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My favorite albums from 1961-1970: 150-126

I couldn’t stop with 100, so I went to 150, and I’ll go through them 25 at a time. I won’t post every day, but it’ll be every three or four days.

SamuraiFrog has ” been doing a massive project for the past couple of years: listening to all of the music I ever wanted to listen to, in chronological order… I thought I’d jump back into the sixties and make a big list of favorites… So, in my journey through the 1960s, here are my 100 favorites of the many, many albums I listened to, 20 a day for the rest of the week.”

He wrote about them HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

“A couple of ground rules, though:

“First, I count in units of 10, so the years active here are 1961-1970.”
Well, OK. Must say, though, that most of the albums I listed for 1970 I played in college, while the ones from 1969 and earlier were from high school, so it represents a sea change in perspective, though there was some carryover.

“Second, no greatest hits albums or compilations. I always feel like that’s cheating to have them on the same list as proper albums because compilations are the cherry-picked best.”

True, though most of my albums early on WERE the greatest hits. Herman’s Hermits, much of my early Motown, Donovan, and especially Sly and the Family Stone.

“Third, I apologize if this list isn’t really that different from the myriad of greatest album lists already in existence.

“Fourth, as always, I reserve the right to cheat my rules because they’re my rules.”

In deference to the originator, I will play by most of these rules. That said, I did NOT engage in a massive listening. I took a couple of greatest albums of the period lists, added some top sellers lists, and augmented with my rapidly fading memory to come up with the raw list from which to pare down. The chances I’m forgetting SOMETHING is very high. Also, some of the dates have come from secondary sources, so if they are wrong, you can tell me and I will correct them.

Also, I couldn’t stop with 100, so I went to 150, and I’ll go through them 25 at a time. I won’t post every day, but it’ll be every three or four days.

150. Blind Faith: Blind Faith (1969)
That group with 2/3s of Cream, Steve Winwood, and a guy I hadn’t hear of.

149. Neil Young: Neil Young (1968)

148. Judy Collins: Whales & Nightingales (1970)

147. Jefferson Airplane: Crown Of Creation (1968)

146. Iron Butterfly: In A Gadda Da Vida (1968)
What else was even ON that album?

145. Rolling Stones: Beggar’s Banquet (1968)

144. Diana Ross: Diana Ross (1970)
Her first solo album, with ‘Reach Out And Touch’, and ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’.

143. The Byrds: Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)
Came to this album this century.

142. Silver Apples: Silver Apples (1968)
A “psychedelic electronic music duo”. Got the LP in the 1980s. “Oscillations, oscillations. Electronic evocations of sound’s reality.” Opening lyrics to the single from the album.

141. Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
I found it revolutionary at the time, and much imitated (often badly), but, to me, it feels its age. Still I listened to it a lot. And my friends in high school referred to themselves as Holiday Unlimited. Our motto came from ‘Mr. Kite’ – “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.”

140. Beach Boys: Wild Honey (1968)

139. Jimi Hendrix: Axis: Bold As Love (1967)
I think I bought this album twice, by mistake.

138. Temptations: Cloud Nine (1969)
The first side was the first iteration of psychedelic soul on Motown, with songs written by the late Norman Whitfield with Barrett Strong, and produced by Whitfield.

137. Rolling Stones: Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967)

136. King Crimson: In the Wake of Poseidon (1970)

135. Jeff Beck Group: Truth (1968)

134. The Band: Stage Fright (1970)
The third album, which I played a lot in my dorm room freshman year in college.

133. Rascals: Once Upon a Dream (1968)
I was a sucker for the Rascals, even when they got a bit – weird.

132. Three Dog Night: It Ain’t Easy (1970)

131. Diana Ross and the Supremes and Temptations: Join (1968)
‘Try It Baby’, a cover of a Marvin Gaye song, is my favorite.

130. Cream: Wheels Of Fire (1968)

129. Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys (1970)
Buddy Miles’ ‘Them Changes’ featured here.

128. Blood, Sweat, and Tears: 3 (1970)

127. Diana Ross and the Supremes: Reflections (1968)
There is this Motown compilation I have on LP, and I think it was Mary Wilson who said, in the intro, that the title tune, is a “weird, weird song.”

126. Stephen Stills: Stephen Stills (1970)
Stills could be rather preachy, but I was OK with that at the time.

N is for Nutcracker

The NY Philharmonic plays a section from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker followed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra playing the Ellington/Strayhorn arrangement of the same section.

You are almost certainly familiar with the music from The Nutcracker, a two-act ballet, with “a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, 18 December 1892… Although the original production was not a success, the twenty-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was.” Jaquandor shared a link to all the music.

The Nutcracker Suite is also “an album by American pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington recorded… in 1960 featuring jazz interpretations of ‘The Nutcracker’ by Tchaikovsky, arranged by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.”

Overture
Toot Toot Tootie Toot (Dance of the Reed-Pipes)
Peanut Brittle Brigade (March)
Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy)
Entr’acte
The Volga Vouty (Russian Dance)
Chinoiserie (Chinese Dance)
Dance of the Floreadores (Waltz of the Flowers)
Arabesque Cookie (Arabian Dance)

I discovered on YouTube a “Live From Lincoln Center special called ‘Nutcracker Swing’ featuring both the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis that originally aired on PBS in December 2001.” The compiler said: “As far as I know this special never aired again, nor has it ever been made available to purchase anywhere…The way it works is that the NY Philharmonic plays a section from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker followed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra playing the Ellington/Strayhorn arrangement of the same section.

“The special starts with four sections from Wynton Marsalis’ “All Rise,” [parts 2-5], introduced here by Leonard Slatkin [part 1].

There are several other iterations of The Nutcracker, but I’ll deal with just one more. Nutrocker, a rock version of The Nutcracker March, was recorded by B. Bumble & The Stingers, released in February 1962, and went to # 23 in the US and # 1 in the UK. Emerson Lake and Palmer performed it live about a decade later.

These variations show how rich the original music is.

Of course, “the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in the U.S.” In the Albany, NY area alone, there were at least six different companies performing it in December 2012. On December 16, I watched the Albany Berkshire Ballet performance at both 2:30 (so my daughter could see it) and 6:30 (the performance my daughter was in, as an angel). THAT was a lot of Nutcracker for one day!
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American Ballet Theatre’s Paloma Herrera in the Nutcracker with Gennadi Saveliev

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

L is for Leadbelly

When my father would come to my elementary school to sing, he’d always perform the song Goodnight, Irene.

The Wikipedia post for Leadbelly starts “Huddie William Ledbetter (January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949) was an iconic American folk and blues musician.” Truer words were never written. He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence.

Huddie spent time in and out of prison between 1915 and 1934, including for killing a man. It’s almost certain that he got his nickname Lead Belly, or Leadbelly, while behind bars. In 1933, “he was ‘discovered’ by folklorists John Lomax and his then 18-year-old son Alan Lomax during a visit to the Angola Prison Farm. Deeply impressed by his vibrant tenor voice and huge repertoire, they recorded him on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress.”

Possibly his best-known song was Goodnight, Irene; LISTEN to his take. The year after he died, The Weavers recorded a version [LISTEN] which “first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on June 30, 1950, and lasted 25 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1. The Weavers’ enormous success inspired many other artists to release their own versions of the song, many of which were themselves commercially successful.” When my father would come to my elementary school to sing, he’d always perform the song, causing my classmates to assume that I had a crush on the girl in my class named Irene – I did not – and that I had put my father up to it – I had not.

Here is Yahoo’s list of the ten best songs by Lead Belly:

10. Ain’t It a Shame
9. Blood Done Signed My Name
8. Gallis Pole – LISTEN HERE or HERE. You may be familiar with the cover, Gallows Pole by Led Zeppelin [LISTEN, I hope].
7. Midnight Special – LISTEN. A live cover by Creedence Clearwater Revival [LISTEN]
6. Bourgeois Blues – LISTEN HERE or HERE. LISTEN to a live cover by Taj Mahal
5. He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word – LISTEN
4. On a Monday – LISTEN HERE or HERE
3. In New Orleans (House of the Rising Sun) – LISTEN. You probably know the version by the Animals [LISTEN]
2. Black Betty – LISTEN
1. Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” (In the Pines) – LISTEN. It was later covered by Nirvana.

My favorite song performed by Leadbelly, though, is We’re in the Same Boat, Brother [LISTEN]. “And if you shake one end, you’re gonna rock the other.”

Here are some more lyrics:

The Lord looked down from his holy place
Said Lordy me, what a sea of space
What a spot to launch the human race
So he built him a boat with a mixed-up crew,
With eyes of Black and Brown and Blue.
So that’s how come that you and I
Got just one world and just one sky.

Leadbelly songs that have been covered

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor

I continue to be moved by its chordal structure of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue.

From last.fm, copied verbatim in the Wikipedia: “The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach sometime between 1703 and 1707. The attribution of the piece to Bach has been challenged since the early 1980s by a number of scholars, and remains a controversial topic.”

This piece of music has been used in dozens of movies (The Tree of Life, Gremlins 2, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, Fantasia, among others), TV shows, and video games. Check out this list of Bach music, and find the toccata references. The music is usually used to suggest something scary in a way that has become an unfortunate cliche.

I, though, continue to be moved by its chordal structure. Here’s one recording; you can find several others on YouTube. Listen to the segment that starts at 7:20; the chord at 7:45 just wows me. By those last three chords which are as intense as any power chords by a rock guitarist, I’m in tears of awe.

Somehow, it puts me in the right frame of mind for the latter stages of Holy Week.

Sacred Songs by Daryl Hall

There were two obvious candidates for a single from Sacred Songs, the first two songs on the album.

darylhall.sacredsongs — Recorded in 1977, released in 1980

My old blogging buddy Johnny Bacardi was on Facebook, and I could see that he was on Spotify, one of those online music channels. He was listening to a song called ‘North Star’ by Robert Fripp [LISTEN], a founder of my favorite “progressive rock” band, King Crimson. The vocal, though, was, unmistakably, by Daryl Hall of the very successful singing duo Hall & Oates.

This got me to wonder what the relationship was between that song and the Daryl Hall solo album Sacred Songs, produced by Fripp, an LP that I own and love.

Sacred Songs has a complicated history. From Wikipedia, and confirmed in the liner notes of the CD: “Sacred Songs was recorded in a rather short span of three weeks [in 1977]. Most of the songs were initially recorded with Hall singing and playing piano alongside Fripp’s guitar work, followed by overdubs by Hall & Oates’ regular touring band…

“Fripp and Hall gave the album to RCA officials. Though still relatively pop-oriented, Sacred Songs was very different from Hall & Oates, and fearing the album might be unsuccessful and alienate Hall’s mainstream fans, the company shelved the record, and release was postponed indefinitely.” This, of course, ticked them off greatly, and so they “passed tapes… to music journalists and disc jockeys” to pressure the label to release the album, which they finally did, a couple of years later.

Meanwhile, Fripp’s solo debut, Exposure, had a bunch of Hall vocals as well. “However due to pressure from RCA and Hall’s management, this was cut back to just two songs on the final release (‘You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette’ and [the aforementioned] ‘North Star’).” These two songs now appear on the CD version of the Sacred Songs album.

“Upon release, Sacred Songs sold fairly well, peaking at #58 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart; however, there was no hit single from the record. It has since come to be regarded as a high point in the careers of both Hall and Fripp.”

There were two obvious candidates for a single, the first two songs on the album, the title track, and Something in 4/4 Time [LISTEN]. When I got out this album, I loved it all over again. Oddly, I’ve recently had it stuck in my mind that some a capella group ought to cover 4/4 Time, complete with that Frippertronics in the bridge.

Listen to 30 seconds of each track of the original album HERE.
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Watch the 62nd episode of Live from Daryl’s House, in which Daryl and the group Minus the Bear perform NYCNY from the Sacred Songs album.