1960: The Sound of Fury by Billy Fury
Before the British invasion, fledgling rockers the world over all wanted to be Elvis Presley. Liverpool’s Billy Fury was the best of them. His debut album, recorded when he was just 20 years old, retains a modern sound 65 years later. Fury wrote all his own material and had the benefit of a fine guitar player in Joe Brown.
If the hit from the album, “That’s Love,” leaned a little closer to Buddy Holly, he had a remarkable range. “Phone Call” begins with a Gershwin-esque intro before morphing into a great string-based hybrid blues tune. And “Turn My Back on You” is just early rock & roll bliss.
1961: There’s Party Going On by Wanda Jackson
“There’ll be no limiting the swinging and dancing that goes on when these rockin’ songs hit your turntable.” That’s what it says right there on the back of the album. And for once, those promo hacks from PR are not lying. The queen of rockabilly – the female Elvis – call her what you want, Wanda Jackson could rock with the best of them.
It opens with “There’s a Party Goin On" and closes with “Man We had a Party,” and well, you get the idea. Fabulous renditions of “Hard Headed Woman” and “Tongue Tied” are just a few of the delights. With that voice, and with the sensational Roy Clark on guitar, Wanda rocks.
(Wanda would gradually move from rockabilly to country to gospel by the end of the decade, so catch her early if you want to hear her truly rocking out.)
1962: Burnin’ by John Lee Hooker
There were some great albums in 1962, but in rock terms, it was more or less the calm before the storm. True, the Beach Boys released their first album, but Surfin’ Safari had too much filler to be a great collection. Meanwhile, a sharecropper’s son from Mississippi had travelled north, bringing the elements of delta blues to electrified Chicago. John Lee Hooker could never be easily classified.
But listen to the opening track, “Boom Boom,” and you hear blues turning into rock before your very ears. You’d be right to call this more of a blues album than a rock album, but the strolling improvisation and complex rhythmic changes would have enormous influence on the seminal rock and rollers of the second half of the decade.
Extra bite: 1962: Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol 1 by Ray Charles
Here’s why you get 15 songs. I’m tossing in a few non-rock albums that nonetheless were part of the rock and roll fabric of the decade. This astonishing collection of songs by Ray Charles redefined all popular music of the time. He covered the Everly Brothers (“Bye Bye Love”) and did a groundbreaking cover of Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me.”
He did Hank Williams and Don Gibson songs, and the traditionalists didn’t know what to make of the fact that a blind black prodigy was taking country music and making it something new and extraordinary – something that was accessible to everyone – not just in the world of country music – but in the entire country.
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