What do you think is the best year for music in the 20th century ? 1956 and 1968 must surely be strong contenders, at least from the perspective of Rock music. However, the best year for music as far as I am concerned in the 20th c. is 1948. The reason is that John Lee Hooker, Hank Williams, Charlie Parker & Muddy Waters were all recording masterpieces in that year; also, laying the foundations of so much music to come. That list of names is actually quite hard to take in once you start thinking of what they achieved in music collectively.
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| Hank Williams |
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| Charlie Parker |
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| Muddy Waters |
Charlie Parker very much appreciated Hank Williams' songs, a taste extremely unusual in his milieu, where Country or Hillbilly music was generally regarded as unsophisticated nonsense, certainly not worth serious attention. There are stories of Parker baffling his acolytes & other hipsters in New York jazz hang-outs, where he would put Hank Williams repeatedly on the jukebox. People remember this so vividly because it was such an eccentric thing to do in that place at that time. When challenged about it, Parker would say "Listen to the stories, man." I like to think it was one genius recognising another.*
So - 1948. & I haven't even mentioned Lightnin' Hopkins, or Flatt & Scruggs, also recording that year .....
*My source for this story is Ken Burns'
Jazz. I use the word
genius advisedly in the case of each man.
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| John Lee Hooker |
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