With the exception of the entries from Quebec, I know all of these bands and own CDs by most. There are others that I’ve grown out of but had owned LPs by them. So I wouldn’t consider any of them obscure. But maybe Leaffan was younger than I during the Seventies. Sylvester Weaver (1927) is obscure. Hopefully, Sylvester (1977) is not.
Of course, one could make the argument that if an average thirty year old doesn’t recognize the names of these bands today, then they can be considered obscure. But I assume that we’re not allowing thirty year olds to be the final arbiter of the value and influence of performers who peaked before they were born.
I’ll wait for the results of the poll to determine who deserves a mention as “the best”. I’m predicting Bowie, Wonder and Young for win, place and show.
I’ve been trying to recall the albums I bought or heard on the radio during those years – to little avail – so I did a bit of searching and located The Best Jazz Albums of the 1970’s which I’m planning to use as a memory jogger to see what I would add to this thread. Most of my non-jazz things have already been mentioned by others, but I fear jazz has been poorly represented thus far.
Other jazz fans might use the site for similar purposes. And do note that other decades are linked to off that page.
Well, I don’t like Anthony Braxton and I found Escalator Over The Hill to be unlistenable. Otherwise, I have no major complaints with their top ten albums of the decade. I’m a hard bop / Blue Note fan though, therefore not a trustworthy judge of post-1969 jazz.
Piero Scaruffi and I have divergent tastes but at least he makes an effort. He finds more pleasure in “challenging” albums and avant-garde. Although we usually disagree, I find him more trustworthy by an enormous margin than Rolling Stone / Mojo magazine.
I was also disappointed as I looked over the entire decade list not to see some of my favorites – then and now. I’d go check my own albums (LPs) if it weren’t such a hassle to get at them, but quite a good number of names I’d be wanting to list were radio station choices that I never bought, but enjoyed hearing all the same.
I’m also a fan of the “Blue Note” and “Atlantic” catalogs and was unhappy not to see some more of them listed.
Bottom line: can any other jazz fan point to a comprehensive list of what was released in the 70’s? One source does list the Blue Note catalog: Blue Note Records Discography Project
Names I would hope to see and maybe even nominate for this thread’s consideration would include:
Pat Metheny
David Sanborn
Bill Evans
Gato Barbieri
Herbie Hancock
Keith Jarrett
Chet Baker
Paul Desmond
Horace Silver
And even if their better years (for my taste) came earlier, I’d want to see:
To my mind, though, you’ve basically got ten names that stand out:
Led Zeppelin
Elton John
The Bee Gees
Stevie Wonder
David Bowie
Fleetwood Mac
Pink Floyd
Neil Young
Queen
Black Sabbath
That’d be my ten.
I’m surprised I left off Springsteen, but Bruce didn’t really become the legendary, iconic, fetish-of-Rolling-Stone guy did did until the 80s, even if you argue that his best work was mostly in the 70s. But you could make a pretty good argument I’m wrong. The Eagles were also a difficult omission.
For me personally, the 70s were when I first started to get into jazz. It was bands like Return to Forever, Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra, along with artists like Stanley Clarke and Billy Cobham. Traditional jazz, be bop, cool jazz all came later - it was the fusion stuff that was my gateway…
Pretty much my story, except the 50’s and all that was going on then are what got me to be a jazz enthusiast to start with. It was the 60’s and 70’s that persuaded me to listen more carefully to Rock and Blues and other non-Jazz genres. I even like Funk and some Disco from the 70’s. And, all said, it’s the spinoffs from “Straight Ahead Jazz” that made their biggest move in the 70’s that I still prefer to listen to.
My best guess, not being able to do an actual count of them because they’re inconveniently situated these days, is that my non-Jazz record library (now including CDs and cassettes added since the 70’s) might number as many as 20, but I’d be hard pressed to name more than 10. Jazz: hundreds.