On October 24, 1970, Led Zeppelin III blased onto the Billboard 200 album chart at #3. The next week, it knocked Santana’s Abraxas from the #1 spot and remained there…
The #1 Albums
42 Articles
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
My first radio was a green plastic box with a giant dial and tubes inside. I didn’t care that it got only AM—it got WLS, the Top 40 giant from…
J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
[youtube id=”nM_BJrgRs2E” width=”600″ height=”350″] Sweet mama this is one great album. Released at a moment when everybody knew that Creedence Clearwater Revival was pretty damn good, Cosmo’s Factory managed to…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
At a distance of more than 40 years, we forget how big Blood, Sweat & Tears was at the turn of the 1970s. Their second, self-titled album spent time at…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
Years ago, I worked at a radio station in small-town Illinois. An on-air discussion about Woodstock prompted one of the sales reps to collar me in the hall afterward. “I…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
“I’ll finish you all now! You’ll pay!” So said Paul McCartney to Ringo Starr when Ringo tried to convince Paul to hold his solo album release so it wouldn’t conflict…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
It must be great to be Paul McCartney. All that fame, all that money. And it must be terrible, too, because you have to compete with Paul McCartney, and a…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
Their long musical partnership has been good to David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. During the period when they added Neil Young to the group, it was very good…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
Several songs on Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water seem so perfect it’s as though they must always have existed. Surely the title song, “El Condor Pasa,” and “The…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
In 2003, Eric Boehlert (now at Media Matters) wrote an essay for Salon called “The Greatest Week in Rock History” in which he proposed that the week of December 20, 1969,…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
Certain albums in this series present a particular challenge, as we’ve noted before: What can one say that’s fresh about some of the most famous albums ever recorded? For that,…
J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
And now, a list of songs: “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe “Love Theme From ‘Romeo & Juliet’” by Henry Mancini “Sugar Sugar” by…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
What would an English edition of the Band have sounded like? Eric Clapton wondered, too. And in 1969, he set out to form one, but without much confidence that it…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
In 1953, Johnny Cash wrote “Folsom Prison Blues.” Fifteen years later, on a weekday morning in January, he played a legendary concert there, which resulted in one of the most…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
The changing mores of the 1960s eventually reached far beyond popular music. Motion pictures abandoned the production codes that had ruled since the 1930s and for the first time, the…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
The top of the Billboard album chart in the early months of 1969 had something for everybody: the Beatles’ psychedelic flights on the White Album, Glen Campbell’s adult country/pop on…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
Over the years, certain television programs became iconic because of their historical value—the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis Presley’s 1968 “comeback” special, Nirvana on MTV Unplugged. Others have…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
The Beatles, better known as The White Album, hit #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart for the week of December 28, 1968, and spent nine weeks at #1 in…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
We reach the end of 1968 riding a wave of all-time rock classics, and we’ll see in 1969 with another, in next week’s installment. This week, however: As one of…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
Certain albums in this series present a challenge even to a professional gasbag such as I. What can one possibly say about the most legendary albums in the history of…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
You have undoubtedly heard DJs talking about “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin. When they do that, they’re wrong. It’s properly billed to Big Brother and the Holding Company,…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
The geographical center of the pop music universe was all over the map during the first decade-and-a-half of the rock era. It began in New York, where the old and…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
The first two Doors albums, The Doors and Strange Days, were both written at about the same time, and each one is studded with classic songs. In fact, many if…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
Certain dates in pop-culture history ring with importance. On February 9, 1964, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley died. Nobody stops to…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
You don’t hear the phrase “mood music” much anymore. It was often used to refer to the instrumental pop music that rose in favor along with with the popularity of…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
There was nothing hippie about Simon & Garfunkel, really. Among the general run of late 60s pop stars, they were remarkably straight. That’s not to say they didn’t appeal to…
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J.A. Bartlett
2 Min Read
The year 1968 is one of pop’s most legendary, and to look back on it now is to imagine a continuous stream of genius pouring out of radios and stereos,…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
As if there wasn’t enough evidence of the vast gulf between record industry marketing practices of the 1960s and today, consider this: less than six months after releasing an album…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
In 1967, the album supplanted the single as rock’s preeminent art form. Yet the album that ended 1967 at #1 in Billboard sits astride both sides of that divide. Pisces,…
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J.A. Bartlett
1 Min Read
I quit buying 45s when I was 13 years old. After that, I considered myself an album consumer, but that sometimes created an economic conundrum: when a cool new song…
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