Pitchfork's 200 Best Albums of the 60s

[lpfreak1170]

As long as you copy an excerpt and not the whole article you should be OK.

As long as you give credit to the source, for our purposes here it’s fair use even if you copy the whole thing. However, for readability you might want to quote a key excerpt and include the link to the whole thing.

Thank you both! It's usually only 1 or 2 paragraphs, and I'd probably put them in a spoiler tag and say where it came from.

Edit: Here is what was said about the Golden Rain album above.

Spoiler: From Pitchfork article

Kecak (pronounced “ket-chak”) is a percussive Balinese chant performed by some 100 men squatting in concentric circles, all hooting and hollering in simian syncopation. Although rooted in an exorcism ritual that dramatizes a monkey-filled tale from the ancient Hindu epic The Ramayana, the music and dance performance is a relatively modern phenomenon dating to the 1930s. Self-described “musical tourist” David Lewiston included a kecak track on all three albums of Balinese field recordings he released on Nonesuch, but the 22-minute side B of 1969’s Golden Rain is the iconic example.


Lewiston taped performances in all their messy vitality, achieving an in-the-moment energy more reminiscent of jazz or punk than lab-coated ethnomusicology. Golden Rain’s “The Ramayana Monkey Dance” remains as astounding now as it must have been for late-night FM audiences. The first side of the compilation is given over to two luminously chiming tracks of gamelan, the trance-like Indonesian traditional music played on marimba-like gongs. The Paris Exposition of 1889, when Claude Debussy encountered Javanese gamelan, has long been considered a turning point for modern music. For the vinyl era, Golden Rain stands as a similar epiphany. –Marc Hogan

 

[Ojai Sam]

181 – Lesley Gore – I'll Cry If I Want To


All songs either about crying/sadness or with some form of "cry" in the title. Love the upbeat, bossa nova version of "Cry Me A River". I love the girl groups/girl singers/girl sounds of the 60s, and Lesley is pretty close to the top of my list. Really glad to see this one on the list.

I've always felt Lesley Gore was underappreciated based on her magnificent Bear Family box, but never played her debut album in order before now. "The Amazing 17 Year Old Lesley Gore" proclaims the cover, but the photo looks more like she's 27. Likewise, the songs themselves range from teen pop like "It's My Party" all the way to world-weary laments such as Mabel Wayne's "I Understand". Not many singers can channel both Brenda Lee and Peggy Lee in the same record, but Lesley manages to pull it off. She gets a lot of help from music director Quincy Jones, who supplies just enough sympathetic strings and samba grooves to go with those teeny bopper piano triplets to avoid turning her into a Lolita parody.

 

[lpfreak1170]

I've always felt Lesley Gore was underappreciated based on her magnificent Bear Family box, but never played her debut album in order before now. "The Amazing 17 Year Old Lesley Gore" proclaims the cover, but the photo looks more like she's 27. Likewise, the songs themselves range from teen pop like "It's My Party" all the way to world-weary laments such as Mabel Wayne's "I Understand". Not many singers can channel both Brenda Lee and Peggy Lee in the same record, but Lesley manages to pull it off. She gets a lot of help from music director Quincy Jones, who supplies just enough sympathetic strings and samba grooves to go with those teeny bopper piano triplets to avoid turning her into a Lolita parody.

 

[Ojai Sam]

180 – Wilson Pickett – The Exciting Wilson Pickett


"Exciting" doesn't even begin to describe it. If some part of you doesn't start moving while listening to this, then you're already gone.

Too many albums of the 60's followed the "two singles and the rest filler" model but not this one. From our perspective 50 years later, the four big hits are hardly more enjoyable than the remaining 8 soul scorchers. Muscle Shoals at its best.

 

[Ojai Sam]

179 - Art Ensemble Of Chicago - Message To Our Folks (1969)


That "avant-garde jazz" tag makes me nervous...lol.

I'm not surprised that a sophisticated audience like LPFreak appreciated this record. The Art Ensemble may have been jazzers, but they delivered the message in this album with the cutting edge insurrectionary spirit of rockers during that turbulent time. It does repay repeated listening.

 

[lpfreak1170]

170 – Roland Kirk – The Inflated Tear (1968)


Geez, this is some great stuff! The first track, "The Black And Crazy Blues", is just simply amazing!

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

He was a showman, an eccentric, an advocate, and a scholar—but at the core of Roland Kirk’s appeal, there’s the staggering fact that his performance is the sound of one man harmonizing, thanks to his striking ability to play multiple horns at the same time. One of his earliest records for Atlantic, The Inflated Tear inaugurates his idea of jazz as what he, like Nina Simone, called “black classical music,” a wide-ranging tradition that included everything from the cutting-edge avant-garde to generations-old musical traditions to contemporary pop styles. He could start with a melodic and thematic premise as simple as the slow march of “The Black and Crazy Blues” or a base as familiar as Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Call” and guide his band to places that tapped the deepest spaces of mood-altering sonics. The purity of lighthearted joy on the flute-led tribute to his young son, “A Laugh for Rory,” the manic giddiness of “Lovellevelliloqui”—it’s all overwhelming, so it’s even more of a rush when Kirk goes on one of his spectacular solo runs, like the Coltrane-rivaling tenor sax fusillade of “Many Blessings.” –Nate Patrin

 

[Ojai Sam]

175 - Ella Fitzgerald/Count Basie - Ella and Basie! (1963)


First listen.

Continuing to catch up with the speedy Mr. Freak. Keep 'em coming, brother.

I'm surprised Zeeb didn't post this one in the Jazz Excursion since it fits squarely into two of his favorite categories: Ella and "X Meets Y" mashups on Verve. This particular pairing worked perfectly. Basie always employed vocalists in his band and knew how to keep the brass working in sympathy rather than in competition with a singer. We even get to enjoy a rare appearance by The Count on organ.

As for Ella, by the 60's she recorded most frequently either with her piano trio or the lush orchestras of her Songbooks. This session with Basie takes the listener all the way back to her earliest days as the "girl singer" with Chick Webb's big band. Lady Ella could certainly hold her own against even the most powerful aggregation. She acquits herself magnificently here, bringing new life to a dozen familiar songs.

 

[lpfreak1170]

Continuing to catch up with the speedy Mr. Freak. Keep 'em coming, brother.

Oh yeah, I've just been flying through this list lolol. I am trying to get back on it, though.

 

[lpfreak1170]

169 – The Sonics – Here Are The Sonics!!! (1965)


I already know what a beast this album is!!

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

Rock’n’roll can be a lot of things, but for a certain snapshot of mid-’60s teenage delinquency—an inner world fueled by shaggy Rat Fink scuzziness and drive-in horror double features—the genre reached its ideal form in the Sonics. They weren’t necessarily the first garage rockers, but nobody embodied the style better, from the moment their debut single “The Witch” peeled fake woodgrain off speaker cabinets in 1964. The formula, as ruthlessly displayed on their 1965 debut LP Here Are the Sonics!!!, was simple: Make every instrument hit with the force of a brand new Pontiac GTO smashing through a guardrail. And if you’re going to get that raucous, make sure you’ve got a frontman like Jerry Roslie, whose range stretches from a demented bellow to an unhinged shriek—all in the service of songs about getting your kicks from drinking poison, tearing around in a “turn-on red” Mustang, and absolutely losing your mind over rejection. Throw in some rock and R&B standards performed as though they were all written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins at his coffin-busting wildest, and you’ve got the big bang explosion that set the standard for everyone from the Cramps to Nirvana to the White Stripes. –Nate Patrin

 

[lpfreak1170]

168 - The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (1968)


Oh I can already tell I will struggle to finish this one.

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

When hard-blowing free jazz reaches a certain intensity, you start to wonder how far it can go and what its limitations of expression might be. Machine Gun is one idea of how such an impassable sonic barrier might present itself. On it, the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and seven fellow improvisors—including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Dutch drummer Han Bennink, who would all make a serious mark in European free jazz—are still tethered to jazz proper, with variations on themes and melody and groove, but the result sounds closer to what we now call noise music.

Machine Gun is a roaring mass of energy that serves as an auditory Rorschach test: Given its title and its initial release during a violent, tumultuous, and war-wrecked year, the album can easily inspire fear, horror, and images of violence. But its spirit of collective invention, and the sheer delight of musicians pushing their instruments beyond their design, also yields an equally vivid joy. It’s the sound of eight creative people confronting musical barriers and working together to annihilate them. –Mark Richardson

 

[Ojai Sam]

174 – Patty Waters – Sings (1966)


I've seen the cover and imagined it was a folk album. Three songs in and its late night just a woman and a piano...lovely.

This one came up long ago on the old site as a reco by our old friend, Melodious Thunk. It appeared on the ESP-Disk label alongside Albert Ayler and an Esperanto sing along album, so we shouldn't be too surprised at its eclecticism. It's also a favorite of Yoko Ono.

Not much to say: minimalist vocals and piano. Interesting, but I'm not sure it will get a lot of spins here. However, now I'm looking around for that Esperanto record....

 

[Ojai Sam]

168 - The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (1968)


Oh I can already tell I will struggle to finish this one.

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

When hard-blowing free jazz reaches a certain intensity, you start to wonder how far it can go and what its limitations of expression might be. Machine Gun is one idea of how such an impassable sonic barrier might present itself. On it, the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and seven fellow improvisors—including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Dutch drummer Han Bennink, who would all make a serious mark in European free jazz—are still tethered to jazz proper, with variations on themes and melody and groove, but the result sounds closer to what we now call noise music.

Machine Gun is a roaring mass of energy that serves as an auditory Rorschach test: Given its title and its initial release during a violent, tumultuous, and war-wrecked year, the album can easily inspire fear, horror, and images of violence. But its spirit of collective invention, and the sheer delight of musicians pushing their instruments beyond their design, also yields an equally vivid joy. It’s the sound of eight creative people confronting musical barriers and working together to annihilate them. –Mark Richardson

You and a lot of other folks.

 

[lpfreak1170]

168 - The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (1968)


Oh I can already tell I will struggle to finish this one.

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

When hard-blowing free jazz reaches a certain intensity, you start to wonder how far it can go and what its limitations of expression might be. Machine Gun is one idea of how such an impassable sonic barrier might present itself. On it, the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and seven fellow improvisors—including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Dutch drummer Han Bennink, who would all make a serious mark in European free jazz—are still tethered to jazz proper, with variations on themes and melody and groove, but the result sounds closer to what we now call noise music.

Machine Gun is a roaring mass of energy that serves as an auditory Rorschach test: Given its title and its initial release during a violent, tumultuous, and war-wrecked year, the album can easily inspire fear, horror, and images of violence. But its spirit of collective invention, and the sheer delight of musicians pushing their instruments beyond their design, also yields an equally vivid joy. It’s the sound of eight creative people confronting musical barriers and working together to annihilate them. –Mark Richardson

You and a lot of other folks.

LOLOL. I'm trying...I really am. Had to pause it after the first 2 tracks to give my head a break...only 1 more to go.

 

[lpfreak1170]

167 – The Impressions – Keep On Pushing (1964)


Now this is just what I need after Machine Gun (which I did actually finish)...some stone classic soul!

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

With “Keep On Pushing,” penned in the middle of the civil rights movement, Curtis Mayfield channeled his gospel roots into a moment of motivation. The song’s message of strength and persistence had been stewing in him his whole life—a meditation on love, faith, existing on the streets of segregated Chicago, and how he thought things ought to be. Aided by his bandmates Fred Cash and Sam Gooden’s harmonies, Johnny Pate’s horn arrangements, and of course, the warm flourishes of his electric guitar, Mayfield’s stunning falsetto exuded the power and strength he preached.

Keep On Pushing was the Impressions’ first attempt at a proper album—their previous records were essentially singles collections. Every song is crafted just as beautifully as the title track, with Pate’s expert arrangements backing the trio’s earworm harmonies. Mayfield cements his soul icon status with songs about love affairs that are new (“Talking About My Baby”), forbidden (“I Ain’t Supposed To”), and gone (“Long, Long Winter”). And while Chicago blues is certainly present, gospel is the key ingredient. One year after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the Impressions’ version of the spiritual standard “Amen” is arranged as a march. Mayfield’s first proper LP with the Impressions hinted at the artistic intent that would follow: Not long after its release, the Impressions would further soundtrack the movement with “People Get Ready,” “We’re a Winner,” and several other classics. With Keep On Pushing, Mayfield became a star, and it was just the beginning. –Evan Minsker

 

[Ojai Sam]

173 – Duke Ellington – Far East Suite (1967)

This Grammy winner illustrates perfectly how well Duke Ellington was able to remain relevant for six decades by updating his sound without losing its unique character. The musicians featured here had amassed countless years with the Duke, guys like Mercer Ellington, "Cat" Anderson, Cootie Williams, Lawrence Brown, Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope, Jimmy Hamilton, Paul Gonsalves and Harry Carney.

 

[lpfreak1170]

166 – The Byrds – The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)


Interesting choice...I prefer Younger and Sweetheart to this one, although it's still a really good album.

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

In 1968, the Byrds could be described as Sgt. Pepper’s-curious: a band longing for experimentation but still in touch with their jangly roots. There are moments when they sound like a conservative dad’s worst nightmare: aloof, stoned, and gently rebelling. “Things that seemed to be solid are not,” goes one trippy line from “Change Is Now,” and the song’s guitar solo is the sound of thousands of high school longhairs being threatened with military service. But for every early, intrepid use of a Moog synthesizer, there’s something like the gentle cover of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “Goin’ Back,” which came with its own confession: “A little bit of courage is all we lack.” The Notorious Byrd Brothers catches the band in a space between, it’s the sound of psychedelic pop’s sugars fermenting, but not yet turning into alcohol. –Andrew Gaerig

 

[JazzyRandy]

168 - The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (1968)


Oh I can already tell I will struggle to finish this one.

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

When hard-blowing free jazz reaches a certain intensity, you start to wonder how far it can go and what its limitations of expression might be. Machine Gun is one idea of how such an impassable sonic barrier might present itself. On it, the German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and seven fellow improvisors—including British saxophonist Evan Parker and Dutch drummer Han Bennink, who would all make a serious mark in European free jazz—are still tethered to jazz proper, with variations on themes and melody and groove, but the result sounds closer to what we now call noise music.

Machine Gun is a roaring mass of energy that serves as an auditory Rorschach test: Given its title and its initial release during a violent, tumultuous, and war-wrecked year, the album can easily inspire fear, horror, and images of violence. But its spirit of collective invention, and the sheer delight of musicians pushing their instruments beyond their design, also yields an equally vivid joy. It’s the sound of eight creative people confronting musical barriers and working together to annihilate them. –Mark Richardson

I struggle as well. The most polite way for me to describe Brotzmann's music is "not for me."

 

[Ojai Sam]

172 – Eddie Palmieri – Justicia (1969)

This is pretty good Latin jazz but nothing extraordinary. I was expecting boiling social justice commentary full of spice and wound up, as @Mattafett might say, with lukewarm small beer.

Hi Matt!

 

[Ojai Sam]

171 – Various Artists – Golden Rain (1969)


Linking to the later CD version since that's the cover you'll find on streaming services (at least on Tidal it is). Also, would everyone want me to copy/paste the album description from the original article (or would that be a copyright no-no)?

The repeated chanting and percussion are exotic and interesting, but this is not a journey I plan to take again anytime soon.

 

[lpfreak1170]

165 – Sonny Rollins – The Bridge (1962)

Spoiler: From the Pitchfork article

After releasing over 20 albums from 1953 to 1959, Sonny Rollins found himself being named in the same breath as John Coltrane and Miles Davis. But at the height of his fame, the tenor saxophonist disappeared from the jazz scene. Convalescing from the stresses of addiction and success, he began practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge’s pedestrian walkway, far from the peering eyes of the world (save the chance passerby).


Those three years of meditations led to The Bridge, an album that turns panoramic NYC vistas into ballads and bop of utmost soul. Stylistically, the record doesn’t veer far from the hard bop of Rollins’ celebrated 1956 LP Saxophone Colossus, but it digs a little deeper. The nimble title track, in particular, is a snapshot of his new level of control as his solo winds through a series of tempo changes. While his peers started to explore the structural limits of the genre with free jazz in the early ’60s, Rollins went further into what he knew, into himself, discovering a fount of grace in the process. –Kevin Lozano