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Unfortunately, ten choices wasn’t enough to cover all the essential albums of my teen years. I feel a need to mention the most important ones that are missing, there’s seven of them.

11. Chuck Berry

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is included in several Rolling Stone Magazine’s “Greatest of All Time” lists, including being ranked fifth on their 2004 list of the Greatest Artists of All Time. Leaving Berry unmentioned in the Top Ten doesn’t mean that he isn’t present there actually. Practically every artist mentioned in my list recorded songs by Chuck Berry and all of them definitely played his songs on stage at some point in their career.

I owned several of Berry’s vinyl albums in the 60’s, but today the best buy would be a greatest hits compilation called The Great Twenty-eight. It contains 28 of his greatest songs from 1955 to 1965.

12. Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)

BB gained popularity for their close vocal harmonies and lyrics reflecting a Southern California youth culture of cars, surfing, and romance. Brian Wilson’s growing creative ambitions later transformed them into a more artistically innovative group that earned critical praise. Their 1967 album Pet Sounds has often been regarded as the best album of the 20th century (in close competition with Sgt. Pepper, of course) and Good Vibrations has been voted best song many times.

For me, however, the record that finally convinced me was their 9th album, Summer Days, which was released in 1966, the year before Pet Sounds. My favorite song on this album is “California Girls”. Today, I think the best collection of Beach Boys songs is the album “20 Golden Greats”, which was the second biggest selling album in 1976. When BB gave a concert in Helsinki in 1966, I had a seat in the front row.

13. Strange Days – The Doors

As noted before, there is a connection between the groups Love and Doors, apart from both coming from Los Angeles. Arthur Lee tipped the bosses of his record label, Elektra, about The Doors, then playing as the house band at the famous Whisky a Go Go. The rest is history. Their greatest song “Light My Fire” is on their first album, but I liked the songs on their second album, Strange Days, better as a whole. Some of the songs on Strange Days were written in 1965-1966 , but did not make it onto their debut album, such as “Moonlight Drive” (which probably is the first song Jim Morrison wrote).

14. Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul

Black music was very much part of the rock scene in the sixties. The dominant label was Tamla Motown, with names such as The Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Supremes. But there were many others; my favorite being the “King of Soul”, Otis Redding and I still have his 1965 vinyl album “Otis Blue” in my book shelve. A close contender is James Brown, the “King of Funk”, but he was more limited. Otis Redding’s greatest song, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, was released after his death (only 26 years old, in one of those many plane crashes).

15. Orbisongs – Roy Orbison

“The Caruso of Rock”, Orbison had maybe the most distinctive voice of the rock scene. He was known for complex compositions and dark emotional ballads. His greatest success came in the early to mid sixties, when 22 of his songs (according to Wikipedia) landed on the US Billboard Top Forty, including “Only the Lonely”, “Crying”, “In Dreams”, and “Oh, Pretty Woman. In a 68-week period in 1963-64, Roy Orbison was the only American artist to have a number-one single in Britain. He did it twice, with “It’s Over” and “Oh, Pretty Woman”. It is a bit difficult to name my favorite Orbison album of the period, but I chose “Orbisongs”, the one that includes “Pretty Woman”.

16. Are You Experienced – Jimmy Hendrix

In the winter of 1968 I saw Jimmy Henrix Experience live in Helsinki. I still think that’s the greates concert I have ever experienced. His first album does not include his best songs of the time, unfortunately, but a new release in 1997 fixed that problem, adding “Hey Joe”, “The Wind Cries Mary” and “Purple Haze” and some other tracks to the original eleven.

17. Led Zeppelin II

Probably one of the most influential guitar albums of all times.

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Every record the Beatles published was a shock when it came out. We used to line-up outside the record store in the mornings of the release days. Compared to rabid R&B evangelists like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived sounding like nothing else (Rolling Stone Magazine). Following up on my earlier post today, on the list of my most memorable albums, we now get to the rest of the Top Ten, in random order (the number is there just to limit them to 10). And one rule here is, that no group can have more than one album on the list.

2. Rolling Stones no. 2

Yes, they are number two on this (random) list, but that was also the name of the album. Also in this case I chose an album that not normally is regarded as one of the band’s greatest. It contains only 3 songs composed by Jagger and Richards, but this is how I learned to listen to The Stones. My favorites on this album are “Everybody needs somebody to love”, “Under the Boardwalk” and particularly “Time is on My Side”.

3. Dance with the Shadows

The Shadows were pioneers of the four-member rock-group format (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums) in the UK. They were Cliff Richard’s backing band, but had their own career as an almost entirely instrumental group. Cliff and The Shadows dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-beatles period 1958-62. John Lennon is rumored to have said that before Cliff and the Shadows there was nothing to listen to in Brittish music.

As the first backing band to emerge as stars in their own right, they were early trailblazers for the beat-group boom that followed. The Shadows didn’t have any particularly great album, but several chart-topper singles, starting with Apache. For me personally, as a drummer in our garage-band, the most important track was Brian Bennetts drumming on “Big-B”. The best album to buy today would be “20 Golden Greats”, but as an illustration for this post I have chosen the album “Dance with the Shadows (1963).

4. Elvis Presley

The early 1960’s was not musically a good period for Elvis Presley. He got lost in Hollywood and in a few years starred in more than 20 films. They were “musical comedies” accompanied by sound track albums. The movies were dismissed by the critic and by and large, the songs were written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll.
Nevertheless, each year we saw at least one new Elvis movie, such as Kid Galahad, Girls girls girls, Fun in Acapulco, Kissin’ Cousins. Three of Elvis’s sound tracks actually reached number one on the charts and a few of his popular songs are from his films, such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, “Return to Sender” and “Viva Las Vegas”.

Although we never missed a new Elvis movie in the early 60’s, we didn’t really appreciate many of the songs. Instead we favored the “real” Elvis and the proper album for that is his debut long-playing record, named simply, Elvis Presley.

5. The Best of The Animals

Their 1964 hit House of the Rising sun was probably the first folk rock hit (although the term was not invented until the Birds recorded Mr Tambourine Man). This album by the Animals was not released until 1966, but the songs are recorded in 1964-65. In May 1964 I went to The Animals’ concert in Helsinki. It was the first live performance of an international band I have experienced (except Paul Anka by coincidence at the amusement park in Stockholm 1959, unfortunately I was too young at that time to realise what was going on).

6. The Magnificent Moodies – Moody Blues

Anybody can tell you, that the symphonic “Days of Future Passed” album is considered to be the ground breaking album of the Moody Blues. But I got totally knocked out already by their first, R&B, album in 1965. The first track is a cover of James Brown’s “I’ll Go Crazy”, and this version is the reason I found the album. One of the most popular Finnish groups in the 60’s was Topmost, and they used to open their shows with the Moody Blues version of the song. I thought it was awesome. The album also includes “Go now” and a great version of “Something you got”.

7. Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was, no doubt, one of the most influential songwriters in the 1960’s. His own performances were initially not easy to digest, the voice very nasal, “as if sandpaper could sing”. Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through more immediately palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Sonny and Cher, The Birds, The Association, The Hollies, The Turtles, Jimi Hendrix etc.

Many consider “Blonde on Blonde” to be Dylan’s best album, but I have chosen Higway 61, partly because it includes the fantastic “Like a Rolling Stone”. In those days a typical track lasted between 1:50 and 2:20 minutes. Like a Rolling Stone goes on for more than 6 minutes. The times really were a’changing.

8. Disraeli Gears – Cream

Cream was probably the first so called “Supergroup”, but even so, their front man was Eric Clapton. He played a central part of many groups in the 60’s, and is still very much around, almost 50 years later! Earlier in the 60’s he was part of, among others, The Yardbirds and The Bluesbreakers and after Cream he formed Blind Faith (including Stevie Winwood) and Derek and the Dominoes before leaving on his solo career. Claptons first (solo) Number One was Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff”, probably the first reggae song to top the charts. According to one source, Clapton is the only person who has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times; as a solo performer, as well as a member of rock bands the Yardbirds and Cream.

In 1967 I had the good fortune to experience Cream in a concert in Helsinki. The first song they played was Tales of Brave Ulysses, also included on Disraeli Gears. The record also includes “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Strange Brew”. By the way, the two other super stars of Cream were bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.

9. Forever Changes – Love

This is my choice for the best album of all times, but I guess I have said enough of them earlier in this blog already (see August 22). I’ll just add, that enigmatic singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Arthur Lee formed the group Love when he was just 20 years old. An other important member of the group on their first three albums (this one was the 3rd) was Bryan MacLean, who wrote the opening track “Alone Again Or”.

Arthur Lee is also known for producing Jimi Hendrix in his early career, and tipping off his label bosses about his friend Jim Morrison’s new band, The Doors.

10. Child is Father to the Man – Blood Sweat and Tears

A classic fusion of jazz, rock and roll, psychedelia and classical music, Child Is Father to the Man is one of bandleader Al Kooper’s greatest works. This album was not a commercial success and Kooper left the band, changing the nature of the group. Later, with a completely different line-up, BS&T had some great hits, but that’s an other story.

My favorite on this album is “I Love You More than You’ll Ever Know”. It also includes Nilssons “Without Her”.

11. Yes that’s the problem,

I already listed ten albums out of ten, and I still have seven more! But I will leave them until tomorrow.

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I have an embarrasing confession to make. A couple of weeks ago I participated in a poll about electing the best (pop, rock etc) album of all times. At least that’s what I thought I was doing. Reading the titles the other participants voted for made me a bit confused, cause I didn’t think their choises made sense at all, but for some reason it didn’t ring a bell – yet.

I listed my favorite album, Forever Changes by a Californian group called Love (see earlier post).

It took me more than a week to realise that the contest had been about “The best album name”, not “The name of the best album”!

Anyway, the last two weeks I spent a lot of time, going through in my mind, all the albums that have moved me, and I might as well let it all out now. Therefore I have made a list of the albums that have been important to me.

Remember that this list is not the “general” Top Ten, but about albums that have had a real impact on me as a person. I was born in 1950, so it should be no surprise that, for the Top Ten, I have chosen only albums published in the 60’s.

1. The Beatles – Please, please me.

No band has influenced popular music the way the Beatles have. They were unmatched innovators who were bigger than both Jesus and rock & roll itself: During the week of April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the first five slots on the Billboard Singles chart; they went on to sell more than a billion albums.

Many lists of “All time greatest” have named Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as their finest achievment, sometimes it has been “Revolver” or “The White Album. They are all educated choices, but my first long-play record was Please Please Me, the Beatles’ first album, and therefore it has had the biggest impact on me.

I will continue the list in next post.