I've always liked Harry Belafonte, but we never had any of his records and even now I think all I have is a cheap compilation with not many songs on it. I might have to start looking around to see what I can find. Jamaican Farewell was a radio favourite of mine as a very young kid.

I have no particularly strong feelings either way, really. That said, I do think it's sort of more interesting and fairer to everybody if we keep it to individual albums. But I'm certainly not gonna get all out of bed about it if you want to deviate from that on a couple of your picks.

My late stepfather had that album. Did I ever listen to it? Probably not. Not that I can recall. But seeing that has made me think about him in a good way. 

And onto day 2. Still in no particular order.

9. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced (1967), again experienced mid-90s by me.




What's even to say? For any kid getting into rock music by way of the 60s bands, this was an essential stop on the journey. You ever have one of those songs that you don't know, but from the first time you hear it somewhere it just INSTANTLY grabs you? For my dad, that was Purple Haze when he was in college walking by the store. He heard it, ran inside and spent his food money for the week on it. Suffice to say, it was a longtime staple in our house.

Like most of my picks from my parents' music, this was circa mid-90s when I discovered it. I was developing an interest in music as its own thing instead of parts of other things, and shifting away from comicbooks and toys into music. It was around the time we got the 6 CD changer going. I believe my dad also bought a new turntable at the same time while refreshing the sound system and getting it working. I used that system a LOT through high school.

This is the album I remember learning how to operate the turntable for. I had heard Foxey Lady on the Wayne's World movie, but besides the scene being funny, this song was the coolest shit I had ever heard in my life up until that point. I was mesmerized by the style, the audacity, the swagger emanating out of it, the catchiness of the riff, the blaring guitar on the bum dum BOWWWW bummm bum BOWWWWW. That more LP. I must have worn out that groove.


I think the sample song is going to be obvious. When I was younger, if I was into something, I was INTO it. I eventually branched out into other songs and his other work, including a greatest hits compilation CD I listened to A LOT. But this is where it started for me:




You know, I put on the album after I wrote this, and I have to add a second sample song. The drumming on Fire definitely started a spark somewhere that would grow over time. When I started getting into music, it was 100% the guitars that pulled me in, but I somewhat quickly started noticing the drumming and how much the differences really set apart different artists. Thing song in particular was the first time I noticed groovy, funky, wild drumming, and that stuck with me even if only subconsciously at first. I even remember getting ahold of some post-Experience recordings of Hendrix and finding them inexplicably boring. I now understand that was my realization it wasn't Mitch Mitchell before I knew or cared about who else was in the band.

This became much clearer over time. I remember having a chat with a buddy from college in our later 20s who was also a guitar player friend of mine, and I forget how it came up, but he said something to the effect of "Jimi is the star of the show there, you can stand him up in front of any drummer or bass player and it will sound the same" and my jaw hit the floor at the stunningly bad take. I thought he was all right, that guy, but wow. /S

Fast forward to now, and it's a massive part of my tastes. I can retroactively look back at how I got to where I am, and it all makes so much sense in hindsight. But this is the start of that branch.

I don't know this album....but we will be seeing more Johnny Cash.  On that you can rely.  

I was certainly listening to Top 40 AM Radio prior to 1964. Enjoyed the surf music, girl groups, early Motown, 4 Seasons and other types songs on those stations. But I didn't think about who these performers were, didn't try to remember their names and back then, TV appearances were very rare. All this changed for me in 1964  at age 10 when The Beatles arrived in the USA. 
And up to then, no music recordings in my house besides what my mother owned. Half were Sinatra records, others from artists I still think as schmaltzy (Perry Como). And somehow this album was among that bunch and stuck out to me (in a good way). 
I guess it's the pure soulfulness in her voice, that she was singing from experience rather than from some lines on a paper. It was my first exposure to someone who could meld jazz, blues, R&B, gospel and pop together. 

This was Nina Simone's first live album. She became a star at the end of the 50's, had a great run of albums during the early 60s. And like Harry Belafonte beforehand, she became increasingly involved in Civil Rights activity from the mid-60's onwards




As a sample I chose the song The Other Woman. Definitely not a song you'd expect a 10 year old to positively react to. But a song that stayed with me for decades

We never had any Everly Brothers records in our house but I always liked them. I can't recall when exactly i became aware of their classic songs that came out before I was born but I do remember really liking "Bowling Green" when it was a new song on the radio. As far as I can tell after a brief look-up, this would have been the summer of 1967, which would make sense as this was around the time when I was becoming more consciously aware of a lot of pop culture things in general, including some of my first Marvel comics. My favourite of their earlier classics has always been "Cathy's Clown" which I think has a strong melody and shows off their harmony sound to great effect.