You know how it is. You’re in a shop or a café when a tune you recognise comes on in the background. It’s jazz. You’ve heard it a thousand times. You can even whistle the sax solo note for note. Trouble is, you have no idea who it’s by. And you wouldn’t know where to begin finding the album it’s from. Well, don’t worry. Here’s a handy guide to some of the biggest and best loved Blue Note jazz classics you never knew you knew.

1. Blue Train

John Coltrane’s “Blue Train” sounds like the essence of mid-20^th century jazz. Cut in September 1957 at the same time as Trane’s legendary residency at New York’s Five Spot as part of Thelonious Monk’s quartet, it’s the lead track on the album of the same name, released the following year. Louche, laid back and hypnotically cool, it captures Trane still bluesy as heck while beginning to hint at the more exploratory territory he would occupy in later years. The A-team band includes two former bandmates from Coltrane’s time with Miles Davis – bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones – as well as astonishingly gifted rising trumpet star, 19-year-old Lee Morgan.

2. Autumn Leaves

“Autumn Leaves” had been around for a while before it became a jazz standard. Originally a French song called “Les Feuilles Mortes” composed in 1945, it entered the world of Anglophone popular music a decade later with English lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Since then, it’s become one of the most recorded songs in jazz, but the definitive version appeared as the opening track on alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley’s classic 1958 album “Somethin’ Else”. Recorded while Adderley was a member of Miles Davis’s group, it features Davis on gorgeously languid form with a muted trumpet solo that oozes calm sophistication, while drummer Art Blakey keeps time with softly sighing brushwork. 

3. Moanin’

Also released in 1958, Blakey’s “Moanin’” is a hard bop perennial by one of the most fiery incarnations of his Jazz Messengers featuring tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt. Kicking off the album, the Timmons-composed title track is a stone cold classic hung on a slinky call-and-response theme and a stomping, blues-drenched mid-tempo vamp. At nearly 10 minutes long, there’s plenty of room for the feisty young Messengers to solo too. Golson’s tenor smoulders, Timmons whips up all kinds of drama and 20-year-old Morgan unveils his effortless command of the horn, swerving from woozy slurs to bright, brazen calls. 

4. The Sidewinder

The irresistibly infectious soul-jazz classic “The Sidewinder” by Lee Morgan is probably the most famous of all Blue Note tunes. Recorded in late 1963 and released the following summer as the lead track on Morgan’s album of the same name, it became a surprise hit on the pop charts. The rest of the album is worth checking out too: a gloriously assured and heavy swinging hard bop date with all tunes composed by Morgan and featuring some righteous playing by tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Barry Harris, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Billy Higgins. One of the cornerstones of 60s jazz, it remains an eternal high point in Morgan’s career.

5. Cantaloupe Island

Pianist Herbie Hancock was no stranger to catchy tunes. His 1962 debut album “Takin’ Off” included the boogaloo jukebox hit “Watermelon Man,” establishing him as one of Blue Note’s leading artists when he was still in his early twenties. Two years later, he struck gold again with “Cantaloupe Island” from the album “Empyrean Isles”. Famously sampled by jazz rap outfit Us3 on their 1993 hit “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),” it’s one of the most recognisable hooks in jazz. Meanwhile, “Empyrean Isles” resounds with quintessential 60s Blue Note sophistication, its four Hancock originals brought to life by Freddie Hubbard on cornet and two of Hancock’s fellow members of Miles Davis’s band – bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams.

6. The Cat

Imagine a swinging 60s party and it might sound a lot like “The Cat” by Hammond organ maestro, Jimmy Smith. An impossibly exuberant upbeat boogaloo with Smith testifying to the heavens, guitarist Kenny Burrell chopping out effortlessly groovy guitar chords, and brassy Big Band stabs arranged by Lalo Schifrin, it was a Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1964. As if that wasn’t cool enough, it was also one of two tracks on Smith’s album of the same name to be featured in the French mystery thriller movie Joy House starring Jane Fonda and Alain Delon. Impress your friends by telling them all these facts next time you hear it on a night out.

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Daniel Spicer is a Brighton-based writer, broadcaster and poet with bylines in The Wire, Jazzwise, Songlines and The Quietus. He’s the author of a biography of saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, a book on Turkish psychedelic music and an anthology of articles from the Jazzwise archives.