Spotify GO! 1950: The Bomb in the Heart of the Century

Totally. It's post-swing era but pre-rock & roll. ("Rocket 88" was released in '51.)

Comes just at the right time - a really great un-mined era. Bob Stanley opens his latest book with a chapter on this era and there's some extraordinary stuff.

cool

so great

Awesome. Great starter track too. Furtwangler's La Scala Ring has an elemental feeling of gods lurching about that I haven't heard on his later Ring cycles or anyone else's.

Is this really the 1950 LP recording of Gieseking's Debussy, not the 1953-54 well known EMI one or the 1930s 78 rpm one? I ask because I have been hankering for the 1950 Preludes recordings to come out on CD or digitally for more than a decade and as far as I knew it never has?

dog latin -- good suggestion! Based on that I forwarded it to him on Twitter and he agreed 'it sounds very me'

<rubs hands together>

The album cover with Giesking's Debussy takes says it was recorded live in Berlin on May 23, 1950. So (I'm pretty sure) it's not any of the above -- not any of his more "canonical" takes. I just really wanted to include some Debussy to bump up against "Out West." (Which you all may not realize was voiced by THIS guy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0906918/?ref_=tt_cl_t5)

Also, Giesking's 1953-4 recordings, which for years were the only Debussy I owned, sound so...dim. It's nice to have something a little more sonically commanding from him.

OHHH it's a live one. That explains it. I knew there were some live 1950 pcs of him in that repertoire.

The ones I am salivating for are two Columbia LPs (preludes book I, preludes book II) which were iirc recorded in 1949 and released in 1950. The EMI ones of a few years later seem to have wiped these out of history but the columbias have better sound and are better played. I agree with you that the sound on the famous EMI preludes sucks shit. Remastering after remastering has not helped. Walter Legge was a terrible producer of solo piano recordings.

Gieseking's 78 rpm traversal of all 24 Preludes is currently the way to go for him in that music IMO. It was on one of those Great Pianists of the 20th Century 2cd sets on Philips which are OOP but easy to find used...

I was thinking there ought to be something from film scores but it looks like '50 was not a great year for film music with the v notable and wonderful exception of Waxman's music for Sunset Boulevard. Spotify should have a great suite from it recorded later on in stereo by Charles Gerhardt.

Really cool project!

Some background:

After finishing one for 1984 and abandoning one for 1975, I asked to do a 1950 CDR Go! all the way back in 2006. (For you ILX young'uns, the CDR GO! concept was more or less where you'd fill a CDR with as many songs from one year as you could without repeating an artist.) I chose 1950 because it was a nice round number and a year I didn't know much about. No other reason why. I have no great sentimentality for the era. So I spent a month and a half researching tejano/conjunto, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina on the internet (well, just googling music styles and performers + 1950). Eventually I grew tired -- it was monotonous work. I put it aside. Then, a few months ago, I said to myself, OMG, I do not want to die before completing this. Which is, yes, a ridiculous thing to think. Completely ridiculous, and not to be encouraged. Anyway, I dug out my old notes, bored deep, and started with everybody ever covered on the Chronological Classics label. Google Books, translation sites, etc. made everything a lot easier; plus, there's so much more in 2013 Spotify's shitstorm of lapsed copyrights than there was of the iTunes/SoulSeek of 2006. And two and a half months later, voila!

I've put together a few year-specific Spotify playlists (1994, 1997, 2003), making some discoveries along the way but rarely straying too far from my own tastes and lived experiences. But when I tried to start one for 1939, it seemed so overwhelming and unfamiliar, I gave up pretty quickly. So kudos!

this is great and i thought so before the abe ellstein orchestra kicked off - what a jammy klezmer track!

This is amazing.

Such an amazing eclectic mix. Thanks! Was jamming this in the kitchen last night.

daddino i think i love you

This looks amazing. I love this post-war era because there's so much energy and so much going on in jazz, blues, country, pop -- a lot of it headed toward convergence in "rock 'n' roll."

If I was going to add one person, it would be T-Bone Walker. Maybe "The Hustle Is On." The first time I heard him, it was like, oh, this is where Chuck Berry learned to play guitar.

The intro of "Water Baby Blues" by the Maddox Brothers & Rose sounds kind of like the Beatles' "Revolution"!

amen to all of this.

Spotify's shitstorm of lapsed copyrights

that's a book, or an EMP presentation, waiting to happen.

Nice mention of this playlist in this P4k article:
http://pitchfork.com/features/article/9887-why-the-death-of-greatest-hits-albums-and-reissues-is-worth-mourning/

good article, an instance of Pitchfork not being dumb

Hey everybody, I have an announcement about this playlist: https://twitter.com/epicharmus/status/769386571120386049

required a few clicks, but seems to work - thanks!

this playlist rules so much. thanks Michael!

epic! managed to get all five parts downloaded. a heroic work.

so good, having a great time starring my faves as i listen through. i always knew john lee hooker was a legend but hadn't really focused on him til it appeared here early on. holy moly 'rollin' blues', whoa now, that's an incredible performance, the sound of the stomping on the floor is electrifying

this playlist was what made me subscribe to Spotify and we listened to it for hours last weekend as my 84-year-old father-in-law had his moving party with all his friends from years past. thanks so much for making this one, a true joy.

This is amazing.

― etc, Saturday, 2 November 2013 10:09 (two years ago)

Even more so. Pixie Williams represent! It's not the easiest finding documentation on NZ stuff from this era, eh ...

Hey everybody. I've recreated The Bomb in the Heart of the Century as a series of Mixcloud mixes. The first two are now up:

https://www.mixcloud.com/epicharmus/mixcloud-go-1950-0112/
https://www.mixcloud.com/epicharmus/mixcloud-go-1950-0212/

Exhaustive discographical information is being posted on my Tumblr:

https://unbreakabletrust.tumblr.com