Until he died earlier today, Little Richard was arguably the most influential living rock & roll artist. He counted Elvis Presley, James Brown, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, The Beatles, & Otis Redding not only as contemporaries, but as disciples.
He was the self-proclaimed Architect Of Rock & Roll, & was making the music before virtually every other rock & roll pioneer, with the exception of the late Fats Domino. Perhaps no one captured the implications of Little Richard better than Lillian Roxon in her landmark Rock Encyclopedia in 1969:
His pompadour was high & his hip action wicked when Elvis was still a pimply kid mowing lawns in Memphis. He was the model for 99 percent of the screaming, jet-propelled pelvic freakouts of the post-Elvis early rock era, down to the shiny suits, lurid showmanship & acrobatic piano-playing...Once you have seen Little Richard it is very difficult to take any other rocker seriously. He did it all first.
He also did it among the very best.
For just over 2 years--September 13, 1955 to October 18, 1957--Little Richard recorded a catalog of songs for Specialty Records that rival Elvis's pre-Army sessions, The Beatles' psychedelic era, & Bob Dylan's initial electric albums as some of the most consistently excellent rock & roll ever recorded. Virtually every song was a hit, classic, or standard (or at least should have been). "Tutti-frutti." "Long Tall Sally." "Slippin' & Slidin'." "Rip It Up." "Ready Teddy." "The Girl Can't Help It." "Lucille." "Send Me Some Lovin'." "Jenny, Jenny." "Miss Ann." "Keep A-Knockin." "Good Golly, Miss Molly." & those are just the songs that made the pop charts.
This is remarkable for anyone, let alone a very wild & flamboyant gay African-American man from the Deep South in the mid-1950s. The fact that "Tutti-Frutti" was originally a celebration of anal sex ("Tutti-frutti, good booty!" went the original lyric), was lost on the many who covered it, including Pat Boone, whose tepid white-bread version of the song scored the bigger hit among pop (read: white) audiences. At the time, this incensed Little Richard to no end, but he came around in later years. He once explained how, for many white kids, while it was Pat Boone's version of "Tutti Frutti" that lay on the teenager's nightstand, it was his version that was secretly tucked away in the drawer underneath. That got him in the room, he acknowledged.
With his hits covered by every white rocker worth their weight in sweat--Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran, & Gene Vincent--& a hereto-unknown generation cutting their teeth on his music on the other side of the Atlantic--The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, & The Kinks--Little Richard was a legend even if he stopped making music right then & there.
Which he sort of did.
Suspended several miles above the ground in an airplane that nearly went down, Little Richard promised God that he would turn to the Church if the plane could land safely. Little Richard kept his promise, which, along with the fact that Elvis was in the Army, Chuck Berry was in jail, Jerry Lee Lewis was disgraced in scandal, & Buddy Holly was dead, helped bring the first great rock & roll era to a crashing close as quickly as it had appeared.
But of course, Little Richard's soul was too conflicted to stay in one place too long. For much of the rest of his career, he remained torn between the rock of blues & the rock of the Church, all the while serving as a reminder--along with such peers as Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin--that African-American gospel music is largely the same thing as rock & roll, only played on Saturday night instead of Sunday morning.
So, he recorded gospel records, he tried his hand at new rock recordings, & re-recorded inferior versions of his Specialty hits time & time again.
But the die was cast & Little Richard was the rare legend who touched so many other legends.
Paul McCartney learned how to sing by copying him.
Bob Dylan wrote in his high school yearbook that his ambition was join Little Richard's band.
Jimi Hendrix actually did join Little Richard's backing band & it was his big break into the music industry.
The Kinks' first single was a cover of "Long Tall Sally."
Otis Redding began his career directly lifting his style.
The Band liked to do "Slippin' & Slidin'" as a searing encore.
Rock's first great history, Nik Cohn's Rock--From The Beginning, was retitled Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock & Roll.
Rock's first great cultural study, Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, opened with Little Richard exploding in mad fury on a late-night talk show.
& Little Richard became something of a latter-day pop culture icon, appearing in those Nike commercials with Spike Lee & Bo Jackson, rapping on Living Colour's "Elvis Is Dead," & singing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" on Full House.
He's done the awards laps. His landmark 1957 debut album, Here's Little Richard, is the first (& so far ONLY) '50s rock album inducted in the Grammy Hall Of Fame & he won an honorary Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993.
In 1997, he received the American Music Award of Merit.
In 1994, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation.
In 1990, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
& in 1986, he was one of the first ten musical inductees into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, along with Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, & Elvis Presley. There has literally never been a better class ever inducted.
& now, after the passing of Chuck Berry & Fats Domino in 2017, Little Richard was one of the last remaining members of that first class. Now all that's left is Don Everly of The Every Brothers, & Jerry Lee Lewis.
Which means that Jerry Lee Lewis is one man closer to being The Last Man Standing.
"It is with a heavy heart that I ask for prayers for the family of my lifelong friend & fellow Rocker 'Little Richard,'" The Killer told Rolling Stone today. "He will live on always in my heart with his amazing talent & his friendship! He was one of a kind & I will miss him dearly."
Other accolades are already pouring in about Little Richard that are as magnificent as the man himself.
Bob Dylan: "His was the original spirit that moved me to do everything that I would do."
Mick Jagger: "He was the biggest inspiration of my early teens & his music still has the same raw electric energy when you play it now as it did when it first shot through the music scene in the mid 50's.
Brian Wilson: "He was there at the beginning & showed us all how to rock & roll."
There are many more & there will be many more echoing this sentiment.
But for me, Little Richard comes down to one distinctive sound that is now so ripped off, it's amazing to think it was ever someone's signature vocal lick. Because no one could hit a thrilling "ooooo" like Little Richard. Straight from the Church, he drove it into the rock & rhythm & blues, a falsetto wail of a cry that captured the crazy guts & glory of rock & roll like few other sounds.
When Little Richard sang "ooooo," it lit a flame in the ear of his millions of fans.
I cannot stop listening to Sam Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz."
The song has overtaken me, demanding to be played repeatedly, beckoning to be solved like a riddle, plumbing me further into its seemingly bottomless depths.
The other day I listened to nothing but the song for close to an hour--hearing it, studying it, contemplating it, trying to make it reveal itself to me.
Sam Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz" was first released on March 1, 1964, as the closing song on the first side of his criminally-underrated album Ain't That Good News. The following July it was culled as the B-side of "Good Times," where it made the Top 40 with a respectable #35. By that point, the song was already around eight months old.
Cooke originally recorded "Tennessee Waltz" on January 28, 1964, in that odd string of months after JFK was assassinated but before The Beatles came to America. He recorded "Rome Wasn't Built In A Day" & "Meet Me At Mary's Place" before it; each took little more than two takes to master. It's said that he was more focused on the song he would record two nights later--his epic "A Change Is Gonna Come," which has been rightly hailed as the finest soul record of all-time.
Which means that "Tennessee Waltz" was the last song he recorded before his masterpiece. While nowhere near the scope of "A Change Is Gonna Come" (virtually no other song could be), to my ears "Tennessee Waltz" plays like a small epic in & of itself. Only instead of an epic looking outward that takes in all of society, "Tennessee Waltz" is an epic that looks inward to a story that is central to pop music: Love.
Part 1: Words.
As a story, "Tennessee Waltz" is simple to the edge of banal, consisting of one verse & one refrain that would be entirely cliche if not so economic in their presentation:
I was dancing with my baby to the "Tennessee Waltz"
When an old friend that I happened to see
I introduced him to my baby & while they were dancing
My friend stole my baby from me
But I remember that night & the "Tennessee Waltz"
Only you know how much I have lost
You know that I lost my baby that night they kept playing
That beautiful "Tennessee Waltz"
As a lyric, it's not much, but Sam Cooke transforms it into a small saga of a performance, endlessly wringing new meaning from its words & music. Part of Cooke's power derives from his focus on the word you--as in "only you know"--which cements the connection between the singer & the listener. The relationship between the singer & the listener in recorded sound is so taken for granted that we hardly even notice it today, but Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz" makes you appreciate it in full. He isn't so much singing the song to himself as much as he's confiding to you about it, as though you share the song's burden by the mere act of listening to it. Part of music's magic is its inherently intangible nature, & the way in which every person listening to a song has a direct connection to the singer. This is what helps give music its profound power, & touch our lives. Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz" reinforces this with the way he seems to confide in us, as though it is not so much a song as it is a pact.
In Dave Marsh's classic The Heart Of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made, he chose Marvin Gaye's version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" for the hallowed #1 spot. (Like Cooke, Gaye was another '60s soul pioneer who died way before his time because of a bullet that was supposedly fired in self-defense.) Marsh picked it in part because of the way that Gaye sings it as "an internal dialogue," working his way through a confrontation, then overtaken by humiliation, before finally ending with mourning. It is, in a little over three minutes, the psychological journey through the ending of a relationship, by feeling the words of the story through the emotion of the music.
In many ways, Sam Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz" does the exact same thing over nearly the exact same length of time, only four years earlier--& it does so with a third of the lyrics to work with.
Similar to what Marsh heard in Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," I hear in Sam Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz": The psychological scope of the end of a relationship. Traditionally, grieving has been divided into five major stages since the Kugler-Ross Model was introduced in 1969: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, & Acceptance. "Tennessee Waltz" is not an exact replication of this model, but it's about as close as one can find in a pop song.
For the first verse, Cooke plays it coolly, evenhanded, even nonchalantly, taking you through the facts of the case like it was a burglary (which, in fact, it essentially was). One imagines that only his denial can allow him to keep his anger at arms length, with a reasoned calm that nearly spills over into aloofness.
But then the melody of the refrain causes things to turn; it seems to bring out a passion that had remained latent in the initial verse. He doesn't sing it, but rather rides his emotions simmering just underneath.
The second verse (same as the verse) finds him going through the facts of the case again, but now his cool resolve has hardened into something close to anger. He sounds like someone exasperated after having to explain the same thing seventeen times in a row with little faith that this eighteenth time it will stick. On one hand, it is like an old man retelling the same story as though it holds the elusive key to his freedom; on the other, it sounds like Einstein's definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over & over but expecting a different result. & if one can hear the latter in his words, perhaps one can find a sense of bargaining in them too. I'm honestly not sure.
& then the bottom falls out of the record.
As Cooke reaches for that second refrain, he soars with a graceful sadness that can only result in beauty. I've now listened to it dozens of time, but it always remains new, always catches your attention, always demands to be heard. His performance takes you by the chest & pulls you into his pain, his suffering, his world. It's tempting to label this bottomless sadness as depression, but depression never sounded so beautiful.
Which gets to the heart of the record--& its profound statement on not just love, but music. The thing that seems to keep the singer going through his friend betraying him with his lover is the beauty of the "Tennessee Waltz." Lyrically, it sets up an odd dynamic for a pop song: The song "Tennessee Waltz" is about a person who keeps hearing the song "Tennessee Waltz." If they are different songs, it is like Russian stacking dolls; if they are the same song, it's like a hall of mirrors. Either way, the importance is its beauty. A beauty so great that it can distract the singer from the greatest heartache he will ever suffer.
I remember talking to my grandfather about his time serving in World War II in Papua New Guinea. He was a Navy man, but for some reason that I've never been able to piece together, he went down in an airplane. For the rest of his life, he hated to fly & only did so out of sheer necessity. But when I remember him describing the crash, he spoke with a near mystic sense of wonder. "I was so terrified," he said. "But looking out the window at the lush vegetation all around us, I had never seen anything so beautiful."
I believe a similar thing is happening in Sam Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz." He loses his girl to his friend, but boy, that song was beautiful! If it wasn't handled so effectively by Cooke, it might fall flat as a joke, but it never even gets close to one. Is there some sort of hidden self-loathing that would make the song seem even more beautiful to have this traumatic experience happen during it? Nietzsche might think so. If the record does finally make its way out of depression to acceptance, it is by the grace of the music it is said to. Like Dante being unable to describe Beatrice upon finally reaching her in the Paradisio, Cooke grasps at meaningless adjectives: "That Beautiful, That Wonderful, That Marvelous, That Glorious." It is not a conclusion so much as a transcendence over the human spirit.
Part 2: Music.
One of the first things you might notice about Sam Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz" is that it is not a waltz. It's a sort of shuffle built around a groove--an acoustic guitar strum pitted against porto-funk horns playing a simple, scratching three-note lick while a piano dashes around them, quietly building the tension secretly, but in plain sight; one could easily mistake it for an Atlantic-era Ray Charles song (say, "I've Got A Woman") played at the wrong speed. Its straightforward rhythm is a reminder that many of the hottest songs sounded like samples long before anyone was actually sampling records. But the live performers are revealed when the horns start to peel away from each other towards the end, which ultimately give it that much more of a visceral quality. All put together, the sound jumps off the record & forms a cocoon that you can virtually crawl inside of, enveloping you in its tale of woe. By the time you're blindsided by the performance, it makes no difference whether the song is a waltz or not. (& in case anyone wasn't sure whether Cooke was basking in its majestic wonder, you can just hear him clap once after singing the "dirty dog" line, in a moment of joyous spontaneity.) But the "Tennessee Waltz" did begin as a waltz, composed by country crooner Pee Wee King in the mid-1940s, as a sort of answer record to Bill Monroe's "Kentucky Waltz." King didn't record it until late 1947 & didn't release it until early 1948, but it became a hit song with this band, The Golden West Cowboys, as well as a cover version by Cowboy Copas (who was originally a member of the Golden West Cowboys).
In 1950, bandleader Erskine Hawkins--best known nowadays for writing "Tuxedo Junction"--cut a jazz version of "Tennessee Waltz," smoothing it out & bringing it to something close to a pop standard. While the song initially missed the charts, it made enough waves that a young Jerry Wexler (later to become a legendary producer at Atlantic Records) played it for the manager of Patti Page.
It was Patti Page's version of "Tennessee Waltz" (recorded in November 1950 as the B-side to "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus") that became a smash hit, sitting atop the national Billboard charts for nearly two months straight. It was as white-bread of a record as could be imagined in that period--right at home on the shelves next to the likes of Perry Como & Mitch Miller--& serves as a case-in-point why rock music just had to happen. Among the cover versions that cropped up in her wake were by Jo Stafford, Guy Lombardo, & The Fontaine Sisters. 'Nuff said.
In Jim Miller's Flowers In The Dustbin: The Rise Of Rock & Roll, 1947-1977, he describes Page's "Tennessee Waltz" as "the biggest pop hit of the postwar, prerock era" and as "a synthetic new kind of music, the hybrid product of several different vernacular genres." as "And the sheer sound of Page's recording was unprecedented. A tricked-up, technologically evolved sort of pseudo-folk song, Patti Page's hit was hard to categorize, impossible to reproduce on stage, & instantly unforgettable."
The song itself--which already by the time Cooke got to it was a country-song-turned-jazz-ballad-turned-white-bread-pop-smash was like a chameleon, taking the form of anyone who sang it. The song didn't reveal itself as much as it revealed whoever was singing it.
Take Elvis' home recording of the song from 1966, where he turns it into pure 19th century parlor music, as though it came straight by a tunesmith on Tin Pan Alley:
At least until he starts riffing about a man stealing his horse--which would have been a real concern in the parlor-music era--before it devolves into him cracking his friends up like the jokester he was known to be. If anyone wondered where the kid who talked his way into Sun Records to croon The Ink Spots' "My Happiness" in 1953 went, this performance (mostly) showed he was still right there. & to stretch the point, here's Spike Jones' novelty version--a #13 hit in 1951:
He seems to jump on the pioneering multitrack vocal by Patti Page by turning over the vocal to two old Jewish ladies, for no particular reason. (Unless I'm missing some reference to Yiddish vaudeville, which is entirely possible.) The instrumental break is vintage Jones, mixing all sorts of crazy sounds at a breakneck pace--& all recorded live in the studio, of course--that mirrored his earlier masterpiece from 1945, "Cocktails For Two." (Unrelated but related quandary: When The Band sing about having "Spike Jones on the box" in "Up On Cripple Creek," were they listening to his version of "Tennessee Waltz"? Discuss.) But all roads lead back to Patti Page's monster hit version, which makes it all the more surprising that it was not included on Cooke's second RCA album, Hits Of The 50s. But it seems that once he nailed it in the studio, he was happy to keep it close by. In July of 1964, Cooke included it as the finale of what would be his first live album, Sam Cooke At The Copa.
Generally, Sam Cooke At The Copa is not held in terribly high regard as it captures Cooke playing at a dinner-club for people who politely applause upon recognizing whatever song he is singing. It's a bit like the sonic equivalent of those early rock movies were Little Richard plays for a room of middle-aged white people sitting still in tuxes.
The previous year, Cooke had cut Live At The Harlem Square Club in Miami, Florida, for a proposed live album that was to be called "One Night Stand." Cut with the then-current smash James Brown's Live At The Apollo ruling the nascent soul world, it appears to try & beat that record at its own game. To my ears, it largely succeeds, giving Cooke a hot & sweaty night that serves as a testimony to people who remember him as a pious choirboy.
But that's what did the record in. Deemed too wild for his clean-cut image, the album was shelved until over two decades after his death.
So for several decades, the only live taste one could get of Sam Cooke was at this polite supper-club album. For the most part, he plays it safe, giving the people what they want--jazz standards ("Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home?"), blues standards ("Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out"), & folk standards ("Frankie & Johnny"). Aside from "Twistin' The Night Away," his biggest hits are trotted out on the first side in a five-minute medley. "Tennessee Waltz" seems like a nice place to end the set.
He sings it fine--even noting that Patti Page might not recognize it--but it lacks the drama of the studio version. I was surprised to see that this version was cut nearly half a year after the studio version; played next to the more familiar hit, it sounds like a rough draft for a song that will be tightened up later.
When Otis Redding covered the song a few years later, he stretched it out into a dirge, perhaps to differentiate it from the version sung by Cooke, who was one of his idols. If Cooke sung it like a therapy session, Redding sang it like he was in the confessional. The song is pure church, from the 6/8 time signature to the gospel flourishes on the piano. Redding seems to worry over the lines about what he has lost, driving it home home like an atonement for his sins.
& just in case you doubt Cooke's influence, Redding throws in the words "cotton-pickin'" towards the end, a direct lift of phrase from Cooke's version on the Copa LP. That said, there's one part of Cooke's Copa version that sticks out to any modern listener. Towards the end of the song, as he's riffing his way to a close, Cooke sings "I know, I know, I know, I know" in a tone & style that provides the blueprint for Bill Withers' 1971 classic "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone." Where Cooke's song is swinging & off-the-cuff, Withers' song is smooth & slick; the way the beat locks in with the strings seems to predict the next 30 years of R&B music.
For the most famous element of "Ain't No Sunshine" is when Withers sings "I know" 26 times in a row to fill out the brief song in lieu of a verse (& even with this part, the single still doesn't even reach two & a quarter minutes). These words make the song for Withers--& in turn, powered it to become his first major hit. It appears that the germ of that song, the engine that drove the initial success of his career, derived from Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz." Part 3: Video.
On October 5, 1998, Scottish indie group Belle & Sebastian recorded a set of song's in Paris, France, for a series in that country called the "Black Sessions." Currently on YouTube, it remains the longest available footage of the original seven-member lineup.
Typical for the group, they work their way through a series of familiar songs & deep cuts, intercut with a surprise cover. In this case, it is violist Isobel Campbell singing France Gall's "Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son," which can be seen at the 33:53 mark. Campbell completely nails it, transforming Belle & Sebastian into a runaway locomotive of drums & organs, as she leads the way like a soldier doing battle with the ocean. It is a sexy, focused performance that is all the more remarkable with the way she sheepishly falls apart directly after delivering it--"I'm sorry if my French was bad"--shrugging away the entire thing like a second grader faking their way through a book report.
You can see how the leader of Belle & Sebastian, Stuart Murdoch, was completely infatuated with her.
Although they were together at the time of this concert, they would grow apart in the coming years, as Murdoch's quiet & more subdued nature made him the foil for her outspoken, feisty ways.
The following song is a rendition of one of the most beautiful Belle & Sebastian songs, "Slow Graffiti," which begins at the 36:16 mark. Although the title is a sphinx, the song itself is brimming with an odd balance of careful precision & heart; in studio, it is one their closest approximations to the pop side of their beloved heroes, The Velvet Underground. Here, in this live version, it takes on a more precious, delicate shape that outdoes the studio version with its effortless grace.
Midway through the song comes its bittersweet climax:
Listen, Johnny
You're like a mother
To the girl you're falling for & you're still falling--
These are some of the cruelest words ever voiced in a pop song. There is nothing less sexy than a man pursuing a girl by acting like he's her mother. The words sting, making one wonder if it's not a commentary on Murdoch's own relationship with Campbell, who just proved both her strength & charisma only moments before.
& holding it all together is the melody in "Slow Graffiti," which maps directly onto "Tennessee Waltz." Did Murdoch realize this when he wrote it? Or was it just in the ether of a popular music subconscious?
Either way, I find it fascinating he chose this melody for these lyrics.
"Slow Graffiti" plays almost like an inverse of Cooke's "Tennessee Waltz"--where Cooke sings of a man who loses his girl to a friend, Murdoch sings of a man who can't even get a girl in the first place, because of his own maternal instincts. The cruelty of the situation--& the essential loneliness that both men feel--tie the songs together, with the thread of same melody bringing beauty to the proceedings. The contrast is further enhanced by the performers themselves--on one hand, we have Cooke, an African-American mainstream pop solo singer whose career ended over 50 years ago, & on the other we have Belle & Sebastian, a Scottish indie septet who soldier on to this day.
Coming from opposite sides, "Tennessee Waltz" is where they meet in the middle.
On September 16, 1964, Sam Cooke co-headlined the first episode of Shindig!with future-Rock-&-Roll-Hall-Of-Fame inaugural inductees The Everly Brothers. He was to be killed less than three months later.
Like he did on Sam Cooke At The Copa, he seems to be choosing his material to please a mainstream (white) audience; his two solo numbers for the show was a cover of Bob Dylan's "Blowing In The Wind" & his own take on Patti Page's "Tennessee Waltz." But then when one factors in that he was also promoting the Copa LP that was to be released the following month (which contained versions of both songs), it seems more like it was two birds with one stone.
Given all of the possible songs Cooke could have performed for this show, it's a small miracle that we have footage of "Tennessee Waltz." His abridged reading of the song (he skips over the second/first-for-a-second-time verse) is an interesting cross between the crowd-pleasing of the Copa LP and the fervor of the studio version. While it is not quite as good as the latter, it easily beats the former, landing somewhere in between the two. His performance is confident, settled--this is a man who has performed a million times before & has no reason to feel any pressure co-headlining the launch of a new primetime national series.
Whoever directed the show clearly knew the song, initiating with a tight focus framed by those ever-present saxophones, before pulling back for a third act to reveal backup singers (!) & backup dancers (!!) & additional horn men (!!!) turning it into a feel-good time once & for all. Sadly, we can't see Cooke's face for that final refrain, but his body language helps to tell the triumphant tale. Plus, when host Jack Good bounces out at the end, Sam Cooke is beaming his big, beautiful smile. Paradise has been found through the beauty.
I've spent months trying to compile a definitive list of rock albums, with now over 30 charts that I am still working on. However, no matter how many I add, it struck me that I don't think I'll be able to do much better than this straightforward compiling of the five lists that formed the core of the project:
*(Instead of using the overall list, I only used the non-user "recognized" lists, which resulted in 503 albums)
As far as I can find (so far), these are the best general rock lists, & if you cut it off at 300, you get a pretty solid sampling where the lists still interact effectively; go much further & they taper apart into nonsense.
The Beatles are the most represented with 9 albums, followed by Bob Dylan, who has 6 albums. Next is Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, & The Who, who have 5 albums each. After that comes David Bowie, The Byrds, Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, Radiohead, R.E.M., & U2, who have 4 albums each.
A lot of artists have 3 albums each: James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Parliament/Funkadelic, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Sly & The Family Stone, The Stooges, Stevie Wonder, & Neil Young.
Finally, artists as varied as AC/DC, The Band, The Beastie Boys, Big Star, Bjork, Black Sabbath, Ray Charles, The Clash, Elvis Costello, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Miles Davis, Nick Drake, Marvin Gaye, Green Day, Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, Janis Joplin, Joy Division, The Kinks, Kraftwerk, John Lennon, Madonna, Massive Attack, Metallica, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Oasis, OutKast, The Pixies, Public Enemy, The Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Simon & Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Smashing Pumpkins, The Smiths, Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground, Kanye West, The White Stripes, Frank Zappa, & probably more I didn't catch have 2 albums each.
But this is not to imply there is any correlation between number of albums to make the list & overall influence. Artists as major & iconic as The Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, The Doors, Little Richard, Otis Redding, Run-D.M.C., The Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, & Muddy Waters only have a single album each, & many of them are far more influential than the names listed above. For that matter, consider the likes of Sam Cooke, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, & Smokey Robison & The Miracles, none of whom placed an album at all.
So here's the list breakdown, followed by the full list.
Top 10 Albums Of All-Time:
1. The Beatles: Revolver 2. The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds 3. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 4. Nirvana: Nevermind 5. Marvin Gaye: What's Going On 6. The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main St. 7. The Clash: London Calling 8. The Beatles ["The White Album"] 9. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited 10. The Beatles: Abbey Road Top 10 Albums Of The '50s:
1. Elvis Presley 2. Little Richard: Here's Little Richard 3. Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue 4. Frank Sinatra: Songs For Swingin' Lovers 5. Elvis Presley: The Sun Sessions 6. Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight 7. Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours 8. Ray Charles: The Birth Of Soul 9. Buddy Holly: 20 Golden Greats 10. Buddy Holly: The "Chirping" Crickets Top 10 Albums Of The '60s:
1. The Beatles: Revolver 2. The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds 3. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 4. The Beatles ["The White Album"] 5. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited 6. The Beatles: Abbey Road 7. Bob Dylan: Blonde On Blonde 8. The Velvet Underground & Nico 9. The Beatles: Rubber Soul 10. Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced Top 10 Albums Of The '70s:
1. Marvin Gaye: What's Going On 2. The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main St. 3. The Clash: London Calling 4. Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run 5. Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon 6. David Bowie: The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars 7. Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks 8. The Who: Who's Next 9. The Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bollocks 10. Fleetwood Mac: Rumors Top 10 Albums Of The '80s:
1. Michael Jackson: Thriller 2. U2: The Joshua Tree 3. Public Enemy: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back 4. Prince: Purple Rain 5. Guns N' Roses: Appetite For Destruction 6. Prince: Sign 'O' The Times 7. AC/DC: Back In Black 8. Paul Simon: Graceland 9. The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead 10. Talking Heads: Remain In Light Top 10 Albums Of The '90s:
1. Nirvana: Nevermind 2. U2: Achtung Baby 3. Radiohead: OK Computer 4. R.E.M.: Automatic For The People 5. Pearl Jam: Ten 6. Dr. Dre: The Chronic 7. Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation Of 8. Oasis: (What's The Story) Morning Glory? 9. Notorious B.I.G.: Ready To Die 10. Metallica
Top 10 Albums Of The '00s:
1. Radiohead: Kid A 2. OutKast: Stankonia 3. Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP 4. The Strokes: Is This It 5. Amy Winehouse: Back To Black 6. Green Day: American Idiot 7. Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head 8. U2: All That You Can't Leave Behind 9. Arcade Fire: Funeral 10. The White Stripes: White Blood Cells & without any further ado, here's the full list of... The 301 Greatest Albums Of All-Time.
1. The Beatles: Revolver 2. The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds 3. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 4. Nirvana: Nevermind 5. Marvin Gaye: What's Going On 6. The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main St. 7. The Clash: London Calling 8. The Beatles ["The White Album"] 9. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited 10. The Beatles: Abbey Road
11. Bob Dylan: Blonde On Blonde 12. Michael Jackson: Thriller 13. The Velvet Underground & Nico 14. The Beatles: Rubber Soul 15. Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced 16. Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run 17. Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon 18. U2: The Joshua Tree 19. David Bowie: The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars 20. Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks
21. The Who: Who's Next 22. Public Enemy: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back 23. The Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bollocks 24. Fleetwood Mac: Rumours 25. The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed 26. Joni Mitchell: Blue 27. Led Zeppelin [IV] 28. Van Morrison: Astral Weeks 29. Stevie Wonder: Innervisions 30. Prince: Purple Rain
31. The Doors 32. Guns N' Roses: Appetite For Destruction 33. Stevie Wonder: Songs In The Key Of Life 34. Jimi Hendrix: Electric Ladyland 35. Carole King: Tapestry 36. Prince: Sign 'O' The Times 37. Patti Smith: Horses 38. The Ramones 39. U2: Achtung Baby 40. Radiohead: OK Computer
41. James Brown: Live At The Apollo 42. Led Zeppelin II 43. The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers 44. Love: Forever Changes 45. AC/DC: Back In Black 46. Neil Young: After The Gold Rush 47. The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet 48. Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water 49. The Band 50. The Eagles: Hotel California
51. Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home 52. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band 53. Paul Simon: Graceland 54. Pink Floyd: The Wall 55. Michael Jackson: Off The Wall 56. Elvis Presley: The Sun Sessions 57. The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead 58. Led Zeppelin [I] 59. R.E.M.: Automatic For The People 60. Otis Redding: Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul
61. Van Morrison: Moondance 62. Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You 63. Television: Marquee Moon 64. Talking Heads: Remain In Light 65. Pearl Jam: Ten 66. The Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique 67. Neil Young: Harvest 68. Bruce Springsteen: Born In The U.S.A. 69. Aretha Franklin: Lady Soul 70. The Clash
71. Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 72. The Who: Tommy 73. The Band: Music From Big Pink 74. Bob Marley: Legend 75. Sly & The Family Stone: There's A Riot Goin' On! 76. The Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack 77. Dr. Dre: The Chronic 78. N.W.A.: Straight Outta Compton 79. Chuck Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight 80. R.E.M.: Murmur
81. John Lennon: Imagine 82. Led Zeppelin: Physical Graffiti 83. Pixies: Doolittle 84. Curtis Mayfield: Superfly 85. Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation Of 86. Joy Division: Closer 87. Elvis Presley 88. David Bowie: Low 89. Black Sabbath: Paranoid 90. Blondie: Parallel Lines
91. Sly & The Family Stone: Stand! 92. Stevie Wonder: Talking Book 93. Prince: 1999 94. Oasis: (What's The Story) Morning Glory? 95. The Beastie Boys: Licensed To Ill 96. Bruce Springsteen: Darkness On The Edge Of Town 97. Elvis Costello: This Year's Model 98. Jimi Hendrix: Axis: As Bold As Love 99. Bob Marley: Exodus 100. Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True
101. Queen: A Night At The Opera 102. Derek & The Dominos: Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs 103. Radiohead: Kid A 104. Notorious B.I.G.: Ready To Die 105. Metallica: Master Of Puppets 106. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young: Deja Vu 107. Metallica 108. Muddy Waters: The Anthology, 1947-1972 109. OutKast: Stankonia 110. A Tribe Called Quest: Low End Theory
111. Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP 112. Al Green: Greatest Hits 113. Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan 114. Sly & The Family Stone: Greatest Hits 115. The Beatles: A Hard Day's Night 116. Alanis Morrissette: Jagged Little Pill 117. The Police: Synchronicity 118. Little Richard: Here's Little Richard 119. Madonna: Like A Prayer 120. Ray Charles: The Birth Of Soul
121. Cream: Disraeli Gears 122. Ray Charles: Modern Sounds In Country & Western 123. Nas: Illmatic 124. Al Green: Call Me 125. Phil Spector: Back To Mono (1958-1969) 126. Santana: Abraxas 127. The Beatles: Please Please Me 128. James Brown: Star Time 129. The Harder They Come Soundtrack 130. Billy Joel: The Stranger
131. Buddy Holly: 20 Golden Greats 132. Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness 133. Miles Davis: Kind Of Blue 134. Radiohead: The Bends 135. David Bowie: Hunky Dory 136. The Stone Roses 137. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme 138. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica 139. Miles Davis: Bitches Brew 140. Lou Reed: Transformer
141. Beck: Odelay 142: Dusty Springfield: Dusty In Memphis 143. The Byrds: Sweetheart Of The Rodeo 144. Johnny Cash: Live At Folsom Prison 145. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless 146. Run-D.M.C.: Raising Hell 147. Pavement: Slanted & Enchanted 148. Iggy & The Stooges: Raw Power 149. The Allman Brothers: At Fillmore East 150. Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here
151. Jeff Buckley: Grace 152. The Strokes: Is This It 153. The Pretenders 154. Massive Attack: Blue Lines 155. The Stooges: Fun House 156. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Catch A Fire 157. Portishead: Dummy 158. De La Soul: Three Feet High & Rising 159. Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express 160. Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation
161. Peter Gabriel: So 162. Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream 163. Nirvana: In Utero 164. Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral 165. Public Enemy: Fear Of A Black Planet 166. The Replacements: Let It Be 167. The Wu-Tang Clan: Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) 168. Funkadelic: One Nation Under A Groove 169. Green Day: Dookie 170. Tom Waits: Rain Dogs
171. Red Hot Chili Peppers: Blood Sugar Sex Magik 172. The Cure: Disintegration 173. The Zombies: Odessey & Oracle 174. Amy Winehouse: Back To Black 175. Eric B. & Rakim: Paid In Full 176. Marvin Gaye: Let's Get It On 177. The Who: Sell Out 178. Janis Joplin: Pearl 179. Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left 180. Liz Phair: Exile In Guyville
181. The Smiths 182. Rage Against The Machine 183. Green Day: American Idiot 184. Nirvana: MTV Unplugged In New York 185. The Beatles: Let It Be 186. Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head 187. Moby: Play 188. Van Halen 189. Pink Floyd: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn 190. George Harrison: All Things Must Pass
191. AC/DC: Highway To Hell 192. R.E.M.: Document 193. The Who: Quadrophenia 194. Frank Sinatra: Songs For Swingin' Lovers! 195. Parliament: Mothership Connection 196. Hole: Live Through This 197. The Grateful Dead: American Beauty 198. Aerosmith: Toys In The Attic 199. Moby Grape 200. Madonna: Ray Of Light
201. Simon & Garfunkel: Bookends 202. James Taylor: Sweet Baby James 203. The Kinks: Something Else By The Kinks 204. Crosby, Stills, & Nash 205. Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms 206. Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense 207. The B-52's 208. U2: All That You Can't Leave Behind 209. Red Hot Chili Peppers: Californication 210. Def Leppard: Hysteria
211. Dolly Parton: Coat Of Many Colors 212. Aretha Franklin: Young, Gifted & Black 213. Robert Johnson: King Of The Delta Blues Singers 214. Sam Cooke: Portrait Of A Legend 215. Elvis Presley: Sunrise 216. Hank Williams: 40 Greatest Hits 217. Arcade Fire: Funeral 218. Oasis: Definitely Maybe 219. Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures 220. Primal Scream: Screamadelica
221. Kate Bush: Hounds Of Love 222. Blur: Parklife 223. Jefferson Airplane: Surrealistic Pillow 224. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing..... 225. The White Stripes: White Blood Cells 226. Pulp: Different Class 227. Bjork: Debut 228. Kanye West: The College Dropout 229. Joni Mitchell: Court & Spark 230. Jesus & Mary Chain: Psychocandy
231. Pixies: Surfer Rosa 232. Radiohead: In Rainbows 233. Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain 234. The Beatles: Meet The Beatles! 235. The White Stripes: Elephant 236. The Who: Live At Leeds 237. PJ Harvey: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea 238. The Verve: Urban Hymns 239. Elvis Presley: From Elvis In Memphis 240. LCD Soundsystem: Sound Of Silver
241. The Velvet Underground: Loaded 242. T. Rex: Electric Warrior 243. Creedence Clearwater Revival: Cosmo's Factory 244. Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours 245. R.E.M.: Out Of Time 246. The Stooges 247. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 248. MC5: Kick Out The Jams 249. Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 250. Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
251. OutKast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below 252. The Mothers Of Invention: Freak Out! 253. Creedence Clearwater Revival: Green River 254. Jay-Z: The Blueprint 255. Bob Marley & The Wailers: Natty Dread 256. The Byrds: Mr. Tambourine Man 257. The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society 258. The Byrds: Younger Than Yesterday 259. Weezer 260. Bjork: Post
261. The New York Dolls 262. Big Brother & The Holding Company: Cheap Thrills 263. Talking Heads: Fear Of Music 264. The Ramones: Rocket To Russia 265. Radiohead: Amnesiac 266. Deep Purple: Machine Head 267. The Byrds: The Notorious Byrd Brothers 268. Nick Drake: Pink Moon 269. U2: The Unforgettable Fire 270. Black Sabbath
271. Kraftwerk: The Man-Machine 272. Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road 273. Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure 274. James Brown: Sex Machine 275. Adele: 21 276. The Modern Lovers 277. Bob Dylan: Time Out Of Mind 278. Coldplay: Parachutes 279. David Bowie: Station To Station 280. Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells A Story
284. The Mothers Of Invention: We're Only In It For The Money 285. Depeche Mode: Violator 286. Massive Attack: Mezzanine
287. The Fugees: The Score
288. Jethro Tull: Aqualung 289. Led Zeppelin: Houses Of The Holy
290. Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel
291. Neil Young: Tonight's The Night 292. Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes 293. The Beach Boys: Today! 294. Paul McCartney & Wings: Band On The Run 295. The Rolling Stones: Some Girls 296. Leftield: Leftism 297. Meat Loaf: Bat Out Of Hell 298. Big Star: Third/Sister Lovers 299. Sly & The Family Stone: Fresh 300. TLC: CrazySexyCool
301. Jerry Lee Lewis: Live At The Star-Club, Hamburg
I am an artist, musician, and writer who loves America and currently resides in its capital. I was born on Christmas, raised on rock, and can recite the presidents backwards in 11 seconds.
