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Last Active 01-01-70 12:00 am
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| 10 albums of 1963
63 was a very interesting year. The Beatles were finally put on record and they changed the world. Jazz agonized but Mingus still managed to create "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" before the whole genre took a modest turn to the shadows. Space Age Pop thrived and a certain French Pop singer tried to conquer the Americas with mixed results. I've heard of some Bob Dylan but I decided to leave his free wheelin' for the 2nd round. Let's see what we got. | | 1 |  | Charles Mingus
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
Impulse! // July, 1963
I would have paid good money to see the Impulse! label executives' faces the first time they heard "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady". I think this is an album that allows any kind of hyperbole, because everything can be justified simply playing the damn thing. I don't know what kind of revelation Mingus went through when he composed this masterpiece, but he definitely positioned himself as an undisputable genius. If the city could speak, it would sound like this album. Every dark corner, every broken soul, every promise, would speak the story of The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and you'll sit down to hear the tale for the uptenth time as it was always the first time. | | 2 |  | Dick Hyman and Mary Mayo
Moon Gas
MGM // One day in 1963
Albums like this one are the reason why I started doing these yearly explorations in the first place. What a discovery. It's crazy how asynchronic this album feels. Borderlining jazz with a strong cinematic feel that trascends the exotica compositions of Lex Baxter, legendary electronic wizard Dick Hyman teams up with soprano singer Mary Mayo (I promise I'm not making up their names) to create an album that would feel right at home as the soundtrack of a Bioshock game. The vocals sound amazing and Hyman's arrangement are just fantastic. Those tracks with an eerie feel are really something else considering the year this was released and the modest repercusion it got. I would recommend listening to this on headphones, it's wonderfully panned too. | | 3 |  | The Beatles
Please Please Me
Parlophone // March 22, 1963
And then the Beatles arrived. I won't get into the story of how the Beatles changed everything and everyone forever. How does this album feel in 2023? Well, some tracks have definitely aged better than others. The Beatles never hid their love for Motown, and how they deliberatedly ripped off the way of harmonizing vocals of bands like The Marvelettes or The Shirelles. Without knowing that, you would think the Liverpool lads were fucking geniuses, but everything can be traced back, and their music is no exception. On the other hand, those voices, those songs... Not everyone could do what the Beatles were doing at the time and god knows many would try in the years to come. I'll take "Do You Want to Know A Secret" as a hell of a sleeper track on this record and tell you that it took me years of listening to them to realize this song in particular is my favorite on the album. And that could change tomorrow. | | 4 |  | The Beatles
With the Beatles
Parlophone // November 22, 1963
To add to the offense, eight months later, the Beatles released their sophomore record with Parlophone and many things started to move on the music industry machinery. Everyone and their mother knew that what these fine young men were doing was not normal. Are you telling me that I don't need to spend years learning music theory anymore to play in a band? Are you telling me that jazz is not the end? That Bo Didley and Chuck Berry were right all along? Suddenly every fine young man got a haircut and hanged an instrument, strumming chords that never had strummed before and the pop rock hemorrahge that would devolve into psychedelia and a hundred other subgenres just happened, and The Beatles were to blame. It's typical of me, but I really think they did something special with "Please, Mister Postman" though, and I almost hate them because of that. | | 5 |  | Sheila Jordan
Portrait of Sheila
Blue Note // January, 1963
I'm not surprised Alfred Lion decided to get Sheila Jordan on his label to fire up some jazz standards and see how the whole business went. Her voice has that velvet tone that sometimes sounded like a howl, and sometimes like a whisper in your neck. She had the right amount of sassiness and sensibility, extreme versatility. Just listen to "Am I Blue" followed by "Dat Dere" and you'll hear what I mean. Especially on the latter, where she builts the whole song on a simple contrabass arrangement, not even a bassline. The contrabass is actually the one following her. Needless to say, Rudy Van Gelder did an outstanding job recording this, and 50 years later (and maybe a remaster or two) still sounds incredible. | | 6 |  | Gerry Mulligan
Night Lights
Mercury // One day in 1963
"Night Lights" became a big thing recently thanks to a youtube algorithm that would spam this album to anyone typing the words "jazz" and "nocturnal" on the search bar. It is indeed a great album, one that didn't benefit from a stereo version though, and whoever panned this on headphones should be in jail right now. In any case, the title track is the apogee of night jazz, as you would have deducted from the title. It's perfect for a night drive or if you wanna cosplay as Marlowe and investigate the strange case of the cat on the tree while the city sleeps. The bossanova tracks add to the charm too, but this album classifies as background music for me, not that it ever was a bad thing anyway. | | 7 |  | Skeeter Davis
Sings The End of the World
RVA Victor // One day before the end of the world
It seems the doc team from Bethesda did their homework and found the song that would fit their Fallout series like a motherfucking glove. There's a good chance that this was your way into Skeeter's music. To be completely honest, I didn't even make the relation until yesterday, then I remembered. The real gem of this album, on the other hand, is not the infamous opening track, but the second: "Silver Threads and Golden Needles". You can keep you Lanas and your Swifts, Skeeter was already killing it before they were even conceived, singing from a window while looking at the clouds, probably to a nuclear bomb mushroom. From Nashville to the world, or more likely, to the end of it. It seems we found our soundtrack at least. Happy extinction everyone! | | 8 |  | John Coltrane
Stardust
Prestige // October, 1963
Technically a recording from 1958, that Prestige did dirty and released once their contract with Coltrane was expired but music it's music regardless of label politics. I actually found this on vinyl just a couple of weeks ago for a fair price and the only reason I bought it was because in all my ignorance, I was just excited to see the names Coltrane and Hubbard together. It does sound great on vinyl though, and it's the kind of slow Coltrane I like, especially the title track. Love the title too. The rest of the tracks are fine too, nothing to go crazy about but they are pleasant to the ear. | | 9 |  | Francoise Hardy
Le premier bonheur du jour
Vogue // October, 1963
After being completely in love with her debut for weeks I was very excited to hear this follow up but I gotta say, I'm not completely sold on the direction she took here. Legend says she got rid of every musician involved in her first record and even changed producers to pursue a style more desirable by anglo-american audiences, and you know what that means: doo wop. This is just my opinion but I don't think the style suited her at all. Her Parisian glamour gets completely lost at times while she tries to reach for a sound that simply doesn't belong in her. I have no idea how succesful the experiment was, but I'd take her debut over this any day, any time. Now what's left to see is where did she go next. Don't get me wrong though, I still like this album a lot, especially the songs with that feel more like... well, like her. | | 10 |  | Freddie Hubbard
Hub-Tones
Blue Note // November,, 1963
What a cover art, huh. The Hubbard discog run continues, more or less, with this "Hub-Tones". I love how he always find a way to make it about himself on the album title (lol). Half standards, half his thing. The standards are alright, they are correctly executed but they don't tell me anything I don't already know. The title track though, now that's what I'm talking about. The initial main phrase feels so heavy, with the drums and the bass just being hammered behind the central theme, and then... off they go! "Lament for Booker" is a great ballad too, one for his fellow trumpeteer Booker Little who died years before in his early twenties. In fact, everyone on this record is still really young, so I'm surprised how mature their musicianship feels. I guess that's the positive side-effect of not having consoles, youtube and tik tok around. | |
Dewinged
12.26.23 | Not gonna miss the chance of doing a beatles discog run. | BlazinBlitzer
12.27.23 | It'd be very hard to find anything that will ever beat 1 here. | sonictheplumber
12.27.23 | RIP kennedy | Dewinged
12.28.23 | @Blitz yeah not looking for anything necessarily better, just albums I dig from 63. If there was any sort of AOTY ranking, 1 would definitely be 1 though. | Dewinged
12.28.23 | I'm on a blurb spree.
Off to 1964! | AsleepInTheBack
12.31.23 | This is a great list idea
Typo in 4 says it’s 1962. I had no idea they released 2 in 1 year though | Dewinged
12.31.23 | Ooops fixed! Thanks Asleep! They did, also on the following year. It's crazy but their career, if you count first official release til breakup was only 8 years and after 1966 they didn't tour anymore. |
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