We are in the midst of a string of jazz and world music albums that, quite honestly, are absolutely perfect for cooking dinner too. While I complained about the lack of blues representation on this list, there is a ton of jazz, which is great because the whole point of listening to 1001 albums was to find stuff outside of my comfort zone. Despite the absolutely incredible album cover, The Atomic Mr. Basie is a fine jazz record for popular consumption. Nothing explosive about it. As previously noted I lack the context or vocabulary to properly analyze jazz records, but I did enjoy listening to this one. However I've since listened to the next record on the list--Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners--and it pretty much punted The Atomic Mr. Basie from my brain.
The Crickets - The "Chirping" Crickets Brunswick, 1957
As an indie rock devotee, The "Chirping" Crickets feels like patient zero of nerdy white dudes playing rock n' roll music. Buddy Holly has been an alluring figure to me since I was a kid. As previously mentioned (and something I will probably mention in every other post until we get out of the 1960s), the first music I came to love on my own was oldies. When I was 10 or 11 I vividly remember getting a couple of oldies compilations for my birthday. I remember the confused looks on the faces of some of the dads at the party. It was decidedly uncool, but KC's erstwhile Oldies 95 radio station was all I really listened to. This was the late 90s, and I'd soon crawl out of my cozy sock hop swamp into the actual swamp of rap rock, but those were halcyon days of establishing a musical bedrock. The clean, chiming electric guitars here are what really do it for me. There's just something undeniable about songs like "Oh Boy" and "That'll Be the Day." You can hear a whole branch of pop music history sprouting on those songs. You can practically see the artists that would take that sound further sitting by the radio hearing those songs for the first time.
Frank Sinatra - Songs for Swingin' Lovers! Capitol, 1956
Talk about emotional whiplash! In the span of a year Sinatra went from the sad bastard after midnight opus In the Wee Small Hours to that straight-up Sinatra swagger. This album is what you think about when you think about Frank Sinatra. I mean look at the exclamation point baked into the title! This is the sun coming up on the long dark night. These lush love songs are decidedly not my favorite thing on earth, but it's hard to deny that this album isn't magnetic. There's just nothing not to like here. Nelson Riddle's arrangements are impeccable. It also helps that this Sinatra guy can sing.
First impression: Damn, this sounds really slick for a live recording. Consulting the Oracle: "Informed that the concert recording was flawed, Columbia executives sent Ellington into a New York studio to re-record the set on the Monday after the gig. The resulting album is a patched together fusion of live recordings, studio retakes, and canned applause. It became the biggest selling record of Duke's career." So there you have it, and as a result it's a truly fantastic "live" album. I loved the element of the host introducing the band members and bantering, and the presentation of the event. You feel like you're there! That's a big cliche but I've never encountered a live album that had that could so vividly transport you to a time and place. I won't pretend that I am equipped to talk about jazz so I'll leave it at that.
Fats Domino's hybrid of R&B and Rock and Roll is the sort of music history lesson I was looking for when undertaking this project. Brain-wise, it's easier for me to undertake something if there is a clear structure and purpose, even if that purpose is something as loose as "Listen to 1001 albums in order over the next five years or so." The appeal of this style of music is apparent even nearly 70 years later. In a way it's both of its time and timeless. It's a rock and roll history lesson and an absolute delight. A true crowd pleaser too! See: My 22 month old baby girl toddling into the kitchen to show me her dance moves during "The Fat Man's Hop." My personal favorite track was the downtrodden "Blue Monday" (which made me want to hear an R&B cover of New Order's song of the same name).
The Wildest! was the litmus test for this whole project. I'm just so eager to get to the mid-60s and even as a kid who grew up only listening to Oldies 95 in Kansas City, I was trepidatious of the grandpa music. But is Louis Prima actually grandpa music? Yes, it is. But is it a whole heck of a lot of fun? Absolutely. I put this on while making dinner the other night and it was a delight. You can't help but get into "Just a Gigolo/ I Ain't Got Nobody." And even though The Brian Setzer Orchestra effectively killed "Jump, Jive, An' Wail" (not exactly Setzer's fault here, as it was death by over-saturation and how cringey the whole swing fad of the late 90s looks in hindsight), that song encapsulates the fun, swinging, New Orleans big band sound that Prima does so well.
The Louvin Brothers - Tragic Songs of Life Capitol, 1956
The extent of my knowledge of the Louvin Brothers is that they were super religious (this album cover in particular is what I immediately thought about when this album came up on the list). Listening to Tragic Songs of Life, you can hear how influential it was to country music and bluegrass. And yet as pure as this record is, it made me realize that blues is incredibly underrepresented. For instance, the only John Lee Hooker record is from 1989 and Robert Johnson only gets a cursory mention in someone else's write-up. I suppose it's a matter of scope and you have to start somewhere, and I'm sure there will be some that crop up as we go along, but considering how influential the genre was to modern music it seems odd not to at least start there. After all, the is a very rock-centric list, so it would make sense. It's not like these guys weren't releasing albums, despite blues being rooted in the pre-album age of singles and 78s. I think I'm just miffed because it's a genre I want to learn more about and you have Elvis listed before Muddy Waters.
The racial politics of Rock and Roll are a whole can of worms I keep dancing around as I, for instance, try to listen to Elvis' debut without recalling the "It's your cousin, MARVIN Berry" sequence from Back to the Future where Marty McFly rewrites history and has a white man creating modern Rock and Roll. I wrote a paper for an African American Music class I took in college that hinged on that scene. The thesis was essentially about white colonialism in music, in which African-Americans create a revolutionary sound that is co-opted and further popularized by white guys time and time again from Rock and R&B to Jazz to Hip-Hop. Anyway, that's a brain detour, back to the Louvin Brothers. This is as enjoyable as anything on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, and a very pleasant and despite the gospel influences isn't preachy and in fact has a whole lot of sin scattered across its tracks (not excepting murder! See "Knoxville Girl," which is a terrifyingly upbeat account of a man murdering his beloved in surprisingly gruesome fashion).
The book refers to Elvis' first album as "a frustratingly inconsistent record." And they have a point! This is Elvis in his infancy as one of rock and roll's biggest stars. For one, there are only a handful of songs that you can tag as "Certifiably Elvis." He spends a lot of time crooning here, and his voice sounds like he could be anyone. But on "Blue Suede Shoes," his cover of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" (which ties with "Tryin' to Get to You" as my personal favorite cut on the record), and "Just Because" you can hear all of that future greatness. It's like looking at baby pictures of your kid. In hindsight they were always going to grow up to look like your kid, but when they're a baby you have no idea what they're going to look like when they're six. The prominent features are used sparingly here, but this is more of a fascinating bit of music history than it is a compelling record. It's not a drag by any means, but we're a few years off from full blown idol status.
Below you can find the same song performed 12 years apart to see what I'm talking about.
Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours Capitol, 1955 Every time I listen to Belle & Sebastian, I immediately think of the first time I ever heard Belle & Sebastian: In the movie High Fidelity. In that scene, Jack Black's character ridicules his coworker for putting on some "Sad Bastard Music." In that regard, Belle & Sebastian don't really have a leg to stand on. They make Sad Bastard Music through and through. Listening to Frank Sinatra's 1955 album In the Wee Small Hours, I feel like I tracked down the original sad bastard. The book says Old Blue Eyes was essentially DOA at this point in his career, and it took the pluck of a lone true believer of a record exec to get him signed. History is full of stories like this. It's Van Gogh being wholly unappreciated in his time and dying in squalor over and over. It's the underdog story. It's needing one person to believe in you, taking your shot, and making it.
The whole album has the vibe of a late night drunk dial. It's 3AM, pouring rain, you're standing in a phone booth crooning "I'll Be Around." Sinatra's voice is obviously terrific and floats on top of Nelson Riddle's forlorn arrangements. It's a far cry from "My Way" or "Fly Me to the Moon." That In the Wee Small Hours is hailed as one of the first concept albums helps me reconcile why I like this one so much. Not that I had anything against Sinatra, it's just that in my head I file it under Grandpa Music. Nothing wrong with Grandpa Music, just not really a place where if I spend too much time in that realm it starts to feel like I'm doing it ironically. This is much less Grandpa Music than expected and a welcome surprise. The 1950s chunk of this project was almost enough to keep me from embarking on this journey, but this one makes me feel like it's gonna be a-ok.
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