1966
The most important music events of the year that contributed to the birth of Progressive Rock Music.
January 17 - Columbia Records releases SIMON & GARFUNKLE's album, Sounds of Silence in a great rush in an effort to take advantage of the duo's first hit single of the same name. Interestingly, the song "Sounds of Silence" first appears on the duo's debut album from 1964, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
February - Impulse! Records releases JOHN COLTRANE's Ascension (I) album. Two long jams of abrasive and aggressive free form jazz that many people surmise was John's effort to let loose of some dissonant emotion after the previous year's A Love Supreme.
February 25 - the release of THE YARDBIRDS' single "Shapes of Things" a song that was highly influential, even pivotal, to many budding and future rock and progressive rock musicians.
February 28 - Dunhill Records releases THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS sophomore album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes, an album that spawns numerous mega-hits, including "California Dreaming," "Monday, Monday," and "Go Where You Wanna Go." It continues to receive acclaim as one of rock's best and most influential albums of all-time.
March 14 - CBS Records releases THE BYRDS single version of "Eight Miles High" as the B-side to the single, "Why?" Both songs use Roger McGuinn's electric 12-string guitar in a crazed, unruly, almost-sitar effect but the former gives the guitar an unprecedented amount of time and space for its unusual solos both in the intro and extended instrumental passage after the second verse and chorus.
May 16 - the release date of THE BEACH BOYS' landmark album, Pet Sounds, an album that is said to have influenced many of rock's bands to use the engineering room as a veritable tool for expression and experimentation.
June 20 - Columbia/CBS Record's release date of BOB DYLAN's Blonde on Blonde.
June 27 - release date of Frank Zappa's MOTHERS OF INVENTION's first album, on Verve Records, Freak Out!--an unusual (for the time) double album of songs that totally parody the pop and rock world but which also contains the three-movement suite, "Help, I'm a Rock" and the 12-minute "unfinished ballet in two tableaus" called "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet."
June - Elektra Records releases THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND's self-titled debut album, The Incredible String Band, a folk album which uses some electrified instrumentation and rock formats. This has yielded a near-universal opinion that The Incredible String Band is to be considered the first "Prog Folk" album.
July 18 - Columbia/CBS Records' release of THE BYRDS seminal album, Fifth Dimension, Besides housing the hit, "Eight Miles High," it featured nearly all original songs penned by Roger McGuinn and his band mates with the one notable exception being Californian Billy Roberts' "Hey Joe (Where You Gonna Go)"--a song that the band had to sanitize with a change in the lyrics from "Where you gonna go with that gun in your hand" to "… money in your hand."
July - Valiant Records releases THE ASSOCIATION's debut album, And Then… Along Comes The Association. It is an album filled with several mega hits, including "Along Came Mary" and "Cherish,"some of which became hits in successive years through being re-released on "greatest hits" and "anthology" albums. The album is especially notable for two main reasons: all of the songs were written by the band as well as its incorporation of an unusually wide assortment of influences, including folk-rock, psychedelia, baroque pop, and sunshine pop--of which it remains a cornerstone.
August 5 - Parlaphone Records releases THE BEATLES' Revolver in both stereo and mono formats. It is the first Beatles album to show the band (and George Martin)'s new experimentation in the engineering room--which results in the still-iconic song, "Tomorrow Never Knows." Also, the elaborate and lush orchestration on "Elenor Rigby" gives a nod to The Beach Boys/Brian Wilson's recent studio overtime work on Pet Sounds. The baroque pop song, "In My Life," proudly displays the classically-trained producer's harpsichord work.
August 26 - Epic Record's release of folk artist DONOVAN's Sunshine Superman., first in mono, shortly thereafter, in stereo. Donovan's third album, it was, interestingly, only released outside the artist's native UK due to contractual disputes at the time. It is the first album on which Donovan is backed by rock musicians on every song--which lead many to consider this the first truly psychedelic album.
August - Impluse! Records releases JOHN COLTRANE's Meditations, a return to the more meditative, spiritually-inspired music of A Love Supreme.
October 17 - International Artists' release of 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS' debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, a definitive representative of the new realm of "psychedelic" music. An album that every prog lover really needs to hear.
October 21 - Fontana Records releases Manfred Mann's version of "Semi-Detached, Suburban Mr. James," one of the first recorded rock songs to contain the use of the Mellotron, an instrument that would become almost synonymously associated with the progressive rock movement. Though meant to be a "household" item, it initially cost around £1000 (the equivalent of nearly $25,000 in our times) which, of course, made it a prohibitively expensive item. In an interesting side note, it was created from pirated versions of the American Chamberlin keyboard (invented and first marketed in the late 1950s) which Harry Chamblerlin's chief salesperson, Bill Fransen, brought with him to London, England and proceeded to relabel and sell as his own. The original Chamberlin used direct, unedited recordings of samples of virtually any sound or instrument whereas the British modification that became known as the Mellotron used modified or engineered sound recordings. Both instruments are, in fact, instances of the first examples of sound sampling.
October 24 - Columbia/CBS Records' release of SIMON & GARFUNKLE's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, in this writer's opinion, one of the most boundary-pushing albums of inventively-constructed and socially-conscientious songs ever put together.
2. DONOVAN Sunshine Superman
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