oriente

from the album the king and i / el rey y yo

loretta lynn: don't come home a drinkin'

album rating.★★★★☆

Genre

Traditional country and honky tonk. The album captures Lynn at the peak of her early creative powers, combining her own compositions — co-written principally with her sister Peggy Sue — with familiar country standards, all delivered in her distinctive Appalachian contralto against the warm, stripped-back arrangements typical of Bradley's Barn productions.

Release

Released on February 6, 1967, by Decca Records. It was Lynn's ninth solo studio album.

Production

Produced by Owen Bradley — the co-architect of the Nashville Sound and Lynn's producer throughout her Decca tenure. Recording sessions took place at Bradley's Barn, Mount Juliet, Tennessee, over four sessions between July and November 1966; one track — "Saint to a Sinner" — was recorded at Columbia Recording Studio, Nashville, Tennessee, United States.

Reception

The title single — co-written by Lynn and her sister Peggy Sue Wright, partly inspired by the heavy drinking of Lynn's husband Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn — became her first number-one country single, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and No. 80 on the pop chart. Billboard's February 1967 review predicted it would be "a sales giant"; Cashbox praised it as a package "all of her fans should be eager to hear." The album was certified Gold by the RIAA (the first by any female country artist) and its success directly contributed to Lynn winning the first-ever CMA Female Vocalist of the Year award in 1967. "Don't Come Home a Drinkin'" earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country & Western Vocal Performance, Female.

Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn (born Loretta Webb, April 14, 1932, Butcher Hollow, Kentucky – October 4, 2022) was an American country singer-songwriter, the defining female voice of honky tonk country. Married at fifteen and a mother at sixteen, she launched her recording career in 1960 and rose to prominence through candid, autobiographical songwriting that addressed infidelity, alcoholism, female autonomy, and class — subjects rarely tackled with such directness in country music of the era. She was the first woman named CMA Entertainer of the Year (1972) and the first female country artist to receive a certified Gold album — with this very record. She placed 76 titles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart across five decades, sixteen reaching number one. Her accolades include four Grammy Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2013), the Kennedy Center Honors (2003), and induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame (1988). She sold more than 45 million records worldwide.

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don't come home a-drinkin'

ornella vanoni [1967]

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre: Italian pop / canzone italiana / chanson. The 1967 self-titled album is one of several albums Ornella Vanoni released under her own name, and it documents her at the peak of her mid-1960s commercial prominence in Italy. Ornella Vanoni (Milan, 1934 – 2025) was one of the great figures of twentieth-century Italian popular music, with a career spanning over sixty years and total record sales exceeding 55 million copies. She began as a theatre actress under Giorgio Strehler at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, then moved into music with the Milanese underworld songs (canzoni della mala) that earned her the nickname cantante della mala. After her artistic relationship with singer-songwriter Gino Paoli — who wrote 'Senza fine' (1963) for her — she established herself as a major pop voice. The 1967 album takes its centrepiece from 'La musica è finita', written by Umberto Bindi, Franco Califano and Nisa, which Vanoni performed at the Festival di Sanremo 1967 and which became one of the defining Italian pop songs of the decade. The album includes a broad repertoire of Italian melodic songs in the elegant, intimate pop style that characterised the best Italian popular music of the era.

Label: Ariston Records (Italy), 1967.

Producer: Not individually credited in publicly available sources for this album; production in this period was handled by Ariston's house team.

Recording studio: Not individually specified in publicly available sources; recorded in Italy.

Critical reception: The album and the period it represents are regarded as central to Vanoni's legacy. Italy's culture minister at the time of her death in November 2025 described her as 'one of the country's most original and refined artists' with a 'unique voice and unparalleled interpretive ability'. 'La musica è finita' has been covered by Mina, Massimo Ranieri, Franco Califano and Renato Zero, among others, and remains one of the most admired Italian pop songs of the 1960s.

Commercial success: Ornella Vanoni was a significant seller in Italy, supported by the chart success of 'La musica è finita' and Vanoni's high public profile through her Sanremo appearances. The album contributed to a period in which she was among the most prominent Italian female artists. Vanoni went on to receive the Tenco Prize for best singer-songwriter — the first woman to do so — and her 1976 album La voglia, la pazzia, l'incoscienza e l'allegria with Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho was included in Rolling Stone Italy's list of the 100 greatest Italian albums.

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senza di te

the best of millie small

compilation

Genre: Ska / bluebeat / pop. The 1964 debut album by Millie Small (born Millicent Dolly May Small, Clarendon, Jamaica, 6 October 1947 – London, 5 May 2020) was released in the United Kingdom under the title More Millie and in the United States as My Boy Lollipop, with a slightly different track selection. The US edition was issued on Smash Records; UK releases were on Fontana. It was produced by Chris Blackwell, with musical direction and arrangement by the Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin. Ranglin, already celebrated for his session work at Studio One in Kingston — the legendary Jamaican recording studio described as the 'Motown of Jamaica' — was brought to London specifically for the session, and his rearrangement of the ska rhythm was central to the record's sound. Small had begun her career in Jamaica after winning the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour talent contest at age twelve, moving to Kingston to record for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One and later working with producers Lindon Pottinger and Prince Buster. Her popularity attracted the attention of Anglo-Jamaican entrepreneur Chris Blackwell, who became her manager and legal guardian and brought her to London in late 1963. The centrepiece of the album is the single 'My Boy Lollipop' — a rearrangement of 'My Boy Lollypop', originally recorded in 1956 by American singer Barbie Gaye from a song written by Robert Spencer of the Cadillacs, with credits disputed and claimed also by Morris Levy and Johnny Roberts. Blackwell had purchased the original record in 1959 and found his tape copy in 1963. The session recording, clocking in at under two minutes, featured a harmonica solo (widely attributed to Rod Stewart, though this has been disputed). The album includes cover versions and originals, with Ranglin directing an ensemble that infused the material with Jamaican ska rhythms.

Label: Fontana Records (UK) / Smash Records (US), 1964.

Producer: Chris Blackwell. Musical direction and arrangements: Ernest Ranglin.

Recording studio: Not individually specified in publicly available sources; recorded in London, UK, late 1963 / early 1964.

Critical reception: My Boy Lollipop was celebrated as a historic breakthrough for Jamaican music. The NME credited the title single with helping to spark the worldwide popularity of ska and reggae, and opening doors for other genres of Jamaican music on the global stage. The Grammy website described Millie Small as 'the Caribbean's first international recording star and its most successful female performer.' Chris Blackwell stated that she 'opened the door for Jamaican music to the world.' Radio DJ David Rodigan credited watching Small perform the song on Ready Steady Go! as a schoolboy as the origin of his lifelong passion for Jamaican music. The song featured in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

Commercial success: 'My Boy Lollipop' reached number 2 in both the UK and US charts and sold over seven million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling hits with a reggae/ska influence. It was also the first major international hit for Island Records. The album peaked at number 132 on the Billboard 200. A second single, 'Sweet William', reached number 40 in the US and number 30 in the UK. Small subsequently toured the world and performed at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where Smash Records arranged 'Millie Small Day' on 12 August 1964.

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paco ibáñez: la poesie espagnole de nos jours et de toujours / 2

original release

cd realease as paco ibáñez 2 [2002]

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre: Canción de autor / Spanish poetry set to music / chanson. Paco Ibáñez / 2 — also known in its original French edition as La poésie espagnole de nos jours et de toujours ('Spanish Poetry of Today and Always') — is the second album by Paco Ibáñez (born Valencia, 1934), released by Polydor in 1967 (later reissued as Polydor/Moshé-Naïm). Ibáñez is one of the most significant and original figures in the tradition of sung poetry in the Spanish language: a guitar player, singer and arranger who has dedicated his career to setting to music the work of poets, classical and contemporary, from the Spanish literary tradition. His father was a Valencian cabinetmaker with anarchist sympathies; the family was exiled to France following the Spanish Civil War. Growing up in Paris, Ibáñez came into contact with the chanson tradition — particularly Georges Brassens, whom he considers his master — and with the Spanish poets he had begun reading in exile. His first album (1964, illustrated by Salvador Dalí) set poems by Federico García Lorca and Luis de Góngora; it became an immediate classic, used by teachers of Spanish literature and by defenders of civil liberties as a symbol of cultural resistance. Paco Ibáñez / 2 deepens and broadens the project: the twelve tracks set poems by Gabriel Celaya, Miguel Hernández, Rafael Alberti, Blas de Otero, Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora — ranging from contemporaries of the mid-twentieth century writing under or against the Franco dictatorship to Golden Age masters of the 16th and 17th centuries. The album was illustrated by José Ortega. It opens with Gabriel Celaya's 'La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro' ('Poetry is a weapon loaded with the future') — one of the great poems of Spanish 20th-century political verse — and continues with Miguel Hernández's 'Andaluces de Jaén', Rafael Alberti's 'Balada del que nunca fue a Granada' (an elegy to Lorca written in Argentine exile in 1953), Blas de Otero's 'Me llamarán, nos llamarán' (a poem facing a firing squad) and 'Me queda la palabra', Celaya's 'España en marcha', and a second side devoted to Golden Age verse: Quevedo's 'Don Dinero' and 'Romance satírico', Góngora's 'Déjame en paz amor tirano' and 'Verdad, mentira', the anonymous Moorish romance 'La gran pérdida de Alhama', and Quevedo's 'Es amarga la verdad.' Ibáñez arranged all the music himself for solo guitar and voice, with absolute economy of means.

Label: Polydor (France/Spain), 1967. Also issued as Moshé-Naïm. Illustrated by José Ortega.

Producer: Not individually credited. All music arranged by Paco Ibáñez for guitar and voice.

Recording studio: Not individually specified in publicly available sources; recorded in France.

Critical reception: Paco Ibáñez / 2 is regarded as one of the masterworks of Spanish canción de autor and of poetry set to music in any language. The La Fonoteca review describes it as 'un gran disco, en fin, sin artificios, con una envoltura musical humilde y desprovista de todo artificio con una voz grave y potente, una voz de pregonero de verdades y llamadas a la reflexión, a la toma de conciencia y, en última instancia, al combate' ('a great record, ultimately, without artifice, with a humble musical setting stripped of all ornament, with a deep and powerful voice, a voice proclaiming truths and calls to reflection, to awareness and, ultimately, to struggle'). The Human Traces essay on Ibáñez describes him as creating 'an absolutely unique style, with absolute instrumental simplicity and a profound emotivity and intensity in his vocal interpretation.'

Commercial success: Paco Ibáñez / 2 was a significant success in France and among Spanish speakers in exile and in Spain, where the album circulated clandestinely under the Franco dictatorship and its songs became anthems of resistance. In 1967 Ibáñez visited Spain for the first time to give recitals in Madrid and Barcelona; in 1969 his interpretation of Rafael Alberti's 'A galopar' made him 'a symbol of the struggle against the Franco dictatorship' (Internet Archive biography). That same year he triumphed at the Paris Olympia. His recordings in this period became foundational texts of the Spanish anti-Francoist cultural resistance and continue to be used by teachers of Spanish literature worldwide.

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balada del que nunca fue a granada

roberto carlos em ritmo de aventura

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre: Brazilian rock / Jovem Guarda / iê-iê-iê / pop / romantic ballad. Em Ritmo de Aventura ('In the Rhythm of Adventure') is the seventh studio album by Roberto Carlos (born Roberto Carlos Braga, Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Espírito Santo, 19 April 1941), released by CBS Brazil in November 1967 as the soundtrack to the film of the same name. The album was produced by Evandro Ribeiro, with arrangements by José Pacheco Lins and Alexandre Gnattali (though these are not individually credited on the original pressing). It was recorded on 16–18 August 1967, with the exception of the opening track 'Eu Sou Terrível', recorded in October after Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos — whose friendship had been strained by professional disagreements — reconciled specifically to complete the track. Roberto Carlos was at the apex of his fame as the figurehead of the Jovem Guarda movement — the Brazilian rock and pop explosion of the mid-1960s, centred on the TV Record programme Jovem Guarda which he co-presented from 1965 with Erasmo Carlos and Wanderléa. The film Roberto Carlos em Ritmo de Aventura (1968, directed by Roberto Farias) was directly inspired by the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night and was a Brazilian popular cinema landmark: a production of exceptional ambition for the era, filmed in colour, that took its cameras from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to New York and Cape Kennedy, where the NASA granted permission — then unprecedented — to film at the launch towers. The plot sends Roberto, playing himself, on an adventure being chased by an international gang while making a film. The album's twelve tracks represent the definitive statement of Roberto Carlos's Jovem Guarda era. Notable among them are: 'Eu Sou Terrível' (Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos), his anthem of teenage arrogance and rebellion; 'Como É Grande o Meu Amor por Você' (Roberto Carlos), one of his most enduring romantic ballads; 'Por Isso Corro Demais', 'Quando' and 'De Que Vale Tudo Isso' — all composed by Roberto Carlos alone during the period of estrangement from Erasmo Carlos. The Apple Music editorial notes that 'few albums had so many iconic tracks', including 'the captivating Quando, one of the singer's trademarks.' The Rolling Stone Brasil ranked the album at number 24 in its list of the 100 Greatest Brazilian Music Records.

Label: CBS Brazil (catalogue 37525), released November 1967. Originally issued in mono; a stereo edition followed approximately two months later.

Producer: Evandro Ribeiro. Arrangements: José Pacheco Lins and Alexandre Gnattali.

Recording studio: Not individually specified in publicly available sources; recorded in Brazil, 16–18 August 1967 (with 'Eu Sou Terrível' in October).

Critical reception: Em Ritmo de Aventura was universally acclaimed in Brazil as one of the definitive records of the Jovem Guarda era and one of the greatest Brazilian pop albums. The Música do Brasil blog describes it as the album in which 'some of the most potent poisoned romantic ballads of the Rei da Juventude emerge', noting that 'the rebellious image as in the anti-marriage rock Não É Papo pra Mim continues to be sold in parallel with the romantic juvenile sweetness.' The Apple Music editorial calls it 'the most representative album of Roberto Carlos during the Jovem Guarda era.' It was ranked 24th in Rolling Stone Brasil's 100 Greatest Brazilian Music Records.

Commercial success: Em Ritmo de Aventura was a massive commercial success, entirely consistent with Roberto Carlos's dominant position in Brazilian popular music in the late 1960s. The film was one of the biggest box-office successes of Brazilian cinema of the era. Roberto Carlos has sold over 140 million albums worldwide during his career and is the best-selling Latin American artist of all time. He received a CBS 'Crystal Globe' award in 1982 for selling more than five million copies outside his country of origin.

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quando

the moody blues: days of future passed

album rating: ★★★★★

Genre: Progressive rock / orchestral rock / psychedelic rock / concept album. Days of Future Passed is the second studio album by The Moody Blues, released on 17 November 1967 by Deram Records (a subsidiary of Decca). It is widely cited by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and music historians as one of the first albums of the progressive rock genre and one of rock music's first concept albums. The album marks a decisive creative turning point for the group, and is the first to feature guitarist and singer Justin Hayward (who replaced Denny Laine) and bassist John Lodge (who replaced Clint Warwick), the two central creative forces of the band's classic era. It is also the first to feature producer Tony Clarke, who would collaborate with the Moody Blues for the next twelve years, and keyboardist Mike Pinder playing Mellotron — the instrument that would become central to the group's sound. The album's genesis was accidental: Decca's new subsidiary Deram, having developed an enhanced stereo recording technology called the 'Deramic Sound System', commissioned the Moody Blues to record a rock version of Dvořák's 'New World Symphony' to showcase it. Instead, producer Tony Clarke, impressed by the band's new original material, and engineering the album with Derek Varnals, persuaded the label to let the group record their own compositions. Conductor and arranger Peter Knight adapted the songs for the London Festival Orchestra and devised orchestral bridges between the band's tracks. The result — 'neither classical nor pop' — so puzzled Deram that they almost refused to release it. The album is structured as a journey through a single day, from dawn to night: 'The Day Begins', 'Dawn: Dawn Is a Feeling' (Mike Pinder), 'The Morning: Another Morning' (Ray Thomas), 'Lunch Break: Peak Hour' (John Lodge), 'The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?) / Time to Get Away' (Justin Hayward / John Lodge), 'Evening: The Sun Set / Twilight Time' (Mike Pinder / Ray Thomas), and 'The Night: Nights in White Satin' (Justin Hayward). The closing track 'Late Lament' is a spoken-word poem by drummer Graeme Edge.

Label: Deram Records (UK), released 17 November 1967. Catalogue: SML 707.

Producers: Tony Clarke and Michael Dacre-Barclay. Executive producer: Hugh Mendl. Engineer: Derek Varnals. London Festival Orchestra conducted and arranged by Peter Knight.

Recording studio: Decca Studios, West Hampstead, London, UK (October–November 1967).

Critical reception: Reception on release was mixed. Rolling Stone dismissed it as music 'constantly marred by one of the most startlingly saccharine conceptions of beauty and mysticism that any rock group has ever affected.' New York magazine called it 'a ponderous mound of thought-jello.' However, the album was subsequently reassessed: Spin cited it as a classic of progressive rock; Rolling Stone included it in its essential albums of 1967; and it has been described as 'one of the defining documents of the blossoming psychedelic era.' Justin Hayward's 'Nights in White Satin' became a massive international hit on re-release in 1972.

Commercial success: The album was a slow-build commercial success, eventually finding a large audience as progressive rock established itself in the late 1960s. On re-release in the United States in 1972, 'Nights in White Satin' reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, driving renewed attention to the album. It has since sold millions of copies worldwide and has never gone out of print. The 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (2017), remastered from original master tapes and supervised by Justin Hayward, was accompanied by a live album recorded with orchestra in Toronto.

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the night: nights in white satin

secret love

from the album singin' with feelin'

l'amour est bleu

nicoletta: il est mort le soleil

album rating: ★★★★☆

il est mort le soleil

ciao, amore ciao [french version]

ciao amore ciao [italian version]

something stupid

track rating: ★★★★★

carlos paredes: guitarra portuguesa

album rating: ★★★★★

canção verdes anos

track rating: ★★★★★