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In Reply to: RE: One of my favorites is :In the Wee Small Hours". Possibly the first concept album ever. nt posted by dancingseamonkey on April 07, 2015 at 07:31:27
The first concept "album" was Woodie Guthrie's two albums of 78 rpms Ballads from the Dust Bowl (aka Dust Bowl Ballads).
Originally released in 1940, in two three-78rpm-disc albums totaling 12 songs, all of them about the travails of migrant farmworkers--"Dust Pneumonia Blues" is a typical title.
So, those two albums of 78rpms would have been about the outer limit of the running time of a 1950s 12-inch LP.
While it is possible that Sinatra and producer Voyle Gilmore were unaware of Dust Bowl Ballads, I rather doubt it. Guthrie was very media-savvy and his record label was Victor, not some undercapitalized mom & pop.
I am not claiming that either Sinatra or Voyle Gilmore sat down and listened to the whole thing through to study how Guthrie's songs fit together, but I am saying that it would have been bizarre for them not to be aware of Guthrie's concept album, which I believe was remastered and reissued as an LP on Folkways in 1950.
Wee Small Hours came out in 1955.
JM
Follow Ups:
Nah. The first "concept album", although they didn't have a recording system back then - it had to be performed live, was Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition" in 1874.:)
Edits: 04/09/15
Thanks for that information, at least we now know that Sargent Pepper was not the first concept album.
"Trying is the first step towards failure."
Homer Simpson
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