Best Albums Pre-60
 

You all know the drill, I decided to do pre-59 because looking through lists (well more the lack of lists...) I've decided coming up with 100 would be very hard. So yeah, everything pre-59 lets aim for 100 but if we fall short oh well.

Almanac Singers "Songs for John Doe"
Billie Holiday "Lady Day"
Billie Holiday "Lady in Satin"
Billie Holiday "Lady Sings the Blues"
Billie Holiday "Songs for Distingué Lovers"
Hank Williams "Moanin' The Blues"
Johnny Cash "Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar!"
Johnny Cash "The Fabulous Johnny Cash"
John Lee Hooker "I'm John Lee Hooker"
Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"
Ornette Coleman "The Shape of Jazz To Come"
Pete Seeger "The Goofing-Off Suite"
Pete Seeger "American Industrial Ballads"
The Weavers "The Weavers At Carnegie Hall"
Woody Guthrie "Dust Bowl Ballads"

...I don't even have one album that predates 1963 on my computer right now... I'll come back when I find what was in my old music collection.

Okay after much previewing, researching and so on I've extended the list quite a bit. I imagine some of it will go, I didn't like alot of the early rock and roll stuff however some of the other stuff was nice particularly Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.

MB's Top Albums Pre-59 - Rate Your Music

Where is right-track! He has to know some old soul ]:<

Soul is mostly 60's.
Early R&B is what you want to look for.

You missed Nat King Cole and Ray Charles!
Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters should be included too.

João Gilberto "Chega de Saudade" [1st bossa nova album, great stuff]
Bernard Herrmann "Vertigo" [a MASTERFUL score]
Sun Ra "Jazz in Silhouette"
Frank Sinatra "A Swingin' Affair!" [16 great songs; i'm not complaining]
Moondog "Moondog" [important avant garde work]
Julie London "Julie Is Her Name" [at least a dozen great songs; and the superb "cry me a river"]
Frank Sinatra "Songs for Young Lovers" [8 great songs; again, why complain]

Yeah about this whole pre-59 thing. Why not just make it pre-60?

Sorry, I should've said pre-60 I meant 59 and back >.> after Comus and I finish with the finishing touches on the 70-74 list I'll get all this on. Igor Stravinsky came out with some stuff he'll go on also.

Yes, those two are good. I love Thelonious Monk.

I'll probably post my list when I have the net again... I'm using the computers on campus right now.

MB's Top Albums Pre-60 - Rate Your Music

Okay, I'm very content with the top 10 and I could go and move everything into a better order but if you guys suggest number positions for certain things and swap arounds it would be so much easier.

This only problem with pre 60s music is that a lot of great music wasn't released on albums. I'd say people like Son House & Robert Johnson were hugely influential in the pre 60s period yet neither man had any albums until compilations came out in the 60s. Even though a lot of their work dates back to the 20s & 30s

Eh, absolutely. Hell, even in the SIXTIES the LP was still not really the dominant format, in all truth. It had only really become entrenched as the dominant format by the early 70s, though of course the late 60s were what brought it on and changed the shape of what an album could be, what with LPs like Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road and of course the many contributions of other bands etc..

As far as it not being the dominant format in that era, it's telling enough that as many as 10 Beatles singles for example didn't even appear on any of their albums. On top of that, look at the disparity between UK and US releases concerning their first four albums. They had completely different names and rather different track listings. Even more striking is the point that on those first four albums there were around 20 covers. The music industry was just a completely different animal back then. Everything really changed for good by the onset of the 70s.

So do we want to include compilations than from artists who recorded in that time?