondays at Enfield Tennis Academy, if just slightly more abstract. And between 2022 and 2023, Parker appeared on two great records by Daniel Villarreal, Panamá 77 and Lados B, the latter of which is a trio record with frequent collaborator Anna Butterss that gets a great deal of mileage out of a relatively straightforward setup.

Advanced Listening: In addition to his work with Tortoise and Isotope 217, in the ’90s and early ’00s Parker also worked with Rob Mazurek in the Chicago Underground Orchestra and Chicago Underground Quartet, whose 2001 self-titled album is a splendid set of shape-shifting jazz fusion. And for another outstanding collaboration with Mazurek, check out Exploding Star Orchestra’s Dimensional Stardust, which features an even larger ensemble full of incredible musicians (jaimie branch, Nicole Mitchell and Damon Locks, to name a few) on a maximalist avant garde odyssey.

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