1001 Album Club

The great Jimmy Smith introduces the Hammond B3 organ to popular music and things get funky.

We go on the a date with Phil and Don and some of us are in love and some feel like we got stuck with the check.

Miriam Makeba is one for the ages, amazing life story, great singer, and all around wonderful person. The group loves this album .

Elvis is back and the production is great but why didn’t anyone buy this album?

We all find Joan Baez a bit irritating, but we love talking about her debut album.

After hearing it for the first time Ben falls in love with the off-beat styling of Dave Brubeck.

Marty Robbins brings the American West to life in some of the best cowboy songs we’ve ever heard.

On this revolutionary album of modal blue Jazz episode we try and get to the root of Rob’s distaste for this album.

Sure Ray Charles is a genius, but is this album? This album represents the softer Ray Charles without the R&B groove.

Ella Sings all of Gershwin and we don’t have much to say except Ella is a wonderful singer and the production is top notch.

We discuss Scat singing and how we can never go back to when it was new and the fact that Sarah Vaughan can’t remember the words for her own live album. Also Rob thinks the song “Honeysuckle Rose” is filthy.

The proto oogle shows us why we should run away and join the circus and we get to Ramblin’.

We find this swansong album beautifully haunting or maybe hauntingly beautiful.

Tito brings Afro-Cuban and Caribbean sounds like mambo, son cubano, and cha-cha-chá to the mainstream and we are glad he did!

We talk about the wildest voice and the man that puts the Rock in Rock n’ Roll.

We talk about the afro cuban jazz big band sound that seems to be in perfect sync. Oddly Machito’s singing isn’t featured on the album at all.

We talk about this seminal jazz album that was before it’s time and was recorded 7 years before it was before it’s time. Also Grady and I muse about the song “Moon Dreams” .

Some of us struggle to find the rhythm in Palo Congo trance like drumming .

We discuss one of the most difficult compositions that mentally broke the Monk’s band, our favorite Bops and Pannonica de Koenigswarter.

In what has been called his “last great album” Count Basie shows the power of the young players in an old style. We also take about jazz royalty names and the meaning of “Splanky”.

Buddy Holly sets the template for the rock band and inspires a new generation.

We talk about another Sinatra classic, that shows the singer back on top.

We discuss Gonsalves’s famous “Wailing Interval” that goes on for 27 choruses, and some of us feel betrayed from this “live recording”.

Fats Domino teaches us the “Roll” in Rock N’ Roll and can’t remember the words to his most famous song.