To a degree, then, the completion of this list requires the making of another. No Michael Brecker or Kenny Garrett or Joe Lovano or Ravi Coltrane. No Roland Kirk or Pharoah Sanders or Archie Shepp. No Cannonball Adderley or Joe Henderson or Jackie McLean.

That’s inevitable, but it hurts to think of the musicians who didn’t make the cut. What’s more, this list of “essentials” is missing dozens of groundbreaking players. After all, how can you select just one album by Sonny Rollins? Sometimes you just have to go with the one you love the most. But here and there, the list has tipped toward personal favorites. I’ve tried to include “essential” recordings, ones that anyone interested in jazz should hear. Good luck, right? What you are about to read covers about 80 years of jazz history. So here we are, attempting to boil down this history of saxophone glory into a list of 15 recordings.

Again and again, the innovations of saxophonists have carried the music forward: from Lester Young to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and beyond. For the better part of a century, the sound of jazz has been inseparable from the sound of the saxophone: urgent, wailing, uniquely expressive.

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