That's pretty cool.  I'll have to give the album a listen.  I'm not familiar with Gary Burton at all and have never heard that album.  There's just sooo much jazz with so many rabbit holes to go down.  My youngest son was a percussionist in junior high and high school so he played many instruments from the metallophone family over the years.  

OK, then...top albums of 1964...


#10 - Ramblin' Boy by Tom Paxton




Folk singer Tom Paxton was one of the leading lights of the early '60s Greenwich Village folk revival. Ramblin' Boy is basically his debut album, although he had previously released a live LP on the tiny Gaslight label in 1962. But this was Paxton's first studio album and the first album of his that anybody outside of the folkies who attended his coffee house shows in Greenwich Village took any notice of.

It's a mixture of heartfelt ballads, comedy ditties, children's songs, and a bucket load of overly earnest political protest songs. The abundance of protest material is, from a modern perspective, one of the album's chief failings, since nothing dates faster than a topical song. Though the material is fairly strong throughout, and Paxton's attractive, understated voice is very inviting, the fact remains that an awful lot of this album is simply a period piece.

Still, it's a decent enough album, which must've sounded pretty cutting edge back in 1964. But for me, it's the non-political songs that work the best – particularly the gorgeous "The Last Thing on My Mind", which would go on to become a folk music standard that has been covered by many, many different artists…

Solid album.  It might make my top twenty.  I actually agree that the political stuff sound super dated now (and you know how I am about political stuff of that stripe, so that's saying something).  "The Last Thing on My Mind," "Ramblin' Boy," and "I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound," however are all-timers and "The Last Thing on My Mind" is one of the great songs of that period.  

I like all three and generally prefer Cole and Martin to Sinatra (but not Bennett).  Unfortunately Cole would be dead in 1965.  And quality Dean Martin albums were always pretty rare.  That said, I still love me some Francis Albert for all that he was a pretty despicable human.  

I don't think I've knowingly heard any music that he was involved in and, in fact, I had to Google him because the name didn't ring a bell for me. As I say, I do like the sound of a vibraphone, but only for so long. I'm guessing that would be the case for Hampton's output. A little Vibraphone goes a long way.

Confessor , well done, you picked up on my little "test"! That's correct, that album was recorded in 1964 but not released until 1965, I wanted to see how sharp-eyed you folks were.

And it had nothing to do with my bad memory I was going off of or the fact that I did not double-check the date. Nope, not that at all.

So yeah, I don't use recorded date either for lists, it was purely old age gets the best of me again! But on the upside, you get an even better Gary Burton album at #10 in my opinion, Something's Coming, with a smaller ensemble including Jim Hall on guitar. That WAS released in 1964 haha!

For your entertainment:

I actually listened to a really cool jazz-funk album from Hampton recently. Stop! I Don't Need No Sympathy! from 1974.