By Francis Davis

Here’s my Top 10 presented with the understanding that I didn’t hear as many albums as in other years, or concentrate on those I did hear and enjoy as if I had nothing else on my mind.

The 19th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll: The Shape of Jazz That Keeps Us Going

The 19th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll: The Nuts and Bolts

You haven’t seen much of me or my byline lately and you won’t be. About three months ago, at my own request, after never having been sick a day in my life, unless hypochondria counts, I started home hospice as an alternative to repeated, lengthy hospitalizations for pneumonia and other sundry comorbidities stemming from Parkinson’s and emphysema, two “progressive” conditions from which there ain’t no getting better. Nobody medical says I’ll be dropping my snow globe and murmuring “Rosebud” imminently. But nobody’s saying I won’t be, either, and I know deep in the foul rag and bone shop of my heart that my circus animals have already begun deserting, and I’m not entirely unhappy to wave them goodbye.

However much time I have, and especially if it’s considerable, I don’t want to waste taking notes on music I’m indifferent to, or sweating through those long compound sentences and tedious literary references I’m infamous for (like the one from Yeats, above, or George Washington’s reported last words at end of this essay). Nor do I want to waste it pitching reviews and stories to publications that don’t run reviews or stories on jazz, or trying to score review copies from publicists who don’t know who I am (or once was?).

When I started my career what only feels like several careers ago, I prided myself on being first on the scene (or damn near first, pro or con) whenever a significant development or hot new soloist surfaced. Starting in 2006, conducting this poll more or less freed me of that responsibility. Now, I hardly recognize many of the names I read in DownBeat. I can’t tell you any more about some of them than I can about the demi-celebrity hosts or music guests on Saturday Night Live. I mean, who the hell is Jacob Collier? Samora Pinderhughes? I don’t know if I’ve ever heard either of them, and nothing I read convinces me I’m missing anything.

So it isn’t only my health that makes me realize it might be time to bench myself. It was almost a relief when I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It explained a lot: my tremor, my sudden drool, why shoelaces and hooks fight me as I dress, why I constantly bump into door frames on entering or leaving rooms. And unlike emphysema, for which I had only my two-pack-a-day habit and lack of willpower to blame, no one could blame me for what was probably the luck of the genetic draw or something that medical science has yet to explain.

Maybe I was the last to learn that criticism had outlived its usefulness as far as the arts and entertainment industry were concerned. Or maybe only I have outlived mine. Counting downloads (my last resort), I received promos of roughly one third of this year’s Top 100. How can anyone claiming to be tracking the best in jazz overcome a gap that wide? Were I and my ilk among the early collateral damage of algorithms? “Oh, just buy the damn albums,” I can hear you thinking. And give up what? Food? Medicine? Shelter? (Pre-Trump 1.0, my record purchases were tax-deductible — one of the “loopholes” closed for me and my kind but not for tax-dodging corporations and their CEOs.)

Not that my colleagues are necessarily doing any better than I am. And don’t think for a second that today’s record company parsimony with promos doesn’t affect standings in this and similar surveys, to the point where a true measure of critical consensus becomes impossible. One example among many is relative newcomer Patricia Brennan’s first-place finish in New Albums, a result that delights me. But the favorite going in had to be Vijay Iyer’s Compassion, on the basis of the artist’s track record (three previous victories — in 2009, 2012, and 2016), and the album’s win in our first midyear poll this summer (kind of like a halftime score). But would the results have been reversed if ECM hadn’t guarded review copies like contraband?

Despite it all, I cast my ballot anyway. I guess smoking isn’t the only habit difficult to break. You might think that being practically bedridden created ample time for listening, among other pursuits. You’d be wrong. You’d be surprised how quickly time flies when no demands are being made of it. So, here’s my Top 10 presented with the understanding that I didn’t hear as many albums as in other years, or concentrate on those I did hear and enjoy as if I had nothing else on my mind.

NEW ALBUMS

1. Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra, Louis Armstrong’s America (ESP-Disk)
2. Thumbscrew, Wingbeats (Cuneiform)
3. Lux Quartet, Tomorrowland (Enja/Yellowbird)
4. Matthew Shipp Trio, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz (ESP-Disk)
5. Vijay Iyer, Compassion (ECM)
6. Patricia Brennan Septet, Breaking Stretch (Pyroclastic)
7. Dave Douglas, Gifts (Greenleaf Music)
8. Ryan Truesdell, Synthesis: The String Quartet Sessions (ArtistShare)
9. Kim Cass, Levs (Pi)
10. Walter Smith III, Three of Us Are From Houston and Reuben Is Not (Blue Note)

RARA AVIS (REISSUES/ARCHIVAL)

1. Sonny Rollins, Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings (Resonance)
2. Andrew Hill Sextet Plus 10, A Beautiful Day Revisited (2002, Palmetto)
3. Yusef Lateef, Atlantis Lullaby: The Concert From Avignon (1972, Elemental Music)

VOCAL

• Lucy Wijnands & John Di Martino, Call Me Irresponsible: The Songs of Jimmy Van Heusen (Night Is Alive ’23)

LATIN

• Daniel Carter-Leo Genovese-William Parker-Francisco Mela, Shine Hear Vol. 2 (577)

DEBUT:

• Riley Mulherkar, Riley (Westerlies)

When I was in college, I used to haunt downtown Philadelphia record shops, often going without lunch to put the few coins in my pocket toward buying that just-released Jackie McLean or Archie Shepp. Or if I couldn’t afford it right then and there, to wonder what Martin Williams or Nat Hentoff might have to say in the next issue of DownBeat. I was listening vicariously. Now, as I become increasingly disengaged, I find myself wondering what that esteemed critic Francis Davis would have to say about it — as if listening posthumously. I’ve become my own imaginary friend, as good a time as any to split. I leave you in good hands with the super diligent Tom Hull. ‘Tis well.