Top 50 albums of the Fifties

You say bluesy, I say ba-luesy

As far as I know no major publication has done this in decades: maybe ever? I’ve found late 20th century lists from Amazon and Rolling Stone Germany, and of course the first Christgau Record Guide has an appendix of 1950s singles and albums. But in making a list of albums released in the Fifties that covers jazz, rock and roll, and (a little) other stuff, with at least some explanation, I’m in territory nigh-uncharted save by YouTubers whose efforts I respect and whose videos I didn’t watch. The best prose attempt I found was by some guy named Colin—a pretty solid list, honestly (the least surprising of number ones notwithstanding), but I wouldn’t write this newsletter if I didn’t think I could do better.

With all this comes great responsibility, so some preamble, starting with the rules (feel free scroll down to the lists first if you don’t care.) Most importantly, one album per lead artist—defined as the first artist to be named, to the benefit of ideal second banana Ben Webster)—primarily so that Monk doesn’t dominate the top ten. The album/compilation distinction didn’t mean much at the time, so comps are eligible. First-time issues of old music, like Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, were not. Bonus tracks on subsequent reissues got credit if I thought they fitted. A couple of times, releases in the same series are concatenated into one entry.

Of the lead artists, only Sonny Rollins is still with us, so this is probably about as ethical a situation as you get for using the streaming services. Thus playlists are included, covering almost all of the music from the USA and most of the rest; albums absent from or incomplete on Sp_t_fy are linked to. A few embeds are included for music that streaming numbers suggest almost nobody too young for Medicare has heard (which apparently includes most of The Shape of Jazz to Come.)

I tried to listen to something by every major Fifties artist who put out an album in the timeframe (far from everyone—no Elmore James or Huey “Piano” Smith.) As a skeptic of auteurism, I didn’t attempt to get through complete discographies: as implied above, I think Monk’s basically a god and I haven’t listened to every ’50s Monk album. Turns out fifty entries isn’t much, so among those missing out are big names I appreciate rather than adore (Nina Simone, many French people), beloved names who didn’t get all their good stuff on one LP at the time (a lot of country stars), and all non-Brazilian movie soundtracks. But what good is a list unless it’s painful?

The list is presented by genre and geography, with a ranked top 25 and playlist at the end (putting all 50 in order got too messy.) It’s far from representative of all Fifties music, most evidently in the paucity of women—six or seven lead artists, depending on who the Toraia Orchestra was named after. I’ll leave it to others to judge how much of this is due to structural biases in music biz opportunities and who got to try to play a sax, and how is due to the author’s fallible taste.

JAZZ (PLUS ONE CLASSICAL ALBUM)

Henry “Red” Allen: Ride, Red, Ride [World on a String]

One of the great early swing trumpeters makes one for the legacy. He blows ripe glissandi, covers the waterfront with muted longing, and hits high climaxes over his racing band. Vocals are enthusiastic and Coleman Hawkins gets to comp under them.

Louis Armstrong: Satchmo at Pasadena (live)

The most concentrated blast of the All Stars as all stars: Teagarden with a beautiful “Stardust”, Bigard and Hines actually enjoying themselves, and Velma Middleton, without whom “Baby It’s Cold Outside” has never been funny. Plus, you know, the world’s greatest stage entertainer, who in the closing stretch (“My Monday Date”/“You Can Depend on Me”/“That’s a Plenty”) shows he’s still in the running for world’s greatest musician.

Art Blakey Quintet: A Night at Birdland (live)

One night, three 10-inches, two 12"s that anticipate the next decade-plus of hard bop. Horace Silver’s tunes shine; Clifford Brown's trumpet is at its absolute peak on v. 1, perhaps for the first time. Not to be outdone, Blakey bangs the shit out of “A Night in Tunisia”.

Clifford Brown & Max Roach: Study in Brown

In his tragically short career, Brown showed you could play bop trumpet and still retain the warmth of earlier generations. “Cherokee” is definitive over even “Ko-Ko”, if only because by 1955 Roach has found his mature cymbally sound. “Sandu” has jazz chords with blues feeling. “Take the A-Train” shows we need not fear high speed rail.

Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out

Not too far out by today's standards (oooh, 6/4, scary), just a very accomplished pop-jazz album. Paul Desmond comes up with simple cool solo ideas—I like the “make you smoke a whole pack of Bb7s” on “Pick Up Sticks”—and he and Brubeck have the kiss/bang act down. Plus it’s catchy as heck throughout.

Serge Chaloff: Blue Serge

Yep, another tragic figure (many more to come in this jazz section): generational baritone player, having kicked heroin, borrows Sonny Clark and shows off the entire range of his instrument on “Thanks for the Memory” and its dynamics throughout. He’s dead of cancer the next year.

Sonny Clark: Cool Struttin’

This shows what Johnny Griffin called the “finesse” of Clark (1931–61) on piano when he’s rhythmically emphasizing Art Farmer's trumpet or Jackie McLean’s alto, and on his classic title track solos. Also: one of several great Paul Chambers performances on this list.

Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz to Come

Streaming numbers suggest Ornette’s still seen as forbidding by too many people, so let me suggest this one’s easy as pie. He and Don Cherry clearly state their tunes, and whatever “harmolodic” means, their improv is in the tradition of playing to the feeling that goes back to New Orleans: follow a solo and note how linear it is compared to free jazz a decade later. Only after several plays should one consider what 1959 Charlie Haden had to do to hold all this together.

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue

At no point has this been my fave jazz album—Davis and Trane both got much more adventurous in the ’60s—but it’s a strong and endlessly listenable record, so it’s not worth resisting the hype. (Except for “Freddie Freeloader”, not a good fit for a group that’s only kind of blue.)

Duke Ellington: Masterpieces by Ellington

As he had since the ’20s, Duke made the most out of the available recording technology. He extends “Mood Indigo” past 15 sublime minutes, breaking into a waltz at one point, and he has the star power to get away with it (he’d soon lose Johnny Hodges, among other players. and you can hear it in the bonus tracks.) One of the first album-ass albums.

Dizzy Gillespie/Sonny Stitt/Sonny Rollins: Sonny Side Up

“Sonny Stitt had the same competitive streak as Coleman Hawkins. It is said that Gillespie exploited this by calling Stitt before this recording session to let him know that Rollins was really going to be loaded for bear at the session. He then called Rollins to tell him the same thing about Stitt.”

Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster

David Murray in Jazzwise: “When Coleman Hawkins played, his rhythm was so dominant; whereas Ben Webster’s sound and vibrato stood out when he played. I wanted both!… Coleman Hawkins was like fighting with an axe, Ben Webster was like fighting with a feather.” Once you can hear this (easiest on the ballad “It Never Entered My Mind”, on which Webster goes first), you can better appreciate the back-and-forth on the closing “Shine on Harvest Moon”. And David Murray.

Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um

Mingus had arguably his best large group in ’59 (pace ’64 fans), and they live up to his demanding bandleading, especially John Handy (who I think is the only musician on any of these album who’s still active) who when asked to switch from alto to tenor on “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” plays the solo of his life. Irreproachable in either the 43- or 57-minute versions.

Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners

Arguably the greatest jazz studio album beats out Misterioso, arguably the greatest jazz live album, for this spot. The title track was so structurally difficult that Max Roach had trouble with it, yet producer Orrin Keepnews pieces together four brilliant solos (including Roach’s) from 25 takes. Rollins is Rollins, doomed Ernie Henry grumpily cements his place in history, and gee is Monk's solo “I Surrender, Dear” pretty.

Bud Powell: The Amazing Bud Powell (1952 10")

He maybe had the best bebop piano ideas, and on these eight sides, they're executed immaculately: an extended scale (and a big Max Roach beat) on “Un Poco Loco”, clashing intro chords resolving in glory on “Bouncin’ with Bud”, dizzying right-hand speed everywhere.

Ruggiero Ricci: A Paganini Recital

I’m mostly ignoring classical, since I don’t have the apparatus to tell if, say, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations are better than everyone else’s, but want to shout-out my all-time fave showoff violin album. Hard to imagine Pags himself had perter bouncing bow control on “God Save the King” or got “Moto Perpetuo” under four minutes with more distinctness to each note. Pretty bell sounds? There are those too.

Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus

He perfects the wit-with-strength approach he’d stick with all career (sabbaticals notwithstanding.) It might take many plays to appreciate how unified the solos are, but no experience is needed to hear that “St. Thomas” is a bop. “Mack the Knife”: a bop. “Blue 7”: a spontaneous response to the last few decades of Black music and, thanks to Max Roach, also a bop.

Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers

See beboppers, it’s cool to let R&B back into your music. On the second side, Silver and Hank Mobley lay out the melodic template for soul jazz in all its elegance and wit before handing the keys to the band to Art Blakey, whose big backbeat is at its swingiest.

The Art Tatum–Ben Webster Quartet [The Tatum Group Masterpieces Vol. 8]

Suffering from the uremia that would kill him, Tatum finally finds someone in Webster with the sound and style to complement him. Neither changes their usual approach: Tatum embellishes melodies to the point of abstraction, Webster blows sweet and hard, and they just fit.

Ben Webster: Soulville

Once a honker, Webster had smoothed out by the time the LP era arrived. Here with Herb Ellis and the Oscar Peterson trio, he proves that when he plays nice, it’s really nice, with every waver of his fat tone controlled. And on “Late Date”, he shows he can still blast like it’s the past. (The amusing bonus tracks have Webster playing robust piano.)

VOCAL/POP

Nat King Cole: Unforgettable

On e.g. “What’ll I Do”, the least jazzy of the major pre-rock singers is introspective yet in control of himself—there isn’t Sinatra’s sense he’ll fall apart as soon as the tapes stop. His reasons may have been sentimental, but he lets you know they’re reasons, dammit.

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong: Ella & Louis Again

Unlike the first Ella & Louis, conceptually imperfect—not all duets, and stingy with the trumpet. Well, order the ersters and cancel the oysters. Ella, who can be too perfect on her Songbook series, is agreeable loose here, especially when swinging on “Stompin’ at the Savoy”. Pops’s trumpet tone is tops when he does play, and he drags out “Let’s Do It” to exhaustively list the reasons to do it once and for all. On “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” they burn through their overcoats, gloves, and probably their house in three minutes.

Billie Holiday: Songs for Distingué Lovers

Through fast and slow ones, giddy and sad, Billie shows no matter how much hard-won experience you have, you can still be a romantic, and no matter how well-worn your voice is, you can be a jazz singer, though it helps to have Ben Webster and Sweets Edison and not strings.

Anita O’Day: Anita

For Verve’s first album, Norman Granz had the novel idea of supplying O’Day with all good songs. She’s a rhythm-first singer, which is certainly a fun approach to Porter and Gershwin, yet with negligible vibrato she also gets a slow angular beauty out of “I Can’t Get It Started”.

Frank Sinatra: A Swingin’ Affair!

A coin flip with Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, with this one maybe having marginally better material (appending “The Lady Is a Tramp” doesn’t hurt.) Together they’re his peak, as he imbues his unparalleled ability to put the words across unpedantically (somehow putting both “d”s in “Night and Day” without overenunciating) with the weight of experience and without the maudlinness of his later middle age. Nelson Riddle underlines things so he doesn’t have to.

ROCK/BLUES/COUNTRY

Chuck .. Berry Is on Top

Several consensus greatest rock and roll songs, several more that give the most insight into ’50s teendom you’re going to get at this remove, some stuff that only stopped clocks at the time thought sus because RJ Smith’s bio wasn’t out, plus a couple of ethnic ones, and even one of those is good.

Ray Charles [Hallelujah, I Love Her So] (1957)

Good singer. Beyond the super-classics, there’s a digested recent history of R&B, from the jumpin’ “Greenbacks” to “Don’t You Know”, which makes it clearer what he means by “mess around”. And on “Sinner’s Prayer”, a guy who sometimes took it easy on piano shows he could get inspired (by God.)

The Coasters’ Greatest Hits

Four highly professional Black singers, two Jewish songwriters, and King Curtis’s rusty axe create comic fantasies about the universality of pop culture, caring not if 1950s kids had any idea who Bulldog Drummond was. (Maybe they did—their secret subject is how the TV on which they’re watching slow-walkin’ Jones is changing the relationship with the pulp past.) So ambitious that they had no artistic heirs, save for the Beatles.

Bo Diddley (1958)

Pick a beat, make it yours, easy enough. Only his most streamed song is “I’m a Man”, on which Bo instead takes a Chicago blues “beat” and makes it his. He also flirts with swung and backbeat-heavy R&R rhythms. Who do you love? Anyone who gives you a chance to boom chicka boom.

Fats Domino Swings

Genres don’t have single origins except as marketing terms, so let’s just say Fats and Dave Bartholomew were the first to cram all of the African-derived American secular music of the century to date into two-plus minute packages: rigid syncopation and relaxed swing, showmanship and plainspokenness, the most mainstream pop and the grimiest blues scrubbed up for mass consumption. The most omnivorous rock and roll, and the most insatiable. Pass the jambalaya.

The “5” Royales: Dedicated to You

The major R&B group in most danger of being forgotten—“Dedicated to the One I Love” and “Think” are better remembered in covers. But they’re more fun than their non-Coasters peers, thanks to Lowman Pauling’s judicious guitar and Johnny Tanner’s showbiz imperatives, which lead directly to J.B.

The Buddy Holly Story

The first alt-rocker? Nah, too well-adjusted—on record at least, not necessarily when having hurried threesomes with Little Richard. His hiccup cuts through the introspection; he raves on like a White guy without trying to convince you that’s the right, wrong, or only way to do it (“Early in the Morning” isn’t the Ray Charles song yet ends up a tribute to him anyway.) Even the string arrangements are a brisk shower. Screw Weezer, he shoulda lived to guest on an Allo Darlin’ album.

Howlin’ Wolf: Moanin’ in the Moonlight

This scrambles a decade of recordings to depict the possessor of the most apropos pseudonym in music as a master of both untamed Southern and backbeat-heavy Chicago blues, aided by Sam Phillips, Willie Dixon, and the best bands he could buy. (Didn’t hurt that he paid his sidemen’s insurance.) Put it in chronological order and you can better hear how ahead of its time the backing of “How Many More Years” was, thanks to Willie Johnson’s distorted chords and Phillips telling the rhythm section to get way close to the mic. And then try not to forget that as your ears inevitably get drawn into Wolf again.

Here’s Little Richard

A shame the intro to Mystery Train was ahem fictionalized because it captured better than anything the power of the non-verbal in rock. Wild we take for granted, queer well obviously that’s one thing he has over McCartney, varied not so much but this is twelve songs so who cares.

Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters

Singing high and ratcheting the melisma way up, the great R&B lead of the era dominates proceedings from the rollicking “Money Honey” through the stealth gospel of “Without Love”, so you bet when Bill Pinkney gets the chance to deflate “White Christmas”, he jumps on it.

Webb Pierce: The Wondering Boy

Now most remembered for a Sam Hunt sample, Pierce was the biggest country star of the ’50s thanks to his emotional range as much as his high twang. He’s wide-eyed, infatuated, unrequited, jealous, guilty, bereft, alcoholic with a core of optimism melting like an ice cube in the glass.

Elvis Presley: Elvis’ Golden Records

The Sun singles are better—no Jordanaires, for one thing—but they’re not all on one LP until ’75. So we'll settle for one of the greatest singers in popular music history singing some of the most indelible hits in popular music history and a naff ballad or two. What a letdown.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Gospel Train

Per the revisionists, she invented rock & roll, soul, electric blues, Johnny Cash, lesbianism, etc. What’s sometimes overlooked is she fits snugly in the long tradition of keep-it-movin’ Black entertainers, and there’s no question about her piety no matter who she loved.

Kitty Wells’ Country Hits Parade

A- and B-sides and unreleaseds all outline the gamut of post-heartbreak options with more fidelity than anyone of the time save Hank. The answer songs are all-timers, the unjustly pained “Paying for That Back Street Affair” even more than the (admit it, Kitty) feminist “Honky Tonk Angels”.

Hank Williams: Moanin’ the Blues

This isn’t all Hank could do, but his blue (the feeling not the form) side, his most valuable, is captured in full here. “Lovesick Blues” shows how cannily he arranged a song around his voice for maximum emotional effect. “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry" is just poetry. “I’m a Long Gone Daddy” throws his witty side a bone.

BRAZIL & LATIN AMERICA

Aracy de Almeida Sings Noel Rosa

On two early ’50s 10-inches, 1930s samba star Aracy made the late Rosa’s songs central to the Great Brazilian Songbook, performing them with clarity and smarts that cut against the lush orchestrations. Worth finding translations, even if one of the most famous ones is titled “Não Tem Tradução”.

Antônio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá, et al.: Black Orpheus soundtrack

The movie played as rather exoticist/French when I watched it twenty years ago, but the soundtrack remains the single fullest picture of Brazilian music available at the time. The burgeoning bossa and the DRUMS! DRUMS! carnaval music are presented not just as a dichotomy but as interrelated, with snippets of Jobim tunes poking through from the barrel drums and crowd noise. Ofter overlooked: Agostinho dos Santos, the guy who, you know, actually sings “A Felicidade” and “Manhã De Carnaval”, beautifully.

Macumba (1958)

Comp of Afro-Brazilian batucada, mixing carnaval party-starters with paeans to orixas, not that the divide’s clear. Showbiz vet Jorge Fernandes takes many leads and is fine; Heitor dos Prazeres’s robust chorales and João da Bahiana’s para-JB grunts are more interesting. Drums abound.

Astor Piazzolla Octeto Buenos Aires: Tango Moderno

Fortified by classical training and Gerry Mulligan, Piazzolla returned to Argentina determined to blow up tango with electric guitar and cello solos, and with time- and finger-warping arrangements that paradoxically gave his soloists unprecedented freedom. Fights started, allegedly. What did he do to be so marrón y azul?

Pérez Prado Plays Mucho Mambo for Dancing

Six songs at the dead center of 20th century Latin music, and “Qué rico el mambo” isn’t even there. Prado’s big brassy trumpet and sax lines duel without the simplifcations that’d make him richer still by decade’s end, plus this Benny Moré kid sounds like a star. My fave is “Mambo No. 5”, and unfortunately I can’t guarantee this isn’t because of Lou Bega.

Edmundo P. Zaldivar (hijo): Carnavalitos

Altiplano folk, as fabricated by a Buenos Aires composer, except the melodies are astoundingly catchy (“El Humahuaqueño” became a standard in several languages.) Zaldivar’s a strong guitarist, the singing has gusto, and even the panpipes aren’t too precious.

THE OLD WORLD

Jacques Brel: No. 4 [La valse à mille temps]

Yes yes literary chanson, but very well done and usually even fun: many songs build as excitingly as the accelerating waltz, and Brel’s so wormy on “Ne quitte pas” that any attentive potential lover sees the red flag or has their inner domme/dom activated.

Gamelan Orchestra of Peliatan: Dancers of Bali

I’ve no idea what the best gamelan album is, but this might be the most important: the group that introduced Balinese music to a mass Western audience (with an assist from an only slightly condescending Ed Sullivan; see clip above) is recorded in NYC in as good quality as one can expect from 1952. Experts can track how their “Kebyar Duduk” differs from the modern one; the rest of us can be swept up by the shifting gongs.

E.T. Mensah & His Tempos Band: Tempos on the Beat

Left brain: so are you going to help me break down how the melodies on this thing are much trickier than they might first appear?

Right brain: no money

Left brain, sighing: no bus

Right brain: NO MONEY

Left brain: NO BUS

The Toraia Orchestra of Algiers: Music of the Arab People [reissued as Ya Bay! among many other titles]

Not purist at all, mixing qanun solos with Algerian love pop and a Turkish song. To me, “Ahsin” sounds like the most sensual female vocal on record to that point, and if I’m misinterpreting, the Egyptian prince who ran off to marry one of the singers was too.

TOP 25 ALBUMS OF THE FIFTIES

Remember I’m ranking albums, not artists: Hank Williams is greater than Webb Pierce, but Pierce got his biggest hits on one disc before Hank did.

1. Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners (1957)

2. Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis Again (1957)

3. Howlin’ Wolf: Moanin’ in the Moonlight (1959)

4. Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster (1959)

5. Black Orpheus (1959)

6. Fats Domino Swings (1959)

7. Ornette Coleman: The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)

8. Frank Sinatra: A Swingin’ Affair! (1957)

9. The Buddy Holly Story (1959)

10. The Coasters’ Greatest Hits (1959)

11. Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus (1957)

12. Pérez Prado Plays Mucho Mambo for Dancing (1951)

13. Duke Ellington: Masterpieces by Ellington (1951)

14. Clifford Brown & Max Roach: Study in Brown (1955)

15. Webb Pierce: The Wondering Boy (1956)

16. Here’s Little Richard (1957)

17. Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um (1959)

18. Billie Holiday: Songs for Distingué Lovers (1958)

19. Astor Piazzolla Octeto Buenos Aires: Tango moderno (1957)

20. Louis Armstrong: Satchmo at Pasadena (live 1951)

21. The Art Tatum-Ben Webster Quartet (1958)

22. The Ben Webster Quartet: Soulville (1958)

23. Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1956)

24. Toraia Orchestra of Algiers: Music of the Arab People (1952)

25. Chuck .. Berry Is on Top (1959)

1959 might’ve semi-accidentally been one of the best album years ever?