Essential Studio Albums

[Buby]

I will listen and try Beatles For Sale again, but I always had a different take on that album.

Oh man! I think you'll dig it. I can't explain why, but I love it. It's just a different animal.
The originals are a very welcome change of pace. The covers are closer to their personal taste / deeper cuts.
Chronology aside, For Sale sounds closer to Rubber Soul than Help! does.

[liebzz]

Funny, my thoughts on that album were that you could sort of hear the lack of enthusiasm at recreating the same thing for the fourth straight album - like they were tiring of Beatlemania but weren’t quite meeting minds yet on the change of direction that started with Help! and really took off with Rubber Soul.

[liebzz]

Sam Cooke - Night Beat

This album might be proof that Sam Cooke can take any song, turn it into a ballad, and lend his soaring voice to it so that you forget the original version or question the arrangement. That said, my favorite here is where he lets the balladeering rest momentarily for the album closing Shake, Rattle & Roll. But Little Red Rooster under the souled out blues track, and Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen are both highlights. He could have done soul versions of Master of Puppets and Paranoid and it wouldn’t have been out of place.

The Essential Track: Shake, Rattle & Roll

Up Next: Sam Cooke - Ain’t That Good News

[liebzz]

Sam Cooke - Ain’t That Good News

The first half of this album seems chock full of hits - (Ain’t That) Good News, Good Times, and Another Saturday Night are certainly songs I have heard quite a few times. The second half is again ballads, though There’ll Be No Second Time is as lush a ballad as it gets. And of course this is one of the great voices - an instrument all its own. This one was a bit easier to listen to as well. Good recommendations!

The Essential Track: Another Saturday Night

Up Next: The Beatles - A Hard Say’s Night

[liebzz]

The Beatles - A Hard Day’s Night

The Beatles were all over the place in terms of the different ways they were selling themselves - albums, singles, movies, I am sure there was at least a lunchbox. This is the soundtrack from the film of the same name. There’s a dynamism to this album though, on this listen, that pushes this up on my pantheon on Beatles rankings thus far (we’ll get to nearly all of them here), where it was more of a basement dweller before. The opening riff and snap into the title track is a favored moment for me (as it is with Help also), but the songs are just clicking better than they had before, as if the hit machine is perfecting itself on this release. Tell Me Why, Any Time at All, You Can’t Do That, and I’ll Be Back stuck out more than other listens, and of course there’s the all time hits And I Love Her and Can’t Buy Me Love. A much better album than I have given credit to in the past.

The Essential Track: A Hard Day’s Night

Up Next: The Beach Boys - Shut Down, Vol. 2

[liebzz]

The Beach Boys - Shut Down, Vol. 2

The classic pop that flows out the first part of this album is the sugary sweetness that really encapsulates the early Beach Boys. Fun, Fun, Fun and Don’t Worry Baby are deserved classics, and their cover of Why Do Fools Fall in Love are highlights of this. Most of the rest seem a bit like filler, particularly the three minutes of poking fun at Mike Love’s voice in what seems more like a juvenile interview than a proper song. Certainly overall enjoyable enough though.

The Essential Track: Don’t Worry Baby

Up Next: The Beach Boys - All Summer Long

[liebzz]

The Beach Boys - All Summer Long

So the thing about these early albums is that I enjoy them while I am listening to them, and then it ends and I mostly forget what I just heard but for the songs that have been ingrained in my psyche for 45 years. So I Get Around and Little Honda are memorable, but not too much of the rest. I can at least I enjoyed it while it was playing.

The Essential Track: I Get Around

Up Next: Manfred Mann - Mann Made

[liebzz]

Manfred Mann - Mann Made

So these guys have some disparate interests. From soul, rock, and jazz, this album jumps around a lot, and the arrangements seem to completely change from song to song. Hearing a bit of Miles Davis in Bare Hugg, and a bit of the blues (One Way Out?) in LSD. Stormy Monday Blues is great. I also really liked Since I Don’t Have You, Look Away, and You’re For Me. Abominable Snowman was the left turn at the right moment. So this thing was quite good.

The Essential Track: Stormy Monday Blues

Up Next: Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil

[liebzz]

Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil

This was quite enjoyable. It does seem a bit like a compromise between slow burn Coltrane jazz, and Coltrane’s more freewheeling side, but Shorter carves out his own personality here even if it seems very influenced. There were a few long sax notes in the title track where it was an excellent transition to the next movement in the track that were all Shorter. The last two songs, both slower (outside of the alternate take of Dance Cadaverous) but both had a lot to offer beyond a standard ballad.

The Essential Track: Speak No Evil

Up Next: The Maytals - Never Grow Old

[liebzz]

The Maytals - Never Grow Old

This is pre-reggae era ska. Toots Hibbert’s personality still shines through since how could it not!? Granted, this extended version with 4 additional tracks starts to suffer from sameness - there’s not a lot of variety here, but it’s a fun sound. The recording quality is not phenomenal but Toots and his band find moments on their debut here. The opening track, I’ll Never Grow Old is really the best of the bunch.

The Essential Track: I’ll Never Grow Old

Up Next: B.B. King - Confessin’ the Blues

[liebzz]

B.B. King - Confessin’ the Blues

So this blues album, big band and all, felt like a lot. Maybe it’s the albums that sandwich it, a sparsely recorded Maytals album and next Waters’ Folk Singer, but this feel very big and polished. That’s not to insult this album, which still packs plenty of highlights, including See See Rider, Please Send Me Someone to Love, and the more prototypical How Long How Long Blues, which feels a bit more wheelhouse than the sometimes overbearing horn section.

The Essential Track: How Long How Long Blues

Up Next: Muddy Waters - Folk Singer

[liebzz]

Muddy Waters - Folk Singer

Against the overly sweetened feel of Confessin’ the Blues, this album has a sort of authentic feel, largely based around the original disc’s acoustic set up, revealing a sort of return to form for Waters. In that, you can really hear each of the instruments and how they tease out the blues, not to mention Waters’ voice that is picture perfect suited for this genre (or he’s so inextricably entrenched in the genre that it is so on association). Good Morning Little School Girl and The Same Thing were favorites there. The bonus tracks add another element since they are electric and exciting in this context, with You Can’t Lose What You Never Had at the top of this. Great album.

The Essential Track: You Can’t Lose What You Never Had

Up Next: The Rolling Stones - 12x5

[liebzz]

The Rolling Stones - 12x5

The Stones are back here, with more covers, though this album takes a decidedly more rock approach to the songs and less pure blues cover band territory. It’s also just a hair less menacing than their debut, with great performances that feel a bit more straightforward in Around and Around, Time Is On My Side, It’s All Over Now, Susie Q, the instrumental 2120 South Michigan Avenue, and the less heralded but engaging Under the Boardwalk.

The Essential Track: It’s All Over Now

Up Next: The Beatles - Beatles For Sale

[liebzz]

The Beatles - Beatles For Sale

On this fourth album, the Beatles indeed sound exhausted, though they still bring plenty of energy, though a bit more nuanced maybe than the bombardment if youthful vigor on A Hard Day’s Night. The opening three tracks on this are spectacular, and probably a bit of a drag for Beatlemania at the time. Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey is possibly the best cover here, though Words of Love is also really good. What You’re Doing is a late album highlight. Those first 3 had me re-evaluating my prior stance on this album, and it is helped exponentially by not listening to it in a run of only Beatles albums (I think I have done that 3 times with this album, but never put it on as a standalone thing). It probably doesn’t rise much in my ranking of Beatles albums, if I have any sort of definitive preference, but it does sound much better in this light.

The Essential Track: No Reply

Up Next: Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin’

[liebzz]

Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin’

Bob Dylan is pissed. Much in the tradition of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, these are songs that captivate your attention and set a mood without anything more than guitar, harmonica, and an authentic voice delivering to us the shape of injustice. This of course contrasts completely with the albums we’ve been covering. And there’s not one ounce of sugar to coat this. That rawness is a powerful force from Dylan, even if he does not quite match the pure genius of the former album. The title track and The Ballad of Hollis Brown are the immediate winners, with The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, and With God on Our Side both serving as highlights here.

The Essential Track: The Times They Are A-Changin’

Up Next: Bob Dylan - Another Side of Bob Dylan

[liebzz]

Bob Dylan - Another Side of Bob Dylan

This one contains a lot of thematic and stylistic variety, as if to change the pace from the focused The Times They Are A-Changin’. All time classic It Ain’t Me Babe closes this but the heart and fun of this record for me came on I Don’t Believe You, All I Really Want To Do. Granted that Chimes of Freedom, Black Crow Blues, and Motorpsycho Nightmare have their own amazing flavors. This thing is Dylan containing multitudes in his folk tradition. Everything would change that much more soon, but this one is close to the folk magic of Freewheelin’.

The Essential Track: I Don’t Believe You

Up Next: Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto

[liebzz]

Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto - Getz/Gilberto

This was a pleasant album - a mix of latin, jazz, and vocals that seemed mostly soothing, a far cry from some of the wilder releases we’ve covered. The Girl From Ipanema is an obvious choice here - the one song I heard and knew instantly. Doralice and Corcovado were also really great, and a very nice change of pace. Good recommendation wherever that came from.

The Essential Track: The Girl From Impanema

Up Next: John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

[liebzz]

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

This is another album I was familiar with before this started, really the second of two jazz north stars (with Davis’s Kind of Blue). The whole thing seems built around the “a love supreme” chant, a sort of spiritual marker that gets refrained on every instrument in different parts of this album while the remainder of the band find spaces to improvise around it. Sometimes it’s Coltrane leading the refrain, sometimes it’s through the bass, drums, or keys, and everyone has time to shine. Part III is way up there in the drum solo with some of the greats I have pointed out so far. Rather than spanning Coltrane’s different styles across songs, he seems to pull off all his sounds simultaneously in each movement here, a feat of pure genius here.

The Essential Track: another where you have to hear all of it

Up Next: John Coltrane - Ascension

[liebzz]

John Coltrane - Ascension

What a surprise to get this after A Love Supreme. This is a no holds barred, seemingly chaotic adventure into Coltrane’s mind. One 40 minute jam session, this is what it would sound like to take, say, the opening “Free Jazz” bars on Vitalogy, extend it for 40 minutes, then turn the insanity dial up by a hundred. Really it seems like mildly disjointed jamming devolving into pure chaos, then reverting back again, as if the players each got different pieces of music to work off of. That said, the playing itself is pretty great, with each member excelling in their own moments, but cohesive it is not. My sense is that repeat listens on this will reveal a lot more.

The Essential Track: Ascension (*wink)

Up Next: Hank Mobley - The Turnaround

[Kalevi]

I come back to Ascension a lot. Probably my most listened to jazz album