What are the best Rock albums of all time?
Well that’s a pretty subjective choice. Tastes vary. I compiled what I considered to be (after a life spent playing music, writing about music and attending gigs) a definitive list of essential albums. This book contains what I believe are the best of the best. These need to be in everybody’s collection!
Of course, your views will differ, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? This might just entice you to check out a few names you might not have heard of. I have eclectic tastes but am very particular!
Another extract:
238. Esquirita – Believe me when I say Rock ‘n’ Roll is here to stay
Eskew Reeder was a wild piano playing R&B singer from the early fifties. He started off as a gospel singer and moved into R&B where he produced the stage personality of Esquirita which involved heavy make-up, wigs and a huge piled up pompadour. He specialised in pounding piano and whooping vocals to great upbeat numbers.
It was said that Little Richard ripped off his style, looks and act. That is hard to assess because Esquirita was only brought in to record following Little Richard’s conversion and departure. At the time everyone thought that Esquirita’s style was based on Little Richard.
Whatever the truth of that there is no denying that Esquirita created a number of rockin’ tracks in a similar style to Little Richard including ‘I’m getting plenty loving’, ‘Golly Golly, Annie Mae’, ‘Rockin’ the joint’, ‘I’m Battie over Hattie’, ‘Hey Miss Lucy’ and ‘Oh baby’. They had Little Richard’s characteristic whoops, copied by the Beatles, and the gospel tinged raucous vocals, pounding piano and wailing sax.
Unfortunately Esquirita never rose to great recognition and declined into obscurity as a car-park attendant before dying of AIDS in 1986.
239. Joan Baez – Farewell Angelina
Joan Baez always was a bit of an activist even causing a few rebellious moments in High School. She started into Folk Singing in the late 50s and released her first album in 1960.
Her early albums were all traditional folk songs and she rapidly rose to prominence as the first lady of Folk because of her crystal clear vocals. She was political back then but hadn’t yet found a way to express it. That came when she met the ragamuffin Bob Dylan fresh from his adventures ion the streets and in the coffee houses of New York. Joan was knocked out by the quality of his songs and took to promoting him, getting him to come up on stage and introducing him to a wider audience. She also took to doing covers of his songs and extolling their virtues. Joan’s music and level of activism leapt forward.
Joan performed with Bob at the great civil rights march on Washington when Martin Luther King gave his wondrous speech. She went on numerous other civil rights marches and meetings and became involved in the anti-war movement and environmental issues and human rights. She always wore her heart on her sleeve and incorporated the politics into her songs and stage act. There was no doubting where Joan stood on all those issues. She was a voice of humanity, liberty, freedom and the voice of reason and intelligence. Where-ever there is injustice in the world Joan has been willing to put her time, money and voice to opposing it. If only we had a million more Joan’s we would not have such a selfish, greedy, cruel, warmongering world!
It’s hard choosing a best Joan Baez album. Her early albums were a little lightweight, her success, like ‘The Night they drove old Dixie down’ are not her best and some of her albums are a bit patchy. My favourite songs are ‘Diamonds and Rust’ and the Phil Ochs cover ‘There but for fortune’ but in the end I plumped for the album ‘Farewell Angelina’.
I think Joan was always brilliant at interpreting Bob Dylan numbers and this was one of her early albums which featured a lot of Dylan, with a Guthrie, Donovan and Seeger as well as some traditional songs. Not only that but two of the Dylan songs ‘Farewell Angelina’ and ‘Daddy you been on my mind’ had not been released by Dylan. They really shone.
The album was well produced with Joan’s guitar and voice prominent and the lyrics shining through. The passion is there and the versions of ‘A Hard Rain’s a gonna fall’ and ‘It’s all over now baby blue’ are great. It was wonderful to hear the Woody Guthrie classic ‘Ranger’s command’ and the Pete Seeger anti-war song ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ (in German).
Oh how we need that voice of sanity now as the environment is being eaten by the machine, the animals murdered, the forests cut down and the wind and waters tainted! 56% of all our wild mammals destroyed in forty years! Sing up Joan!
240. Don & Dewey – Jungle hop
Still in the wake of Little Richard the Specialty label were hunting around for an act to fill the gap and Don & Dewey flew in from nowhere. They were a versatile powerhouse of a Rock/R&B duo who created a dynamic sound and yet were also capable of more delicate numbers like ‘Pink Champagne’ and ‘I’m leaving it all up to you’.
Their act was reminiscent of the later Soul combo Sam and Dave. I’m sure Sam & Dave were more than a little influenced by the sound and act created by Don and Dewey. It is certain that Don and Dewey were certainly Soul precursors. The idea of a dual vocal attack was quite revolutionary.
Specialty gave them a hard hitting Rock backing on numbers like ‘Justine’, ‘Jungle hop’, ‘Koko Jo’, ‘Mammer Jammer’, ‘Little Sally Walker’, ‘Just a little loving’ and ‘Miss Sue’. My one concern of the numbers they chose to produce was this emphasis on jungles and monkeys. It came over to me as a slightly racist stereotype and I wondered where that had come from.
They were never very successful despite the quality and originality of their act but a few of their numbers were successfully covered. The most notable of these was ‘Farmer John’ which was a big hit for the Premiers and was covered by the Searchers and Neil Young.
241. Ronettes – Da Doo Ron Ron
Back in the late fifties and early sixties black R&B groups were all the rage. They were mainly male and had basically come out of the Doo-Wop scene. The sound was dominated by the Coasters, Drifters, Miracles, Contours, Isley Brothers and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. In the early sixties it was the turn of the female vocal groups to make themselves heard.
The Ronettes were really a family group with the two sisters Veronica and Estelle joining up with their cousin Nedra. They started singing together as little girls round at their grandmother’s house. They went on to dance and sing at the famous Peppermint lounge’ and then signed to the Colpix label.
They developed a cool appearance with high heels, slinky dressed and hair piled up a mile high. They oozed class.
Phil Spector was developing his Philles Label Sound in New York and stole them from Colpix. Their first few numbers were actually ascribed to the Crystals.
The first single ‘Be my Baby’ was recorded with Sonny Bono and Cher (who later became Sonny & Cher) helping out on backing vocals. It went huge and not only established the group but also that special production sound that Phil Spector had been working on.
This was the time that the Beatles were breaking and they were greatly impressed with girl bands and had covered both the Marvellettes and Cookies on their first album. Other Mersey bands, such as the Searchers with Da-Doo Ron Ron’, were also successfully covering these female R&B groups. I can remember the success of a number of these groups breaking into the charts such as the Crystals, Supremes, Shirelles and Shangri-Las. While Merseybeat had blown away all the old guard it seemed to have created a space where new acts could slip in and the female vocal groups fitted the bill.
The Ronettes second single ‘Baby I love you’ was almost as successful.
Ronnie and the girls came over to do a tour of Britain and were introduced to the Beatles and Stones. Estelle dated George Harrison and Ronnie had a romantic fling with Keith Richards.
Ronnie later married Phil Spector and he kept her secluded in his mansion.
242. Crystals – Best of
The Crystals were another of Phil Spector’s Philles Label signings. For some reason Phil Spector seemed to have the view that all the girl bands were interchangeable and, much to the annoyance of his artists, brought recordings of one group out under another groups name. The Crystals had minor hits with songs like ‘Uptown’ and ‘He hit me (and it felt like a kiss)’ and then had a bigger hit with ‘He’s a rebel’ except it hadn’t been recorded by the Crystals. Phil had got Darlene Love and the Blossoms to record it and then released it under the Crystals name! – As was their follow up single ‘He’s sure the boy I love’. That was all very weird and unethical!
However it was the real Crystals who recorded ‘Da-Doo Ron Ron’ and set the ball rolling in England. I remember the B-side was an instrumental call ‘Git-it!’ The rumour was that the girls had played the instruments and that set everyone talking in my school. The idea of these girls actually playing instruments seemed strange. How times change! – It’s not so strange now! In hindsight I’m sure that they had nothing to do with that B-side at all.
‘Da-Doo Ron Ron’ was not only a big hit but also the start of that famous Phil Spector ‘Big Wall of Sound’ production technique that created such a stir.
They released another great song with ‘Then he kissed me’. After that it all went downhill. It was obvious that Phil was besotted with Ronnie and the Ronettes and they eventually split company.
243. Sun Rockabilly – Billy Lee Riley/Sonny Burgess
There are not many compilation albums in my essential album collection but this one is a must.
Sam Philips started as a scout searching for R&BN and Blues talent for the big Chicago labels like Chess and Vee-jay. After a while he thought he could do the job himself and set up his own studio to record the local R&B and Country & Western artists. He figured that there was no point discovering them and allowing someone else to get the benefit. The result was Sun Studios in Memphis.
I visited Sun Studio a couple of times to soak in the aura that stills hangs in the air and emanates out of those walls and that wavy ceiling. When I went they had the old microphones that Elvis used to record on, a pink Cadillac parked outside and an X on the floor marking where Elvis stood when he recorded ‘That’s alright Mama’ all those years before. We all had to pretend we were Elvis! You couldn’t help yourself!
Those studios recorded some of the greatest names in the music business – Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Rufus Thomas and Carl Perkins. It was awesome to stand in their and breathe their molecules.
Sun Rockabilly, which came out in two volumes, did not focus so much on the major stars so much as the plethora of other relatively unsung heroes. These included Sonny Burgess, Billy Lee Riley, Malcolm Yelvington, Warren Smith, Johnny Carroll, Ray Harris, and Hayden Thompson.
Many of my favourite Rockabilly tracks were from some of the unknowns such as Billy Lee Riley’s ‘Flying Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and ‘Red hot’ and Sonny Bugess’s ‘Itchy’ or Warren Smith’s ‘Uranium Rock’ and ‘Ubangi Stomp’ or Malcolm Yelvington’s ‘Rockin’ with my baby’ or Ray Harris’s ‘Come on little Mama’. They were wild and uninhibited.
A lot of these tracks are on the Sun Compilation.
A lot of these guys ended up with a bit of a chip on their shoulder because they reckoned Sam put all his energies and best material into Elvis, Jerry Lee and Carl and neglected their careers. He probably did. But at least we have these raw rockabilly recordings. They sure as hell knock the legs off all that Pop stuff Elvis did in his latter career.
244. Little Walter – Little Walter
Little Walter Jacobs was a master Harp player. His exploits with the harmonica have been compared to what Jimi Hendrix did for the guitar. He was the harp player with the Muddy Waters band and appears on most of his big numbers for Chess.
He recorded in his own right for Checker and had some huge hits with numbers like ‘My Babe’ and the instrumental ‘Juke’. Other great tracks include ‘Mean old world’, ‘Boom boom, out go the lights’ and ‘Tell me mama’. He had a very smooth singing voice that proved very popular. His songs were covered by lots of Blues bands from the Yardbirds to Dr Feelgood.
Those were violent times in Chicago and Little Walter was an alcoholic on a short fuse; he was always getting in fights and was supposedly extremely mean and ornery. One such altercation in 1967 led to him dying later that night of a thrombosis. He did tour Europe but he was one of the guys that I regrettably never got to see perform. I loved his records though.
245. Billy Boy Arnold – I wish you would
The first Billy Boy Arnold numbers I heard were recorded by the Yardbirds on their early singles with Eric Clapton ‘I Wish you would’ and ‘I ain’t got you’. I loved those singles and it wasn’t til later when I heard Billy Boy’s versions that I found anything better. Billy Boy’s versions were richer.
He started off playing with Bo Diddley before signing to Vee-jay and doing his own stuff. He recorded some great songs including ‘She fooled me’, ‘Rockinitis’ and ‘You got me wrong’.
When the Blues dropped out of popularity in the States Billy Boy went into driving buses and then as a parole officer
537 Essential Rock Albums – Pt. 1 The first 270 eBook : Goodwin, Opher: Amazon.co.uk: Books
PS – I got slagged off for putting a few ‘best of’ in amongst them. I remain defiant. Sometimes a ‘best of’ contains all the tracks you need and the album works!