I promised I was going here, and this is way more ambitious than the live albums thread. I have always wanted to take the albums largely seen as classics and play them in relation to what I would suggest are my favorite albums. For this, I am going back 100 years essentially, incorporating jazz, blues, rock, folk, country, and hip hop, with an admitted so far heavy lean on rock music since it is the center point of my music taste. I want to expand my listening experience with this while also paying homage to the albums that brought me here.

At early points in particular, there’ll be some compilations, especially before we get to the “album era”, but my hope is to really hone in on the album as a singular experience. The comps, particularly with jazz, serve as a vehicle as much for my understanding of what comes next as much as treating them as albums in themselves.

I will periodically check in with a top 25 again - in the hopes that a bunch will be from music I’ve never heard. I will also seek out suggestions (already have in the Jazz section that will be the focus of the first set of albums), but to keep it manageable I’ll call out for suggestions as I get close to the transitions.

Trash my thoughts, join along, catch some things for the first time or the hundredth time with someone fully green to a lot of this, or ignore this weird ass thread for the next how many months…

We begin with what my limited internet research says is the first proper LP, and the only planned classical album of the journey. We’ll take a jump backwards in time to some comps after this, but this one is placed in without ever hearing it and without any expectations (we could do another journey one day of classical music essentials, but not here).

Up First: Nathan Milstein - Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor: Op. 64 & A Midsummer Night’s Dream

fuck yeah

Nathan Milstein with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic - Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor & A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I will never be mistaken for a classical music diehard. To be frank, I only put this on here for dramatic effect, a way of starting from the beginning, if one can be made out of such an undertaking. To my shock, I really enjoyed this quite a bit. Not knowing what to expect, this thing goes pretty hard for what I would normally think of in a classical piece. The pacing of this is perfect for someone who’s largely ignorant to this, so I ended up with an unexpected gem to start. We’ll get that classical journey yet someday.

Taking this thing as a single piece, I won’t post an essential track here, but will note if this is the first LP, those microgrooves sure set the bar pretty high to start.

Up Next: Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Volume 1

Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Volume 1

We’ll hit up all three of these, recorded between 1924 and 1928. This is a fascinating dive 100 years into the past, with what is a surprisingly quality recording. What you hear on this is what seems like the origins of improvisation as the main dish, and a solid band holding things down for Armstrong to improvise on top of. Add to that Louis’s occasional vocals, immediately perhaps the most distinctive ever, and a feeling of pure enthusiasm and passion that’s palpable. In these early recordings, you get both his unmistakable ability, and his exceptional judgment to know when to kick it into high gear and when to dial it down. A wonderful foundational piece for this whole damn journey. Looking forward to the next two volumes. The essential track (they pretty much all are) goes to the closing track, which brings a bit of all the flavors in one nice bite.

The Essential Track: Skid-Dat-De-Dat

Up Next: Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Volume 2

Listen to classic hip hop albums until you stop clutching yer pearls over cuss words. Let's get you conditioned.

We’ll get there. I’m bringing my pearls.

Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Volume 2

The first volume focused exclusively on the Hot Five, and this one mixes it up a bit, blends into the Hot Seven and finishes with the reformed Hot Five. Despite the interchanging lineups on this one, the sound and the direction seems consistent, and nearly all of it again spectacular. To Armstrong’s credit, nearly 100 years from these recordings, if you wanted to know what I think jazz music sounds like in my imagination, this is it. It also serves as the OG jam band - while the songs are quick blasts, the interchange between instruments and the improvisation are as good as it gets. The winner here, for maintaining both that sense of anything can happen while capturing a mood and atmosphere, is Wild Man Blues.

The Essential Track: Wild Man Blues

Up Next: Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Volume 3

* home in on

Louis Armstrong - The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings, Volume 3

This is the last of the trilogy of this anthology of early Armstrong recordings. While I was not as hot on this one as the prior two, there is a lot here to chew through. It takes the same general approach as the other volumes, but it may be that the strongest of the strong material made it to the first two, or that three of these is sufficient? Either way, I still found this to be an excellent listen. Beau Koo Jack stuck out to me as a favorite here, but I am not sure I could be definitive about it since there’s something in Armstrong’s playing that I could switch at the drop of a hat. He was an astonishing player whose personality comes through so well in his playing. One more from this era and we move on.

The Essential Track: Beau Koo Jack

Up Next: Louis Armstrong - Jazz Moods: Hot

Louis Armstrong - Jazz Moods - Hot

This serves less as a distillation of the 3 volumes just played, and more of a focus on those tracks highlighting Armstrong’s playing at a reasonable 44 minutes. The tracks here, including a series of great performances in Cornet Chop Suey, Struttin’ with Some Barbecue, and Knee Drops, is a highlight reel in exuberant playing, the kind of stuff that excited me at the outset, and less the mood pieces that refined that appreciation. That said, this is my favorite of what I have heard so far, even if much of it is repeated from those 3 volumes.

The Essential Track: Cornet Chop Suey

Up Next: Billie Holiday - Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday

it's almost like the more offensive classic hip hop is, the better it is

So…you are not recommending DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince?

I will have you know I did some research on this front already and have a rudimentary list, but since we are currently listening about 50 years back of that at present, I will take recommendations on this closer to the time we get there (psst, Kendrick Lamar is on the list - I am gonna listen real low so my train neighbors don’t tell my mom I listen to potty mouth music).

Tribe, De-La, Digable Planets and Jurassic 5 don't support this theory. But it's true for Biggie and Wu.

Billie Holiday - Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday

We continue to traverse the early Jazz recordings, and this is a wonderful collection from Billie Holiday, a vocal jazz legend in a space I am wholly unfamiliar. Where the improvisation of Armstrong’s music is connected to something I return to from time to time, I don’t know if I have ever sought this kind of jazz music in my lifetime. Part of this is mind expansion for me, and consider me highly impressed by at least the first half of this, which we get some really wonderful songs in What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Summertime, Billie’s Blues, Me Myself and I, and then some smattering of highlights in the second half with Long Gone Blues, Swing Brother Swing, and All of Me. God Bless the Child is beautiful singing, I can recognize brilliance, but maybe not what I’d generally prefer. Billie Holiday had a wonderful voice and this really felt seasonally appropriate for some reason.

The Essential Track: Billie’s Blues

Up Next: Robert Johnson - The Complete Recordings 1936-37

no, i can recommend other philly hip hop artists, but they have to cuss to sell records lol

Robert Johnson - The Complete Recordings

So this one I own on CD, so I have given it a few listens over the years. It’s truly remarkable that the OG member of the 27 club recorded all of this in the span of a few months to be pored over for nearly a century by many a future blues and rock star. Many of these songs are covered my famous folks like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, and even the Chili Peppers. Yet, even with those big rock bands and their covers, these songs sound lush and full with just a man and his guitar and voice. There’s some sense of mystery and atmosphere here that Johnson captures with seeming effortlessness, the songs just coming out of him and bringing as much variation to a discreet signature as possible. Nearly all of these have arguments for being the essential track, but my favorite is take 2 of Love in Vain. But I could argue for many of them.

The Essential Track: Love in Vain Take 2

Up Next: Duke Ellington - Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band

Enjoyed reading your takes on the Armstrong and the Holiday — truly wonderful, historic recordings. I have also always loved “Cornet Chop Suey,” also “Chicago Breakdown,” “Potato Head Blues,” “West End Blues” — so many. And I can probably sing close to every note of that Holiday collection, but my favorite will always be “I Can’t Get Started.” One of my favorite songs ever.

Robert Johnson — I’ve always been partial to “From Four Until Late,” though “Love In Vain” is great too.

Looking forward to your take on the Duke!

Thanks, at least with the Jazz in this particular period, it’s like a newborn taking in new sights, sounds and flavors for me. I mean, there’s an element of osmosis or something where I have heard snippets, but really a first immersion and something to get excited about again.

Duke Ellington - Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band

Maybe the message in the shift from Robert Johnson’s blues to Duke Ellington’s jazz lies in the album covers. If the mysterious black and white photo, complete with worn acoustic guitar can sum up Johnson’s appeal, Duke Ellington then comes on in full color, blasting out the speakers lush, composed, and full of grandeur. As noted in the Jazz thread, the most stunning takeaway on the first listen is that Ellington always seems in complete control of the orchestra, and yet everyone has space through this long compilation to shine and demonstrate their personality through their solos. It’s astonishing that you could be caught in a moment where the solos are tremendous, and yet everything is smoothly in its right place, and nothing feels off script even in improvisation. The first half of disc two here is my favorite section as this is where I get a sense of the range and intensity through really three tracks: Chloe (Song of the Swamp), The Sidewalks of New York, and the unmistakable Take the “A” Train. I would need more listens to complete a lot of thoughts, and there’s plenty more highlights - plenty! And I can’t go without mentioning the import of putting the bass up front here, which drives the engine of this band so well, especially when they pick things up.

The Essential Track: Take the “A” Train

Up Next: The Lester Young Trio

Disappointed that “studio albums” doesn’t indicate a desire to explore the recording studio as an extension of the artist. This thread needs way less Decca trees and way more Brian Eno.