Don’t suppose you went to school in Columbia, MO? I knew the guy who taught the class there in the 80s.
Sam Cooke’s Trouble Blues: the "B" side: Sam Cooke - Trouble Blues (RCA 8803)
Best listened to very late at night in the dark after drinking a bit…
Just a little addendum, not for a song but a group. Not too long ago I found the Gipsy Kings and I find their music and their lead vocalist utterly compelling even though I understand maybe one word in ten. Except for their cover of Hotel California – not among my favorites but at least I understand two words in ten. 
….the Curse, by Josh Ritter. Magical and haunting and sad and hopeful and beautiful and chilling. All at the same time. Introduced to me by a thread here on the dope.
Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings in E Major. The very definition of a haunting melody.
Way before it was used in Platoon, I heard Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’ for the first time. And it still makes my jaw drop thirty years later.
He shall feed his flock from Händel’s Messiah.
In trutina from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana
Cocteau Twins’ Blue Bell Knoll
Dead Can Dance’s Black Sun
Swans’ Beautiful Child and then, years later, their Goddamn The Sun
My Bloody Valentine’s Strawberry Wine and Feed Me With Your Kiss
Shelleyan Orphan’s Shatter
The first time I heard Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits I was slack-jawed and mesmerized. I’m glad I was alone so there were no distractions. I literally drove to the record store as soon as the song ended.
I think I’ve only gone up asked what was playing in a record shop a couple of times.
I hadn’t heard either of the groups at the time but had to buy the albums.
One was Raw Power by Iggy and the other was Plastic Letters by Blondie (who had their 1st hit off it within weeks). Loved them both but I never really became a big fan of either - those are the only albums I ever bought by these artists!
I’m not certain of my jaw position, but a few years back I was browsing in a used CD store when a song came on the sound system that froze me in my tracks: O Mary Don’t You Weep by Springsteen. I went to find the CD for purchase before the song finished.
Do yourself a favor if you have not heard it: LINK
mmm
Isn’t it great when a song is so beautiful that you don’t even have to understand what the hell they are talking about? That’s how I was with “Maps”
I remember when I first heard Bjork’s “Human Nature”. Whoa! My hip hop tapes didn’t get any play for weeks. I was too busy consuming all things Bjork, then Tricky, then Portis Head. I loved it all, but like taking first taste of a great scotch, I couldn’t get back that first sip that was “Human Nature”.
I was late to learning of Nina Simone. Oh, the feeling my friend must have enjoyed when he introduced me. The way his eyes widened and the smile glowed on his face when he realized I had never heard of her.
This is in chronological order of when I heard these songs that blew me away:
The Four Tops “Baby I Need Your Loving”:
The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations”:
Heart “These Dreams”
Eva Cassidy “Over the Rainbow”:
This is more about the performance than the song itself, but I was once listening to a live performance of Bach’s St John Passion by The Gabrieli Consort and the alto and gamba player came forward to perform “Es ist vollbracht!”. It was so stunningly good that after about 15 seconds I realized that I’d actually stopped breathing in order to listen better. A transcendent moment.
The earliest music that I remember reaching out and grabbing me by the throat were:
Soul Serenade, by King Curtis: I’d never heard jazz before, and this guy blew me away. The clarity of his horn, the heart he put into his playing, and the pure swing of the tune still puts me into rapture. The tune was the theme music for a late-night DJ in the 60s; I remember forcing myself to stay up late for a solid week, hoping he would mention what that tune was. As soon as I found out, I went to the record store and ordered a copy. I wore that thing out, man.
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Ludwig van Beethoven: the opening stanzas of the second movement were the theme for the Huntley-Brinkley Report, an old news show. It took me quite a long time to find out what the music was, but it captivated me from the get-go.
In the early 60s, it was hearing Take Five, by the Brubeck Quartet. The 5/4 time signature was an attention grabber.
In about 1964 I heard Brubeck’s Carnegie Hall album. I was, and still am, mesmerized by Joe Morello’s drum solo on Castillian Drums. In fact, the entire album is a masterpiece.
In the late 60s, it was Hendrix, playing Purple Haze. Nobody had ever done that with a guitar before.
In the 70s, it was first hearing Al Di Meola playing with Paco de Lucia on the Elegant Gypsy album. I feel fortunate to have seen both of them in concert.
In the 90s, I first heard Ali Farka Toure on his Talking Timbuktu album with Ry Cooder, and was hooked on African music. Also very fortunate to have seen him live in his home country of Mali.
I’m sure there are many more, but these stand out for me. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
ETA: Thanks, Nzinga, for reminding me of Nina’s rendition of Feelin’ Good. Makes me want to dance whenever I hear it.
I also was knocked out by this song.
Unfortunately, I wrongly guessed that it was Bob Dylan. I thought, “Wow, Dylan is really sounding great!” :rolleyes:
I heard it played yesterday. It sounded like Brubeck, but there was a clarinet instead of an alto saxophone. It sounded perfectly OK.
The first time I saw them live, at the Vic Theater in Chicago, they did their first song…and nobody applauded. Seriously. Not a single peep out of the audience, who were collectively so stunned that they didn’t want to break the spell. They finally started applauding after the second song.
The Church, “As You Will”. I have been a huge fan of theirs for 30 years, understand; the original American release of the album it appears on, Heyday, was missing this song (and one other). Well I finally got around to DLing them this past fall, and, while I can see why they left it off-as it doesn’t quite fit the gestalt of the album, it remains a rather stunning song (and fit quite a few themes in my life this past fall on top of that).
For me there was a particular recording of Andrew Weber’s Pi Jesu by a young boy and slightly older woman. I have the LP but forget their names, it was probably the late 80s, early 90s. I think it was played at the end of ET (Ent. Tonight) and it stopped me dead in my tracks it was so beautiful.
Another for me might have been RHCP’s Under the Bridge. I distincly remember being at a pool hall, setting my cue down and asking “Holy crap, who the heck is this?”
I know my sister experienced the same astonishment when I sent her Annie Lenox’s version of I Don’t Want to Wait in Vain for Your Love off Medusa.