50 years ago today Nick Drake released “Five Leaves Left” – July 3, 1969

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Said she hadn’t heard the news
Hadn’t had the time to choose
A way to lose
But she believes.

Going to see the river man
Going to tell him all I can
About the plan
For lilac time.
(River Man)

Nick Drake’s debut album is as gentle as the singer-songwriter himself. Sensitively plucked acoustic guitar and pensive lyrics make for a deeply resonant, emotionally effecting album. At turns haunting (‘River Man’) and quietly confident (‘Cello Song’), it’s Brit folk at its best.
-NME: 20 best folk music albums of all time
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River Man:

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July 3: Muddy Waters At Newport was recorded in 1960

muddy waters at newport 1960

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]For many back in the early ’60s, this was their first exposure to live recorded blues, and it’s still pretty damn impressive some 40-plus years down the line. Muddy, with a band featuring Otis Spann, James Cotton, and guitarist Pat Hare, lays it down tough and cool with a set that literally had ’em dancing in the aisles by the set closer, a rippling version of “Got My Mojo Working,” reprised again in a short encore version.
~Cub Koda (allmusic.com)

A stomping live document of the period when Waters’ Chicago blues started reaching a wider pop audience. Newport has his classics – “Hoochie Coochie Man,” a torrid “Got My Mojo Working” – delivered by a tough, tight band anchored by harp genius James Cotton.
~rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Got My Mojo Working (part 1 & 2)

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July 2: Elvis Costello released “Imperial Bedroom” in 1982

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]It may not have been a commercial blockbuster, but it certainly earned the respect of legions of musicians and critics who would have previously disdained such a punk rocker. And, perhaps, that’s also the reason that he abandoned this immaculately crafted style of work on his next album, Punch the Clock.
-Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)

Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom is really a mansion, each of whose rooms is decorated with painstaking care and detail by the artist. In every aspect of this masterfully wrought, conceptually audacious project, he’s managed to bulwark his emotional directness with vision and clarity — and to make an album that lingers and haunts long after the last note has died out. Like a long, episodic novel — or a long, episodic relationship — you can look back when it’s over and measure how far you’ve traveled.
-Parke Puterbaugh (rollingstone.com)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Man Out of Time:

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July 1: The Band Released “Music From Big Pink” in 1968

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]This album was recorded in approximately two weeks. There are people who will work their lives away in vain and not touch it.
-Al kooper

Bob Dylan contributed “I Shall Be Released” and co-wrote two other tunes. But it was the rustic beauty of the Band’s music and the drama of their own reflections on family and obligations, on songs such as “The Weight,” that made Big Pink an instant homespun classic.
rollingstone.com

Over time, Music from Big Pink came to be regarded as a watershed work in the history of rock, one that introduced new tones and approaches to the constantly evolving genre.
allmusic.com

..the debut album from the Band made roots music sound as impressionistic and idiosyncratic as any other kind of rock’n’roll. It was revolutionary.
pitchfork
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The Weight:

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October 25: Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience was released in 1968

hendrix-electric-ladyland

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]undoubtedly a rock album, albeit rock on the point of evolving into something else.
– David Stubbs

one of the greatest double-albums in rock.
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Electric Ladyland is the third and final album of new material by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in October 1968 on Reprise Records. It is the only Hendrix studio album professionally produced under his supervision. It topped the Billboard 200 album chart for two weeks in November 1968.

Released October 25, 1968 (some sources says October 16…worth celebrating anyhow)
Recorded Olympic Studios, London and Record Plant Studios, New York, July and December 1967, January 1968, April–August 1968
Genre Psychedelic rock, blues rock, acid rock, hard rock
Length 75:47
Label Reprise, Track, Barclay, Polydor
Producer Jimi Hendrix

 

All along the watchtower, the best Dylan cover of all time!:

This is a perfect Hendrix album. It is poppy and funky and original at the same time, and what a great soul singer Hendrix was! I also think it is very inventive, sonically speaking. Jimi Hendrix really searched for “new sounds” on this record, he produced an album that has stood the test of time marvelously.

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September 8: Bone Machine By Tom Waits Was Released in 1992

bone-machine

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]“it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”
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From Wikipedia:

Released September 8, 1992
Recorded Prairie Sun Recording, Cotati, California
Genre Rock, experimental rock, blues rock
Length 53:30
Label Island
Producer Tom Waits

Bone Machine is a critically acclaimed and award-winning album by Tom Waits, released in 1992 on Island Records. It won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, and features guest appearances by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, Primus’ Les Claypool, and The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards.

Bone Machine marked a return to studio material for Waits, coming a full five years after his previous studio album, Franks Wild Years (1987). The album is often noted for its dark lyrical themes of death and murder, and for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy blues rock style.

Tom Waits

Recording & production:

Bone Machine was recorded and produced entirely at the Prairie Sun Recording studios in Cotati, California in a room of Studio C known as “the Waits Room,” in the old cement hatchery rooms of the cellar of the buildings.

Mark “Mooka” Rennick, Prairie Sun studio chief said:

[Waits] gravitated toward these “echo” rooms and created the Bone Machine aural landscape. […] What we like about Tom is that he is a musicologist. And he has a tremendous ear. His talent is a national treasure.

Waits said of the bare-bones studio, “I found a great room to work in, it’s just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we’ll do it here. It’s got some good echo.” References to the recording environment and process were made in the field-recorded interview segments made for the promotional CD release, Bone Machine: The Operator’s Manual, which threaded together full studio tracks and conversation for a pre-recorded radio show format.

Artwork:

The cover photo, which consists of a blurred black-and-white, close-up image of Waits in a leather skullcap with horns and protective goggles, was taken by Jesse Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan. He wears this same outfit in the video for “Goin’ Out West” and “I Don’t Wanna Grow up”.

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