Some of my favorite albums (Page 2)

Paul Kennerley, who wrote all of the songs on this album, is a British-born songwriter, musician, singer and producer. In the 1970s he wrote this album, and it was released in 1980. It features a star-studded lineup, including Levon Helm, Johnny Cash, Charie Daniels, Emmylou Harris, Albert Lee and others. He was married to Emmylou Harris from 1985 to 1993. I love this album. I think it must be one of the best albums ever that almost no one has heard of. I bought this album in March 1981. The selected song is "One More Shot" - Spoiler Alert! Jesse gets shot in the end. Actually in the back!
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BB King was one of the greatest blues singers ever and not a bad guitar player either! I had the pleasure of seeing him live a number of times, and he and his band were always outstanding. This album was recorded November 21, 1964 at the Regal Theater in Chicago. I bought this album (a Pickwick Records re-release of the original ABC recording, which apparently is missing one track from the original - I've got the CD which is complete) in April 1978. BB's signature songs are probably "Every Day I Have The Blues", listed here, and "The Thrill Is Gone" (not on this album). The tracks on this album showcase not only BB's and the band's talent, but they also show BB's sense of humor. The blues ain't always "blue".
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SRV was a great guitarist, named on some lists as one of the ten best of all time (I'd have to think about that). He was a tremendous blues guitarist, influenced by such players as Albert King, Jimi Hendrix and his older brother Jimmy, and many others. And I think I detect a hint of Lonnie Mack on my selected track here. But he also had a jazzy side with Kenny Burrell and his album "Midnight Blue" as a big influence. Stevie Ray had battled drug and alcohol problems for a number of years, but he had finally cleaned himself up when he tragically died in a helicopter crash in 1990. "In Step" was released in 1989, and it was his last studio album.
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The members of Led Zeppelin got together in 1968, originally calling themselves the "New Yardbirds". The name was soon changed, however, to "Led Zeppelin" before their self-titled first album was released (in the U.S.) in January 1969. This selected album, "Houses of the Holy", was released in 1973, and I bought it in June 1977. It received mixed reviews, but it's always been a favorite of mine. In 2012, Rolling Stone selected it as number 148 on their list of the all-time greatest albums.
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This album was released in 1969, and I bought it in June 1970. Strangely enough, I did not like this album when I first heard it. I thought it was rough and somehow non-musical. Evidently my tastes changed, because when I went back to it several years later, I discovered how good it really is. I could have picked pretty much any song on it for my selected track (except maybe "Moby Dick", with its interminable drum solo), but "Whole Lotta Love" is probably the most well-known track, and it's a real showpiece for both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
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Jerry Lee Lewis is one of "Fathers" of rock'n'roll. He was slightly later among the Sun Records stars to record under his own name (although he performed as a session musician on many 1956 tracks), following Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and, of course, Elvis Presley. He broke out in 1957 with the giant hits "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire". In 1958 his star crashed and burned with the news that he had married his thirteen-year old cousin. It took a number of years before he was rejuvenated as a country music star. Lewis is widely recognized as a great influence on many rockers for his uninhibited performance style and especially for his piano playing. I bought this album in August 1978.
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As I noted on the previous entry, Jerry Lee's career had foundered in 1958. In the late 1960's he had a comeback as a country music star, with his "Another Place, Another Time" becoming a surprise hit. He had at least seventeen top-10 hits in the following decade. Jerry Lee had always played country music, going back to his first recording, "Crazy Arms", in 1956. This album selection, "Killer Country", was released in 1980, and I bought it in November of that year. Lewis not only does straight country songs on this album, but showed that he could still rock with anybody on my selected track, "Folsom Prison Blues". Turn it up loud! He also throws in an unusual and melancholy version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which is terrific.
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Kenny Loggins was a relatively unknown singer/songwriter when he was signed by Columbia Records. He was teamed with producer Jim Messina, who had had previous success with Buffalo Springfield and Poco. The two collaborated so well on the successful first album that a new duo was created. Their second album, listed here, continued their success. I had the pleasure of seeing the group live in about 1974. I bought this album in July 1973. The selected track is a rocker with a dreamy middle part which features those Telecaster guitars we love so much.
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The first time I heard Lacy J. Dalton was singing "Takin' It Easy" on the local country radio station. I'm not sure when that was, but the song was a number-2 hit in 1981. I loved the record and her singing. Like Petula Clark, shown on page 1 of this list, she sings great sings in a clear, straight-forward way. Lacy J has not had any big hits since the 1980s, but she has continued to produce excellent albums. I bought this one in October 1984.
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As I think I mentioned earlier in this list, there are some double albums where you love all four sides and some where you really prefer just one of the albums. This is one of the latter kind. I really enjoy the first two sides of this album (that is, disk 1 of the CD), but I find the rest of it (disk 2 of the CD) to be sort of tedious. But Disk 1 is good enough to make this list. It includes two Hendrix numbers - "Red House" and "Voodoo Chile" -, several Marino originals, and my selected entry, which is a medley of four tracks and which is a part of a much longer medley. It starts with the Zombies' "She's Not There", follows with a Cream tribute of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", returns to "She's Not There", and finishes with a reprise of their original "Poppy" which started the medley. It's just too long to include the whole thing here. This live album was recorded in 2001. I listen to and like many different kinds of music, but when it's hard rock, I want the guitarists to give everything they've got. This one satisfies. Turn it up!
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Unlike the previous entry, this is a double album that I like everything on it. It was released in October 1972, and was a "Best of" collection culled from the first seven Steve Miller Band albums. Thankfully, this was before Miller discovered the synthesizer. It featured a bunch of well-known guests including Paul McCartney, Buddy Spicher on violin, the great Charlie McCoy on harmonica, Lee Michaels on organ, Nicky Hopkins on keyboards and others. I could have picked many of the sixteen tracks for display here, but I chose "Going To Mexico" for the vocals (by Steve), his Hendrix-flavored guitar and the catchy lyrics. I bought this album in july 1973.
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This album was released in 1966, and it took Rick away from his "teen idol" days of "Hello Mary Lou" and "Travelin' Man". He had always been (and remains) a favorite of mine going back to the days when he would finish up the old "Ozzie and Harriet" show by lip-synching his latest hit. He was, I guess, never the greatest singer of his time, but he was good enough, he had good songs, and, of course, he had James Burton and that twangy Fender Telecaster. James plays a lot of dobro on here, including on my selected track. This album was not a critical or popular favorite, failing to crack the country or pop charts. I bought it in July 1966, and it's become one of my favorites, not only for listening to, but also for playing along with. I had the great pleasure to see Rick live
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This album was released in 1975 to somewhat mixed critical reviews but great commercial success. It is a country "concept" album based on the title song, which was written in the 1950s by Edith Lindeman Calisch and Carl Stutz. It has minimal instrumentation and short songs or snippets of songs. Overall I can take Willie Nelson or leave him, but I do like this album a lot. I bought it originally on a cassette tape (remember those?) in the '80s or maybe '70s.
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I believe Harry Nilsson was a great singer and songwriter. I consider this album and the two that follow to be among those "all-time great" albums I talked about in the beginning of this list. This album was recorded in 1973 with Gordon Jenkins as arranger and leader of an orchestra of veteran session players. If you're looking for rock and roll, don't look here - this album is all ballad "standards" performed as they should be by a singer who could do it. The original release has only twelve of the songs he recorded, but a later re-release includes the others. A live "re-creation" of the session can be found on YouTube.
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Harry was a terrific songwriter as well as singer. The other two Nilsson albums on my list here do not include any Nilsson originals. But this album includes a number of originals. Some of his songs on this album have been covered by Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Sinead O'Connor, Michael Nesmith and others. It also features Harry's multi-tracked vocals, catchy melodies and sense of humor. It was released in 1969, and I bought it in March 1970. This is another "all-time great".
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Randy Newman has an unusual sense of humor which displays in his songs. This album is all Newman songs performed by Harry. The instrumentation is sparse: mostly just Newman's piano backing up Harry's vocals. But the tracks are enriched by Nilsson's multitracking of his voice. The album was released in 1970, and my notes say I bought it in August 1976, although I thought I had it earlier. Like the "Schmilsson" album above, this one is not for rockers. It's mostly ballads - some humorous, some sentimental. The selected track, "Caroline", was reportedly written especially for this album. This is yet another "all-time great".
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Dickie Betts was one of the original members of the Allman Brothers Band, and this album was his first under his own name. Recorded and released in 1974, it leans heavily toward a country flavor. It features one of my favorite musicians, Vasser Clements, on the fiddle, steel guitarist John Hughey, Chuck Leavell of the later Allman Brothers, and many others. All but one of the songs were written by Betts. The selected track, "Hand Picked", is an all-instrumental romp with Dickie, John, and especially Vasser, trading licks, and with Chuck taking an extended solo. It's fourteen minutes long, but worth the listen. This is another album I love to play along with. I was lucky enough to see the Allman Brothers live in 1974 at the "August Jam" in Charlotte, NC, and to see Betts and his band live in 2009 at an outdoor concert in Roanoke, VA. I bought this album in November 1979.
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Three of my very most favorite movies of all time are "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly", "Once Upon A Time In America", and "Once Upon A Time In The West". All three were created by director Sergio Leone, and all featured musical scores by Ennio Morricone. Once Upon A Time In The West" included a blockbuster cast including Charles Bronson, Claudio Cardinale, Jason Robards, and, remarkably, Henry Fonda as the bad guy - a SERIOUSLY bad guy. The music is integral to the film - each main character is associated with a "leitmotif" which is heard when that character appears. The title track, which I've selected here, is a beautiful melody played by the orchestra and vocalized by Edda Dell'Orso. A shortened version of the film was released in the U.S. in 1969 to not very favorable reviews, but it has since gained critical support and has been cited as an influence by directors Scorsese, Lucas and Tarantino.
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"Meddle" was recorded in 1971 and released in October of that year. I bought it March 1974. I first heard this album in 1973 when I returned to college and met a roommate who played "Echoes" as a "going-to-sleep" lullaby. "Echoes" takes the entire side two of this album, and it would be my selection choice except that at 23 minutes it's just a little too long. I chose "San Tropez", a sort of jazzy shuffle by Roger Waters. (I've played this tune myself with accompaniment from my trusty Yamaha PSS-480 keyboard.) The album at its introduction was generally critically approved, and, although it was commercially successful in Great Britain, it did not sell well in the U.S. due to lacklaster support from the record company.
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Certainly there was Rock 'n' Roll before Sam Phillips recorded Elvis in his Sun Studio in Memphis in 1954. It grew long before that from country music, rhythm and blues, jazz and swing, and blues. But it's at least doubtful whether it would have become the international force it grew into without Sam's recordings of Elvis and later Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison. Of course, Elvis really took off in 1956 when, on the strength of his Sun popularity, he was signed by RCA, and the rest, you might say, is "history". But it all began here, with Elvis, the great Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on bass and later with drummers Jimmie Lott and Johnny Bernero (sometimes attributed to D.J. Fontana), and that "slap-back echo". My selection here, "Mystery Train", is an all-time classic.
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Okay, now we come to Roy Orbison. He is without a doubt my all-time number 1 musical hero. He was not only a great singer, but also a great songwriter who wrote or co-wrote many wonderful songs, many of which you know ("Crying" - selection 47 below, "Pretty Woman", "Only The Lonely", "Blue Bayou", and my selection here, "In Dreams" along with many others) and many more which you may not know ("Borne on the Wind", coming up on the next entry, "Ride Away" on entry 48, and way more than I can list here). Roy was originally signed by Sam Phillips at Sun Records, where he recorded the rockabilly "Ooby Dooby". After a brief unsuccessful stint at RCA, he signed with Monument Records, where he achieved stardom with hits such as "Only The Lonely", "Running Scared", "Crying", and, of course, "Pretty Woman". The "In Dreams" album was released in 1963, and the title song was a top-10 hit in countries all around the world. I bought this album in March 1965. I consider it and the following three albums to be "all-time greats".
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This album was released in 1964, and featured his singles from the last year or so, including, among others, "In Dreams", "Working For The Man", "It's Over", "Blue Bayou", and Willie Nelson's "Pretty Paper". My selection is "Borne On The Wind". This beautiful song has a distinct Spanish flavor, and it's far removed from most of the pop ballads of the day. It was released as a single in 1964. It did not chart in the U.S. but continued Roy's popularity in the United Kingdom countries. Previously Roy had composed his songs either by himself or with Joe Melson. During this time he began to write with Bill Dees. This selection is one of the many great Orbison-Dees compositions. I bought the album in the fall of 1964.
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Roy's first compilation album was released in 1962 and contained his Monument Records hits from 1959's "Uptown" to 1962. The biggest hits were 1960's "Only The Lonely" (#2), "Running Scared" (#1) and "Crying" (#2) from 1961, and "Dream Baby" (#4) in 1962. All these except "Dream Baby" were written by Roy and Joe Melson, as were most of the other songs on the album. My selection "Crying" is perhaps the best-known song due to its reworking in 1987 with k.d. lang. I bought this one in the fall of 1964.
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Roy was riding high in 1964 with "Pretty Woman" which reached number 1 in the U.S. and in many other countries around the world. It was, in fact, one of the top-5 records for the entire year in the U.S. (The Beatles, of course, were #1 and #2.) But that was to be his last top-10 charting. His popularity dimmed in the U.S. (if not so much overseas), but not his vocal talent nor his amazing song writing. He left Monument Records for MGM with hopes that he could get into movies with them. His first MGM record, released in 1965, is my selection here. I personally believe this is his best studio album ever. It leads off with my selected track, "Ride Away". This Orbison-Dees composition is just so different from what you could hear on the radio then. I bought the album in August 1965.
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