Records To Die For

Never in the history of our venerable "Records To Die For" feature has the word Die come to mean as much as it has in the past year. Merle Haggard, Phife Dawg, Rudy Van Gelder, Maurice White, Glenn Frey, Otis Clay, Blowfly, Bob Cranshaw, George Martin, Steve Young, Chips Moman, Lonnie Mack, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Sharon Jones, Leon Russell, Ralph Stanley, David Bowie—all died in the past year. So to drive away any evil spirits that may be hovering over this year's R2D4 extravaganza, we may need to think of this 2017 installment more as "Records to Live For."

The overall idea is fairly simple: For R2D4, each Stereophile writer is asked to choose two albums that move, animate, enlighten him or her. Any format is fair game, the only restriction being that it must still be available in the US, if only in the deep, dark recesses of the Internet. And speaking of byzantine spaces, the recordings that follow are what Stereophile's illustrious writing staff consider the pillars of their music collections. So by all means, listen, and draw your own conclusions!—Robert Baird

Note: If a recording listed here was previously reviewed in Stereophile, whether in "Record Reviews" or in a past edition of "Records to Die For," the volume and number of the pertinent issue(s) appear in parentheses at the end of the review. For example, a listing of "(Vol.39 No.1)" indicates that a review of the recording appeared in the January 2016 issue.