It seems that Lester Bangs, your burn-out uncle, and all those Rolling Stone editors were on to something… the 60’s were pretty groovy.
Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960. Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover. While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before. Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish? Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before. Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time. Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments. So without further ado, here is #12 in the series. My random number generator tells me that our next year to explore is 2010!
Check out my previous entries here.
The Greatest Albums of 1966
As I set out to examine the past six decades of albums, year by year, I envisioned myself laying waste to long-held cultural assumptions about popular music that I had been hearing since I was a child: “Today’s music is terrible” – clearly false. “The eighties were the worst decade for music” – mixed results, but I’m still optimistic. “Music peaked in the mid-to-late sixties” – I don’t know guys. As I reflect on my journey into 1966, it’s hard to ignore that sentiment. I expect I will find it’s not true as I continue this project (I’m a mere 1/5th of the way through), or at least I will find that there are a series of artistic peaks, but I wouldn’t be shocked if this remains one of my all-time favorite years. I experienced some real angst over the last spot in my list, and I don’t know how to express how good this year was any better than pointing out that Blonde on freakin’ Blonde didn’t make the cut.
The landscape in the mid-sixties was made up of four distinct genres at particularly compelling points in their evolution. Soul music had not yet reached the creative heights that it would find in the early seventies, but in terms of great singers tackling love and heartache with believable emotion, 1966 might be its peak year. Across Stax and Motown, the two legendary record labels that boast the greatest house bands of all time (Booker T. & the M.G.s and the Funk Brothers, respectively), a tidal wave of amazing music flooded the airwaves. Even beyond my list and honorable mentions, you had great singles by the Supremes, young Stevie Wonder and James Brown. In a historical context, it’s clear that jazz had started the slide from cultural relevance that it has yet to recover from, but that is not evidenced by the creativity displayed by Wayne Shorter, Sun Ra and others. Folk music is at its peak in the mid-sixties, and its influence was clearly bleeding into blues-based rock and roll, which had quickly got its footing as the soon-to-be dominant force in American music.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at 1966, thus far the pound-for-pound champion of years reviewed by my silly music blog.
1. Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys
I’m an unabashed music nerd (duh), but I’m definitely not an audiophile. Artists and albums and songs are very important to me, but audio fidelity is not so big a deal. Don’t get me wrong, I know not to use the crappy white Apple headphones for anything but podcasts, but when it comes to lossless music or bitrates or even the reason I need a stereo and a mono mix on my Pet Sounds CD, I’m a bit of a Luddite. If any album was designed for music nerds and audiophiles alike, however, it’s Brian Wilson’s masterpiece, Pet Sounds. Every voice, every note, every touch of theramin or windchime or dog whistle is perfectly placed and adds exactly the right element to the music. I’ve heard a lot of bands test the limits of excess (this album featured more than 50 session musicians), but no on else has ever done so without sounding excessive. As much as I love TV on the Radio, and like the Flaming Lips, and tolerate Animal Collective, none of them have remotely the same handle on all of the instruments and flourishes they employ to flesh out their recordings.
Lest I make this album sound like nothing more than an engineering problem solved particularly well, there is undeniable beauty that permeates the recording. “God Only Knows”, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Caroline, No” are among the most lovely pop songs ever committed to wax. Also, “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on my Shoulder)”, “I Know There’s an Answer” and “I Just Wasn’t Made for this Time”… equally lovely. Really the whole album is over-the-top gorgeous, and in the most simple, adolescent terms possible. There are times in this project when I am energized by trumpeting the merits of some undiscovered gem that I think is genius, and then there are times when I’m faced with this:
Look, a lot of more qualified people have spent a lot more time espousing the virtues of Pet Sounds in immeasurably more eloquent ways. All I can say is that you should trust those eloquent experts, at least in this instance. I can’t overstate how loaded 1966 was in terms of quality albums, and the Beach Boys’ classic remains the undisputed champ.
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2. Speak No Evil – Wayne Shorter
It occurred to me while listening to this album, a key difference between my two favorite types of jazz music. Hard bop is immediate, visceral and in the moment, while modal jazz is a journey. Speak No Evil, to its credit, balances both approaches for one of the last great jazz masterpieces. Particularly on the opening track, “Witch Hunt”, and the title track, the quintet simmers along intensely while still fully exploring the space of the songs. As the album goes on, the tunes slow down (“Infant Eyes” and “Wildflower”) but they never become wistful or easy-going. The musicians maintain their focus on passionate exploration even as the tempo recedes. In fact, a great strength of the album is its penetrating focus. Shorter, Freddie Hubbard and Herbie Hancock are all locked into the tone of the session and delivering driving, lyrical solos. The rhythm section of Ron Carter and Elvin Jones is fantastic, as expected, but they don’t have any solos of their own. Drum and especially bass solos have been responsible for stalling the momentum of many a jazz record, and Shorter isn’t willing to let that happen here.
The jazz scene in the 50’s and 60’s was a really special and unique thing. You had a great number of world-class musicians, and they all appeared in different configurations on each others’ albums, often resulting in pure magic. There really hasn’t been anything like it since then, outside of the more insular example of the solo Wu-Tang or Odd Future albums, where a stable of like-minded and affiliated artists show up in support of each other. The line-up listed above is a great example of five individual masters, each of whom brings something critical to the table. Shorter is the leader, with concise, steely trumpet playing. Hubbard’s trumpet is brighter and flashier, making a nice counterpoint to Wayne, and their harmony on the opening of most tracks is piercingly beautiful. Carter and Jones are the backbone, toning down their specific styles in service of the album yet still finding ways for their personality to shine through. Herbie Hancock ties the whole thing together with lovely, measured but sparkling piano playing.
Only a few jazz albums have managed to penetrate the pop/rock canon, and somehow Speak No Evil isn’t one of them. Make no mistake, though, this is one of the greatest works of jazz ever recorded.
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3. Revolver – The Beatles
The Beach Boys may have put together one of the best albums of the century in ’66, but the Beatles were still head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of crafting songs. The previous year’s Rubber Soul was probably the band’s (and by extension, the genre’s) first major turning point in terms of sophistication, and Revolver feels very much like a companion piece. On both albums, they hone their ability to make deceptively complex tunes that are peerlessly catchy. Personal favorites are “I’m Still Sleeping” and “And Your Bird Can Sing”, which are just perfect little nuggets of pop/rock wryness. “Here, There and Everywhere” is an attractive ballad that could have easily fit into Pet Sounds. What really stands out, though, is the diversity of the tracks. You have straight-forward rock like “Taxman” and “Dr. Robert”, the Eastern-influenced and sitar-laden “Love You To”, straight pop like “Good Day Sunshine”, and ‘Eleanor Rigby” which is backed entirely by a string section and basically defies categorization. Yet, for all the range on display, the album never becomes muddled or confusing. The band gets in, knocks it out, and moves on to the next track before any idea has the chance to become overwrought. When you listen to, say, Buffalo Springfield, you don’t get anywhere near the variation in sonic palette or tone.
A subtle element that unifies all the disparate songs is the band’s vocal harmonizing, apparent on nearly every track. The Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel get a lot of attention for their amazing harmonies, but while the Beatles are equally adept, it doesn’t stand out as much. The weaving of multiple voices is just another tool that they use to elevate the material, not something that is identified as their signature sound. It’s telling that the group is so good at everything that this thing that they are great at doesn’t particularly stand out. I’m trying to resist the urge to talk about every track, but the album closes brilliantly with its final three. “I Want to Tell You” echoes “Got to Get You into My Life” thematically and musically, making the pair the only two tracks on the album that flow together in a way that makes them inseparable. That approach would become much more common on later albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road. Meanwhile, there was some trippy music sprinkled through the landscape in 1966, Zappa and the like, but album closer “Tomorrow Never Knows” is the only real indicator of what the psychedelic movement of 1967 would sound like. With fourteen essential tracks that clock in at a mere 35 minutes, Revolver is the type of joy you can’t afford to deny yourself.
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4. Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul – Otis Redding
Otis Redding is the greatest soul singer of all time, which might make him de facto the greatest singer of all time, depending on your proclivities. Sam Cooke and Aretha are probably better vocalists, but as far a straight up singer (or a sanger, you know, who can really sang), there’s Otis and there’s the field. His greatest attribute is that he is just so convincing. When he sings “My Lover’s Prayer”, you picture him at an altar, hands clasped and kneeling, sweat pouring down his strained face. On “Try a Little Tenderness”, a masterclass at building tension, he gets completely apoplectic at one point, stammering “Gotta cha manana tra try”. It’s a moment that Kanye West would sample to great effect on 2011’s Jay Z collaboration, Watch the Throne, but more importantly it’s the type of ad lib that can only come from being so invested in the emotion of the song. No producer is ever going to tell an artist “Why don’t you say ‘Gotta cha manana tra try’ before the chorus like you’re having a stroke?”, and in today’s world of reality singing competitions and genetically engineered Disney pod-people dominating the charts, that sense of organic connection is sadly very rare. None of the songs on Complete & Unbelievable are complex. They trade in simple concepts and arrangements, with the inimitable Booker T. & the M.G.s asked to simply stay in the pocket and occasionally punctuate the blank space while Otis catches his breath. Otis is elemental, the archetypal soul singer, and complicated songs would just distract from the essence of his performance. That fact allowed Redding to be pretty prolific over his tragically short career, as evidenced by the fact that this was his second album released in the span of four months. Stay tuned for more on that.
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5. Wild is the Wind – Nina Simone
Nina Simone didn’t write very many songs, but when she did, they were monsters. Tracks like “Mississippi Goddamn” and “Four Women” (the latter of which is included here) are so infused with righteous indignation, so informed by the weight of being on the losing side of racial and sexual politics, they are downright incendiary. Simone is a wholly unique performer, with a gorgeous yet acid-touched voice that transmogrified throughout her career, a fascinating blues/classical/jazz piano-playing style, and a seemingly contradictory aesthetic that saw her cover some ill-advised tunes in service of commercial pursuits yet had no qualms about alienating her audience with naked rage at the injustices of America in the civil rights era. “Four Women” is a character study of a prostitute, a slave, a child of slaves, and a bi-racial product of rape “living between two worlds”. It’s almost unbearably heavy, but incredible in the way that Simone modulates her voice to portray each unique woman and build to an emotional, riveting climax. Fortunately, she is just as accomplished an interpreter of songs as a writer, and her lone contribution to the album is in good company.
Nina had the ability to inject layers of complexity to any material she touched. Typically, those layers were dark, either sad or sinister. On a track like “Don’t Explain”, which appears on the similarly excellent 1966 album, Let It All Out, you aren’t sure if Nina is playing it as a straight tale of sadness and submission, like Billie Holiday did, or if she is actually going to murder her philandering husband in his sleep after lulling him into a false sense of security. Her cover of Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown”, also on that album, similarly manages to drag an already dark song mercilessly darker. It’s one thing to add nuance to already great tunes, however, and something else to completely transform a work with less of a pedigree. “Wild is the Wind” is a Johnny Mathis love song written for an Italian romance in 1957. The lyrics are over-the-top saccharine:
“You’re Spring to me, all things to me, you’re life, itself. Just like a leaf clings to a tree, Oh my darling, Cling to me!”
Yet Simone keys on an element that isn’t on the surface, bringing a desperation to her interpretation, almost making it stalker-ish. It’s agonizing the way that she yearns for this man in such an all-consuming way, and she seems to know that her love can’t be reciprocated as strongly. Lest she be accused of being inescapably morose, she follows that track up with the traditional “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”, a song that she made one of her signature standards, and plays it purely, seductively romantic. I could gush over Nina Simone for several more paragraphs (my first daughter’s middle name is Simone, not by accident), but I expect I’ll get the chance to discuss her in future installments. For anyone who is curious about her, either of the albums released in 1966 are a solid starting point.
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6. Sounds of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel
Folk music is not my favorite form by any stretch, but it does offer a lot to enjoy when done well. Sincerity, for one, thoughtful lyrics, social commentary. What I tend to gravitate towards is a sort of serene beauty. On that front, you’d be hard pressed to find a better folk album than Sounds of Silence. It is on par with Neil Young’s After the Goldrush in terms of ear-pleasing joyfulness. Just listen to “April Come She Will” and tell me that there is a prettier two minutes of music in all of pop music. Paul Simon is one of America’s great lyricists, and that is apparent in even this early entry into his recording career. From the first verse (“Hello darkness, my old friend”) to the last (“And an island never cries”), Simon conjures enough political, religious and romantic imagery to make this the most well-written album of the year. No offense to Pet Sounds and Revolver, but the former record is practically juvenile by design, and for all the plaudits foisted upon the Beatles, the only one I will dispute is that they are some sort of lyrical geniuses. The main event is clearly the vocals, though. While Simon would go on to top himself from a song-writing perspective in his solo career, he would never replace the soulful purity of Art Garfunkel and the otherworldly harmonies that they produced as a pair. The album is almost cruelly short, clocking a mere half an hour, but it’s brevity only bolsters its impact.
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7. You Got My Mind Messed Up – James Carr
While Otis is a master of selling sadness and heartache, James Carr conveys utter devastation. Carr isn’t as well-known as many of the soul artists of the time, and doesn’t have the catalog to compete with them, but he did manage one stone masterpiece. You Got My Mind Messed Up is practically a concept album about getting shit on by love. Check out the song titles for two of the most devastating tracks: “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man” and “Dark End of the Street”. Sounds positively cheery, right? It’s tough to talk about Carr after I’ve already written about Redding, because they are very similar artists. Carr was in his twenties when he recorded this, but he reads as much older than his more famous counterpart. More wizened, perhaps, like late-career Solomon Burke. His voice carries the weight of whatever injustice has been perpetrated on him by the woman that is the subject of each tune. These aren’t silly little love songs, this is life-altering drama. The tracks are almost all covers, but the album quickly becomes a collection of the definitive versions of each one. This was a year with a slew of passionate and gritty soul music from Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and others, and Carr deserves his spot near the top of the stack.
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8. Mode for Joe – Joe Henderson
I mentioned the storied R&B record labels of Motown and Stax in the intro, but a case could be made that the greatest American record label of all time is Blue Note. It’s a stretch to state that every Blue Note record is a treasure, but the hit rate is absolutely amazing (see #2 on this list). Mode for Joe continues that tradition. In some ways, the album could be considered a little old fashioned. Despite its title, the music is far more hard bop than modal jazz – it sounds like Coltrane circa ’58 while Coltrane in ’66 was pushing hard into the free jazz and avant garde realm. Yet the further away you get from the release of an album, the less important is its context within prevailing trends, and the more it stands on its own merits. The merits here are considerable. Henderson employs a crack squad of musicians, including Lee Morgan on trumpet and the rhythm section of Ron Carter and Joe Chambers, and they combine to tear through a set of six impressively propulsive tunes. There are no ballads or slower spots, but the band manages to vary the sound considerably between tracks: “A Shade of Jade” is a late-night barroom bop number; the title track is a moody, mid-tempo track that sounds closer to late 50’s modal; “Caribbean Fire Dance”, as the title suggests, is exotic and intense. Having a trombone and vibraphone in the mix really adds some extra texture and makes the album a little heavier than it might have been otherwise, and that’s coming from someone who generally disdains vibraphone on jazz recordings. Ultimately, the album’s success is largely due to the excellent compositions that Henderson and the band wrote, and the fire that they bring to their performance.
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9. The Soul Album – Otis Redding
In my earlier review, I dismissed the Stax house band a bit by insinuating that they didn’t have to do much in support of the great Redding. That’s technically true, but also a bit misleading. Part of what makes Stax albums stand out so much is that they don’t have disinterested session musicians or obnoxious overdubs of strings and chimes that some other soul singers were saddled with. The band buys in, and by the third or fourth consecutive album with a particular artist, everything really comes together. Even more so than with the rest of the Stax stable, however, Redding fit in with Booker and the boys. They became an extension of one another, and while Otis could carry the day with his muscular voice, the instrumentation elevated the material even more. Most of the time you have a vocal and a backing track, and the two are ever so easily distinguishable. On The Soul Album, and their other collaborations, the band seems to have a telepathic link to the singer, matching his every whim. The rhythm section ratchets the intensity in perfect pace with Redding, while the horns provide a mirror-image of his moans and wails, like a dance partner that performs slightly different moves but never falls out of step. I gave a lot of thought to these last couple of spots on the list, and I nearly downgraded this album since Otis was already featured early in the countdown. But, this is supposed to represent the ten best albums of the year, and there’s no way to listen to the splendid unity between the world’s best singer and his perfect accompaniment, and argue that it doesn’t belong. The back half cools off a tiny bit in comparison to Dictionary of Soul, and that’s the hair I split to land it in the second half of the list.
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10. Sinatra at the Sands – Frank Sinatra
“We feel sorry for people that don’t drink, cause when you wake up in the morning that’s the best you’re gonna feel for the whole day.”
It feels a bit perverse giving the last spot of this list to 50-year-old Frank Sinatra when young talents like Tim Buckley, Bob Dylan and Buffalo Springfield were at the forefront of the culture in the mid-sixties and releasing excellent work. He’s undeniably a titan, however, and you’re unlikely to find him in a better setting. Sinatra studio albums are typically just a couple of hits padded with pleasant but ultimately forgettable filler. In some ways, Sinatra at the Sands functions as a bit of a best of album, but it’s not the concentration of great songs that earns it a spot on the list. Sands captures a performer who, sure, is great singer, but who is foremost an entertainer. We get a document of Sinatra working a crowd with the studied charm and coolness that made him legendary. The mid-song banter and name-dropping monologues are almost as much fun as the tunes. As for the music itself, you have one of the finest interpreters of American standards accompanied not by session musicians and overdubs, but by one of the greatest jazz outfits of all time. Count Basie and His Orchestra are the perfect support for Sinatra, highly talented in their own right, but comfortable laying back and ceding the spotlight to the chairman. Then you have arrangements by the great Quincy Jones, which is again, the perfect choice. All of these elements come together to create a flawless package. Listening to the album, you can easily drift back to that night half a century ago and picture the smoke drifting past the stage lights, the horn section genially laughing at Sinatra’s jokes, the martinis and the suits and the wide-framed glasses and the tipsy women in their finest jewelry.
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Honorable Mentions
Rock/Pop: East-West – The Butterfield Blues Band; A Quick One! – The Who; Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton – John Mayall; Buffalo Springfield – Buffalo Springfield; Sunshine Superman – Donovan; Face to Face – The Kinks; Fresh Cream – Cream
Jazz: The Far East Suite – Duke Ellington; Grrr – Hugh Masekela; Let It All Out – Nina Simone; Tauhid – Pharoah Sanders; Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth – Sun Ra; Alfie – Sonny Rollins; Strangers in the Night – Frank Sinatra
Soul: Ridin’ High – The Impressions; Moods of Marvin Gaye – Marvin Gaye; Double Dynamite – Sam & Dave; The Exciting Wilson Pickett – Wilson Pickett; Hold On, I’m Comin’ – Sam & Dave;
Folk/Country: Tim Buckley – Tim Buckley; Blonde on Blonde – Bob Dylan; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme – Simon & Garfunkel; Leavin’ Town – Waylon Jennings
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