1. Ella Fitzgerald - Ella in Berlin 2. Frank Sinatra - Nice 'n' Easy 3. Ornette Coleman - Change of the Century I'm sure my list would be completely different if I did it again in a month. I don't have any strong favorites from this year.
I'm listening to the Etta James album and it's great. It's the kind of album I've always wanted to get into but didn't really know where to start. Her vocals are so good! Very good start to this experience, haha.
If you’re looking for guidance on places to start you’ve definitely got some solid people to ask in this thread I’m looking forward to this process
Motherfucker, Muddy Waters’ At Newport 1960 is unbelievable. Even for those who are uninitiated in blues (I’m a relative neophyte myself) it’d be a great gateway. WHAT a band!
also, obviously, recommend the joan baez debut. plenty gets said about her voice and writing, for good reason, but her finger-picking is top notch too.
This is from 1956 but it's one of my favorite songs of his, and since we're starting with 1960, this will be one of the few opportunities to humble brag about my Grandfather's music career, especially the early years when he was a recording artist for RCA
I'll have to look this up as i'm teaching right now but---do not get my grandfather mixed up with Motown Shorty Long. Two different artists lol
There’s probably about 100 more highly regarded records that I could have picked from this year instead, but I listened to Everything Goes by The Four Lads, a group I’d never heard of till yesterday. They’re a Canadian pop or swing vocal quartet, and they apparently did the first version of that “Istanbul, not Constantinople” song, which I did not know till now. It’s pretty good! Absolutely nothing remarkable or innovative about it, but for a set of swinging big band tracks, this is pretty good fun. Can definitely imagine this being the soundtrack to an American film set in an upscale club in the late 50s. Glad I listened!
This right here is why you’re my favorite, George. Haha This is the kind of rabbit hole I can respect
Yeah a lot of it is really fun to listen to. He did a lot of the 'rockabilly' style music that was popular at the time, and he was eventually know as "The Reading Hillbilly" lol. They did music in the Reading PA area up until basically his death in 91. He was probably the most famous musician from Reading until Taylor Swift came along. The humbleist of brags is that he played piano in the studio recordings for Hound Dog and Don't Be Cruel. We have pictures of him sitting around with Elvis/playing piano while Elvis sings. I thiiiiiink his piano playing is what is featured on the actual finished recordings of those songs but I'm not 100% on that.
looks like per wiki he was on the finished recording of don’t be cruel but someone else is on hound dog bc your grandpa had to leave for another session hahaha. that’s so rad!
First, @Morrissey 's title formatting makes me cringe every time I see it. Capitalize "Music"/"Film" and get rid of that period! Second, I don't have much from 1960 in my Apple Music. I'll have to check out what people are saying in here first.
Maybe not albums, but 1960 had some solid singles per Wikipedia: "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" "Beyond the Sea" "Chain Gang" "Georgia on My Mind" "The Twist" ...and "Finger Poppin' Time"
See I didn't even realize that would be on Wiki lol. I've heard some truly great/jaw dropping stories. He was on broadway for a year and one of his songs he was lead on in the show was performed by him and the rest of the cast on the.....Ed Sullivan show maybe? Have to look that up. But if you've ever heard the songs "Standing on the Corner" or "Big D" from the show The Most Happy Fella, that's my grandfather singing the male lead on those from the original cast. In addition to being featured on Ed Sullivan, they're also the two songs featured in the episode of I Love Lucy when Ricky takes them to broadway to see a show. That's the show they see and they recorded the episode in the venue as the show is going on, so you can hear the show going on in the scenes they're watching it, and the songs that you end up hearing parts of are those two songs. The greatest/most "ugh!" one though...he and his bandmates got a call one night to come in and get some studio time to record a song. Studio time was hard to come by so they went out a celebrated, ate a bunch of spicy food and drank a ton, and got so drunk that they overslept the next day and missed the studio time. The song being recorded ended up being one of the big Christmas song hits....possibly Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, but not sure on that either. I get bits and pieces of it from my Uncle, but I haven't seen him as much lately with the pandemic and he's also a hardcore Trumper now so lol.