She chose The Who's QUADROPHENIA, Patty Smith's HORSES and Eminem's RECOVERY.
What three (just three) would you choose? It is very easy to pick ten, more challenging to pick three.
Mine would be very mundane if I was honest. They are not concept albums but the music I listened to most at the time. Carole King's TAPESTRY, The Beatles, RUBBER SOUL and the MAMAS AND THE PAPAS, DELIVER. TAPESTRY in 1971 saw the beginning of my exit from rock music, I think.
21 comments:
Wow, this is really hard! I'll go with Bob Dylan's HIGHWAY 51 REVISITED, Joni Mitchell's BLUE, and DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES JOIN THE TEMPTATIONS.
I was going to pick the Supremes too. And thought about Joan Baez or Judy Collins but these three went to a second copy when I played the first one out. The absolute truth is I should have put down GIGI, which was my first album and the only one I played for months at age 10.
Patti, I was tempted to include the soundtrack to BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S which I played a hundred times in the Sixties. Or the soundtrack to MY FAIR LADY with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. I played that a lot, too. But, I had to make some hard choices and they didn't make the cut.
Soundtracks have always worked for me as I can associate a story with the music.
Amusingly, Patti, two of yours were among those in my Honolulu HS library that led me to consciously start seeking out my own rock albums in earnest, after a number of years of concentrating on jazz and classical and the rare something else (while still listening to comedy albums I'd pick up from libraries). I listened to and liked the library's copy of TAPESTRY (this was, after all, one of the set of Every record collection in the US that had any rock/pop albums in it in 1979), but loved RUBBER SOUL and DELIVER, and needed more...along with Love's DA CAPO, which I liked only a little less...and was amused to find the (latter-day, Andy Summers-including) Animals' THE TWAIN SHALL MEET, since I was reading THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT at the time and much was made in the novel of their song "Sky Pilot". I soon learned I liked the original Animals, particularly while Alan Price was still in the band, rather better, and had already loved War, from my '70s radio auditing. And was already happy about the Police by that time. Eric Burdon knew some other talented people.
So, I'd disagree with the notion of any of your four (including GIGI) being mundane, certainly not compared with George's nor Egan's, which aren't, either (though the relatively common affection for Mathers on the part of NEW YORKER readers strikes me as Indicative of Not Listening to Much Good Rap, Big Surprise).
Aside from the childhood purchases that made huge impressions on me as First Records Bought (if funded parentally), the three I might cite that had the largest impact on my future tastes and outlook might run to:
The Brubeck Quartet: TIME FURTHER OUT; MIRÓ REFLECTIONS
The Modern Jazz Quartet: THE LAST CONCERT
Max Roach and associates; FREEDOM NOW SUITE (originally issued as WE INSIST! FREEDOM NOW SUITE, but I had the 1980 CBS reissue)
But ten would give a larger view. Obviously.
Just the other day, I responded to my friend and fellow ex-PBS-desk guy at TV GUIDE (he's still working his end for whatever they're calling themselves these post-TiVo, post-Rovi, post-TVG days) Jeff Gemmill's post on his blog, wherein he was answering Ted Gioia's (I think it was) open question as to what musician people listened to most as a teen, which would help place their age without stating their age...a Very unreliable guage in the individual case, though less so in the mass survey I guess. Jeff said Wings, the Paul McCartney/Denny Laine band (of course)...mine was of course more long-winded: the Brubeck Quartet, followed so closely as to make the parsing difficult by the Modern Jazz Quartet (I had over forty albums by both bands in various forms by the my late teens) and Thelonious Monk (mostly quartets, but from solo piano to orchestras), with at least 35 or so.
(Did "Penny Lane" also pun in some vague way on buddy Denny, I vaguely wonder...the latter being in or just out of the listenable first version of the Moody Blues at time of composition...)
The Eminem selection was a album her son loved and his enjoyment of it made it precious to her.
I moved from this era to Karl Haas and his education in classical music.
Many NPR-nexus folks rush to cite Mathers with less good reason!
I did like Haas's show, too, though in Hawaii (1979-1984), oddly enough, we had no audible classical music station till toward the end, as the signal of the University of Hawaii student station was too weak and KHPR didn't start till November 1981 (!)...so no Karl Haas till I moved in with my folks again in DC-area Virginia in '84 and continued uni there. I had, beyond my father's and various library classical collections (I tore through as many Louisville Symphony First Edition albums as I could lay hands on), I was buying lotsa Nonesuch, CBS Masterwork and Bach Guild recordings among others along with my jazz, rock, folk and whatever else looked good, after Tower Records opened on my way home from my Honolulu HS and I found the secondhand record stores with a good selection.
Did you ever get a chance to hear Anthony Boucher's opera series? Though it would've had to be in repeats.
Fats Domino album, had “Blueberry Hill” and “Blue Monday” on it.
MEET THE BEATLES, the US release with their first eight or so hits including “She Loves You”, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, etc.
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED by Bob Dylan.
There were several Motown records, but it was individual songs (Four Tops, Temptations, Supremes, etc.) but don’t think of a single album.
TAKE FIVE by Dave Brubeck Quartet.
TIME OUT, Rick? That was the one that debuted "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo á la Turk". "Three to Get Ready" my favorite "forgotten" track on that one.
Ha! And I promise to go away...I was really thinking of "Pick Up Sticks" on TIME OUT rather than the good "Three to Get Ready"...
https://youtu.be/4Ro8-NOiMBY "Pick Up Sticks" (and vanishes in a puff of tendentious smoke)
How is Alice?
Never saw his opera series.
The Mamas and the Papas album I would have gone with (if I had been picking one) is the first - IF YOU CAN BELIEVE YOUR EYES AND EARS. But I'm not.
If I went by "most played" in my house growing up, it would definitely be MY FAIR LADY and (Harry) BELAFONTE AT CARNEGIE HALL (or TONY BENNETT AT CARNEGIE HALL) on one of several Mantovani (MUSIC FOR DINING; MORE MUSIC FOR DINING, etc.) albums my father played, or better yet, MUSIC FROM MILLION DOLLAR MOVIES (Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops). But, again, I'm not picking them.
The Beatles would definitely be a pick, but though I liked RUBBER SOUL better, I'd have to join Rick and go with MEET THE BEATLES. After all it was the first. My friend Jan bought it during Christmas vacation of 1963, and it led directly to us going to see The Beatles at Carnegie Hall in February of 1964.
Bob Dylan, I'd have to go with the first one I played repeatedly, BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME. Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie's Farm, Love Minus Zero/No Limit, Mr. Tambourine Man, Gates of Eden, It's All Right, Ma (I'm ONly Bleeding), It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.
As for a third, so many choices. There is Traffic, JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE, which I liked a lot at the time, or LET IT BLEEd by the Rolling Stones, or AMERICAN BEAUTY by the Grateful Dead. Or maybe I'd go with RUBBERR SOUL after all.
So interesting, Jeff. There was no recorded music in my house at all. Only when my grandfather bought me a turn table and three albums: GIGI, SOUTH PACIFIC and MY FAIR LADY was there music played. My mother would listen to the radio, but no one thought to actually buy music. I wish I could ask them why? We had to pinch pennies but why did no one buy a turntable until 1958 or so.
Alice is back from the hospital, groggy, and probably could've stood another day of professional observation. Though I hope to make sure she is comfortable as she heals up. It's been a ringer of a day, probably helping drive some of my blogorrhea, whenever I have to sit down for a minute. Thanks for asking after her!
Boucher's opera series was for Pacifica Radio, so, like Haas's (on commercial classical radio initially) didn't get as much NPR clearance as it miiht've, but both did and were worthy of it.
I think BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME was Dylan's peak, though 51 wasn't to be sneezed at.
In the DC area, Haas's series had one of its last commercial-radio affiliates, the now-vanished WGMS-FM. Haas's obit in the POST...Haas got his first national exposure at the same Detroit station that had been the home of Father Coughlin in the '30s...ah, what a rich, or something, history this country has had...as with all things human, a mixed bag, taken in entirety, but the Haas show on the positive side of the balances:
Classical Radio Personality Karl Haas, 91, Dies
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 8, 2005; Page B06
Karl Haas, 91, a radio personality who for more than half a century shared his love of classical music with listeners around the world, died Feb. 6 at William Beaumont Hospital in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak. No cause of death was given.
Mr. Haas's syndicated program, "Adventures in Good Music," for many years attracted the largest audience of any classical music radio program in the world and was at its height carried by hundreds of stations in the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Panama and on Armed Forces Radio.
Karl Haas's syndicated program, "Adventures in Good Music," attracted the largest audience of any classical music program.
In Washington, WGMS (103.5 FM) carried "Adventures in Good Music" until the mid-1990s. Program director Jim Allison said it was the station's most popular program through about the mid-1980s.
"It's still our highest-rated program," said Robert Conrad [no battery on his shoulder--TM], president of WCLV-FM in Cleveland, which began syndicating the program in 1970.
"Karl Haas had the unique knack of being able to convey his love and knowledge of classical music to an audience that, for the most part, wasn't all that familiar with it," Conrad said. "But instead of bringing the music down to them, he brought them up to the music. He was like Leonard Bernstein in that respect."
Mr. Haas, a native of Speyer-on-the-Rhine, Germany, began taking piano lessons from his mother at age 6. A few years later, he formed a piano trio with boyhood friends.
He fled Nazi Germany in 1936 and settled with his family in Detroit, where he taught piano and commuted to New York to study with the renowned pianist Arthur Schnabel. He also founded the Chamber Music Society of Detroit in 1944. From 1967 to 1971, he served as president of the Interlochen Academy of the Arts in Interlochen, Mich.
His broadcast career began in 1950 at WWJ in Detroit, where he hosted a weekly program previewing concerts by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In 1959, station WJR, also in Detroit, debuted "Adventures in Good Music," an hour-long program in which Mr. Haas played the music he loved and, in a warm and distinctive German-accented voice, talked about the music with his listeners.
Conrad, who had met Mr. Haas in Detroit in 1962, moved to Cleveland and helped him get his program syndicated at WCLV in that city. He said listeners enjoyed not only Mr. Haas's vast knowledge of music but also his punning program titles, including "The Joy of Sax," "No Stern Unturned" and "Baroque and in Debt."
Conrad said a farmer once told him he listened to the show every day on his tractor.
Mr. Haas stopped doing new shows two years ago, but the program airs in reruns on about a hundred stations in the United States and Australia. Conrad said WCLV will continue to distribute the program.
Mr. Haas received two George Foster Peabody Awards for excellence in broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities Charles Frankel Award in 1991. He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago in 1997.
His wife, Trudie, died in 1977.
Survivors include three children and two granddaughters.
Hard to name just three.
The Velvet Underground with Nico
Forever Changes by Love
Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan.
Hard to leave off albums by The Beatles and Rolling Stones.
I guess that is the challenge. But in the end, your choices were more interesting.
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