The Rolling Stone Record Guide
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| Author | Dave Marsh and John Swenson (Editors) |
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| Subject | |
| Publisher | Random House/Rolling Stone Press |
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Publication date
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1979 |
| Media type | Hardcover / Paperback |
| Pages | 631 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 5353861 |
| 789.9/136/4 | |
| LC Class | ML156.4.P6 M37 |
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| Author | Dave Marsh and John Swenson (Editors) |
|---|---|
| Subject | Music, Popular music, Discography, Sound recording, Reviews |
| Publisher | Random House/Rolling Stone Press |
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Publication date
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1983 |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 648 |
| ISBN | |
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| Author | John Swenson (Editor) |
|---|---|
| Subject | Music, Jazz, Discography, Sound recording, Reviews |
| Publisher | Random House/Rolling Stone Press |
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Publication date
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1985 |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 219 |
| ISBN | |
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| Author | Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke, with Holly George-Warren(Editors) |
|---|---|
| Subject | Music, Popular music, Discography, Sound recording, Reviews |
| Publisher | Random House |
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Publication date
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1992 |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 838 |
| ISBN | |
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| 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 |
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Publication date
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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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Wikipedia