Mississippi John Hurt - The Immortal (1967)

You planning on doing any chillin' on your front porch this summer? 

Then let this be the soundtrack to those lazy, hazy summer evenings. 

The undisputed King of Piedmont and Country blues, allow me to introduce Mississippi John Hurt to the uninitiated. Hailing from tiny Teoc, MS, right where the farmland meets the hill country, this man could be found finger pick and grin to his heart's content. 

Living in relative obscurity until his career was resurrected in the early 1960s at the ripe old age of 70, he was nearly forgotten- having released a handful of singles to regional acclaim in the late-1920s he was all but left to the dustbin of history.

Long live the immortal John Hurt.
Mississippi John Hurt - The Immortal (1967; Vanguard Records)

Perrey-Kingsley - The In Sound From Way Out! (1966)

Jean-Jacque Perrey and Gershon Kingsley made space age pop albums before the term electronica ever entered the music-scape, they were considered much too avant-garde to be "pop".

While working for folk company Vanguard Records, Perrey had accumulated hundreds of hours of animal noises and began experimenting with tape loops (before multi-tracking technology you had to do everything by hand, so literally it took days to compose short musical passages with this anti-technology; just scissors and scotch tape!). He was masterful at splicing the magnetic tape to create the desired loop effect; and by speeding up or slowing down the playback he created a synthesized feel to the music. Enter Kingsley; with his composer background and his knowledge of Moog synthesizers (he was the first to play one in a live setting) they created the earliest form of listenable, electronic "pop" music.

So I'm happy to bring to you the very first electro-pop record... 

Perrey-Kingsley - The In Sound From Way Out! (1966; Vanguard Records)