The Jazzprint

Released
1965—Capitol Records T 1974

Style
Cool Jazz

The Line-up
Miles Davis—trumpet
J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding—trombone
Gerry Mulligan—baritone saxophone
Lee Konitz—alto saxophone
Bill Barber—tuba
Al McKibbon, Joe Shulman, Nelson Boyd—bass
John Lewis, Al Haig—piano
Max Roach, Kenny Clarke—drums
Junior Collins, Sandy Siegelstein, Gunther Schuller—French horn

Track of the Day
Boplicity (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Quiet Revolution: Elegant, restrained, and effortlessly cool, but underneath the calm surface, quietly changing the language of jazz.

One Thought
Miles and the nonet expanded the jazz vocabulary with unusual instrumentation, new harmonies, and a cooler, more cerebral approach—while never losing the swing.

Tell Me Something
Was Miles’s greatest contribution here actually his trumpet playing—or his vision of what a jazz ensemble could sound like?

"Misguided angel hangin' over me
Heart like a Gabriel, pure and white as ivory
Soul like a Lucifer, black and cold like a piece of lead
Misguided angel, love you 'til I'm dead"
—from Misguided Angel, by Michael and Margo Timmins

Cowboy Junkies’ second album, The Trinity Session, was their breakthrough, turning the indie band into an international success. Recorded live in a single day in a church with fantastic acoustics, around a single microphone, the record has a haunting, ghostly beauty. Amazingly, it cost only $250 to record.

As I noted in my essay on The Caution Horses, Margo Timmins has the voice of an angel and is my favourite female singer, and every Cowboy Junkies album seems to have one or two songs that rank among my all-time favourites. On this one, it’s Misguided Angel, the album’s great original, with Margo singing about dangerous love while Michael Timmins’ guitar stalks around her voice.

Margo isn’t a technically spectacular vocalist, but she’s an extraordinarily evocative one. She never sounds like she’s performing; she sounds as though she’s letting you overhear something private.

Her signature vocal performance may be the opening and first verse of the band’s cover of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane. There’s no attempt at rock-star drama. Instead, she sounds detached, intimate, and slightly haunted, transforming the song from a rock classic into something hypnotic, mournful, and almost sensual—a piece of country noir. Reed himself called it the best and most authentic version he had ever heard.

To Love Is to Bury and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry are two other standouts. To Love Is to Bury is dark, sensual, and fatalistic, with Michael’s spare guitar work creating a slow-moving backdrop for Margo’s haunted vocal. Rather than a conventional love song, it feels like love viewed from its aftermath. The Junkies then slow Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry to a crawl, transforming a classic country lament into something almost gothic. Michael’s restrained arrangement leaves enormous space around Margo’s voice, making the loneliness feel less like heartbreak than desolation.

The Trinity Session reached No. 26 on the U.S. Billboard 200, eventually going platinum in the United States and double platinum in Canada, while getting substantial exposure on college radio and MTV. More importantly, it became a landmark record, proving that intimacy, atmosphere, and restraint could be every bit as powerful as volume and spectacle. It arrived just before the explosion of alternative country, Americana, and the unplugged aesthetic. In retrospect, it sounds less like it was following those movements than anticipating them.

How many albums have ever sounded this timeless while being so completely of their time?

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The Jazzprint

Released
1964—Columbia Records CL 2212

Style
Cool Jazz, West Coast Jazz

The Line-up
Dave Brubeck—piano
Paul Desmond—alto sax
Eugene Wright—bass
Joe Morello—drums

Track of the Day
Tokyo Traffic (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Japanese Cool: Elegant, atmospheric jazz filtered through the sights, sounds, and rhythms of Japan—restrained, mysterious, and occasionally restless, with Brubeck’s rhythmic imagination underneath Desmond’s cool, lyrical alto.

One Thought
This isn’t really an attempt to play Japanese music—it’s four American jazz musicians translating their impressions of Japan into their own language.

Tell Me Something
Does the album succeed because it captures Japan—or because it captures what Japan sounded like through Brubeck’s imagination?

"The old get old and the young get stronger
May take a week, and it may take longer
They got the guns but we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah, we're takin' over
Come on"
—from Five to One, lyrics by Jim Morrison

Today I’m spinning The Doors’ Absolutely Live, the fifth and final live album in this two-week run. This run has reminded me just how many live albums I have—and why I’ve always loved them. I was always looking to hear a band unleash the full power they could generate on stage, capture new versions of familiar songs, and stretch out with great jams and solos.

I wonder if the younger generation appreciates live albums as much. Today’s polished pop seems to call for exact reproductions of the studio recording, rather than treating the stage as a place to take songs somewhere new.

The Doors’ Absolutely Live certainly bottles Jim Morrison at his wildest and most unpredictable. Recorded in the shadow of his infamous Miami indecent-exposure arrest, Morrison shifts from magnificent blues singer to performance poet to provocateur, often seeming lost in a trance. That unpredictability is part of what makes the album so compelling—you never quite know what he’ll do next.

The album sounds like one continuous Doors concert, but it was actually pieced together from performances recorded at several venues between 1969 and 1970. Fascinatingly, it avoids the obvious “greatest hits” approach, emphasizing blues, improvisation, poetry, and extended performances rather than big hits like Light My Fire and Hello, I Love You. It also includes the complete The Celebration of the Lizard, of which only Not to Touch the Earth had appeared on Waiting for the Sun.

Side A quickly gets into a roaring groove with the medley of Alabama Song, Back Door Man, Love Hides, and Five to One—rock doesn’t get much more fun than this. By the time they hit Five to One, Morrison is taunting the audience while Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore lock into an increasingly menacing blues-rock groove. It’s dangerous, theatrical, and a great example of the Doors turning a relatively straightforward song into something far more explosive on stage.

Side B features the album’s emotional centrepiece, When the Music’s Over, one of the Doors’ haunting, surreal poetic epics. They take the psychedelic studio piece and make it more volatile onstage, turning it into full-blown psychedelic rock theatre. Morrison shifts between singing, shouting, whispering, and addressing the audience as the band builds an almost unbearable tension behind him.

That theatrical intensity carries onto Side C, where Break on Through, #2 becomes almost unhinged. The band attacks the song with far more aggression than on the original, pushing it beyond its familiar structure and giving it a raw, almost dangerous energy.

Side D brings the album to its most ambitious moment with The Celebration of the Lizard, the sprawling piece the band had struggled to capture properly in the studio. Here, it finally comes alive as a piece of psychedelic rock theatre, with Morrison’s sudden “Wake up!” eruption adding to the sense that anything could happen. His poetry, the band’s shifting musical passages, and the audience’s reaction combine to create something closer to a ritual than a conventional concert performance.

Absolutely Live wasn’t universally loved when it was released. Some critics found Morrison’s erratic performances frustrating, and The Celebration of the Lizard particularly divided opinion. But the album has aged well, and it remains a fascinating, if sometimes chaotic, document of the Doors as a live band. It’s heavily constructed rather than a true single-concert recording, but that only adds to its character—and today it stands as one of the more compelling live albums of its era.

I’ll sum up with Jim’s words after the Alabama Song medley: “Pretty good, pretty good, pretty neat, pretty neat.”

What do you look for in a live album—faithful versions of the songs you love, or the magic that happens when a band takes them somewhere new?

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Click the link to read my previous essays on Morrison Hotel, Waiting for the Sun, and L.A. Woman.

"We can't go on together
With suspicious minds (With suspicious minds)
And we can't build our dreams
On suspicious minds"
—from Suspicious Minds, lyrics by Mark James 

Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite was television and entertainment history: the first full-length concert by a musician to be beamed around the world via communications satellite. Widely estimated to have reached as many as 1.5 billion viewers, it remains one of the most-watched concerts ever.

But the spectacle was matched by Elvis himself. In January 1973, he was at the peak of his early-’70s powers—lean, fit, vocally commanding, and backed by the phenomenal TCB Band. He had prepared meticulously for the event, and the result captures Elvis at his formidable best, just before the decline that would overshadow his final years.

Elvis’s early rock-and-roll years are untouchable, but his 1968–1973 period is often underrated. These years produced some of his most astonishing singing, performing, and recordings, as he rediscovered his confidence and expanded his musical range. By then, he had fully immersed himself in blues, rock, pop, country, and gospel, drawing from each with remarkable command. His voice had deepened, his performances had matured, and the charisma that made him a star in the first place was still abundant. In many ways, this was Elvis at his most versatile—and, as a singer, among his most impressive.

The emotional centrepiece of the show, An American Trilogy, is perhaps the quintessential 1970s Elvis spectacle. He takes three songs loaded with cultural history and transforms them into a soaring vocal and theatrical crescendo. The sheer force of the finale is remarkable—and, importantly, he delivers it with conviction rather than letting it become mere Vegas bombast.

He reinvents Suspicious Minds, turning one of my all-time favourite songs from a pop single into a dramatic, high-energy live performance. He stretches the song, plays with the rhythm, and gradually drives the ending toward a near frenzy. It’s a perfect showcase for the muscular new Elvis sound and the crucial role played by the TCB Band.

He is equally compelling on You Gave Me a Mountain, climbing inside the song’s melodrama and making it feel intensely personal before building to a thrilling climax. Then comes Steamroller Blues, where Elvis lets loose as a blues-rock singer, attacking James Taylor’s witty, tongue-in-cheek original with swagger, humour, and a torrid groove from the TCB Band.

Another standout is Burning Love, perhaps the best example of mature rock Elvis. The song has the punch of his early rock records, but now that raw energy is amplified by the TCB Band, a huge rhythm section, and backing singers. Elvis attacks it vocally and physically, reminding us just how formidable a rock singer he could still be, nearly twenty years after That’s All Right.

Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite is widely regarded as spectacular, historically important, and at times excessive—but unquestionably Elvis at the top of his 1970s live game. He wasn’t trying to recreate 1956, nor did he need to. By then, he had become a remarkable blend of soul, country, gospel, pop, and rock, moving effortlessly from See See Rider to I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry to An American Trilogy. That range, combined with his voice and charisma, makes Aloha from Hawaii a remarkable snapshot of Elvis at his peak.

Elvis’s greatest achievement may have been making the American musical vernacular feel limitless. He absorbed rhythm and blues, country, gospel, blues, pop, and rock and made them part of a single musical vocabulary, while transforming the very idea of what a popular performer could be. The man who helped invent rock and roll ultimately became much more than a rock-and-roll singer—a remarkable interpreter who could take almost any song and make it his own. And while the young Elvis changed music forever, the Elvis of 1968–1973 showed just how much more he had to give.

For me, no other vocalist can express the emotions of a song quite so deeply. The King is the only one who can often bring me to the verge of tears.

How much credit does Elvis deserve for anticipating the modern pop superstar—blending genres, spectacle, fashion, musicianship, and an ever-expanding entourage into one enormous show?

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Click the link to read my previous essays on The Sun Collection and Moody Blue.

The Jazzprint

Released
1962—Columbia Records CL 1922

Style
Bop, Modal, Cool Jazz

The Line-up
Paul Horn—alto saxophone, flute, bass flute
Emil Richards—vibes
Paul Moer—piano
Vic Gaskin—bass
Milt Turner—drums

Track of the Day
Count Your Change (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Smooth Operator: Relaxed, polished, and quietly inventive, with intriguing rhythms and shifting time signatures adding an adventurous edge beneath its easygoing surface.

One Thought
“…a strong sense of the blues pervades much of the writing and playing…”
—Leonard Feather in the liner notes

Tell Me Something
Can you hear the difference when Horn moves from alto saxophone to flute?

"If I could dig down deep in my heart
Feelings would flood on the page
Would it satisfy you? Would it slide on by you?
Would you think the boy's insane?
He is insane"
—from It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It), lyrics by Mick Jagger

Day 3 of five live albums continues with the Rolling Stones’ Love You Live—a raw, passionate snapshot of the Stones in their decadent ’70s. Living in the shadow of the great Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, it’s an uneven but thrilling set. Rather than documenting a single concert or tour, the album is a patchwork of performances from 1975, 1976, and 1977, spanning shows in Toronto and Los Angeles, London and Paris, and culminating with the legendary El Mocambo shows in Toronto.

This is the first Stones live album with Ronnie Wood, and you can hear the band becoming a different animal. Mick Taylor brought a fluid, lyrical lead-guitar style; Wood brought something more rhythmic, greasy, and complementary to Keith. Their two-guitar interplay—Keith and Ronnie locking into each other—became the Stones’ defining sound for decades to come. Billy Preston is also all over the record, his keyboards and vocals adding significantly to its funkier, more expansive mid-’70s sound.

Admired from the start, the reputation of the El Mocambo side has only grown with time. It’s almost a different record—and the March 5 concert was finally released in full, along with three tracks from the March 4 show, as a separate album in 2022. Here, the Stones sound like they’re rediscovering their roots, trading the massive arena for a tiny club and digging into the blues and early rock ’n’ roll—the very environment in which they cut their teeth.

Musical highlights: a fabulous cover of Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy, with Jagger sounding absolutely possessed; Keith’s great live showcase, Happy—loose, swaggering, slightly ragged, and completely infectious; the funky, hypnotic Fingerprint File, sinister and stretched out, with Billy Preston adding to its muscular mid-’70s groove; and the grand finale, Sympathy for the Devil, a menacing slow burn capped by Jagger’s theatrical performance. I also love Star Star, Around and Around, and a jubilant It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll.

You probably know by now that I’m a big lyrics guy, always interested in a song’s words and an album’s themes—as well as the music. But strangely, despite loving It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll, I’d never really paid close attention to its lyrics. Reading them today beyond the familiar refrain, “I know it’s only rock ’n’ roll, but I love it,” I discovered that the entire song is a brilliant, lusty portrait of the push-and-pull between a live performer and his audience.

Not having picked up Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! until middle age, Love You Live was my go-to Stones live album growing up. As I’ve mentioned before, a great cover that captures an album’s vibe can go a long way toward attracting listens. This one was designed by Andy Warhol, who apparently wasn’t thrilled when Mick Jagger added his own handwritten titles and other information across the front and back.

Adding another layer to the El Mocambo story, Margaret Trudeau, the newly separated wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was among the guests at the shows, helping turn an already extraordinary club gig into a Canadian pop-culture event.

Beyond Ya-Yas, what’s your favourite Stones live album?

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Click the link to read my previous essays on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, Some Girls, Beggars Banquet, and Tattoo You.

The Jazzprint

Released
1968—Everest Records Archive of Folk & Jazz Music FS227

Style
Hard Bop, Post-Bop

Key Players
Eric Dolphy—bass clarinet, alto saxophone, flute
Cannonball Adderley—alto saxophone
Nat Adderley—cornet
Woody Shaw—trumpet
Bobby Hutcherson—vibraphone
Tommy Flanagan—piano
Paul Chambers—bass
Philly Joe Jones—drums

Track of the Day
Jitterbug Waltz (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Mad Scientist: Restless, unpredictable, and brilliantly inventive, with Dolphy constantly stretching melodic and harmonic boundaries and seeming to redraw the lines as he plays.

One Thought
“As I developed, I found I could play a lot of notes against a common chord progression that some people would call wrong. To my hearing it’s right. You can play any note you like. It’s called freedom of sound.”
—Eric Dolphy in the liner notes

Tell Me Something
What do you hear in Eric Dolphy’s playing that makes his music so distinctive?

"You can walk on the water, drown in the sand
You can fly off a mountaintop if anybody can
Run away, run away, it's the restless age
Look away, look away, you can turn the page"
—from Life is a Carnival, lyrics by Robbie Robertson

Rootsy, warm, and on fire, Rock of Ages captures The Band at their live peak. Their studio albums had already established them as extraordinary songwriters and musicians, but this live album revealed just how powerful they could be onstage. There’s a looseness, energy, and sheer joy here that brings something extra to the qualities that made their studio records so great.

The original double LP was assembled from four concerts at New York’s Academy of Music, December 28–31, 1971, culminating in New Year’s Eve. The songs come from different nights, allowing the best performances from the four-night run to be selected and sequenced into what feels like one great concert.

What made The Band so great live? They were an ensemble in the truest sense. Several members were multi-instrumentalists, and their arrangements allowed each musician to add something distinctive. Garth Hudson could move between organ, keyboards and saxophone, while Richard Manuel could shift from piano to drums. Robbie Robertson provided the guitar framework, while Levon Helm and Rick Danko anchored the rhythm section and added their remarkable voices.

But their greatest strength may have been how well they listened to one another. Richard’s fragile soulfulness, Levon’s earthy power, and Rick’s high, emotional voice gave The Band an extraordinary vocal range, while their instrumental interplay made the music feel constantly alive. Nobody needed to dominate. They simply played with each other.

You can hear that chemistry throughout the album, but it’s especially evident on a handful of standout tracks. W.S. Walcott Medicine Show showcases the rousing horns arranged by Allen Toussaint for the concerts. Live, the song becomes a New Orleans-meets-circus-meets-rock-and-roll spectacular. Garth Hudson’s solo was so impressive the professional horn players were reportedly cheering him on from the stage.

Then there are two iconic classics: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and The Weight. On the first, Levon Helm’s voice is grave, intimate, and deeply rooted in the song’s sense of history. It never sounds like a rock band trying to recreate the past—it feels like a song that has been handed down through generations. On The Weight, The Band makes an already great song bigger, warmer, and more communal, turning it into what I think is the definitive live version.

The album closes with (I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes, and The Band simply lets loose. The horns, Levon’s driving drums, Rick’s bass, and the band’s infectious looseness turn it into the perfect closing rave-up—a straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll send-off.

If anything, the reputation of Rock of Ages has only grown with time. It is widely regarded as one of the great live albums, and some even consider it a better document of The Band than The Last Waltz. That’s partly because Rock of Ages is more purely The Band—five musicians at the height of their powers, rather than sharing the stage with a parade of legendary guests.

I’ve played this album repeatedly over the years, and it remains one of my go-to live records. There’s something about the combination of the musicianship, the looseness, the horns, and the sheer warmth of the performances that continues to bring me great joy.

What live album do you return to again and again?

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Click the link to read my previous essays on Stage Fright and Cahoots.

The Jazzprint

Released
1959—RCA Victor LPM-1986

Style
Flamenco Jazz

The Lineup
Carlos Montoya—guitar
Barry Galbraith—guitar
Milt Hinton—bass
Osie Johnson—drums

Track of the Day
St. Louis Blues (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Flamenco Nights: Fiery, sensual, dramatic, and steeped in the heat and mystery of Spanish guitar.

One Thought
This album was recorded during the early days of the jazz/flamenco crossover that would soon lead toward things like Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain and John Coltrane’s Olé.

Tell Me Something
Can one guitarist bridge two musical worlds?

"Out there in the spotlight you're a million miles away
Every ounce of energy you try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play
Later in the evening as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers ringin' in your head
You smoke the day's last cigarette, rememberin' what she said"
—from Turn the Page, lyrics by Bob Seger

For the next five days, I’m spinning live albums, starting with Bob Seger’s ‘Live’ Bullet, the record that broke him nationally. Recorded over two nights at Detroit’s Cobo Hall in September 1975, just before the rest of America discovered him, it captures a hometown hero on the brink of becoming a national star.

The setlist draws from his early albums, offering a snapshot of Seger’s pre-fame career. The music is rawer and funkier than his later work, and the Detroit crowd is electric. The band is tight, the performances are fierce, and the themes are just as cohesive: life on the road, working-class struggles, and the enduring power of rock and community.

The now classic rock staple Turn the Page is a deeply human portrait of life on the road—one of the best ever: endless highways, anonymous hotel rooms, and the emotional cost of constant touring. Alto Reed’s haunting saxophone introduction is one of the most memorable moments in Seger’s catalogue.

From the introspection of Turn the Page, the album kicks into high gear with the hard-rocking Katmandu, which explodes with optimism and freedom. Seger stretches it into a crowd-pleasing jam of piano, organ, saxophone, and audience participation, capturing the Silver Bullet Band’s chemistry at its best. Get Out of Denver shifts the mood even further into high gear—a Chuck Berry-inspired rock ’n’ roll sprint in which Seger barely pauses for breath, spitting out the lyrics with incredible precision as the band races behind him. It’s one of the album’s most exhilarating performances.

Seger brings that same energy to a terrific selection of covers, including songs by Tina Turner, Bo Diddley, Van Morrison, and Chuck Berry. He has a gift for taking other artists’ songs and making them sound as though they belong to him—and to Detroit. Turner’s Nutbush City Limits is tougher, heavier, and driven by an irresistible groove that became one of the album’s signature live tracks. The closing Let It Rock/Little Queenie medley is a joyous celebration of Berry’s influence, turning the finale into an all-out rock ’n’ roll party.

Live Bullet remains the definitive Bob Seger album for many fans because it captures everything that made him great: heartland storytelling, soulful vocals, blistering rock ’n’ roll, and a band that sounds unstoppable on stage. It regularly appears on lists of the greatest live albums ever, and deservedly so—it overflows with energy, soul, and the feeling of being there.

One of my regrets is that I never got to see Seger live. Live Bullet doesn’t erase that regret, but it comes pretty close, giving me a front-row seat to a performer and band I wish I’d had the chance to experience in person. More than fifty years later, it remains a benchmark for live rock albums, preserving not just a great concert but the moment a Detroit hometown hero became one of America’s essential rock artists.

I also wish Seger would bring more of those early albums back into print. Live Bullet reminds me how much great music is buried in that part of his catalogue, just waiting to be rediscovered.

Did you ever see Bob Seger live—and if so, did he live up to the legend captured on Live Bullet?

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Click the link to read my previous essays on Against the Wind and The Distance.

"Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times, they are a-changin'"
—from The Time's They Are A-Changin', lyrics by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, his first compilation album, was released after his 1966 motorcycle accident as a stopgap while he recuperated and withdrew from public activity. It did just that—going multi-platinum, remaining on the charts for years, and eventually becoming his best-selling album in the U.S. More than simply a collection of hits, the record captures an extraordinary musical evolution in just four years.

Listen chronologically, and you move from the spare folk of Blowin’ in the Wind to the electric explosion of Like a Rolling Stone, the surrealism of Mr. Tambourine Man, and the manic wordplay of Subterranean Homesick Blues. Few greatest-hits albums capture such a dramatic transformation in an artist—and in such a short period of time.

These three iconic tracks changed music forever. Like a Rolling Stone was a seismic moment, with Dylan turning bitterness, freedom, and social dislocation into six minutes of rock ’n’ roll that permanently changed what a pop song could be. That opening snare crack is one of the great entrances in rock history, and then Al Kooper’s organ kicks in and the song takes off.

Mr. Tambourine Man, a personal favourite, is a dreamlike journey through escape, exhaustion, freedom, inspiration, and the desire to be carried somewhere beyond ordinary reality. The arrangement creates a drifting, hypnotic quality before Dylan’s voice enters, making the song feel almost weightless.

In Subterranean Homesick Blues, the rhythm section never lets up as Dylan fires off line after line. It’s folk music colliding with Chuck Berry, beat poetry, and rock ’n’ roll, with Dylan sounding as if he’s trying to cram an entire generation’s paranoia, politics, slang, and rebellion into two breathless minutes.

And then there’s Blowin’ in the Wind, the song that established Dylan as something far more than a talented young folk singer. Its deceptively simple questions about war, freedom, and human suffering became an anthem of the 1960s. How a songwriter so young could express such deep truths with such wisdom and poetry is astounding.

Eminem and Taylor Swift have written plenty of memorable diss songs, but none comes close to Positively 4th Street, which captures betrayal, hypocrisy, and the bitterness of a broken friendship like nothing before or since. Widely interpreted as Dylan’s response to the folk scene and folk purists who turned on him after he embraced electric rock, the song’s contempt is cool, controlled, and devastating. More than 60 years later, it remains the gold standard for the ultimate musical takedown.

I often wonder, though, how Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 got on here. Yes, it was a major charting hit, and it’s certainly a fun, goofy party song, but when you consider that Visions of Johanna and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue—two of Dylan’s undisputed masterpieces—were left off, the choice seems almost inexplicable. It’s a good reminder that Greatest Hits wasn’t really a definitive collection of Dylan’s greatest songs; it was also shaped by what had been released as singles and what Columbia saw as commercially successful.

The album became Dylan’s de facto 1960s singles collection and eventually his best-selling U.S. album, certified five-times platinum. It reached No. 10 in the United States and No. 3 in Britain, but its greatest legacy may be that it became an entry point into Dylan. For countless listeners, this was their introduction to one of the most influential and transformative artists in popular music. Even if it wasn’t a definitive collection of his greatest songs, it became one of the definitive introductions to Dylan.

Is Rainy Day Women really a worthy inclusion—or, if you had to make room for Visions of Johanna, what would you have left off? Or would you have chosen an entirely different song?

If this sparked a memory or brought a smile, subscribe and join me Monday–Friday as I rediscover the vinyl that shaped my life.

Click the link to read my previous essays on John Wesley Harding and Infidels.

"I'm good at chasing rainbows
And dreamin' my life away
I'm good at all the angry words
And the tears that wash them away
And yes I'm good at skipping stones
And walking off my blues
I'm good at causing trouble
But I'm best at loving you"
—from I'm Best at Loving You, lyrics by Murray McLauchlan

On his 1985 release, Midnight Break, Canadian singer-songwriter Murray McLauchlan embraces a fuller country-rock sound while retaining his trademark social themes and deft storytelling. He was consciously aiming for a harder edge, describing the rockier material as having a sound not unlike Springsteen or John Cougar, yet he still considered the album country—a description that fits its blend of rock, roots, and steel guitar.

Several singles charted. I’m Best at Loving You reached #13 on the Canadian country chart, becoming McLauchlan’s most successful country single since Farmer’s Song. When You Become a Memory, a beautifully melancholy meditation on love, loss, and the way people gradually become part of the past, reached #16 on Canada’s Adult Contemporary chart. And Me and Joey, his attempt to infuse his songwriting with genuine rock weight, climbed to #34 on the Canadian country chart.

Two other favourites are Ten People on a Sidewalk and Golden Fields. The first is a gritty, observational portrait of urban isolation, pairing McLauchlan’s understated storytelling with a tougher, bluesy rock sound, while the second is the album’s most picturesque and hopeful song, evoking summer, landscape, and renewal through a warm country arrangement.

One of my most vivid memories of Murray is a good high school friend who, after discovering his music, told me what a great song Farmer’s Song was and insisted I give it a listen—he was right. That friend moved to the Canadian Maritimes more than forty years ago in search of a more peaceful, easygoing life, but whenever I play McLauchlan’s records, I still think of his infectious enthusiasm for the music.

This mid-career release finds a mature artist straddling genres, reconciling his folk storyteller roots with the bigger, tougher country-rock sound of the 1980s. It’s a very good album that showcases McLauchlan’s versatility and his gift for turning Canadian people, places, and social realities into compelling songs without ever sounding parochial.

His legacy is considerably larger in Canada than his American profile would suggest. One of the country’s major singer-songwriters, McLauchlan has won 11 Junos—including five for Best Country Male Vocalist—and was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. More than the numbers, though, his importance lies in helping establish a distinctly Canadian roots songwriting tradition.

I was lucky enough to see McLauchlan perform in Parry Sound in November 2017, during my daughter’s reading week. It was wonderful to share my love of his storytelling with her. He was still going strong after five decades—a reminder that this is a songwriter who has never stopped writing, recording, and performing.

Have you spent much time with Murray McLauchlan, and if so, which of his songs or albums has stayed with you?

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"You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will, but what a thrill
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire"
—from Great Balls of Fire, written by Otis Blackwell and Jack Hammer

The Killer plays and sings up a storm on The Jerry Lee Lewis Collection—twenty explosive rock ’n’ roll and country classics. Long ago I saw him live in Ottawa, and he was true to form, showing up over an hour late but delivering a fiery performance. No one’s ever really improved on what Jerry Lee or Chuck Berry came up with. One of my best childhood friends and kindred musical spirits even named his first-born son Jerry Lee, after his hero.

Lewis took boogie-woogie, honky-tonk, gospel, blues, and country piano and turned them into rock ’n’ roll. His trademark was a powerful, repetitive left hand that drove the rhythm like a bass player, while his right fired off high-register figures, triplets, hammered notes, and glissandos. He could make the piano sound rhythmic, melodic, percussive, and completely out of control all at once. Along with Little Richard, he established a template that generations of rock keyboard players inherited, including Elton John.

Lewis was a rock ’n’ roll pioneer, but he could also play country with complete authority, with the Country Music Hall of Fame describing him as one of the greatest country singers of all time as well as a foundational figure in rock ’n’ roll. A natural sponge, he could absorb blues, gospel, and pop standards without ever sounding like he was stepping outside his musical identity.

It’s hard to pick favourites among these iconic tunes. Great Balls of Fire is a full-on piano assault, with Lewis pounding the keys and delivering the song with an almost manic mix of lust, excitement, and sheer rock ’n’ roll abandon. On Breathless, his piano is more nimble and propulsive, while his cocky, flirtatious vocal makes the whole thing feel ready to fly off the rails. Lovin’ Up a Storm leans into his blues and boogie-woogie roots, with rolling piano figures and an exuberant vocal turning a simple declaration of desire into something irresistibly infectious.

His purported duet with Elvis on Hank Williams’ Cold Cold Heart reveals a different side of Lewis, whose warm, plaintive delivery brings out the loneliness and hurt in Williams’ lyric. The other voice is actually Jimmy Ellis, the Elvis soundalike who performed as Orion, but the mystery surrounding the recording gives it an extra charge. Little Queenie brings Lewis back to his wildest, most playful form, with pounding piano and a mischievous vocal perfectly capturing the excitement of teenage attraction.

There were brilliant pianists, great singers, and flamboyant performers before Lewis, but he somehow brought all three together. He played with such reckless abandon that it seemed he was discovering the song as he performed it, yet the spectacle never overshadowed the musicianship. Sam Phillips considered him one of the most talented people he ever worked with, and Lewis had an extraordinary rhythmic command and instinct for building excitement.

That combination helped define the attitude of rock ’n’ roll as much as its sound. His influence reached generations of musicians, while his later country career showed just how far he could stretch without ever losing his essential identity.

How many artists have ever embodied rock ’n’ roll quite so completely and authentically? He was the real thing.

If this sparked a memory or brought a smile, subscribe and join me Monday–Friday as I rediscover the vinyl that shaped my life.

"I went away to see an old friend of mine
His sister came over, she was out of her mind
She said Jesus had a twin who knew nothing about sin
She was laughing like crazy at the trouble I'm in"
—from Schizophrenia, written by Sonic Youth

Sister was Sonic Youth’s breakthrough in fusing their avant-garde noise with melody and song structure. More accessible than their earlier albums, it still brims with feedback, alternate tunings, distortion, and experimental guitar work. The result is a compelling balance of melody and dissonance, and it was a major critical success, finishing #4 in the 1987 NME critics’ poll and #12 in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll.

The sound is distorted, discordant, noisy rock, but unusually warm and melodic. Sonic Youth aren’t simply making unpleasant sounds; they’re discovering that noise can function like melody. The lyrics, album title, and themes are inspired by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, whose fractured worlds parallel their sonic experimentation. The lyrics are similarly fragmented and surreal, throwing out elusive images of mental instability, science fiction, violence, sexuality, religion, death, and alienation.

These themes come vividly to life in the standout tracks. Schizophrenia, inspired in part by Dick’s twin sister, who died as an infant, and drawing on Kim Gordon’s experience with her older brother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, is the definitive Sister moment. It begins almost like an indie-rock tune, then the guitars grow increasingly unstable until the song seems to dissolve into slow-motion feedback. Catholic Block, perhaps the album’s most immediately recognizable rock song, combines a muscular punk rhythm with Sonic Youth’s warped, buzzing guitars, while Kotton Krown offers a tender, dreamy contrast, with Gordon’s intimate vocal giving the noisy album a surprisingly vulnerable heart.

Sister feels like a turning point for Sonic Youth, caught between their raw, experimental early years and the expansive brilliance of Daydream Nation. They were becoming more accessible without becoming any less strange, which may be what makes the album so exciting.

The critical consensus is remarkably strong, with Sister generally ranked among Sonic Youth’s top three albums, alongside Daydream Nation and EVOL. It doesn’t have the monumental reputation of Daydream Nation, but it is arguably the more concentrated record. It helped establish a template for alternative rock that could be noisy, experimental, melodic, and accessible. For me, it’s the album where Sonic Youth’s wildness starts to feel not just exciting, but strangely beautiful.

Is Sister Sonic Youth’s perfect balance of noise and melody?

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Click the link to read my previous essay on Live in Brooklyn 2011.

The Jazzprint

Released
1963 — Columbia CL-2051

Style
Hard Bop, Post-bop, Modal

The Lineup
Miles Davis — trumpet
Victor Feldman, Herbie Hancock — piano
George Coleman — tenor sax
Frank Butler, Anthony Williams — drums
Ron Carter — bass

Track of the Day
Seven Steps to Heaven (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Restless Elegance: Sleek, lyrical jazz with a subtle sense of tension and forward motion, where cool control meets the excitement of something new taking shape.

One Thought
“…but rarely did he even tell the soloists when to start or stop or how the tunes would be routined. It takes a sensitive and intelligent artist to follow the leader under these conditions, and it was the very demands he placed on his men that brought out the best in them.”
—Leonard Feather in the liner notes.

Tell Me Something
Can you hear the coming revolution in this music, or does it still sound firmly rooted in hard bop?

Though Jeff Beck's guitar sings on Blow by Blow, it's an instrumental album.

Today I’m spinning Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, one of the most influential instrumental rock albums of all time. Produced by George Martin, it’s a remarkable fusion of rock, funk, soul, jazz, and orchestral music. But calling Blow by Blow merely jazz fusion or a guitar-virtuoso album undersells it. This is expressive instrumental rock, where technical brilliance and emotional depth become almost indistinguishable.

Beck doesn’t have the conventional blues-rock tone of Clapton or the brute force of Hendrix. His tone is liquid, vocal, elastic, and extraordinarily responsive. He shapes each note after he plays it, bending, stretching, and sustaining it until the guitar seems to speak rather than simply produce sound. His mastery is always in service of feeling, making the instrument function almost like a human voice, bending, sighing, whispering, and singing.

Nowhere is this more evident than on Beck’s recording of Stevie Wonder’s Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers, now considered one of the most emotional guitar performances ever recorded. His bends, vibrato, dynamics, phrasing, and control are extraordinary, but what makes the performance so powerful is that every technical device serves the emotion.

Scatterbrain, the virtuoso showcase, is fast, intricate, and rhythmically demanding, yet Beck makes even its most difficult passages sound spontaneous rather than calculated. It’s a perfect example of his ability to make virtuosity feel playful rather than showy.

Two personal favourites of mine are Freeway Jam, with its infectious groove and playful, swaggering guitar, and the Beatles’ She’s a Woman, transformed into a funky instrumental that gives Beck plenty of room to stretch out.

Blow by Blow is widely regarded as one of Beck’s masterpieces, redefining what a guitar album could be and showing that an instrumental rock record could achieve major commercial success without a singer, that rock guitar could embrace jazz and funk without losing its edge, and that virtuosity could be deeply emotional rather than simply spectacular.

Its greatest legacy, though, may be Jeff Beck himself. Blow by Blow cemented the guitar as his voice, an instrument capable of singing, crying, whispering, and soaring. He spent the rest of his career exploring new sounds rather than repeating the formula, but Blow by Blow remained the benchmark for everything that followed.

Can you think of another guitarist who made the instrument speak quite like Jeff Beck?

If this sparked a memory or brought a smile, subscribe and join me Monday–Friday as I rediscover the vinyl that shaped my life.

Click the link to read my previous essay on Truth.

The Jazzprint

Released
1957 — Capitol Records T839

Style
Swing, Easy Listening

The Lineup
Jonah Jones — trumpet, vocals
George Rhodes — piano
John Browne — bass
Harold Austin — drums

Track of the Day
On the Street Where You Live (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
Easygoing Sophistication: Polished, accessible jazz that swings with an effortless grace, balancing musical refinement with a relaxed, unpretentious feel.

One Thought
Jonah Jones turns familiar standards into relaxed, polished swing, with his muted trumpet giving everything an unmistakably warm, urbane character.

Tell Me Something
What makes the muted trumpet such a perfect fit for this kind of relaxed, sophisticated swing?

"From Bissau to Palau
In the shade of Avalon
From Fiji to Tiree
And the Isles of Ebony
From Peru to Cebu
Feel the power of Babylon
From Bali to Cali
Far beneath the Coral Sea"
—from Ornico Flow, lyrics by Roma Ryan

I don’t remember if it was my love of all things Celtic, the ethereal single Orinoco Flow, or the beautiful, dreamlike cover that inspired me to pick up Enya’s Watermark. Likely all three, but I’m sure glad I did.

The album was Enya’s breakthrough and is often regarded as her finest. Steeped in nature, mysticism, and explorations of the inner world, the record creates its distinctive atmosphere through lush layers of vocals and instrumentation. I remembered Watermark being a major success—selling an estimated eight million copies—but had forgotten just how enormous Enya became, with more than 75 million albums sold worldwide, making her one of the most commercially successful Irish artists ever and Ireland’s best-selling solo artist.

The soundscape is hauntingly beautiful and transcendent, with a plethora of standout tracks. Orinoco Flow, an unlikely No. 1 in Britain and several other countries, is a brilliantly constructed blend of hypnotic repetition, gorgeous vocal layering, and an almost childlike sense of adventure. Exile, the album’s emotional heart, is a slow, haunting meditation on separation and longing, demonstrating how powerful Enya could be without a conventional pop chorus.

Then there’s On Your Shore, a hushed, organ-led meditation of extraordinary tenderness, and Evening Falls..., a deeply atmospheric song of loneliness and distance that gradually becomes almost ghostly in its beauty.

Enya’s songwriting process is unusual and deeply collaborative. She typically begins with a melody, often working at the piano and allowing the music to develop intuitively. Once the music takes shape, Roma Ryan generally creates the lyrics, responding to the mood and imagery suggested by the composition. Enya then plays most of the instruments and builds her distinctive vocal arrangements, while Nicky Ryan produces and shapes the finished recording.

The results can involve an astonishing number of layers—sometimes hundreds of separately recorded vocal parts. Enya stacks her voice repeatedly to create the choral effect that became her signature, essentially constructing an entire choir in the studio. It’s a painstaking process, but the finished music feels remarkably seamless and effortless.

Watermark was well received from the beginning, although critics sometimes struggled with where to put it. It was frequently called New Age, but the music was far more sophisticated than typical New Age fare—it’s really a very ambitious art-pop record. Its enormous commercial success proved there was a vast audience for music this atmospheric and unconventional, while Enya’s distinctive blend of Celtic tradition, electronic textures, layered vocals, and dreamlike melodies went on to influence a generation of artists. More than three decades later, Watermark remains the defining statement of an artist who created a sound that was unmistakably her own—and somehow made it a worldwide phenomenon.

If you’re searching for a little inner peace, give this beauty a spin.

What other albums provide such a beautiful escape from the noise of everyday life?

If this sparked a memory or brought a smile, subscribe and join me Monday–Friday as I rediscover the vinyl that shaped my life.

The Jazzprint

Released
1958 — Lion Records L70059, Canadian Quality Records pressing

Style
Big Band

The Lineup
Woody Herman — clarinet, alto saxophone, vocals
Sonny Berman, Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo, Marky Markowitz, Shorty Rogers — trumpet
Bill Harris, Ed Kiefer, Ralph Pfeffner — trombone
John LaPorta, Sam Marowitz — alto saxophone
Mickey Folus, Flip Phillips — tenor saxophone
Sam Rubinowitch — baritone saxophone
Red Norvo — vibraphone
Tony Aless — piano
Billy Bauer — guitar
Chubby Jackson — bass
Don Lamond — drums

Track of the Day
Blowin’ Up a Storm (click to listen)

This Album’s Flavour
High Wire Swing: Fast, brassy, exuberant big-band jazz, driven by spectacular soloists and arrangements that constantly seem ready to burst loose.

One Thought
This is the sound of the big band being pushed toward modern jazz—still swinging hard, but with younger, more adventurous arrangements.

Tell Me Something
Was Woody Herman’s First Herd the greatest bridge between the classic swing era and modern jazz?