Urban75 Album of the Year 1964

[belboid]

We should probably do a vote soon ..

good point. It was, seemingly, a surprisingly slim year for albums by what we'd think of as 'sixties' artists. I guess most were still just singles, with the rest of a long player being full of cover versions

 

[Idris2002]

The Chieftains released their first album in 1964



And I'd say it was better than anything else I've heard from that year, or am likely to hear.

 

[Idris2002]

Phil Ochs, All the News that's Fit to Sing, is from 1964



"Phil Ochs - the band Bob Dylan could have been."

 

[Idris2002]

Talking of which this appears to be the debut Stones album


Sounds pale imitation after the Bo Diddley tbh! That Bo record is the one

Discogs reckons theres 3 Stones ablums in 1964
Two more

https://www.discogs.com/master/30169-The-Rolling-Stones-12-X-5

https://www.discogs.com/master/188023-The-Rolling-Stones-Around-And-Around

That's a side of the Stones I didn't previously know. They're basically still a covers band at this point, but at this point I'd say they provided more all around fun than JPG&R.

 

[Idris2002]

The Dubliners in Concert is from 1964 apparently.

 

[ska invita]

I think Flora Purim is up top for me

sounding lovely on a warm day today

 

[Knotted]

We should probably do a vote soon ..

There's the cat hurding issue in that if I bring the date forward not everyone will see it and people remember the end of the month.

But still get your lists in. I haven't received any yet.

 

[Spandex]

Johnny Cash – Bitter Tears - Ballads Of The American Indian

A curiosity from The Man In Black:

A brief news item in the first Billboard issue of October 1964 notes that “Bitter Tears is the title of a new Indian album which Johnny Cash has just finished cutting for Columbia.” It also reveals that the album – AKA Ballads of the American Indian – was rushed out before this tiny announcement was made. Perhaps even then Cash knew the collection of Native American themed protest songs was, in essence, a side-road style experiment. After all, on the album before this, Cash appeared as a cowboy singing The Ballads of the True West, so Bitter Tears was always going to ruffle a few feathers. Indeed, upon its release it had a huge impact and was a seriously controversial record in the country music world. The sleeve notes proclaim that Cash “sings well these tales of the Indian’s woe [and] Johnny is justified in the stand he takes [as he] is proud of his Cherokee blood”.

It is worth remembering that in 1964 Cash was deep into his pills and whiskey trip. So while he may have convinced himself, and told many more, that he was of Native American stock, with both Cherokee and Mohawk blood in his veins, of course, he had neither. “The higher I got,” he told Penthouse magazine in 1975, “the more Indian blood I thought I had in me.” Meanwhile, the Ku Klux Klan was spreading a rumour through the southern states that his then wife, the devoutly catholic Vivian Liberto, was African American. Bookings were cancelled, record sales were affected, and the Klan even tried to abduct Cash from Nashville. Cash, being the innate badass he was, landed them with a $25m lawsuit. Anyway, it’s instructive to see this as a protest record – one that focused on a struggle much less fashionable than the civil rights movement of the time. The key track (like four others on the album) was written by folk singer, former rodeo cowboy, playwright, actor and one-time navy intelligence operative Peter La Farge, whose Ballad of Ira Hayes is a song that tells the story of the Native American from Pima, Arizona, who was among those to raise the US flag at Iwo Jima. Of course, when Hayes returned to the US he met only discrimination, humiliation and poverty; he died an alcoholic, drowned in a ditch. La Farge famously claimed to be a descendant of Rhode Island’s virtually extinct Narragansett Indian tribe and said he was raised as Tewa Indian, so you can be sure there’s plenty of good, strong appropriation and no small amount of paternalism on show here. But Bitter Tears remains an angry and pointedly political album. This is “Indian country” music that decries wholesale cultural dispossession even while Cash poses with a leather belt tied “Native-style” around his head on the cover – but it’s also beautifully realised. Recorded over just two hot June nights, Bitter Tears may not have been Johnny Cash’s most popular album. In fact, he took out a full-page advert in the music press that autumn to harangue DJs and radio station owners for not playing it more. But it’s a fascinating tributary flowing from the great snaking river of this most impressive of careers.

 

[Indeliblelink]

And I guess the above leads onto Buffy Sainte-Marie

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/buffy-sainte-marie

 

[Knotted]

Just remembered. Last year I ruled Raymond Scott's three volume Soothing Sounds for Baby a 1964 release. Don't forget to vote for it!!!!

Also don't forget to vote.

Urban75 Album of the Year 1963

Well I recon this is a good un. We have that rare Dylan period after he got good and before he went bad :p. First two Beatles albums which... well OK. Something extraordinary from Charles Mingus and various bluegrass, folk, bossa nova, wall of sound soul-pop and lots and lots of hard/post bop...

www.urban75.net

 

[Knotted]

I haven't had much time to devote finding new things but I have found this skiffle monster:



Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers

 

[Knotted]

I've not heard of Joseph Spence before. Bahamian doing something that seems to be a cross between caribbean folk and delta blues . Incredibly gruff vocals and some splanky nimble guitar. This is amazing.

 

[nogojones]

and people remember the end of the month.

do we?

 

[Knotted]

Album releases from Muddy Waters, Fred McDowell, Bukka White, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Witherspoon, Jesse Fuller and Sleepy John Este and Reverentd Gary Davis this year. Most of them did better albums and most of them aren't particularly suited to the album format. I'm still over the two Fred Mcdowell albums and the Bukka White.

 

[Knotted]

do we?

There's a distinction between remember something is at the end of the month and knowing it's the end of the month when it comes round. I feel if I give an end of the month deadline, we're at least half way there.

Speaking of which you all have until Sunday evening.

ska invita
nogojones
Spandex
zahir
hitmouse
belboid
The39thStep
Idris2002
Fez909
Indeliblelink
maomao
DaveCinzano
Superdupastupor
andysays
Sasaferrato

 

[maomao]

The only album that John Fahey ever did 'on marijuana and whiskey'.

 

[ska invita]

Been listening to this, this morning. It's lovely

https://www.discogs.com/master/163817-Herbie-Hancock-Inventions-And-Dimensions

supposedly this was almost completely improvised
" On every song but one, the melodies and chords were improvised"

 

[maomao]

My next door neighbours dad had this album and we used to play at being (crap radio one) djs with it.



Makes my top three on the basis of being only the third album I recognise from 1964.

 

[Indeliblelink]

Shame the Noveltones 1964 album, 'Flute Salad', doesn't include this classic -

 

[ska invita]

quick glance no albums i really love that I know , but just saw this is 1964
All Time Favourite Record - play it loud - Killer Jimmy Smith organ with amazing punching hard big band arrangements (arranged by Lalo Schifrin)...loads of quiet then loud smacks around the head - have played this countless times
no cocktail organ tunes here - pure fire

https://www.discogs.com/release/1103510-The-Incredible-Jimmy-Smith-The-Cat

as its says on the liner notes - the cat, equally at home in the alley and the penthouse!!! love that

people might recognise Carpetbaggers - the theme from the Money Programme in the 80s

just had a look at the discogs page for the cat..there have been 92 releases of this album with a new one near enough every year somewhere in the world since it first came out in 64...this is a timeless and i didnt realise it before but clearly well loved classic around the world...played it three times since this thread got posted never gets tired....

 

[Serge Forward]

Blimey! 1964 was amazing! I was only lickle so have little recollection of it. Fantastic though!

 

[Serge Forward]

This from Sam Cooke.

Features this...

 

[belboid]

Features this...

one of the greatest B-sides ever