Chicago - Chicago III (1971)

While 'Chicago VI' was the band's first LP I bought and liked in the early '70s, I grew to appreciate their earlier work more as I got older. Their first album is rightly celebrated as a jazz-rock landmark, and this double LP is almost in the same league.

What's really great about this, besides its unusual mix of jazz, pop and poetry, is the fact that there's no hit material here. Instead, what you get is challenging stuff that's full of the kind of musical adventurism the band seemed to thrive on in their early days but sadly abandoned once they began scoring hits.