50 Groundbreaking Albums That Turn 50 This Year
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50 Groundbreaking Albums That Turn 50 This Year

A groundbreaking year deserves groundbreaking music.

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50 Groundbreaking Albums That Turn 50 This Year
Etta James (Wikimedia Commons)

The Vietnam War raged, The Prague Spring erupted, 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were both assassinated, the Civil Rights Act was passed, Apollo 8 orbited the moon, athletes took a stand at the Olympics, and Star Trek broadcasted television's first interracial kiss. 1968 was a watershed year, and a year that we're still feeling the effects of to this day. The music of the year was performed by angry members of a brand new generation, jaded from '67s Summer of Love and ready to explore new, more daring horizons. Here are the 50 most groundbreaking albums from that groundbreaking year.

1. Johnny Cash - At Folsom Prison 

Johnny Cash was a man of the people. Following years of drug abuse and waning popularity, Cash decided to record a performance at California's Folsom State Prison. The live album effectively revitalized his career, and it's easy to see why. Cash doesn't just treat the prisoners with respect, he treats the prisoners like they're his equal. He sings songs about prison life, crime, and general debauchery with rock & roll swagger and punk rock-like energy, but he's not afraid to sit down and sing a heartwarming duet with his wife, and he has the prisoners complete attention the entire time. Attempts have been made to sum up Cash's career in life in film or in print, but there's no need to do that. The entire essence of the Man in Black is right here.

2. Jean-Jacques Perrey - The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound of Jean-Jacques Perrey

Perrey's music is proof positive that something doesn't need to be radical and angry to be groundbreaking. Just listen to that song, it's the cheesiest, most upbeat thing in the world! While this record might sound charmingly dated nowadays, music like this in 1968 was absolutely revolutionary, to say the least. Before Perrey, electronic music was exclusively avant-garde. Artists used synthesizers and tapes to create classical music, not pop music. Perrey showed the world, and the general public, that electronic music can be just as fun and upbeat as rock music, and in doing so paved the way for the entire genre of synthpop.

3. The Velvet Underground - White Light / White Heat

The Velvet Underground are arguably the most influential rock group of all time, but most of this praise is usually delegated to the band's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. While this album is undoubtedly influential, the band still had roots in the sunshiney pop music of the time. The group's second album, White Light / White Heat, doesn't play around. Without this album, punk rock wouldn't exist, noise rock wouldn't exist, post-punk wouldn't exist. The guitars cut through speakers like a knife, the drums are tribal, and the lyrics are transgressive and explicitly sexual. It was the antithesis of pop music, and that's why it's such an enduring, influential record.

4. Dr. John, The Night Tripper - Gris-Gris

No artist can perfectly embody the feel of the swamp better than Dr. John. His vocal chords might sound like they've been doused in acid, but underneath the gruff and attitude is a brilliant crooner who manages to anchor an otherwise freeform and beautifully weird combination of freak folk, zydeco, and rock & roll.

5. Lightnin' Hopkins - Texas Blues Man

Hopkins was one of many country blues artists to experience an increase in popularity due to the folk revival of the early '60s, spearheaded by luminaries such as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. While many blues artists that experienced increased popularity had died far too prematurely (Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson, to name a couple), Hopkins was hitting is stride when the public first started to pay attention to him, and his opus was Texas Blues Man. It was his first entirely electric album, and his riffs are cutting, soulful, and immediately catchy. With one thirty minute record, he managed to blow all the British blues rock from the year out of the water.

6. The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun

As bop and modal-based styles started to fall out of favor with jazz aficionadoes, the radicals of the free jazz movement strived to move as far away from convention as possible. Free jazz is a genre that throws away the rulebook of jazz, eschewing modal structures and time signatures for cacophonous symphonies of sound with little structure to be found. Americans like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman pioneered the sound, but Europeans such as Brötzmann took it to the extreme. Machine Gun is the most brilliant album title of all time, because the players on the record manage to give their instruments the power and speed usually only reserved for machinery and weaponry. It's a daunting listen, to say the least.

7. The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers / Sweetheart of the Rodeo

The Byrds' released two fantastic albums in 1968, I couldn't pick just one, so I put both on the list. It's my list so I can do what I want. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was the culmination of everything the Byrds had accomplished as a group up to that point. The jangly guitars harken back to Mr. Tambourine Man, the psychedelia is an improvement on the sound they carved out on Fifth Dimension, and they expand upon the country rock influences first present on Younger Than Yesterday. Sweetheart of the Rodeo saw the band bring in country rock legend Gram Parsons, who shifted the band in an entirely country-focused direction. The melodies are sweet, the rhythms are distinctly country-fried, but the vocal harmonies and the jangly guitars are distinctly Byrdsian.

8. The Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money

Lots of late-'60s psychedelic rock tended to take itself too seriously. In every major psychedelic band from the era, there was a distinct aura that what they were doing was more important, more groundbreaking, and more revolutionary than any other music. While this is an arguably true point, Zappa was having absolutely none of that, and We're Only in It for the Money is his most bitingly satirical work. From the album cover's parody of Sgt. Peppers down to the obviously parodic "Let's Make the Water Turn Black", Zappa was out for blood. And like any Zappa work, behind the humorous exterior, the compositions and performances are mindblowingly fantastic.

9. Scott Walker - Scott 2

Walker arguably has the most interesting career in pop music history. Beginning his career as a member of boy band The Walker Brothers, he eventually splintered off to carve out a more artistic solo career. His solo albums got progressively darker and more experimental, he fell of the map for nearly two decades, and came back with the almost oppressively dark and experimental Tilt. Scott 2 is pretty straightforward, consisting mostly of covers, but Walker's vocals are consistantly brilliant, and often strange. He interpolates flagrantly sexual and revolutionary Jacques Brel pieces, and his original compositions show the mark of a brilliant composer yet to find his true voice.

10. The Impressions - This Is My Country

The Impressions spent a solid decade as a decent, if unremarkable, vocal group. They sang songs about love, they all had great, silky smooth voices, they did what they had to do to sell records and they did it well. Around 1966, vocalist Curtis Mayfield began to write most of the group's songs, and Mayfield hit his stride with This Is My Country, a poetic and conscious response to the political turmoil of the year. The vocals are fantastic, the political sentiments give me goosebumps, and the record would launch Mayfield into a beautiful and prosperous solo career.

11. The Millennium - Begin

Begin is quite possibly the most underrated album of all time. Overshadowed by classics such as Odessey and Oracle, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and The Beatles [White Album], Begin often doesn't come up in conversation regarding brilliant pieces of psychedelia, and that's a shame. The band was incredibly ahead of their time with their use of soundscaping and percussion, and they knew how to write an absolutely fantastic pop song when push came to shove.

12. John Fahey - The Yellow Princess

Full disclaimer: Fahey is my favorite musical artist of all time, so anything I write about him might come across as a little bit biased. The iconoclastic guitarist had experimented with psychedelic effects before, but these experiments were just that—experiments, usually involving tape work. The Yellow Princess was the first time Fahey incorporated psychedelia and avant-garde music into his actual guitar playing, and the result is arrestingly complex and gorgeous.

13. Laura Nyro - Eli and the Thirteenth Confession

Nyro is an easy contender for the title of the best songwriter of all time. Her songs are soulful, poignant, and progressive, and her performing style is strangely singular. Eli and the Thirteenth Confession features some incredibly soulful and almost overenthusiastic vocal performances from Nyro, who would tone it down on New York Tendaberry, but if I was writing songs this good I'd probably be overly enthusiastic to sing them too.

14. The Dillards - Wheatstraw Suite

The whole shtick of this album seems a bit gimmicky. The Dillards rearrange pop and traditional folk songs to suite a bluegrass style, and while that may sound like an awful idea, their vocal harmonies are beautiful and the arrangements are delicate and subtle. The instrumental work is also consistently brilliant, and the cover of the Beatles' "I've Just Seen a Face" is pitch-perfect, possibly even better than the original.

15. Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso

Caetano Veloso is the first of three self-titled records from the enigmatic Brazillian singer/songwriter, and one of the most brilliant pop albums ever recorded. Veloso blends folk, pop, traditional Brazillian music, and radical politics together to create a genre and movement known as "tropicália", which would define Brazillian music for a couple years and then promptly fade out. Caetano Veloso is the perfect mission statement of the movement, and a near-perfect record in and of itself.

16. Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends

Bookends saw Simon & Garfunkel, disintegrating relationship and all, swiftly and thoroughly embrace the burgeoning folk rock sound. With this newfound liberation from the folk revival scene, Simon lovingly crafted vast and pastoral pictures of middle America, complete with kaleidscopic arrangements and typically brilliant vocal harmonies.

17. The Jazz Composer's Orchestra - The Jazz Composer's Orchestra

The inagural release from this veritable jazz supergroup is one of the most radical jazz records known to mankind. Taylor, Cherry, and Sanders, absolute masters of their crafts, absolutely let loose and perform Mantler's detached compositions with enough energy and gusto to last a lifetime. The group would perform sporadically through the years, even contributing the music to Carla Bley and Paul Haines' landmark "jazz opera" Escalator Over the Hill, but their debut album would end up as their defining statement.

18. Nico - The Marble Index

Nico was on track to become one of Andy Warhol's many muses with the 1967 releases of The Velvet Underground & Nico and Chelsea Girl, two albums Nico contributed nothing to in terms of songwriting. Due to encouragement from several friends, Nico began to write her own songs, and The Marble Index is an eerie work that puts one of the most singular songwriters of all time on display. The only instrument on the album is Nico's harmonium, and the drones that the odd instrument create serve as a perfect canvas for Nico's dark, droll, and rather scary vocals. This is great, and Nico would only get better on 1970's Desertshore.

19. The Beach Boys - Friends

Still reeling from the commercial failure of the now landmark Pet Sounds, as well as the back-to-back commercial and critical failures of the lo-fi Smiley Smile and Wild Honey, a failed attempt at soul music, The Beach Boys went back to basics with Friends. The album is a simple and lovely ode to friendship and companionship. The melodies are sweet, the vocals are beautiful, and while the arrangements aren't as complex as the ones found on Pet Sounds or Smile, the Brian Wilson genius is still here in spades.

20. Terry Callier - The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier

Callier would rebrand himself in 1972 with the soul classic What Color Is Love, but for my money his best album is his first. The New Folk Sound... has little in common with any of his subsequent records. It's a stark and brooding album equally indebted to rock & roll and the artists of the folk revival. His vocals might be soulful, but the guitar arrangements are heavy, dark, and a joy to listen to.

21. The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle

Odessey and Oracle could quite possibly be the defining album of the psychedelic pop movement. The Zombies play around with many different tropes and cliches in psychedelic music and absolutely perfect them while doing so. There are some heavier rock numbers, some experiments with psychedelic soundscaping, some Beach Boys-esque baroque/sunshine pop, and some absolutely brilliant instrumental work. This album has it all.

22. Dorothy Ashby - Afro-Harping

I needed to fill a jazz harp quota here, but Alice Coltrane's work in 1968 isn't all that great, so Afro-Harping makes the list. Ashby is an absolutely brilliant player, her harp fits so well in a jazz context but it never loses that certain delicate beauty that makes a harp a harp. Some could pass this off as easy listening mood music, and while it almost certainly is, the grooves are immaculate, and what's so bad about mood music anyway?

23. Gilberto Gil - Gilberto Gil

While most of the Tropicália movement focused on bridging the gap between British/American psychedelia and Brazillian pop music, Gilberto Gil simply sought to make traditional Brazillian music a whole lot weirder. This whole record has a folk sound that's nearly impossible to comprehend, because Gil buries anything remotely traditional under countless layers of psychedelic songwriting and soundscaping. It's one of the more unique albums from the whole Tropicália movement.

24. Muhal Richard Abrams - Levels and Degrees of Light

One of the more stark and minimalist jazz records out there. Abrams assembles a veritable team of musicians for this project, but the stars of the show are his clarinet/piano work and Anthony Braxton's fantastic, distinctly avant-garde sax work. "The Bird Song", the ultimate piece on the album, is a 22-minute slow-burning masterpiece. It starts off with ear-piercing saxophone squeaks, transitions into beautiful spoken word recitations, and eventually morphs into a beautiful cacophany of sound.

25. Ultimate Spinach - Behold & See

Ultimate Spinach's first album isn't anything special. It's unique, for sure, but the songwriting is middling and the psychedelic sound isn't fully integrated. Behold & See, released just a couple months later, is their undeniable masterpiece. While many psychedelic rock bands of the times took influence from R&B and rock & roll, Behold & See exists in a whacked-out world of its own. The guitars roar, the rhythm section is undeniably groovy, and the songwriting predates progressive rock.

26. Silver Apples - Silver Apples

Yes, the song above was recorded and released in 1968. That blew my mind when I first listened to this record, and I hope it blows your mind too. Silver Apples' use of electronics in rock music was absolutely unheard of at the time, and unlike most early electronic records, this doesn't seem dated at all. The songs are incredibly strong to begin with, and the more typical psych rock playing underneath the electronics is fantastic, strange, and groovy as sin.

27. International Harvester - Sov gott Rose-Marie

Sov gott Rose-Marie, the first (released) album by the band also known as Pärson Sound and Träd, Gräs och Stenar, is a weird and wild ride through the minds of some of the weirdest figures in psychedelia. Pärson Sound is heavy and experimental, Träd, Gräs och Stenar is more streamlined and poppy. International Harvester sits somewhere in the middle. Half the tracks on the record are long, drawn-out psych rock masterpieces, and half of the tracks are short, bite-sized pieces of folk rock. It's a good balance, and one that doesn't leave the listener overwhelmed by either style.

28. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland

Electric Ladyland was the last album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience to be released in Hendrix's lifetime, and it's arguably their magnum opus. Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love are both fine records, but they're both all too short and inconsequential to properly explore the full realm of Hendrix's talent. Electric Ladyland, clocking in at around 75 minutes, uses every single second to show the listener just how good Hendrix was at guitar. Long, drawn-out jams pair with short, concise folk rock numbers pair with experimental electronic work to create one fantastic record.

29. Magic Sam Blues Band - West Side Soul

West Side Soul is an immediately different and unique blues record. Magic Sam's vocals are higher pitched, but he still ekes out every last bit of soul in every single word he sings. His songs are rather odd as well, his guitar is noticably drenched in a tremolo effect and his songs rarely abide by the 12-bar blues form. It may be strange for a blues record, but these changes make for one of the dreamiest and most passionate soul records out there.

30. Ray Barretto - Acid

Barretto's style of salsa music is about as loose, freeform, and psychedelic as the genre could possibly get. One would probably expect something more psychedelic from this record just by looking at the album cover and title, but the music inside is even freakier and more out-there than these two things would suggest. Barretto goes absolutely insane on the congos, and his insane percussion is what drives the entire record. Other musicians come in to provide some sort of structure (the bassist is an absolute legend), but Barretto still steals the entire show.

31. Various Artists - Tropicália ou panis et circencis

I touched upon the Tropicália movement briefly in the little Caetano Veloso blurb above, but I love the movement so much I just had to talk about it some more. This album is a who's who of the entire movement, bringing together luminaries like Veloso, Nara Leão, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Os Mutantes to lay out the basic foundations of the movement, all while allowing these artists to showcase their unique, individual sounds. It's shockingly cohesive for a Various Artists record, and the talent is second-to-none.

32. Serge Gainsbourg - Initials B.B.

Gainsbourg was the sleazy, perverted king of French pop music, and Initials B.B. was his first masterpiece. Gainsbourg's greatest skill was to pair the most over-the-top, beautiful arrangements with such droll, effortlessly cool vocals. It's an odd dichotomy, but it works absolutely perfectly. Histoire de Melody Nelson is a better album, but Initials B.B. is still one of the best French pop records out there.

33. Cornelis Vreeswijk - Tio vackra visor och personliga Person

Vreeswijk was a major star in the genre of "visor", a style of Swedish folk music that sought to bring back the troubador as a performer. Vreeswijk sang songs of protest, unrest, consistantly imbibing them with his biting and satirical sense of humor. The opening track, a samba-infused cover of a Chico Buarque song, falls flat, but once Vreeswijk finds his groove as a lone troubador singing powerful songs of social upheaval, the album gets really, really good.

34. Jacks - Vacant World

Jacks were at the forefront of an interesting, obscure style of music known as "group sounds", which referred to music out of Japan that sought to emulate the beat music popularized by early Beatles records. Jacks did this with a distinctly psychedelic twist, mixing together beat music and brill building sounds with a crushingly heavy psychedelic rock sound. It's an interesting experiment, and one that doesn't always work, but it makes for an album you can't stop listening to.

35. Sonny Criss - Sonny's Dream (Birth of the Cool)

Sonny's Dream is the best experimental big band record of all time. That may seem like faint praise, because "experimental big band" is a fairly niche genre, but there are some great releases in the genre and this record stands tall above all of them. The individual playing is fine, but it's the beautiful music that occurs when the whole band plays together that makes this record something special. The compositions seem explicitly tailored for a big band style, equally epic and intimate, and the absolute wall of sound that occurs when the band plays together is something to behold.

36. The Beatles - The Beatles [White Album]

A self-titled record sticks out like a sore thumb in an artist's discography. Sometimes it's used to signify a debut album (Black Sabbath, The Stooges, Elvis Presley), and other times it's used to signify a band majorly reinventing their sound and image (Blur, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac). The Beatles fits firmly in the latter category. Clocking in at 93 minutes, The Beatles' longest album by a significant margin, The Beatles is a haphazard mix of about every single genre under the son. There are hard rock songs ("Helter Skelter"), progressive rock jams ("Happiness Is a Warm Gun"), folk ballads ("Blackbird", and, of course, an eight-minute long sound collage piece ("Revolution 9"). Not everything works, but The Beatles is a kaleidoscopic and frequently entertaining portrait of a legendary band in complete disarray.

37. Cecil Taylor - Conquistador!

Piano is one of my favorite jazz instruments. Sadly, the instrument is most often used in smoother styles of jazz, with artists like Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Dave Brubeck, and Bill Evans being the most notable proponents of jazz piano in a cool/smooth jazz context. I still like this stuff, but piano in free/avant-garde jazz is something I dream of. Luckily, Cecil Taylor has got my back. "Structure" and "free jazz" are not two phrases that are often combined, but Taylor and his band have a definite method to their madness, and all of Taylor's compositions have an undeniably beautiful flow to them.

38. Margo Guryan - Take a Picture

Take a Picture is a strange and melancholic take on sunshine pop from a promising artist that sadly has no other records to her name. The songwriting is brilliant, Guryan often utilizes compositional influence from classical and jazz music in constructing these songs, making them oddly complex and grandiose for sunshine pop. The vocals are brilliant as well, Guryan's breathy style of singing perfectly matches the bittersweet melancholy of the music. Added points for the freaked-out psych rock closer, "Love".

39. Wendy Carlos - Switched-On Bach

Despite searching for a decently long time, I could not find any of Carlos' music on YouTube or Spotify, so you'll have to deal with this normal piano rendition of a Bach piece. If you'd like to listen to Switched-On Bach, you could borrow my vinyl copy, I suppose. And I would highly recommend tracking this down, if you can. It's undeniably kitsch, being little more than a tech demo of some incredibly advanced synthesizers, but the influence this record has had is incredible. It showed that electronic instruments could play classical music, supposedly the "highest" form of musical art, and effectively legitimized synthesizers and sequencers in the public eye. Carlos would later go on to do the soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron, and she still remains one of the most legendary figures in electronic music to this day.

40. Aretha Franklin - Aretha Now

Given her recent passing, I would be remiss if I didn't include at least one album from the undisputed Queen of Soul on my list. Aretha Now was her second album from 1968, and I genuinely prefer it over Lady Soul, which seems to be her consensus best. Aretha Now has the soaring vocals a listener would come to expect from Franklin, with the added addition of funkier, heavier, and more distinctly southern instrumentals. Rest in piece to the queen.

41. Pearls Before Swine - Balaklava

One of the more subtle protest records of the year. Given the tumultous times occuring in 1968, subtlety wasn't exactly a possible option for those attempting to criticize the global climate, but singer/songwriter Tom Rapp is able to mix biting satire with fantastical symbolism to wonderful effect. Pair the wonderful lyrics with equally wonderful, understated psychedelic folk songs, and you have a winner.

42. The United States of America - The United States of America

An innovate and experimental '60s psych record that managed to be equally influential and fun to listen to. The album features absolutely no guitar work whatsoever, and while some tracks recall the Californian psychedelic rock of groups like Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane, the vast majority of the record is Silver Apples-esque experimental electronic rock. It must have been mind-blowing for the time, and it's still a great listen today.

43. Etta James - Tell Mama

James is probably best known for At Last! and it's beautiful title track, but Tell Mama is my favorite record of hers. Tell Mama saw the singer move away from classic rhythm & blues to a deep-fried southern soul sound that fits her raw, gregarious vocals wonderfully. The driving title track is my person favorite, but cuts like "The Same Rope" and "Steal Away" make the whole album more than worth your while.

44. Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes

While Gilberto Gil sought to retain a certain traditional folk element in the Tropicália movement, Os Mutantes throws that all away favor of a sound clearly and consciously indebted to psychedelic rock. The guitar work is absolutely incredible, every single lick is immediately catchy and hard-hitting and the production is wonderfully fuzzed-out. Underneath all these layers of distortion and fuzz, the band never forgets to write some absolutely fantastic, tuneful pop songs, all sung wonderfully by the entire group.

45. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

Astral Weeks was a transitional album for the influential singer/songwriter, and one he'd really never come close to topping. The record was released in an awkward period between his time with garage rock group Them and the release of Moondance, and it's the only record where he really embraces traditional folk music, to wonderful effect. The arrangements are peaceful, serene, and immaculately put together, and Morrison's vocals are rough yet soothing enough to lull the listener to sleep.

46. The Kinks - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

After a couple years as one of England's premiere garage rock bands, The Kinks decided to experiment with psychedelic and baroque pop. Face to Face and Something Else by the Kinks saw the fruits of their labor begin to pay off, and ...Village Green Preservation Society cemented them as one of the best psychedelic pop bands around. The harmonies are brilliant, as they are in most psychedelic pop albums, and the songwriting is biting, humorous, evocative, and blisteringly catchy.

47. The Soft Machine - The Soft Machine

1968 was the first year that progressive rock began to rise to prominence, and Soft Machine was one of the first bands to truly embrace the style. The band emerged from something known as the "Canterbury scene", a style of progressive rock born out of Canterbury that blended hard-hitting progressive rock with heavy influence from jazz. Soft Machine consisted of three classically trained musicians (none of them guitarists, which seems to be a prominent theme on this list), and they combined their instrumental prowess with quirky, Syd Barrett-influenced songwriting to create something absolutely magical, not to mention the fact that they practically created an entirely new genre along the way.

48. The Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow

The Pretty Things brought a certain acid-fried intensity to the often saccharine genre of psychedelic pop. S.F. Sorrow tells the entire life story of the titular Sebastian F. Sorrow through his entire life, and the lyrics and story are as poignant and melancholic as they upbeat and bitingly satirical. These lyrics and this story combined with more subtle, maudlin instrumentation wouldn't work, but the Pretty Things know when to kick things up a notch.

49. Sandy Bull - E Pluribus Unum

E Pluribus Unum is Sandy Bull's third record, and easily his most overtly psychedelic. Bull's most notable instrument, the banjo, barely even makes an appearance here, most tracks are entirely devoted to odd drones performed on the oud with sparse accompaniment from cowbells and maracas. E Pluribus Unum is about as far away you can get from blues while still remaining under the "american primitivism" genre, but it's still a breathtakingly daring album nonetheless.

50. Albert Ayler - Love Cry

Albert Ayler is one of the most interesting jazz musicians out there. He's one of the more well-known figures in free and avant-garde jazz music, but his style of free jazz isn't atonal, he often subtly weaves in beautiful, soulful, even catchy melodies into his freeform freakouts. It's a daring thing to do in free jazz music, and Ayler pulls it off with panache on Love Cry. The melodies are beautiful, as is Ayler's work on the sax, but it's the beauty of the electric harpsichord that really pushes this over the edge.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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