1,000 Albums to hear before you die, F to K

[Charlie]

The Guardian list, continued:

Ali Farka Touré
Savane (2006)
Ali Farka Touré, who died in March 2006, was the finest and best-loved African guitarist of his generation. Often described as the godfather of the desert blues, he proved through his hypnotic instrumental work and singing that the blues must have originated from his home country of Mali, where he started out playing traditional instruments such as the lute-like n'goni. Born in Niafunke (where he would later become mayor) on the banks of the Niger river, he moved to the capital, Bamako, and worked at the radio station which then operated the countray's only ­recording studio. With typical confidence, he sent his tapes to France, where he developed a following among the Malian community before establishing a r­eputation among African fans in Britain in the late 80s. He recorded a series of classic albums, including the Grammy-winning Talking Timbuktu in 1994, but this ­album, released after his death, is arguably his finest. That's certainly the way he saw it. The album was made when he had returned to music after a lengthy period of farming and performing civic duties. He was concerned that young Malians didn't know enough about traditional music so he assembled a band including instruments such as the njarka fiddle and n'goni, played by the young virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate. On the opening track, Erdi, he showed the link between ancient Mali and contemporary blues by matching traditional styles with harmonica and saxophone. He produced some of the most compelling guitar work of his career on the album's other songs, which mixed blues with Celtic-sounding influences or the sturdy reggae of the title track. [Robin Denselow]

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Mustt Mustt (1990)
The greatest exponent of qawwli, the devotional music of the Sufis, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan updated his songs to reach younger audiences, both in his native Pakistan and across the west. On this album, his extraordinary, soulful, rapid-fire improvised singing was backed by guitars as well as tablas and harmonium; Massive Attack rousingly remix the title track.

Ibrahim Ferrer
Buenos Hermanos (2003)
Backed by Ry Cooder's dream team - the jazz bassist Cachaito, the surf-rock guitarist Manuel Galbán and the Blind Boys of Alabama on backing vocals - Ferrer's effortlessly soulful voice has never sounded better: crooning the boleros, rolling his Rs on the salsas and making staggering vocal improvisations sound as casual as clearing his throat.

Pedro Luis Ferrer
Rustico (2005)
A true original and eccentric, Pedro Luis Ferrer is a Cuban singer-songwriter who plays the country's small local guitar, the tres. He is backed here by the powerful and intense vocals of his daughter, Lena, on charming and thoughtful songs that range from the surreal to angry social commentary. Translations are thankfully provided.

Celso Fonseca
Natural (2003)
Forget Barry White - there are times when the Brazilians have the edge in late-night seduction music. And Fonseca's effortless skill as a guitarist, producer and songwriter means that his originals (Bom Sinai or Meu Samba Torto) and standards (The Night We Called It a Day) sound just as good in the morning.

Roberto Fonseca
Zamazu (2007)
After paying his dues with the Buena Vista Social Club, the Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca made this great world-jazz album. He has a gift for melody, demonstrated in tracks such as Clandestino and El Niejo, plus a virtuosity that can hold its own on any jazz stage in the world.

Franco and OK Jazz
Originalite (1999)
Congolese music dominated African dance styles for three decades, and OK Jazz were the best-known, best-loved band in the country, thanks largely to their guitarist, composer and singer, Franco Luambo Makiadi. These mid-50s recordings, recorded when he was still a teenager, show his mature, driving guitar work on a typically cheerful selection.

Bill Frisell
Have a Little Faith (1993)
Jazz, folk, classical, pop - like a small-town electrical store, Frisell's landmark album has it all. Made with an unusual jazz quintet that includes Guy Klucevsek's accordion, it's a kind of love letter to American music, with John Hiatt's rolling title track and tunes by Copland, Ives, Foster, Rollins, Dylan and even Madonna.

Jan Garbarek
12 Moons (1993)
In Garbarek's poignant and desolate timbre, with its evocations of wind-blown snowscapes and its quivering cries, there is a unique post-Coltrane saxophone voice. Twelve Moons beautifully balances those atmospherics with explicit references to jazz and folk.

Gastr del Sol
The Serpentine Similar (1993)
Art rock doesn't get much brighter or more accessible than this first outing as Gastr del Sol by the wayward experimental guitarist David Grubbs. The wonky, jagged melodies, the jazz-inflected rhythms and the meandering lyrics call to mind surrealist films in which people tilt and time accelerates: the album is that beguiling and strange.

Mary Gauthier
Filth and Fire (2002)
After a tough early life that included running away from home, jail and drug problems, Gauthier became one of the most compelling songwriters in America, drawing on her own experience to sing about losers, misfits and those just struggling to survive.

Stan Getz
Jazz Samba (1962)
Recorded in a church in Washington, DC, this album introduced Brazilian music to the world, and showed how Stateside jazzmen had truly mastered the bossa nova. Charlie Byrd's guitar provides the hypnotic pulse, but the star is tenor saxophonist Getz, sounding as though he's out to charm every babe on the beach

Gilberto Gil
Early Years (2004)
Now Brazil's minister of culture, in the late 60s Gil was jailed as a dangerous musical rebel by the military authorities, before being exiled to England. Many of his greatest songs are from this early Tropicalia era, including the classics Domingo No Parque and Bat Macumba. Also included is his exquisite treatment of Steve Winwood's Can't Find My Way Home, recorded in exile.

Bebel Gilberto
Tanto Tempo (2000)
Gilberto's seductively intimate vocals, added to bossa nova and chilled electronic beats, created a pastel-shaded formula that reverberated through modernist bars and hotels worldwide. What makes Tanto Tempo work is the quality control.

Dizzy Gillespie
Cubana Be, Cubana Bop (2000)
After Gillespie helped Charlie Parker launch the 1940s bebop revolution, he built a storming big band to play it - and spliced in the music of Cuba and South America. His stunning trumpet playing and audaciously exhilarating themes here define the postwar sound of modern jazz.

Egberto Gismonti
Selected Works 2004)
Gismonti is one of those extraordinary characters who fits hardly anywhere, yet is welcomed everywhere - for his fiery, uncompromising piano playing, his extraordinary solo guitar performances and his creative collaborations.

Luiz Gonzaga
Focus: O Essential de Luiz Gonzaga (1999)
Still hailed in Brazil's north-west as the local equivalent of both Elvis and Bob Marley, Gonzaga was a rousing singer-songwriter and accordion player who became a major star across the country in the 40s and 50s. His finest, passionate songs like Asa Branca, included here, dealt with the suffering of his arid homeland.

Ruben Gonzalez
Introducing Ruben Gonzalez (2007)
Ry Cooder, who plucked this octogenarian pianist from retirement to play with the Buena Vista Social Club, described him as "a cross between Thelonious Monk and Felix the Cat". This album shows us a pianist by turns flamboyant, clunky, majestic, dainty, hilarious and capable of moments of exquisite beauty.

Benny Goodman
Carnegie Hall, January 16th 1938 (2006)
Goodman was a dance-hall star of the 1930s, and this historic show, which launched concert-hall jazz, sweeps through jazz's 20s and 30s history with the clarinettist's band and some star guests. Count Basie, the saxophonists Lester Young and Johnny Hodges, the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, the drum firebrand Gene Krupa and Goodman himself are all in stunning form.

Gotan Project
La Revancha del Tango (2001)
Retrieving tango from the tea-dance set and modernising it for worldwide consumption, the Paris-based trio achieved an astonishing ubiquity with their smooth Spanish-language electronica. Somewhat surprisingly, the frequent use of the music as TV incidental music hasn't diminished its impact.

Trilok Gurtu
20 Years of Talking Tabla (2007)
The percussionist Trilok Gurtu can be a difficult man to pin down: he collaborates with every kind of jazz-world style you can imagine. This two-CD greatest-hits compilation gives a good account of his multiple talents, from 80s fusion to his recent adventures with strings.

Margo Guryan
Take a Picture (1968)
It's a great late-60s story: jazz composer experiences Damascene epiphany while listening to God Only Knows and makes single album of breathy, gorgeous sunshine pop before evaporating back into obscurity. This justifiably cooed-over cult classic is the missing link between Astrud Gilberto and Saint Etienne.

Woody Guthrie
The Very Best of Woody Guthrie, Legend of American Folk Blues (1992)
An inspiration to the young Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, the staunchly leftwing Guthrie travelled across America in the 30s and 40s, writing more than a thousand songs, from This Land Is Your Land to ones of more suffering and hardship such as Dust Pneumonia Blues.

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Merle Haggard
Hag: The Best of Merle Haggard (2006)
He wrote the playful, anti-hippy redneck anthem Okie from Muskogee and was Nixon's favourite country singer. But Merle Haggard became a celebrity (even among hippies) for the tough, no-nonsense style that he developed in jail, and for gutsy songs such as Working Man's Blues and the bittersweet prison lament Sing Me Back Home.

Herbie Hancock
Takin' Off (1962)
The genius for catchy hooks that has made the pianist/composer Hancock so widely sampled was already apparent on his debut, particularly in the gospelly Watermelon Man. The monumental swing of Dexter Gordon's tenor sax, Freddie Hubbard's gleaming trumpet sound, Billy Higgins' infectious drum-dance - it's a classic 60s Blue Note session.

Françoise Hardy
La Question (1971)
After 10 years in the spotlight, the French chanteuse hooked up with an unknown Brazilian guitarist called Tuca and created the most sensual record in the whole canon. All dark strings, wordless vocals, breaths and whispers, this defines the sound that polite people call "after hours".

Harmonia
Musik von Harmonia (1974)
Babbling, trance-inducing proto-electronica by sometime Neu! man Michael Rother along with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Möbius, aka Cluster. Harmonia were fantastically ahead of their time, and much-beloved of Brian Eno, who subsequently collaborated with the trio on Tracks and Traces.

Coleman Hawkins
Body and Soul (1996)
Hawkins' 1939 version of Body and Soul remains one of the 20th century's defining performances, an inspirational improvisation that strays from the tune, glides over the chord changes and sows the seeds for bebop. But this 1939-56 compilation has a dozen other tenor sax solos of similarly playful, spontaneous beauty.

Billie Holiday
Lady Day Swings (2002)
A uniquely personal eloquence, built on low volume, subtle nuance and rhythmic intuitions that define cool, is evident in this first triumphant phase of Billie Holiday's stormy career. The meanings of 30s pop songs are hauntingly reinvented, and her partnerships with the sax magician Lester Young and the pianist Teddy Wilson are sublime.

ohn Holt
1000 Volts of Holt (1973)
It's easy to think of reggae as a vehicle for social protest, which means it's easy to forget artists like John Holt. The honey-voiced former singer of the Paragons (who first recorded The Tide Is High, written by Holt) turned to cover versions with 1000 Volts of Holt, taking on Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are, among others, and making them his own.

John Lee Hooker
Hooker (2006)
A glorious 84-track, four-CD set that chronicles the remarkable history of the Mississippi bluesman who was a major influence on British musicians from the Animals to the Rolling Stones. It covers everything from his early stomping blues boogies, such as Boogie Chillen, through to his collaborations with Eric Clapton and Van Morrison.

Keith Hudson
Pick-a-Dub (1974)
In the pantheon of great reggae producers, Keith Hudson is frequently overlooked next to King Tubby and Lee Perry - yet no other dub album can rival Pick-a-Dub's austere sonic qualities. Amid ghostly voices, desolate horns and trapdoor percussion, Hudson's mix-desk manipulation of the Soul Syndicate's rhythmic power is breathlessly exciting.

I:

Abdullah Ibrahim
Water from an Ancient Well (1985)
South African pianist-composer Ibrahim made hundred of albums, moving around the world while in exile. But few are as satisfyingly consistent as this one, which blends an Ellingtonian compositional sensibility and dignity with African jazz, movingly played (and with a light touch) by a superb band.

Gregory Isaacs
Night Nurse (1982)
Ironically for the epitome of lovers rock, Gregory Isaacs' strongest suit as a vocalist is actually his modesty: unlike the Simply Red version of its title track, Night Nurse is blessed by an elegant service of the song. The glossy production is of its time, but it never detracts from Isaacs' charm.

J:

Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch (1965)
With Dylan it was all about the words, with Jansch the guitar, and never more so than on his keening, threadbare debut. Those spindly, music-box pickings carried British folk into new waters, and came to bear on everyone from Davey Graham to Led Zeppelin. It's virtuosic, but restless, and utterly moving. Needle of Death might still be the saddest of all softly sung tragedies.

Victor Jara
Chile September 1973 Manifesto (1998)
Released to mark the 25th anniversary of the murder of the great Chilean singer by the military authorities in 1973, this poignant version of Jara's unfinished album includes Adrian Mitchell reading his final poem, Chile Stadium. Jara's songs provide a stirring reminder of why he has remained an influence on singers such as Robert Wyatt.

Keith Jarrett
The Köln Concert (1975)
The best-selling piano record ever, in any idiom. Distrusting an inferior instrument on this unaccompanied gig, Jarrett stuck to the mid-range and improvised - with sweeping imagination - around a handful of ostinatos and grooves. The result is a hypnotic, romantically lyrical and country-tinged tour de force.

Linton Kwesi Johnson
Dread Beat an' Blood (1978)
The record that invented "dub poetry" remains a milestone in British urban black music. Dennis Bovell's Dub Band provided anvil-heavy beats to frame Johnson's withering monologues about the 1970s black experience in "Inglan".

Robert Johnson
King of the Delta Blues Singers (1961)
Robert Johnson is the original embodiment of the most enduring myth in popular culture. Not the one about the blues guitarist who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads - although that was him, too, a ­rumour probably circulated by envious contemporaries. The other myth: the one about living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful body of work behind you, in Johnson's case a small but immaculate collection of the most affecting blues songs in existence. For about the same price as King of the Delta Blues Singers, you can get, in Columbia's two-CD set, 41 of the 42 recordings Johnson is known to have made ­before his death in 1938, aged 27, of pneumonia, which the notorious womaniser contracted after being ­poisoned by a jealous husband. But that runs alternate takes of individual songs consecutively, and while there's pleasure to be had in noting how Johnson ­reworked his material - hammering a chord here, ­clarifying a lyric there - listening to it inevitably makes one feel like an anorak. Anything you need to know about Johnson - about most rock music, because on its 1960s release this ­influenced every guitar giant of that decade - is on this 17-track compilation. Crossroad Blues encapsulates black existence in 1930s America: Johnson's ­despair at his low-grade citizenship is palpable. Terraplane Blues takes the tongue-in-cheek "raunchy" form prevalent at the time and makes it raw with heartsore feeling. Me and the Devil Blues pulsates with resignation at the fate of a man given to women and drink. But there was warmth and humour in his songs, too, not to mention a diamantine brilliance about his guitar-playing - so virtuosic that Stones guitarist Keith Richards confessed he initially thought two men were behind it. Johnson was haunted by the restless ambition to transcend his time and place: how profoundly he achieved that dream. [Maddy Costa]

George Jones
The Essential George Jones: The Spirit of Country Music (1998)
Like his idol, Hank Williams, Jones is the bloodied but unbowed heart of country. As famous for his temper, battles with booze and fondness for driving lawnmowers as for his voice, he flies the flag for old-fashioned country and timeless misery.

Joyce
Just a Little Bit Crazy (2003)
Brazilian songwriter Joyce has hardly put a foot wrong in her long career. This brilliant but atypical album draws on Scandinavian nu-jazz (courtesy of Bugge Wesseltoft) to spice up an exemplary home team, including husband Tutty Moreno on drums.

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K'naan
The Dusty Foot Philosopher (2005)
A escapee from wartorn Somalia, by the time he was 26 K'naan Warsame had delivered this brutally candid missive from his adopted Canada. A record of poetic rapping and eye-popping storytelling, it's infinitely closer to the tumbling wordplay of 60s icons the Last Poets than to the showiness of Jay-Z or Kanye.

Salif Keita
Soro (1987)
This is the album that established Salif Keita as an international star, and brought the African desert state of Mali to the attention of western music fans. It was recorded in Paris with a band that included brass and keyboards, but was remarkable for Keita's powerful, soulful vocals and lyrics inspired by the ancient history of his homeland.

Stan Kenton
City of Glass (1995)
Unconventional swing bandleader Kenton liked massive volume and huge bands, complex and highly structured works, classical references (Stravinsky and Ravel particularly); he delivered a kind of prog-jazz of the 40s and 50s. It could be hyperbolic, but these are some of the best-realised of his experimental works, with remarkable arrangements by Bob Graettinger.

Khaled
Khaled (1992)
Up until this point, Algeria's singer-most-likely-to... had earned his stripes backed by the cheap Casio sound that typified home-produced rai. This record, with Don Was at the controls, offered a widescreen canvas and took Khaled international, thanks in large part to the limb-loosening global funk of Didi.

Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
25 Greatest Hits (1998)
You probably don't need 23 of the songs here but the first two are perhaps the only British rock'n'roll songs fit to stand beside the US greats. Shakin' All Over and Please Don't Touch - both later covered by the Who and Motörhead/Girlschool respectively - have a sleaziness utterly missing from anythng by Kidd's Britrock rivals.

Soweto Kinch
Conversations With the Unseen (2003)
Soweto Kinch burst on the scene with a new way of playing jazz, combining edgy post-bop with hand-played versions of the grooves and broken beats of hip-hop. This debut demonstrates Kinch's complex but beguiling tunes, but what makes Conversations special is his thoughtful rapping.

Konono No 1
Congotronics (2005)
This groundbreaking debut from the six-strong Congolese collective blasts out of the speakers like a thrilling parade of west African rave. Combining the firepower of amplified thumb pianos, carnival vocals and whistles, its relentless rhythms suggest Steve Reich's modern compositions, raucous electronica - and the greatest party ever.

Kronos Quartet/ Pat Metheny/Steve Reich Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint (1990)
Different Trains, with its locomotive rhythms and melodies generated by the cadences of speech, is a meditation on Reich's wartime childhood and the fate of Jews in the Holocaust; it's the composer's most moving work. A piece for overdubbed guitars, Electric Counterpoint was notoriously sampled by the Orb for Little Fluffy Clouds.

Fela Kuti
The Best of Fela Kuti: Music Is the Weapon
One of the most colourful figures in the history of African music, Fela Kuti was a bandleader, songwriter, singer, saxophonist, keyboard-player and percussionist who pioneered a new style of Nigerian music, afrobeat, in which he mixed traditional styles with Western funk and jazz. But he was equally known for his wild, flamboyant lifestyle, his angry political songs and often painful battles with the Nigerian ­military authorities. He recorded more than 50 albums before his death in 1997, but was never as well known in Europe and America as Bob Marley, in many ways his Jamaican equivalent. He faced harassment by the Nigerian authorities - in 1984, he was jailed as he was preparing for a major American tour, and was declared a ­political prisoner by Amnesty. Within Nigeria, Kuti became a celebrity, thanks both to his music and rebel stance. He declared the area around his club in Lagos, the Shrine, to be an independent state, the Kalakuta Republic, protected by an electric fence. It was at the Shrine that Fela's firebrand ­politics and musical invention were seen and heard at their best. He came on stage around two or three in the morning, often puffing on a joint as he launched into his angry attacks on the government or corruption in Nigerian ­society. His lengthy songs mixed thunderous percussion with his own improvised solos and call-and-response vocals, in which he was ­answered back by his well-choreographed ­female chorus. His decision in 1978 to marry all of his 27 singers and dancers on the same day added to his notoriety and legend (though, in 1986, he announced that marriage was a bad idea and divorced them all). It's difficult to capture on record the sense of danger, anger and invention that marked out Fela's best live performances, but this set, ­released after his death, is a reminder that he should be remembered for his music and not just his lifestyle. It includes a DVD of a documentary filmed in Lagos in 1982, which includes several performances from the Shrine. The two-CD set includes many of his best songs, from the cheerful, upbeat Lady and the slinky Zombie, notable for its funky guitar work and fine sax solos, through to the angry ITT (International Thief Thief) and perhaps his most bitter work, Coffin for Head of State, a ­reference to the most violent incident in Fela's often painful career. In 1977, the self-proclaimed republic around Kuti's club was attacked by soldiers, after he had embarrassed President Olusegun Obasanjo by refusing to take part in a pan-African festival held in Lagos. Kuti claimed his singers and dancers were raped, and that his mother died after being thrown from a ­window. Later, he presented Obasanjo with a replica of his mother's coffin - and a song that combines the musical originality and political fury of one of Africa's greatest performers. [Robin Denselow]