1974: The 3rd-best year ever for great albums? From Bob Marley to Joni Mitchell, it’s a contender

SAN DIEGO — If 1972 was the greatest year ever for albums, and if 1973 was close behind, where does that leave 1974?

It’s a fair question, especially since I enthusiastically wrote articles in 2022 and last year in the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Sunday Arts section singing the praises of my favorite albums of, respectively, 1972 and 1973. The answer to the question I now pose about 1974 is a tricky one.

At least it is for me, since — in mid-May of that year — I graduated early from Pacific High School in San Bernardino and returned to Frankfurt, Germany, where I had lived from the age of 7 to 16. Once back in Frankfurt, I was introduced to a brave new world of musical adventure. My aural horizons and album collection both quickly expanded.

Fortunately, great music easily transcends borders and time zones on either side of the Atlantic. Witness such standout 1974 albums as Joni Mitchell’s “Court and Spark,” Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Natty Dread,” Randy Newman’s “Good Old Boys,” Stevie Wonder’s “Fulfillingness’ First Finale,” Neil Young’s “On the Beach,” Miles Davis’ “Get Up With It,” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and Tangerine Dream’s “Phaedra.”

The list of similarly impressive 1974 releases also includes Steely Dan’s “Pretzel Logic.” Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel,” David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs,” Joe Pass’ “Virtuoso,” Bonnie Raitt’s “Streetlights,” Roxy Music’s “Country Life,” Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain” and Parliament’s “Up for the Down Stroke.”

Kraftwerk and Willie Nelson

Just as good from 1974 are Labelle’s “Nightbirds,” Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky,” Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn,” Fela Kuti & Africa 70’s “Confusion,” Blue Oyster Cult’s “Secret Treaties,” Grateful Dead’s “From the Mars Hotel,” The Raspberries’ “Starting Over,” Can’s “Soon Over Babaluma” and Willie Nelson’s “Phases and Stages.”

It was also the year some artists released two very memorable albums each, most notably James Brown (“The Payback” and “Hell”), Leo Kottke (“Ice Water” and “Dreams and All That Stuff”), Queen (“Queen II” and “Sheer Heart Attack”) and former San Diegan Frank Zappa (“Apostrophe (‘)” and “Roxy & Elsewhere”).

I happily heard nearly all the albums cited above the year they were released. But one of the joys of music is discovering worthy albums a year, a decade, or even longer after they were released. Accordingly, some of my favorite 1974 albums were acquired later on.

Many of them came from Arcade Music Co. Record and Tape Exchange’s flagship store in downtown San Diego, the city I moved to from Frankfurt in November 1975. Albums at Arcade at that time were priced at $1.98 each. While they were all used, each album came with a five-day guarantee.

The treasure trove of 1974 albums I bought at Arcade included Gil Evans’ “Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix,” Milton Nascimento’s “Milagre Dos Peixe,” The Wild Magnolias’ “The Wild Magnolias,” Horacee Arnold’s “Tales of the Exonerated Flea,” Luther Allison’s “Luther Blues,” Astor Piazzola’s “Libertango” and Keith Jarrett’s “Belonging.” I somehow resisted the fleeting urge to buy a copy of motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel’s self-titled, largely music-free album.

Arcade is also where I came across a number of 1974 debut albums. Some were real finds, most notably Robert Palmer’s “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley,” Dee Dee Bridgewater’s “Afro Blue,” the Residents’ “Meet The Residents” and Dr. Feelgood’s “On the Jetty.” Others were negligible (take a bow Kiss, Rush, Kansas and Judas Priest). And there was one very curious misfire, “Tina Turns the Country On,” the first solo release (and only country album) by Tina Turner.

Life overseas

For me, 1974 was bifurcated. I spent the first five months in San Bernardino, where I knew no one who shared my musical tastes. For the rest of that year and the first nine months of 1975, I was back in Frankfurt where I had a good number of friends and rented a one-room attic apartment. It didn’t have a bath or a shower, just a bed, a closet, a sink, a toilet, a mini fridge, a chair and a small table on which I set the vintage Remington portable typewriter my parents had given me before I left San Bernardino.

I used the Remington to write album reviews and music-related interviews for the magazine Overseas Life, which — despite my clear lack of experience — had hired me to write about music when I was a 10th-grader at Frankfurt American High School. Published just outside Frankfurt, Overseas Life was available free on U.S. military bases in all the NATO countries in Europe and as far afield as Turkey.

Now, instead of snail-mailing my album reviews from California, I hand-delivered them to the magazine’s offices. I was in no way daunted by the fact I did not have a record player during my entire 16-month sojourn in Frankfurt.

But, hey, that’s what friends are for! And I soon found a temporary Frankfurt home for my albums with two new pals, sister and brother Aniko and John Ronto, whose jazz-aficionado father, Jack, had an excellent stereo system and a terrific record collection. It was at the Ronto’s that I did much of my album-listening.

My album collection increased literally overnight, following my first visit to the offices of Overseas Life where a pile of albums had been mailed for my review consideration from Virgin Records in London. They included Tangerine Dream’s “Phaedra,” Henry Cow’s “Unrest,” Gong’s “You,” Fred Frith’s “Guitar Solos,” David Bedford’s “Star’s End” and Dudu Pukwana’s “In the Township,” which was my welcome gateway to jazz from South Africa.

So, what are my favorite albums of 1974?

Depending on my mood, my picks can change by the hour.

On another day, I might pick Newman’s “Good Old Boys,” Gil Scott-Heron’s “Winter in America,” Young’s “On the Beach,” Bennie Maupin’s “The Jewel in the Lotus,” Richard & Linda Thompson’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” and Weather Report’s “Mysterious Traveler.” But right now, the following seven albums fit the bill perfectly.

• Joni Mitchell, ‘Court and Spark’

Her sixth album in as many years, the luminous “Court and Spark” was Joni Mitchell’s most sophisticated work to date. Less nakedly introspective than her 1971 masterpiece, “Blue,” it still offered a candid exploration of the tug-of-war between conflicting desires. Or, as Mitchell so knowingly sings on “Help Me,” still the biggest hit of her career: “We love our lovin’/ But not like we love our freedom.”

• King Crimson, ‘Red’

Few albums have captured the sound of a band simultaneously exploding and imploding as powerfully as “Red” by King Crimson, the seminal English progressive-rock act that influenced everybody from Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain to the members of Phish, Rush, Tool and Primus. Brainy and brawny, “Red” combines edgy dissonance, improvisational finesse and blistering power to create a hair-raising sonic experience that Crimson drummer Bill Bruford once described to me as “intelligent heavy metal.” It’s all that, and a lot more.

• Bob Marley and the Wailers, ‘Natty Dread’

The departure of Wailers’ co-founders Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston seemed to spur Bob Marley to even greater creative heights on “Natty Dread.” Its nine songs, including “No Woman, No Cry,” “Lively Up Yourself” and “Revolution,” are by turns sensuous and thought-provoking, celebratory and reflective, as Marley mixes penetrating songs about redemption, love, faith and rebellion against corrupt political systems.

• Eberhard Weber, ‘The Colours of Chloë’

A striking fusion of impressionistic jazz, hypnotic minimalism and contemporary chamber music, German bassist Eberhard Weber’s cello-drenched “The Colours of Chloë” is a singular work. By turns hushed and haunting, enigmatic and quietly electrifying, it established him and the German record label ECM as major international forces. “Chloë” was a key inspiration for Kate Bush, who later featured Weber’s wonderfully evocative upright electric bass work on her own albums, and for jazz guitar star Pat Metheny, who spearheaded the 2015 all-star concert of Weber’s music released by ECM as “Hommage à Eberhard Weber.”

• Gram Parsons, ‘Grievous Angel’

Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris created such sweet harmony together on 1973’s “GP” that few could envision them topping it. But “Grievous Angel” is even better, a country and Americana-music gem that sounds as vital and stirring today as it did 50 years ago. With the chillingly beautiful “In My Hour of Darkness,” recorded only a few weeks before the 26-year-old Parsons suffered a fatal overdose in late 1973, he seemed to foretell his own death.

• Little Feat, ‘Feats Don’t Fail Me Now’

The exceptional Los Angeles band Little Feat made three great albums, 1973’s “Dixie Chicken,” 1974’s “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now” and 1975’s “The Last Record Album.” From start to finish, “Feats” captures the band at a creative peak with its intoxicating blend of rock, funk, blues, New Orleans R&B, and more. The opening three numbers — “Rock & Roll Doctor,” “Oh Atlanta” and the sinewy “Skin It Back” — would be enough to make any album stand out. Here, they are matched note for note by the six superb songs that follow.

• Slapp Happy, ‘Slapp Happy’

This sadly underappreciated German-British trio’s second album is a treasure trove of left-of-center art-pop that is sly, lilting and gently subversive. Singer Dagmar Krause deftly combined German cabaret traditions with what sometimes suggested clones of Edith Piaf, Diana Ross and Yoko Ono rolled into one. The album’s tango-fueled opening cut, “Casablanca Moon,” begins with this memorable couplet: He used to wear fedoras, now he wears a fez/ There’s cabalistic innuendos in everything he says/ Sucking at a cigarette, picking at a thread/ Underneath the Casablanca Moon.