Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums according to users on rateyourmusic.com (think IMDB for music) from every year from 1960 to the present. If you want to know more, I wrote an introduction to the ‘challenge’ here. You can also read all the other entries I’ve written so far by heading to the lovely index page here.

Well, we’re moving along nicely through the 60’s and we’ve now landed in 1964, so what happened outside of music? Well Khrushchev fell from power in Russia, President Johnson was re-elected as president of the USA after completing what would have been the final year of JFK’s term. Race riots broke out in Harlem and other US cities, Harold Wilson won the election in the UK as leader of the Labour party and the world’s first lung transplant occurred. And now that’s out the way, as usual, we’ll get to the music. Here’s what rateyourmusic.com users rate as their top 5 albums of 1964:

#1 Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch
#2 Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto - Getz / Gilberto
#3 Charles Mingus - Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mings, Mingus
#4 The Beatles - A Hard Day’s Night
#5 Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles

We’ve got our first Beatles entry, our first bossa-nova album and the return of the one and only Charles Mingus. On looking further down the list there’s two Dylan albums which I absolutely can’t pass up this opportunity to talk about, as well as an album by blues legend Muddy Waters, an artist I’ve always wanted to listen to. I’ll add them all to the pile too:

#6 Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin’
#11 Bob Dylan - Another Side of Bob Dylan
#15 Muddy Waters - Folk Singer

Once again we’ve got eight to get through. Strap yourselves in. Actually, just sit down, seatbelts are probably excessive for this. Here’s my thoughts and ranking of the above:

The Beatles’ third album and their first appearance on this list, A Hard Day’s Night features songs from the soundtrack to the film of the same name, and is the first to feature entirely original compositions.

A Hard Day’s Night is a testament to the fact that The Beatles really were the masters of coming up with a catchy melody. If this album was a balloon and catchy melodies were air, it would explode with a bang at a similar volume to that of a sonic boom. In terms of hits, we’ve got the title track as well as Can’t Buy Me Love (factually inaccurate, I’ve bought loads of things I love) but everything around them is just as catchy and fun.

I generally find The Beatles’ vocals a little bland and thus I prefer their later albums where they get more experimental lyrically and instrumentally, but there’s no doubt that this is a very strong set of simple, catchy pop songs. At times they’re a little too simple, particularly lyrically, but there’s a level of charm to the whole thing created by the simple vibrant guitars (particularly George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker) and the well performed harmonies that alleviates this problem somewhat.

A Hard Day’s Night has a certain level of rawness that I appreciate too, the mix isn’t quite as clean as it is later in their career. The bass and guitars have a level of mud that makes the vocals stand out a little more, and it just gives the whole thing a lovely happy-go-lucky feel, and a slightly, dare I say it, punky edge. A 30 minute, 60’s pop, sugar rush.

Song Picks: A Hard Day’s Night, Can’t Buy Me Love, I Should Have Known Better,

7.5/10

EmpyreanIsles — 7. Empyrean Isles

Herbie Hancock

Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock’s fourth album and his first to make it onto these lists, like Out to Lunch (which we’ll get to soon) and many others we’ve heard previously, features Freddie Hubbard on cornet, who along with Hancock, is very much the star of the show.

On the opener One Finger Snap Hancock’s characteristic light, quick touch is evident as his right hand dances up and down the piano like a grasshopper with 73 legs. It’s a style completely different to Thelonius Monk’s, with more notes, less space and less rhythmic interest. Things tend to sound like scales played delicately but quickly with a wonderful precision and with accents providing the variation and interest. It’s a style I rather like. Hubbard is on characteristically fine form here too and the two work very well together. On the dreamy Oliloqui Valley Hancock comps twinkly chords beautifully as Hubbard’s cornet creates a musical painting of colourful dots across a canvas held together by Ron Carter’s rock solid bass and Tony Williams’ enigmatic drum flurries. Carter’s soulful bass solo towards the end of the track is also noteworthy.

Cantaloupe Island, a jazz standard nowadays, features a wonderful piano line from Hancock and Hubbard is perhaps on his finest form of the whole album here, accentuating the piano’s rolling chords delicately, but with plenty of feeling, like the vocals to Hancock’s instrumental bedding. The way Hancock manages to keep the song’s core line going while soloing around it is incredibly impressive, and it took me a while to realise there weren’t two pianists playing.

The 14 minute closer The Egg is perhaps the most experimental piece here, with less of a central theme. Hubbard weaves in and out of Williams’ drum whirlwind which seems to get more and more ferocious as the song goes on. Hancock is remarkably quiet in the first half of the track, but makes the most of it when he is in the limelight, chatting sparkly melodies and ideas to the rest of the band to respond to. Things go eerily quiet in the middle, as the band seemingly go to sleep, Carter’s rumbling bass gently waking everyone up out of their slumber. Hancock wakes with some of the finest piano playing on the album, with a timeless solo, evoking the night sky turning to dawn as a forest begins to wake, insects skittering about their morning routines.

Empyrean Isles is just a really solid jazz album, featuring a quartet that works beautifully together playing some really memorable compositions, and you can’t ask for much more than that.

Song Picks: Cantaloupe Island, Oliloqui Valley

8/10

FolkSinger — 6. Folk Singer

Muddy Waters

So, I got a new set of headphones through the post the other day, which will likely be the last in my embarrassingly large collection for a while, because I absolutely love them. Fittingly, the first album I listened to on them was this one, and indeed it was the first time I’d heard it. Within the first few chords and words of the opening track My Home Is In The Delta I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It sounded so crisp, so deep, so wide, so bloody alive. I had a massive smile on my face that I struggled to remove for quite some time.

It turns out, it wasn’t entirely my headphones; this is just an absolute masterpiece in acoustic recording. That reverb on Muddy’s voice and the instruments is so good I’d say it’s the darn finest reverb I’ve ever heard. Enough about the production quality, what’s the actual music like you say? Ah, yes. Well, luckily, it’s pretty damn good too.

First of all, despite the title (which was chosen due to the popularity of folk at the time), this is very much a blues album, and a wonderfully bare-bones one at that. Waters plays acoustic guitar and sings, backed by Willie Dixon on bass (he’s also to thank for the brilliant production), Clifton James on drums and Buddy Guy on another acoustic guitar. The arrangements leave plenty of space for Muddy’s fabulously dynamic, deep and soulful vocals and the guitar playing has that wonderful blues groove that everyone loves, right?

On that last point I have to confess I have a bit of a bias towards the blues, it always brings me nostalgia for a time when I used to spend my summers at a blues festival near my Dad’s in Switzerland. The blues has always had a cosy predictability to it, something I don’t generally like in music, but that the blues manage to get away with.

Talking of predictability, once you’ve heard the opening track, you’ve pretty much heard them all here. I suspect a large amount of them are in the same key even but it hardly matters. Muddy’s vocal performance is so full of character, and so beautifully recorded that you feel like you’re sat in on a historic moment, a fly on the wall to one of the most influential blues musicians out there. The repetition is comforting, a warm hug in dark times, a 3-point shooter using the same graceful technique to hit the net time after time.

Song Picks: My Home Is In The Delta, The Same Thing, You Gonna Need My Help

8/10

This may be Dolphy’s first appearance on these lists as a bandleader but we’ve heard plenty from him before, he’s just been stealthily avoiding the limelight. He appeared on Coltrane’s 1961 releases Africa/Brass and Ole Coltrane as well as Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz from the same year. Incidentally, he also appears on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (yep, that’s what it’s actually called) from this year. Unfortunately, he died later on in 1964, of a reported diabetic coma, so this, sadly, is the last we’ll hear from him as a bandleader.

Out to Lunch is generally regarded as an avant-garde jazz classic, but what does this philistine who knows nothing about jazz think about it? Well, let’s find out. I love the name and the cover, so that’s a good start.

The opening track Hat and Beard refers to our man Thelonious Monk from the last post (1963) and opens with a bass and brass walk with a childish fun to it. The xylophone only serves to increase this fun as it comes in playing the exact same line, which plays throughout the song in one form or another. The song sounds a bit like everyone taking it in turns to practice a very specific sequence of notes while the rest of the band mucks about trying to distract them. It’s interesting, slightly mystical sounding, has a strange amount of parallels to ambient music, and is quite unlike any jazz I’ve heard so far. Kudos.

Something , Sweet Something Tender interestingly mixes a rather jolly saxophone part with an ominous bass part, combining to create an opening with a strange tension to it. Again, the piece sounds very much like play, sparse play though, the kind of play where someone is lurking around the corner about to abduct you. Actually it’s probably not that dark, but it does sound like something that could be playing as a mildly scary, slightly uncoordinated monster wakes up in the woods of a fairytale, distracted by every falling leaf as he stumbles on looking for the hero.

Gazzelloni is probably my favourite, with Dolphy’s flute playing being both impressive and playful (there’s that word again). I mean it’s out of control, ‘you can’t put a leash on this baby!!’ he screams as he unleashes a flutey wall of noise that sounds like a bunch of comedic birds twittering at each other. Only Freddie Hubbard’s trumpet manages to shut him up, answering in an equally joyful, if slightly less reckless manner. It all combines to create a piece that’s happier than an un-budgeted trip to the sweet shop, and as manic as a kid shortly after consuming all said purchased sweets.

I’m not going to go into the other two tracks in detail, they’re creative, dazzling, confusing and fun just like those I’ve already struggled to describe. This is an album that shows Dolphy’s considerable skill as a multi-instrumentalist (he plays flute, clarinet and saxophone at various points) as well as as a bandleader. It can’t be easy holding something as experimental as this together. This is not an easy listen, and after my first few listens I was left a little confused. The more familiar it’s gentle madness got though, the more it grew on me, and I can now firmly say I’m a fan. I can’t help but feel it’s a little too challenging, and perhaps more inventive than it is a joy to listen to at times, but I can’t deny its fun, its vivacity, its creativity. It must have been one hell of a lunch.

Song Pick: Hat and Beard, Gazzelloni,

8/10

MingusMingus — 4. Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

Charles Mingus

Just look at that album title would you!! No one but Charles Mingus would have the audacity to just repeat his surname five times and call that an album title. What a man. Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus which I’m just going to refer to as Mingus x5 from here on for obvious reasons, is essentially a greatest hits album. Now before you scream at me, “Clive, you’ve already given the classic Out to Lunch a measly 8/10 and now you’re telling me a greatest hits collection is an album, who do you think you are? Alan Partridge?”, just hear me out. This is Charles Mingus, he wouldn’t just slap a load of previous recordings together and release that, oh no, he’s re-recorded them, reworked them a little in places, renamed them, and also added a cover of Mood Indigo for good measure.

Now, with the exception of Hora Decibutus, which is a new version of E’s Flat Ah’s Flat Too from Blues & Roots, and Mood Indigo I’ve not heard any of the original versions of these songs so they’re all new to me.

The opener II B.S. reminds me why I fell in love with Mingus in the first place. Catchy brass lines, stomping bass and saxophone flurries building up to a chaotic crescendo of smashed cymbals and shouting, before breaking back down again. As always with Mingus, there’s plenty to latch onto, and it makes you want to tap your feet.

Then, to prove that he’s far from a one trick pony, comes IX Love, a song of dissonant tenderness. The brass instruments are reminiscent of The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, creating a kind of uneasy carpet for the rest of the music to sit on. The sax plays off this beautifully, with a more straightforward minor scale feel to it, it’s all a little uneasy, but nevertheless memorable.

Celia is probably my favourite track here, which starts with a sweet, cloudy saxophone line before Mingus’ bass takes us for a walk through a night-time scene of alto-sax shrieks and a hug of tubas accompanying us on this mystical journey. The tension builds with some stabs towards the end before the bass and drums leave space for a majestic conversation between a whole host of saxophones up there in the trees, as you lay on the grass and look up at the stars.

The Mood Indigo cover is performed with similar aplomb and then Better Get Hit In Yo’ Soul comes up and again reminds you just how well Mingus crafts a rowdy and yet catchy number. This one sounds like a party that’s got out of hand but no one cares. What? Tony’s gone and knocked over the grandfather clock?? Susan’s had a few too many and smashed your entire glass cabinet? Marlon’s accidentally set fire to all your cigars and you’re all stumbling about in the Cuban smoke wondering what’s going on???

Who cares, man? This’ll make a great story.

Theme for Lester Young is perhaps the album’s least interesting track but thankfully Hora Decubitus ensures we finish on a high. Mingus x5 is a pretty great place to start for anyone wanting to check out just why Mingus is a bloody genius. It features him at his most energetic and his most tender, and although it’s not as cohesive as some of his other work (Tijuana Moods and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady spring to mind), the fact it was all recorded in the same sessions means it doesn’t feel as disjointed as your usual greatest hits collection.

Mingus doesn’t make the top 5 again on any future rateyourmusic.com list, though I’ll probably be checking out his 1972 album Let My Children Hear Music when we make it to that year, as I’ve heard plenty of great things about it. But for now, this seems like a good way to say goodbye to the cigar smoking genius. A collection of his best material, performed emphatically well. Cheers Charles.

Song Picks: Celia, Better get Hit In Yo’ Soul, II B.S

8.5/10

AChangin — 3. The Times They Are A-Changin’

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s third album, and the first to feature entirely original compositions was to be his last with an intensely political message.

I remember I heard the title track in the cinema during the opening of Watchmen, well before I was particularly into Dylan. I remember thinking at the time that the it had such an urgency, such a sense of grandeur, and such an all encompassing sound that was remarkable for a song featuring only vocals, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. The thing sounded huge. Obviously the cinema sound-system played a part in that, but I still feel like that about the song. It’s colossal. It’s a shame the rest of the film didn’t live up to that opening, which is still one of my most memorable musical moments in cinema.

This is both Dylan’s most and last political album. The humour of his debut has gone, there’s no breezy love songs anymore, this is just a set of stark, brilliantly observed songs about the fraught environment that Dylan was surrounded by in the 60’s.

The title track The Times They Are A-Changin’, which was deliberately written as an anthem for the change of the time, succeeds in doing just that. It’s prophetically performed, brilliantly written, and one of the most impactful songs I’ve ever heard. A real favourite.

Other highlights on this album include With God on Our Side, where over 7 minutes Bob tells how various opposing countries and ideas have claimed to have god on their side, and that if this is true god’s supported a whole manner of ills such as genocide and death. Dylan ends the song prophetically with the line: ‘If God’s on our side, then he’ll stop the next war’.

One Too Many Mornings is a rare moment of respite from the political preaching, and besides the title track, is my favourite song from the album. The line ‘and I’m one too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind’ that is repeated throughout the song is one of my very favourites, and delivered with the relatable resignation of never being where one wants to be.

When the Ship Comes In and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll are two other examples of Dylan at his political best, the former with a sense of drama that mirrors The Times They Are A-Changin’.

There’s a lack of humour to this album for sure, and its political message can get overbearing, but there’s no doubt it contains some of the finest political songs ever written, and they’re sung, as ever, with an urgency and importance that Dylan never failed to bring across. It’s not quite as consistently engaging as Freewheelin’, and a bit more one-note, but it’s still rather special.

Song Picks: The Times They Are A-Changin’, One Too Many Mornings, With God On Our Side, When The Ship Comes In

8.5/10

Getz/Gilberto is a bossa nova album by American saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto. It also features Antonio Carlos Jobim on the piano who had a big hand in composing most of the tracks but obviously wasn’t deemed important enough to get his name on the album title, or perhaps two slashes is just one too many slashes? Who knows.

As mentioned in my review of Charles Mingus’ Tijuana Moods way back in 1961 I’m a big fan of two musical cultures coming together, and I’m delighted to say that this is another instance of it working really well. Considered as the album that popularised bossa nova around the world, Getz/Gilberto was a commercial as well as a critical success back in 1964. It’s opening track The Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema in Portuguese) is a song you’ve no doubt heard of, and is probably the most well known bossa nova song worldwide.

I’m not going to hide my feelings until the end of this review; this album is an absolute delight. Joao Gilberto’s nylon string guitar playing is as smooth and simple as butter (it’s just milk innit), and his singing has such a quiet, relaxing, contemplative feel to it that it’s hard not to get whisked away. Stan Getz’s saxophone playing may not have the technical prowess of someone like Coltrane but my, does it have feeling. That thing hums and sings in his hands, it expresses so much with so little, and is easily some of my favourite saxophone playing. I mean just listen to Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), the song starts with one of Astrud Gilberto’s appearances, she also stars on Girl from Ipanema, as she sings of quiet nights and stars in a beautifully evocative way, again in a similarly un-showy and relaxed manner to Joao Gilberto’s vocals. Shortly after the words ‘oh how lovely’ float from her lips, in comes Getz with a short saxophone lick that took me straight to the promised land, a moment of pure magic.

Listening to all 33 minutes of this has got to be one of the most relaxing experiences anyone can have. I mean yoga, meditation and all that just seems redundant now that I’ve discovered this. I feel like I’m taking off, slowly rising over the Earth, zooming out on all the troubles of the world, before being planted back gently to wherever I’m sitting as the final saxophone note of Vivo Sonhando plays. This is a masterpiece in understatedness, every note is effective, nothing is overdone, and it all works together to create one of the prettiest things I’ve ever heard. It’s really hard to create a happy and relaxed sounding album that doesn’t sound painfully cheesy, and even less easy for one to include the saxophone so extensively (a famously cheesy instrument thanks to the 80s). Sometimes it’s not about pushing boundaries, but about mastering your craft so much that you can make something masterful sound as if you could play it while asleep. An absolute triumph.

Song Picks: Girl from Ipanema, Corcovado,

9.5/10

Dylan’s fourth album still has nothing but his voice, acoustic guitar and harmonica on it, but don’t let that fool you, Bob has taken a very new direction here. Gone are the political songs, replaced by a set of introspective, at times surreal, songs performed with a particular lack of vocal restraint.

Another Side of Dylan is a lyrical turning point, and the glorious birth of the more abstract poetry that would fill the rest of his 60’s albums. Lyrically, this is some of his strongest work in my opinion, and they are very much a main part as to why this is such a fascinating and underrated album. I think Dylan’s vocals are perhaps at their most testing here, he pushes them to where they perhaps shouldn’t go, but they have a more delicate feel to them. Gone is the invincible and prophetic Dylan of The Times They Are A-Changin’, he’s been replaced by a more poetic, introspective, and fragile version.

Chimes of Freedom is a case in point, a masterpiece in my eyes. Go and listen to it, I implore you. I’d say just read the lyrics, but you’d miss out on a truly captivating vocal performance and the wonderful melody that ends every verse. Here’s a section for you to read in the meantime:

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked it's poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leavin' only bells of lightning and it's thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
And the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

The imagery created is fabulous, and the Rimbaud influences are evident (a poet Dylan was reading plenty of at this time and a massive influence on his lyrical style). This is where Dylan turns from a folk musician, to a singing poet. From someone who points a finger at things that exist, to someone who creates things that don’t.

To Ramona is another personal favourite of mine and another lyrical masterpiece which again shows Dylan’s uncanny ability to captivate without the need for a chorus. The verses end with a familiar, powerfully performed melody and before you know it, you’re hooked into yet another world of word mastery.

Dylan’s humour is evident here too in I Shall Be Free No 10 and particularly in Motorpsycho Nightmare where you can hear Dylan cracking himself up, his story getting more and more ludicrous as he decides the way to appease a farmer whose daughter he’s just been caught in bed with is to tell him he looks like Fidel Castro. This is the 60’s, in America. Bad idea.

Here’s some lyrics from the underrated gem My Back Pages:

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

I mean just read that! I’m not sure what it means, but it’s amazing. Which is pretty much how I’d sum up Dylan’s lyrics from this point forward. Sure, his lyrics were easier to decipher before, but they’re now full of mystery, full of imagery, full of stardust, like a magical dream that floats in your memory as you wake up, unable to grasp it again.

I’ve not even mentioned the famous It Ain’t Me Babe? which closes out this album, there’s just too much to talk about.

Another Side of Bob Dylan is one of Dylan’s more challenging albums, but one that is well worth the effort. Give it a few spins, let those slightly erratic vocals become more normal and then sit back and focus on the words, you won’t regret it.

I have to be honest, I didn’t think Dylan was going to take the title for 1964 when I started listening to these and Getz/Gilberto had it in the bag right up until earlier today. Then I listened to this again, and the fact that I’ve been listening to this thing for 10 years and still find new bits of magic every time is pretty spectacular. It’s unfair to compare an album that’s been a part of your life for so long to one you’ve heard for the first time a week or so ago, but this just pipped it to the post.

9.5/10