The 20 Most Famous Jazz Songs of All Time

These are the 20 most famous jazz songs in our ranking, each tied to the recording that made it famous. “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet is No. 1: it was the first jazz single to sell a million copies and is still the biggest-selling jazz single. Miles Davis’s “So What” and “The Girl from Ipanema” by Stan Getz and João Gilberto follow. Every entry says who recorded it and when, and what made the record known well beyond jazz audiences.

We ranked recordings rather than compositions, by how widely they are known: chart and sales history, use on radio, film and television, and selections such as the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. Tunes that are famous mainly because musicians keep playing them, such as “Body and Soul,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Summertime” and “‘Round Midnight,” are on our companion list of the best jazz standards, which covers the repertoire from the player’s side.

Our Ranking of the 20 Most Famous Jazz Songs

1. “Take Five” (Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1959)

Paul Desmond wrote it after drummer Joe Morello asked for a piece in 5/4, and the quartet recorded the final version for Columbia on July 1, 1959, for the album Time Out. Released as a single, it became a sleeper hit, reaching No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961, and it was the first jazz single to sell a million copies. Time Out was the first jazz album to do the same.

2. “So What” (Miles Davis, 1959)

The opening track of Kind of Blue (Columbia), recorded on March 2, 1959, with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. After an introduction written by Gil Evans, Chambers plays the theme on bass and Bill Evans answers with the voicing now known as the So What chord. The tune uses just two scales, D Dorian and E-flat Dorian, and became the model for modal jazz. Our ranking of the best Miles Davis albums starts with the album.

3. “The Girl from Ipanema” (Stan Getz and João Gilberto, 1964)

Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes wrote it in 1962, and Norman Gimbel added English lyrics. On Getz/Gilberto (Verve), recorded in New York in March 1963, João Gilberto sings in Portuguese and Astrud Gilberto, making her recording debut, sings in English. The shortened single reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy for Record of the Year; the album won Album of the Year.

4. “In the Mood” (Glenn Miller Orchestra, 1939)

Joe Garland arranged a riff first heard in Wingy Manone’s “Tar Paper Stomp” (1930), and Miller’s band recorded it for Bluebird on August 1, 1939, with a tenor saxophone chase between Tex Beneke and Al Klink and a climbing coda. It became the best-selling swing instrumental, and NPR put it on its 1999 list of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. It is in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Recording Registry.

5. “Sing, Sing, Sing” (Benny Goodman Orchestra, 1937)

Louis Prima wrote and first recorded the song in 1936. Jimmy Mundy’s arrangement for Goodman, recorded in Hollywood on July 6, 1937, with Gene Krupa on drums, ran 8 minutes 43 seconds across both sides of a 12-inch 78, when most big-band records lasted three minutes. The 12-minute version from Goodman’s Carnegie Hall concert of January 16, 1938, came out on Columbia in 1950 on one of the first jazz albums to sell a million copies.

6. “Take the ‘A’ Train” (Duke Ellington Orchestra, 1941)

Billy Strayhorn wrote it in 1939, after Ellington gave him subway directions to his home that began “Take the A Train.” When a 1940 licensing dispute kept Ellington’s ASCAP-registered music off the radio, tunes by Strayhorn, who was with BMI, filled the gap, and “A” Train replaced “Sepia Panorama” as the band’s theme. The Victor recording of February 15, 1941, is in the Grammy Hall of Fame. More in our list of the best Duke Ellington songs.

7. “Strange Fruit” (Billie Holiday, 1939)

Abel Meeropol, writing as Lewis Allan, published the poem about the lynching of Black Americans in 1937 and set it to music. Columbia, Holiday’s label, would not record it for fear of reactions from Southern retailers and its radio affiliates, so she cut it for Milt Gabler’s Commodore label on April 20, 1939. It sold a million copies, the biggest seller of her career, and Time named it the best song of the century in 1999.

8. “Linus and Lucy” (Vince Guaraldi Trio, 1964)

Guaraldi wrote it for an unaired 1963 documentary about Peanuts and recorded it on October 26, 1964, for Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Fantasy). A year later it reached a far bigger audience on A Charlie Brown Christmas, released in December 1965 alongside the television special. In August 2026 the RIAA certified that album 6x Platinum, making it the best-selling jazz album in the US, ahead of Kind of Blue at 5x Platinum.

9. “My Favorite Things” (John Coltrane, 1961)

Coltrane turned the Rodgers and Hammerstein waltz from The Sound of Music into a long modal piece, soloing with McCoy Tyner over vamps on E minor and E major instead of the song’s chord changes. It was his first album on soprano saxophone, an instrument Miles Davis had bought him in 1960. Recorded for Atlantic in October 1960 and released in March 1961, it produced an edited single that became a radio hit, and Coltrane named it his favorite of his own recordings.

10. “West End Blues” (Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, 1928)

Armstrong recorded King Oliver’s blues for OKeh in Chicago on June 28, 1928, with Earl Hines on piano. It opens with an unaccompanied trumpet cadenza, moves through a wordless vocal chorus and ends on a long held high note. Gunther Schuller, in Early Jazz (1968), presented it as proof that jazz could stand beside the most serious music. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1974, and it tops our list of the best Louis Armstrong songs.

11. “A Love Supreme, Pt. I: Acknowledgement” (John Coltrane, 1965)

Coltrane’s quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones recorded the four-part suite in one session on December 9, 1964, and Impulse! released it in January 1965. “Acknowledgement” opens with a gong, then Garrison’s four-note bass figure, which Coltrane develops through his solo before the phrase “a love supreme” is chanted, by Coltrane himself in overdubs. The album went Platinum in 2021 and is in the National Recording Registry.

12. “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” (Chick Webb Orchestra with Ella Fitzgerald, 1938)

Fitzgerald and arranger Al Feldman, later known as Van Alexander, turned a 19th-century nursery rhyme into a swing number, recorded for Decca on May 2, 1938. It was her breakthrough hit, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s jukebox chart and on Your Hit Parade in the years before the Hot 100 existed. For the rest of her career, see our list of the greatest female jazz singers.

13. “Mood Indigo” (Duke Ellington, 1930)

Ellington wrote it for a radio broadcast in October 1930 as “Dreamy Blues,” using a theme that clarinetist Barney Bigard had learned from his New Orleans teacher Lorenzo Tio. Its sound came from inverting the usual front line of trumpet, trombone and clarinet: the muted trombone plays near the top of its range and the clarinet at the very bottom of its range. The band recorded it for Brunswick on October 17, 1930; after the broadcast brought in piles of mail, Irving Mills added a lyric.

14. “God Bless the Child” (Billie Holiday, 1941)

Holiday wrote it with Arthur Herzog Jr. in 1939, and in her autobiography she traced the title line to an argument with her mother over money. She recorded it on May 9, 1941, with Eddie Heywood’s orchestra and Roy Eldridge on trumpet, and Okeh released it in 1942. It is in the Grammy Hall of Fame and on the Songs of the Century list compiled by the RIAA and the National Endowment for the Arts.

15. “Moanin'” (Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, 1958)

Pianist Bobby Timmons wrote the call-and-response theme in F minor; Benny Golson, the band’s tenor saxophonist, urged him to add a bridge. The Jazz Messengers, with Lee Morgan on trumpet, recorded it for Blue Note on October 30, 1958, and the album came to be known by its title. Gary Giddins wrote that it “set the music world on its ear.” Jon Hendricks later added lyrics, and the single entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

16. “Birdland” (Weather Report, 1977)

Joe Zawinul wrote it as a tribute to the New York club, open on Broadway from 1949 to 1965, where he heard Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis; it also honors Charlie Parker. It opens Heavy Weather (Columbia), the band’s commercial peak, with Jaco Pastorius on fretless bass. The Manhattan Transfer won a Grammy with a vocal version using Jon Hendricks’s lyrics, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings counts it among the few contemporary jazz tunes that everyone seems to have heard.

17. “Chameleon” (Herbie Hancock, 1973)

The 15-minute opener of Head Hunters (Columbia), credited to Hancock, Bennie Maupin, Paul Jackson and Harvey Mason, is built on a bass line Hancock played on an ARP Odyssey synthesizer. The album took jazz-funk to rock and R&B audiences, reaching No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and No. 2 on the R&B albums chart. It also has a funk remake of Hancock’s 1962 “Watermelon Man,” which Mongo Santamaría had taken to No. 10 on the Hot 100 in 1963.

18. “The Sidewinder” (Lee Morgan, 1964)

Morgan recorded the title track of The Sidewinder at Van Gelder Studio on December 21, 1963, and Blue Note released the album in July 1964. It became Blue Note’s best-selling record, reaching No. 25 on the Billboard album chart and helping to save the label from near bankruptcy; the single reached No. 81 on the Hot 100. The tune later turned up in a Chrysler television advertisement.

19. “One O’Clock Jump” (Count Basie Orchestra, 1937)

A 12-bar blues assembled from riffs the band played, it got its name because the band first played it near the end of a radio broadcast from the Reno Club at close to 1 a.m. The Decca recording of July 7, 1937, features Herschel Evans and Lester Young on tenor saxophone and Buck Clayton on trumpet. It became Basie’s theme, closing his concerts for the next half century, and is in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

20. “Ko-Ko” (Charlie Parker, 1945)

Recorded for Savoy in New York on November 26, 1945, it sets a new line over the chords of Ray Noble’s “Cherokee.” Miles Davis, the session’s trumpeter, wrote in his autobiography that he refused to play it, so Dizzy Gillespie took the trumpet part. With Gillespie’s “Shaw ‘Nuff” session earlier that year, it counts among the first bebop on record, and it was named to the National Recording Registry in its first year, 2002. More in our guide to bebop jazz.

Where to Start Listening

If you are new to jazz, start with “Take Five,” “The Girl from Ipanema,” “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Linus and Lucy,” whose melodies stay with you after one hearing, then “So What” and “My Favorite Things” to hear how modal jazz works. Our guide to the best jazz albums for beginners builds a listening path from there, and our ranking of the 50 best jazz albums of all time puts many of these songs in their album context.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most famous jazz song of all time?

By sales and chart history, Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961 and was the first jazz single to sell a million copies. Among critics, So What has a strong claim as the opening track of Kind of Blue, which many of them call the greatest jazz album ever recorded.

What is the best-selling jazz album?

A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, which the RIAA certified 6x Platinum in August 2026. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis is certified 5x Platinum, and Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet was the first jazz album to sell a million copies.

What is the most recorded jazz song?

That is a question about standards rather than hit records. Body and Soul tops the JazzStandards.com ranking of the most-recorded jazz standards, ahead of All the Things You Are, Summertime and ‘Round Midnight. Our list of the best jazz standards covers all four.