Later that summer, Blind Faith brought together Cream’s, er, cream (Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker) with Traffic’s boy wonder Steve Winwood. Their graceful harmonies made them one of the era’s most beloved bands, while their melodies helped folk-rock progress. In 1969, the super-group became a major trend, starting with the debut of CSN, which melded Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills, The Byrds’ David Crosby and The Hollies, Graham Nash. Humble Pie - As Safe as Yesterday Is (August) One of its greatest interpretive singers, he found fresh profundity in familiar material, peaking with his take on Bob Dylan’s Just Like a Woman, which had the weight of Greek tragedy.Ĭrosby, Stills and Nash - Crosby Stills & Nash (May)
Like Ray Charles reborn for a new generation, Cocker brought extra gravity to British blues and soul. Joe Cocker - With A Little Help from My Friends (April)
Instead of racing through the music, and packing it with brisk solos, they played with slow determination and left lots of space in the sound – the better to make each note count, and to give the music a uniquely heavy sense of momentum.
#BEST DEBUT ALBUMS FREE#
Though erroneously cast as a one-hit-wonder in the US, due to their sole Top 5 hit, All Right Now, Free flipped the entire dynamic of British blues-rock. The Stooges presented equal anarchism, but with sexier songs, like their undying salute to masochism I Wanna Be Your Dog. MC5 matched primal rock to revolutionary politics, with plenty of lyrical epithets thrown in for good measure. Much of the punk insurrection can be traced to debuts by these two Detroit-based pioneers. They brought a more gleeful sound to this new amalgam. Three months later came Poco, another country-rock touchstone, fronted by an ex-member of Buffalo Springfield, Ritchie Furay. Their harmonies beguiled, but the peak arrived with “Hot Burrito #1,” one of the most ravishing ballads of all time. The more substantial of them, from The Flying Burrito Brothers, featured key members of The Byrds – Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman – who had first experimented with melding country and rock seven months earlier on “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” For their new venture, they added soul, via some aching cover songs, and psychedelia, through the piercing pedal steel work of “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow. The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace of Sin (February)Ĭountry-rock became a key trend with two releases during this pivotal year. While the latter has more force and classics (Down by The River, Cinnamon Girl), the former had a lush and hallowed beauty that established Young as both a singular soul and a role model for others to come. In a scant five-month-period, he not only released his self-titled debut, but his first bracing work with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (May). Young, who had announced his prodigious talents three years earlier in Buffalo Springfield, landed a one-two punch as a solo artist in 1969. In other words, they handed the inmates the keys to the asylum, resulting in the creative windfall that these works revel in.
Once the older record executives recognised the richness of that market, and acknowledged their own ignorance about the new sounds it craved, they ceded more creative control to the new stars, encouraging them to test the limits of their imaginations. And their ballooning demographic came armed with an exceptional amount of disposable income to spend on the music they adored. So, why did this particular period – whose peak will toast its 50th anniversary this year - produce such an ocean of innovators? The gist boils down to a harmonic convergence of generational, demographic and economic shifts. Members of the boomer generation, who would dominate most of the next half-century, reached their prime teen years at this time. While 1967 may have introduced us to The Doors, The Velvet Underground and David Bowie, and 1968 brought us Joni Mitchell, The Band and Led Zeppelin, the sheer range of debuts in 1969 makes it a standout year in modern music history. Music’s most significant years stress the freshest sounds. By that measure, 1969 stands with the most consequential of all time, generating albums and genres that have defined key parts of the last half century.Īrguably, more influential debut works appeared that year than in any of the “classic-rock” era – the creatively dense stretch between 19.
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