An Album a Day: Released Before 1950

Featuring Bing Crosby, Woody Guthrie, Count Basie, and others

My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.

This week’s theme is “albums released before 1950.” This theme was not only the most difficult we’ve undertaken but also the most insightful. Let me lay out a few reasons as to why:

• Album names used to be more direct: Before 1950, you were not getting something called Dark Side of the Moon or In Utero. You’re getting stuff like A Xavier Cugar Album of Latin American Music or Bing Crosby Sings Songs by George Gershwin. The title is a perfect description for what you are about to hear.

• Albums before 1950 were more akin to collections of songs than singular artistic statements: As my first point makes clear, albums in this era usually fit a theme, but they had a very different feel than those after 1950. As Will Friedwald writes in his book Sinatra! The Song is You, it wasn’t until after 1950 that Frank Sinatra “became the first pop singer to perceive possibilities for record making that went beyond individual songs … Sinatra sequenced the songs [on his albums] so that the lyrics created a flow from track to track, affording the impression of a narrative, as in musical comedy or opera.”

• Albums were not common before 1950: What we know as the “album era” really only began after Columbia Records invented the 33⅓ rpm long-playing record, or LP, in 1948. Before that, an “album” was a collection of 78s sold in something that resembled a photo album. (That’s actually where the term album comes from.) But because of this technological limitation, albums were not common.

• Even if a pre-1950 album exists, it’s likely not on streaming services: Because popular music pre-1950 was more focused on individual songs, many of those original collections have not made it to streaming. To be clear, the songs are on streaming services, but they are usually packaged as retrospectives or greatest hits records.

On top of all of this, we limited ourselves to albums recorded and released before 1950. As much as we wanted to listen to Benny Goodman’s famous 1938 Carnegie Hall show, we couldn’t. The first recording wasn’t widely available until 1950. Let’s dive in.

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#9 Bing Crosby Sings Songs by George Gershwin by Bing Crosby (1949)

This album makes it clear why Bing Crosby was the best-selling musician of the first half of the 20th century: The man’s voice feels like a warm hug. My friend Ken described this album as “background music at a family party,” and he meant that as a compliment. I agree. I can’t imagine disliking Bing Crosby.

But that’s also the issue with this record. There is nothing audacious here. Crosby sings these Gershwin melodies exactly as they are notated. Because of that, you’ll likely prefer other versions of these classics. “Summertime” is a great example of that. While there is nothing wrong with Crosby’s version, I’d throw on at least ten other renditions of the famous song first.

#8 Music Out Of The Moon by Les Baxter & Harry Revel with Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman (1947)

This record was made as a vehicle for Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman to show off his skills on the theremin, a weird instrument that can be played without physical contact. The spacey arrangements are actually quite nice, though. And if you don’t let this album just act as sonic wallpaper, you’ll notice some nice guitar work too.

#7 A Xavier Cugat Album of Latin American Music by Xavier Cugat (1939)

The title here says it all. Catalan bandleader Xavier Cugat records selections of Latin American music with his orchestra. Maybe the most rhythmically exciting songs of this week, they really pop on the opening selections where Dinah Shore is on the microphone.

#6 Negro Sinful Songs by Lead Belly (1939)

Folklorists John and Alan Lomax discovered Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at the Louisiana State Penitentiary while they were collecting local musics for the Library of Congress. Impressed both by the inmate’s skills as a performer and knowledge of folk music, they began recording him. Over the years, many of those recordings were packaged and released.

Negro Sinful Songs is one of those early releases. And it is more of a collection of songs than a true album. The first two tracks, for example, are just different takes of “Frankie and Albert,” an old murder ballad sometimes referred to as “Frankie and Johnny.” Even so, you can see why the Lomaxes were so entranced by Ledbetter all those years ago. His voice sounds like it was pulled from the Earth.

Others have felt the same. Led Zeppelin reimagined Lead Belly’s rendition of “Gallis Pole” on Led Zeppelin III as “Gallows Pole.” One-hit wonder Ram Jam did much the same when they set Lead Belly’s acapella “Black Betty” to music.

#5 Dust Bowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie (1940)

Part reportage, part folk song collection, Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads is a socially conscious album that captures the economic upheaval caused by ecological disaster in the American prairie during the 1930s. You can feel the dust in your lungs as you listen to Guthrie tell these tales.

And many of those tales remain as vital today as they were back then. “Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich and the workin’ man is poor,” he sings on the back half of this record. “And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.”

#4 South Pacific by The Original Broadway Cast (1949)

Some of the best-selling albums before 1950 were cast recordings of Broadway shows. Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, along with their Oklahoma!, set the standard for what a Broadway musical—and a Broadway musical cast album—could be.

South Pacific still feels fresh both thematically and musically. In regard to the former, the play confronts issues surrounding interracial relations head on. In regard to the latter, the songs are still tons of fun. That goes a long way when engaging with songs that are 75 years old. My favorite piece was “There is Nothin’ Like a Dame,” a risqué number where the soldiers in the south Pacific long for their women.

#3 At the Piano by Count Basie (1948)

Another album whose name tells you all you need to know. This is Count Basie at the piano. In fact, nine of the ten songs feature no vocals. It’s only the Count and his band ripping through some joyful numbers. Basie does sing on the opening song, “Boogie Woogie (I May Be Wrong).” And while I do love listening to his piano work, I almost wish he sang more. Across an album of fun, that vocal number may be the most fun.

#2 Folk Songs Of The Hills by Merle Travis (1947)

This album is part music and part history, Merle Travis first giving a small narrative before launching into one of his folk songs about coal miners and company towns. In that sense, this album shares lineage with Dust Bowl Ballads. The difference is that Merle Travis can play circles around nearly any guitar player, his fingerstyle work so distinctive that most people now call it “Travis picking.”

Yes, a song like “Sixteen Tons” can hit you like a punch in the gut even if someone is just strumming along—the Tennessee Ernie Ford version of the song is good evidence of that—but Travis makes the guitar sound like an orchestra.

#1 Rendezvous with Peggy Lee by Peggy Lee (1948)

As I noted at the beginning of this piece, many of these albums aren’t albums in the way we conceive of the term today. They are mostly collections of songs. Sure, some of those collections are focused around a theme (e.g., dust bowl ballads, Latin American music, George and Ira Gershwin compositions), but there isn’t the narrative arc that we’ve come to expect from great albums. Rendezvous with Peggy Lee isn’t like this, though. It sounds like the future.

We gave Rendezvous with Peggy Lee the top spot this week because every detail was great. Peggy Lee’s sultry voice is emotive. The arrangements are not only expertly crafted, but they paint vivid scenes. Even the cover art is exciting.

That said, what most impressed us was how much more cohesive this record felt than anything else we listened to. Lee was getting at the ideas that Frank Sinatra wouldn’t perfect for at least another seven years.

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