Kind of Blue
1959
Davis handed the players sketches on the day and most of what you hear is a first take. Two sessions, and it was done.
★ 9.8
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1959
Showing 70 works across all media from 1959
Some Like it Hot
Directed by Billy Wilder
1959
American comedy has never been funnier, and the Legion of Decency was appalled: Wilder ran a single disguise for two hours without ever letting the joke thin out.
★ 9.4
So What
1959 · From Kind of Blue
Two chords and all the space in the world, Davis proving that less was the most radical idea in jazz.
★ 9.2
North by Northwest
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
1959
Every spy thriller since owes it something, James Bond most of all: Hitchcock chases an innocent man across America by crop duster and over Mount Rushmore, enjoying himself throughout.
★ 9.1
What'd I SayRay Charles
What'd I Say
1959 · From What'd I Say
Twelve minutes left at a Pennsylvania dance, so Charles improvised it on his Wurlitzer and many stations banned it.
★ 9.0
Take Five
1959 · From Time Out
Morello kept soloing in five, so the quartet built him a tune in 5/4; Desmond wrote the theme.
★ 8.7
The 400 Blows
Directed by Francois Truffaut
1959 · France
The French New Wave announces itself: Truffaut put his own miserable childhood on screen at twenty-seven, and the last shot changed what an ending was allowed to do.
★ 8.6
The Tin Drum
1959 · 592 pages
Oskar decides on his third birthday to stop growing, keeps his tin drum, and screams glass to pieces while the Nazis take Danzig. Grass forced postwar Germany to look at itself through him.
★ 8.3
All Blues
1959 · From Kind of Blue
A twelve-bar blues in 6/8, take two the only complete one, and Paul Chambers' bass figure underneath everything.
★ 7.6
Mingus Ah Um
1959
Columbia refused to let him record the words to Fables of Faubus, an attack on a segregationist governor, so it appears as an instrumental.
★ 7.6
Shout (The Isley Brothers)
1959
Ronald Isley improvised the call and response onstage extending Lonely Teardrops, and RCA packed the room with friends answering.
★ 7.5
The Shape of Jazz to Come
1959
Coleman played a white plastic saxophone because it was what he could afford, and half the musicians in New York thought he was a fraud.
★ 7.4
Goodbye Pork Pie HatCharles Mingus
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
1959 · From Mingus Ah Um
Lester Young died two months before the session, and Mingus answered with a slow blues named for his hat.
★ 7.4
Time Out
1959
Every piece is in an unusual meter. Take Five is in five beats to the bar and was written by the saxophonist, Paul Desmond, not Brubeck.
★ 7.3
There Goes My Baby
1959
Strings, timpani and a Brazilian baion; Wexler reportedly dismissed the playback as a radio caught between two stations.
★ 7.3
I Only Have Eyes for You
1959
Terry Johnson dreamed the arrangement, called the group to rehearse at 4 a.m., and Goldner drowned it in reverb.
★ 7.2
Rio Bravo
Directed by Howard Hawks
1959
Hawks made it as an argument against High Noon: instead of a marshal begging for help, four flawed men hold a jail and enjoy each other's company doing it.
★ 7.0
Mack the KnifeBobby Darin
Mack the Knife
1959
Richard Wess's arrangement climbs a semitone verse after verse, and Darin rides the tension to his only number one.
★ 6.9
Children of the Alley
1959 · 448 pages
One Cairo alley holds human history entire. Its founder withdraws into a great house, and each generation raises a redeemer, Adam then Moses then Jesus then Muhammad, defeated by the same protection racket.
★ 6.9