37. Various Artists - A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963)

1. White Christmas

2. Frosty the Snowman *

3. The Bells of Saint Mary's

4. Santa Claus is Coming to Town *

5. Sleigh Ride

6. Marshmallow World

7. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

8. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

9. Winter Wonderland

10. Parade of the Wooden Soldiers

11. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

12. Here Comes Santa Claus

13. Silent Night

B

So lets get this straight - Phil Spector was a piece of shit. He sabotaged Ronnie Spector's career by keeping her hostage in his house (allegedly). He sexually assaulted his children (allegedly). He was eventually found guilty of straight-up murder (confirmed). And to top it all off, he looked like a cross between Nosferatu and a Ferenghi. But at the same time, he produced a lot of beautiful music, and his influence is absolutely astonishing. How many people can claim to have been a primary influence on artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Ramones, the Velvet Underground and the Jesus and Mary Chain? If not for his famous "Wall of Sound" production technique, we might never have had My Bloody Valentine.

So I guess the question should be asked here, at the earliest opportunity, because honestly it's going to come up a lot over the course of this project. And that question is: Is it possible to separate the artist from their art? It's something the whole Me Too movement, and the numerous shocking revelations over the past half decade or so, have forced a lot of people to grapple with. For my own part, I used to count Kevin Spacey as one of my very favourite actors, and now I feel squeamish about the idea of watching The Usual Suspects again.

I think (and this is just my poorly thought-out opinion) that it depends on the extent to which the artist's personality enters into the work. Phil Spector may have been a pretty crummy guy, but none of that really enters into his music. Spacey, on the other hand, made a career playing duplicitous slime balls, and so it's hard not to be reminded of his transgressions when watching his work. So I think in general I come down on the side of keeping a separation between the art and the artist for one reason - most famous people are jerks. (In fact, most people are jerks - I know I've got a few skeletons in my cupboard). It's only when the art is a reflection of or promotion of the shittiness of the artists that you should really stop engaging with it. Because if we stop engaging with art because the artists behind it were terrible people, pretty soon there won't be much art left to enjoy.

With that out of the way, on to the album. And honestly - it's nice I guess? It's honestly just a collection of Christmas songs, all very well-produced and performed I suppose. I guess its position and the reverence felt towards it has less to do with any intrinsic value than because this is one of the only cohesive artistic statements that Phil Spector made. There might have been a time, back in the early 60s, when it sounded incredibly fresh and exciting; but after sixty years of being battered with Christmas music in every conceivable genre it's just another (albeit a pretty good) collection of songs. Still, it has to bear the burden of representing all the early-60s girl group sounds on this list, and so from a perspective of providing historical context I can certainly see why it was included in the Book. 

There are a few obvious highlights, though. The version of "Frosty the Snowman" is one of the very best, and the production prefigures songs like the Beach Boys' gorgeous "Don't Worry Baby" (apparently this album was a favourite of Brian Wilson's). "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" has a chorus so ecstatic that it practically leaps out of the speakers and give you a kiss. And then of course there's the jewel in the crown of the record, and possibly of Spector's career - the wonderful original composition "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)". In contrast to every other song on the album, all of which celebrate the joy of the season, this one song is a sad reflection on how Christmas is about the people you're with, or rather not with. It's a beautiful song as well as an incredibly catchy one.

Unfortunately the album concludes with a spoken word coda by Spector read over the top of "Silent Night". So you can't really escape the creep. Unless I guess you turn the CD off one song early or delete the song from your MP3 player. 

Anyway, this is a brilliant album from a technical standpoint, prefiguring many important developments in pop and rock and epitomising the "Wall of Sound" and the girl group aesthetic that so many cherish. Unfortunately, it's also just a bunch of stupid Christmas songs recorded by an (alleged) child molester.

36. Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

1. Blowin' in the Wind

2. Girl from the North Country*

3. Masters of War

4. Down the Highway

5. Bob Dylan's Blues

6. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall*

7. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

8. Bob Dylan's Dream

9. Oxford Town

10. Talkin' World War III Blues*

11. Corrina, Corrina

12. Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance

13. I Shall Be Free

A

Well it took a while but we finally got there - an album of guitar music with decent lyrics. Of course Bob Dylan is known for his lyrics, often to the point where people overlook his skill as a musician and bandleader. This, an early work, shows him by himself with harmonica and guitar (with the exception of "Corrina, Corrina", which features drum and bass). And it really shows him at his best.

I'd say Dylan wrote better songs than this, but did he ever really write a song better than "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"? Well. yes. He wrote "Like  A Rolling Stone" and "Visions of Johanna". But even so, "Hard Rain" is a truly amazing song, and a defining moment in twentieth century music. No-one's quite sure what it's about, but it's brilliant and terrifying and it pointed the way for a thousand folk-singers who wanted to march into the heart of darkness and strike a chord and sing of hope. Then you have a beautiful ballad like "The Girl from North Country", which is almost too pretty for words; and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", which is one of the most elegant put-downs and kiss-offs in popular music. 

A thing not enough people talk about, however (except, allegedly, for Don McLean) is how funny Dylan could be. And really one of my favourite songs on the album is "Talkin' World War III Blues", which is a pitch perfect satire of the whole notion of apocalypse, from the idea that it's improbable to the notion every person has that they'll be the one who survives.

That said, this is not a perfect album. "Down the Highway" is inconsequential, repetitive, and boring. And frankly, "Bob Dylan's Dream" is the sort of thing a lot of people might like, but as a guy who never experienced the wonder and excitement of being young and having a bunch of stupid, idealistic friends, I find it droning and tedious.

The result is a mixed-bag of an album. For every "Masters of War", all doom and gloom, you have something hilarious like "I Shall Be Free". It's a fine album that shows Dylan's range. True, you have to sit through "Blowin' in the Wind", but I guess every silver lining has its cloud.

Really, though, what this shows is perhaps the most revered songwriter of all time just stretching out and trying the waters, before he became the voice of his generation and was forced to consider every move he made. The title says it all, really - this is Bob Dylan as a young man cutting loose.

35. The Beatles - With the Beatles (1963)

1. It Won't Be Long *

2. All I've Got to Do

3. All My Loving*

4. Don't Bother Me*

5. Little Child

6. Til There Was You

7. Please Mr. Postman

8. Roll Over Beethoven

9. Hold Me Tight

10. You've Really Got a Hold on Me

11. I Wanna Be Your Man

12. Devil in Her Heart

13. Not a Second Time

14. Money (That's What I Want)

B+

So we finally get to the Beatles, a band that could be described as the Beatles of popular music. 

If you're like me, then when you think of the Beatles you think of their late 60s output, where they basically rewrote the book on popular music. It's kind of ironic, then, that a band directly responsible for progressive rock and the overproduced crap that punk was a reaction against started out as a scrappy R&B combo whose modus operandi was one that's been repeated countless times and always works - take the hits of your youth, strip them to the basics, turn the volume up to 11, and you've got a fresh new sound. 

This album really captures the Beatles during their "rough-edged pub rock" phase. The overall sound could be described as tuneful caterwauling. Lennon and McCartney were good singers at this point, but their voices were still raw and untrained. The production on the album is also dense and almost claustrophobic. All of this works to the music's benefit, though. The result is a raw, thrilling sound that must have sounded utterly liberating to teens in the early Sixties. It still packs a considerable punch today. Of course, the Fab Four would go on to refine their sound to the point where they were unrecognisable from their early works. No-one listening to With the Beatles could have predicted that these four people (and George Martin) would got on to produce "Eleanor Rigby" or "A Day in the Life". I suppose that they did is probably a result of two principle factors - firstly, that as the biggest band in the world they felt obligated to push the envelope, and secondly that this position atop the charts gave them enormous creative clout.

Of course, when With the Beatles was released the Beatles were not yet the biggest band in the world. This album shows them in their final moments before Beatlemania hit, when they were just a popular rock band doing covers of 50s R&B hits. That said, the album is impressive for its reliance on original compositions - only six of the fourteen songs here are covers, and really the originals hold up pretty well. In fact, "It Won't Be Long", with it's incredible call-and-response chorus, is perhaps the best song on the album, and one hell of an opener. And while "All My Loving" sounds out of place on this album, that doesn't change the fact that it's a great song. And the George Harrison number "Don't Bother Me" may not have particularly brilliant lyrics, but it's very catchy, and shows Harrison already experimenting with the odd, droning harmonies that would result in songs like "Within You Without You". Meanwhile, through it all Ringo Starr cements his position as the most underrated drummer in popular music - he may not be John Bonham, but his drumming was integral to the Beatles sound, and he more than made up in creativity for what he lacked in chops. 

So this is a pretty solid album. The Beatles show that they can write good songs while simultaneously failing to match the original versions of the songs they cover, and the result is an uneven, weird, yet ultimately charming mess. And given all the tensions and excesses and strange experiments that would follow, it's kind of nice to see the band like this, just focusing on putting out a solid record of rock songs. 

34. Ray Price - Night Life (1963)

1. Introduction and Theme/ Night Life*

2. Lonely Street

3. The Wild Side of Life*

4. Sittin' and Thinkin'*

5. The Twenty-Fourth Hour

6. A Girl in the Night

7. Pride

8. There's No Fool Like a Young Fool

9. If She Could See Me Now

10. Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women

11. Are You Sure

12. Let Me Talk to You

A-

More country music, and this time it's a concept album. The concept is stated pretty clearly in the introduction (which, annoyingly, is merged with the title track so that you can't listen to one without the other). This is an album about late nights, drinking in bars, wasting your youth and losing everything to excess. It's a very dark album, but also quite a beautiful one. Ray Price has an astonishing voice, and he's backed up by some wonderful playing from his band (oddly enough called the Cherokee Cowboys). The sound of this album is cavernous and haunting, and the sense of loneliness and displacement this engenders is only heightened by the liberal use of a mournful steel guitar. There are also string embellishments, a little piano, and some back up vocals - all of which was apparently a subtle step forward for this kind of music (honky tonk) at the time of release.

What really makes this album, though, is the lyrics. In reading about Ray Charles for Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music I discovered that one of the main draws of country, for him, was the lyrical honesty and willingness to deal with the dark side of life head-on. That certainly describes this album. The unified theme of the songs allows Price and company to explore some very dark subject matter. Many of the people in these songs are trapped - some by alcohol, some by love, and most by the terrible feeling that they simply have no place else to go. If you've ever found yourself unlucky in love, stumbling back to the same bar every night in the desperate hope of finding a connection, or of at least drinking away your problems, then this album can be highly affecting.

There are a couple of weak songs - "A Girl in the Night", for example, is a good idea (Price wondering about what brings a girl in the audience to the same bar every night, all alone), but is kind of mawkish in its execution. And of course this is the most countryish of country, which might be a stumbling block for some people. Personally, though, once I got used to the fact that it's a genre I don't usually listen to, I found it wonderful. Truth be told, I had to listen to it two or three times before I reached that point, but it was well worth the effort. 

If anyone is reading this (which my stats section says is definitely not the case), then be excited for the next couple of entries, where I manage to trivialise the contributions of two of the true titans of popular music.

33. Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd - Jazz Samba (1962)

1. Desafinado*

2. Samba Dees Days

3. O Pato

4. Samba Triste *

5. Samba de Uma Nota So*

6. E Luxo So

7. Bahia 

A-

So the inclusion of this album in the Book raises some questions. On the one hand, it's a beautiful piece of work that helped introduce the Western World to the wonderful music that is Bossa Nova. On the other hand, its inclusion kind of shows the bias that this book has towards Western artists, and to American and British artists in particular. I mean, surely there were great Bossa Nova albums before this. I know for a fact there were - Elizete Cardoso's Cancao do Amor Demais is a beautiful piece of work, for example. But I guess rather than stretching out and including a Brazilian album it made more sense to just include this one. It shows the central contradiction in the Book - on the one hand, it wants to be a greatest albums compilation, but on the other hand it's trying to be a comprehensive overview of the pop canon that shows the development of popular music for the last seventy years. I suppose within those parameters it does pretty OK, but there are some choices that bother me (don't even get me started on the inexplicable album choices for Bjork).

Anyway, putting all that aside this is a pretty great album. The only real misstep is the inclusion of the Charlie Byrd original "Samba Dees Days", which can't hold a candle to the compositions by Brazilian composers. And really, the music is very beautiful. Stan Getz is a natural fit for this sort of music and would of course go on to play on Getz/Gilberto, one of the prettiest albums ever recorded. Charlie Byrd is a solid enough guitar player, but if I'm being honest I find his playing slightly stiff and his tone a little metallic for this sort of music. He occasionally lapses into bluesy phrases and scales that don't quite mesh, and I would have preferred if he'd played a nylon string guitar. The rhythm section is pretty solid, and the impact of the introduction of traditional Brazilian rhythms in a jazz pop format can't really be overstated.

That said, I can't think of much else to say. This is a very pretty, very well-played, and very well-produced album. It's an incredibly classy listen. There's a degree of refinement and melancholia on this album that transports you to another world - one of quiet nights of quiet stars, perhaps? It's not hard to see how this album blew so many minds when it came out. It sounds like it was recorded on another planet - one of a gentle tristesse spent in the company of a drink with an umbrella in it, as one reflects on the highs and lows of life.

Anyway it's very pretty. And it meets my criteria for a great album - complex, rhythmically and harmonically challenging music that still manages to be a nice listen. 

32. Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Green Onions (1962)

1. Green Onions*

2. Rinky Dink

3. I Got a Woman

4. Mo' Onions

5. Twist and Shout

6. Behave Yourself*

7. Stranger on the Shore

8. Lonely Avenue

9. One Who Really Loves You

10. You Can't Sit Down

11. A Woman, a Lover, a Friend

12. Comin' Home Baby*

B

Well this album is worth it for the title track alone. "Green Onions" is one of those songs everyone's heard and everyone loves. It must have sounded impossibly cool in 1962, and it still sounds amazing today. There's really not much to it, just a few simple riffs shuffled around a bit with Steve Cropper's snarling guitar playing short, sharp licks over the top of it. One thing that really strikes me about it is the rhythm section - "Green Onions" has a drum and bass part that sounds remarkably modern with its hard, tight groove. It's the sort of hard-edged, rock solid performance that would come to define the Stax sound in the 1960s.

The rest of the album is pretty good, too, even if it can't possibly live up to the first track. Tracks 2 through 4 are kind of cheesy and forgettable, though. The album doesn't really recover until the fizzy, high energy cover of "Twist and Shout". After that high point the music settles into a series of quieter, more soulful jams that really show off Booker T. Jones' incredible organ playing and the band's ability to lock into a groove. I may have been a bit hard on that Jimmy Smith album a while back, but truth be told I love the sound of the organ, and this album really shows its possibilities in a pop setting. 

So this is an impressive debut. When an album is built around a gimmick (in this case, the organ), there's always the risk it's just going to devolve into a novelty album. But the quality of musicianship here is incredibly impressive, and the song choices are mostly great. That said, I haven't much to say about it. This is obviously an important album - there are tracks here that sound like Curtis Mayfield, and others that clearly point the way towards the keyboard-driven funk of the Meters. And of course the M.G.'s were architects of the Stax sound. This is well worth hunting down, just don't expect the whole album to be as good as "Green Onions".

31. Ray Charles - Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962)

1. Bye Bye Love

2. You Don't Know Me*

3. Half as Much

4. I Love You So Much It Hurts*

5. Just a Little Lovin' (Will Go a Long Way)

6. Born to Lose

7. Worried Mind

8. It Makes No Difference Now

9. You Win Again

10. Careless Love

11. I Can't Stop Loving You*

12. Hey, Good Lookin'

A

Well apparently this is one of the most important albums ever recorded - an album which, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, broke down the barriers which had existed between pop, R&B, jazz, soul and country, creating an effectively new approach to popular music which defied the then-popular classification of music as "Black" or "White". All well and good, and Charles deserves credit for taking such a big risk. The only question is, "Does that risk pay off?"

Well honestly, this is one of those albums I had to listen to a lot just to get into the right headspace to appreciate it. Believe it or not, big band R&B arrangements of country and western music are not the sort of thing I care to listen to on a regular basis. It doesn't help that Charles seems to be enamoured with kitschy background choirs that defy the term "modern" even for 1962. Thankfully, they only mar a few tracks. Overall this is quite a good album.

 It's really only country in the loosest sense of the term - from a modern perspective, anyway. The shock value of its initial release has been severely diluted by the eclecticism of popular music in the years following its release. With that out of the way, it's possible to focus on the quality of the music. And it's pretty great, if you like that sort of thing. With the exception of the over-the-top choirs, this album is beautifully arranged. There are lush string arrangements and big, brassy moments, but also songs like "It Makes No Difference Now" which are built around simple horn vamps and where the focus is mostly on Charles' marvellous vocals. The one criticism I'd level at it is that there aren't really any obvious standouts. As good as this album is, it doesn't have anything to match the power and beauty of the last three songs on The Genius of Ray Charles. The result is an album of remarkable consistency that lacks that edge necessary to push it up to true greatness.

On a side note, Queen Elizabeth II died today. I really don't know how to feel about that. I mean, she's been around for years. One of the great constants in my life is gone. Very odd. Now I'll have to get used to celebrating the King's Birthday.

30. The Bill Evans Trio - Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961)

1. Gloria's Steps*

2. My Man's Done Gone*

3. Solar

4. Alice in Wonderland (Take 2)*

5. All of You

6. Jade Visions

A

The Book is really forcing me to ask myself the question "How much jazz is too much jazz?" 

I mean, don't get me wrong - I like jazz well enough. But it's definitely not my favourite genre of music, and I'm starting to suffer from jazz exhaustion as a result. 

That might be one reason why, even though this is often ranked as one of the greatest jazz albums, I'm only giving it a straight A. It's very, very good, but not entirely my cup of tea. Any given track on this album is great, but listening to them all in a row multiple times kind of wore me out. 

Still, focus on the positive. This is a very pretty album. Really, it's some of the prettiest music I've heard. And the highly improvisational nature of the music means that every track shifts and changes in a way that creates a wonderful atmosphere. The playing by all three members is also astonishing. Bassist Scott LaFaro is especially impressive. Apparently he died shortly after the sessions from which this album was cut were recorded, and as a result Bill Evans selected the tracks specifically to highlight his playing. And really, it's very strange. All three musicians seem to be soloing at once, but everything holds together beautifully.

Then again, that's one thing that irks me about fans of music that requires a high degree of musicianship. At some point they stop caring if the music is any good and just start getting high on the complexity of the playing. And while this is a beautiful and impressive album, one complaint I have is that there isn't a single memorable tune. I suppose this is part of the point of the music - seeing how far the trio can stray from the original composition without losing its essence - but it still kind of bugs me. I like this stuff, but I guess I'm just not cut out to be a serious jazz fan.

Vituperative asides aside, I really did enjoy this. I don't understand it but I enjoyed it, especially the way it defies expectations of how the three different instruments complement each other. The whole soloist/accompanist dichotomy basically gets thrown out the window. And it is, as I said, very pretty.

Interestingly, there aren't any tracks written by Evans himself on this album. I think they were held over for a second album of material recorded during those sessions at the Vanguard. So while I greatly admire the man's playing, I can't make any comment on his abilities as a composer. Oh well.

So this is faultless on a technical level but lacks that edge to make it perfect musically. This is my blog and that is my opinion.  The End.