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The Rolling Stone Album Guide

The Rolling Stone Record Guide
RSRG1979.gif
Author Dave Marsh and John Swenson (Editors)
Subject
Publisher Random House/Rolling Stone Press
Publication date
1979
Media type Hardcover / Paperback
Pages 631
ISBN
OCLC 5353861
789.9/136/4
LC Class ML156.4.P6 M37
The New Rolling Stone Record Guide
NRSRG1983.gif
Author Dave Marsh and John Swenson (Editors)
Subject Music, Popular music, Discography, Sound recording, Reviews
Publisher Random House/Rolling Stone Press
Publication date
1983
Media type Paperback
Pages 648
ISBN
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide
Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide.jpg
Author John Swenson (Editor)
Subject Music, Jazz, Discography, Sound recording, Reviews
Publisher Random House/Rolling Stone Press
Publication date
1985
Media type Paperback
Pages 219
ISBN
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
RSAG1992.gif
Author Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke, with Holly George-Warren(Editors)
Subject Music, Popular music, Discography, Sound recording, Reviews
Publisher Random House
Publication date
1992
Media type Paperback
Pages 838
ISBN
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
New Rolling Stone Album Guide 2004.jpg
Author Nathan Brackett with Christian Hoard (editors)
Subject More than 10,000 of the best Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, and Soul Records, Reviewed and Rated
Publisher Fireside
Publication date
2004
Media type Paperback
Pages 838
ISBN

The Rolling Stone Album Guide, previously known as The Rolling Stone Record Guide, is a book that contains professional music reviews written and edited by staff members from Rolling Stone magazine. Its first edition was published in 1979 and its last in 2004. The guide can be seen at Rate Your Music, while a list of albums given a five star rating by the guide can be seen at Rocklist.net.

The Rolling Stone Record Guide was the first edition of what would later become The Rolling Stone Album Guide. It was edited by Dave Marsh (who wrote a large majority of the reviews) and John Swenson, and included contributions from 34 other music critics. It is divided into sections by musical genre and then lists artists alphabetically within their respective genres. Albums are also listed alphabetically by artist although some of the artists have their careers divided into chronological periods.

Dave Marsh, in his Introduction, cites as precedents Leonard Maltin's book TV Movies and Robert Christgau's review column in the Village Voice. He gives Phonolog and Schwann's Records & Tape Guide as raw sources of information.

The first edition included black and white photographs of many of the covers of albums which received five star reviews. These titles are listed together in the Five-Star Records section, which is coincidentally five pages in length.

The edition also included reviews for many comedy artists including Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Bill Cosby, The Firesign Theatre, Spike Jones, and Richard Pryor.

Comedy artists were listed in the catch-all section "Rock, Soul, Country and Pop", which included the genres of folk (Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly), bluegrass (Bill Monroe), funk (The Meters, Parliament-Funkadelic), and reggae (Toots & the Maytals, Peter Tosh), as well as comedy. Traditional pop performers were not included (e.g. Andrews Sisters, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, Rudy Vallee, Lawrence Welk), with the notable exceptions of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. (Dave Marsh justified this decision in his Introduction.)


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