“Will The Circle Be Unbroken” vol 1, by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with classic traditional county performers. Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Vassar Clements, and others.
Calm down Ike ;), as I said I’m NOT a Dylan pussy, so I own almost every official recording of the man, including all of the Bootleg Series with the exception of the Complete Basement Tapes, but only because I don’t have the money right now to get it. Yeah, the Bootleg Series is great, great stuff, and IMHO the first release Bootleg Series 1-3 is qualitatively as important as Biograph, and works as a career retrospective just as well, though it consists solely of unreleased outtakes. Other people would have made a career only out of the stuff Dylan left in the can.
And yeah, the “Albert Hall” album is essential, and the acoustic set is as cool as the famous electric part (though you can clearly hear that he’s stoned out of his mind, sometimes he sounds like sedated, but he nails every word and every note of such complicated and wordy songs like Visions Of Johanna (I love this version, maybe even better than the Blonde On Blonde studio track), Tambourine Man or Desolation Row).
Yeah, I did think of that album when I composed the OP and thought about mentioning it. Great example.
When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought of Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-78.
Chock full of classic rock station staples.
Brilliant Corners, Thelonious Monk. It was the album that brought his unique writing and musicality to international recognition. According to Wiki,
Just what I was going to suggest.
If I may respectfully disagree, I suggest that Monk had international recognition at least since Genius of Modern Music, which included recordings made as early as 1947 and which was first released in 1951.
I love Brilliant Corners, but it was recorded in 1956. (I love Monk’s Music (1957) even more…how many albums feature BOTH Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane on tenor?)
Very cool and I agree…I had the pleasure of seeing John a lot of times…I even fixed his bus once in Springfield Illinois summer of '83.
RIP John…you will always be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pdzFaGg-4M
There are umpteen hundred BB King and Ray Charles collections. Both of them did much for their types of music and should be remembered too.
even tho it was old when I bought it the ramones gh album “mania” sums up their years with sire/warners nicely
Van Dyke Parks “Discover America” should be on this list as well. All covers of lesser known 20th century songs, amazing versions, great arrangements and production, and his best work, too.
Any discussion of historically important American music would be woefully incomplete without Sousa.
Welcome back from a bit of time away, Ranger Jeff.
Yeah, various Best of Atlantic compilations work. As long as they include Lonely Avenue. Love that song.
Tough to pick one for Monk, so I grabbed an iconic album (of which he had many). Interesting to note that he composed more music than nearly anybody else, second only to Duke Ellington, whose name is so far missing in this thread.
I will also suggest that Dave Brubeck’s album Time Out is in keeping with the OP. Few laymen other than in the jazz community realized that there were any other time signatures besides 4/4, 3/4, etc. It took heat from the critics, but the public loved it. That the album hit #2 on the pop charts and Take Five charted fairly high is remarkable.
Damn hard to choose a representative Ellington collection. I happen to like his 1920s stuff best:
His sound completely changed by the end of the '30s, with the great Blanton-Webster band. And in the '50s and again in the '60s the orchestra sounded completely different.
One compilation, one album.
Tom Petty’s late 80s album Southern Accents might well be the greatest southern rock album of all time. It’s nine songs that sum up the way the south was just starting to move from what it was to what it is now: a growing economic powerhouse that’s being forced to alter its ways for the first time in a hundred years. Brilliant songwriting and playing.
The compilations is, to me, definitive. Alan Lomax’s Sound Recordings. Lomax toured America and recording the songs people were writing and playing themselves. He did it for decades and essentially got music that was written and performed by Americans…not just the pros but the stuff being played in bars and around campfires that people were never bothering to set down on paper or on tape.