Chicago-X (1976)

One of the leading proponents of jazz brass rock is the American band Chicago, one of the most successful bands of all time with over 100 million records sold worldwide. However, their style wasn't always tied to jazz rock. During their long career, spanning from 1967 to 2022, they explored a wide variety of styles, including blues, rock, rhythm and blues, pop rock, and psychedelic music. By the mid-seventies, Chicago was fully immersed in a period where they blended their jazz-rooted sound with mainstream rock. From this era comes "Chicago X", the eighth album by this large group comprised of Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Laudir de Oliveira, Danny Seraphine, Walter Parazaider, James Pankow, Lee Loughnane, and Robert Lamm. This album features one of their most famous songs and a true classic of 20th-century music, the timeless ballad "If You Leave Me Now", which, along with the album itself, led the band to win three Grammy Awards the following year, in addition to several platinum and gold records. Although this iconic song might initially seem to overshadow the rest of the album, it contains enough merit to consider it another of their great masterpieces, as evidenced by the rock & soul track "One Or Twice", the dramatic mid-tempo "Hope For Love", the luminous "Another Rainy Day In New York City", and the jazz-rock anthems "Skin Tight" and "You Are On My Mind".