Rex Warner

Picking our list of the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums was no easy task, if only because that period boasted such sheer diversity. The decade saw rock branch into a series of intriguing new subgenres, beginning, at the dawn of the '70s, with heavy metal. Singer-songwriters came into their own; country-rock flourished. The era ended with the revitalizing energy of punk and New Wave. No list would be complete without climbing onto every one of those limbs. Here are the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums, presented chronologically from the start of the decade.

Picking our list of the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums was no easy task, if only because that period boasted such sheer diversity. The decade saw rock branch into a series of intriguing new subgenres, beginning, at the dawn of the '70s, with heavy metal. Singer-songwriters came into their own; country-rock flourished. The era ended with the revitalizing energy of punk and New Wave. No list would be complete without climbing onto every one of those limbs. Here are the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums, presented chronologically from the start of the decade.

Decca was a fairly wide-ranging label whose trademark sound was a strain of commercially palpable hillbilly pop perfected by producer (and, beginning in 1958, label head) Owen Bradley. These three discs offer an assortment of stars (Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn), subordinates, and the uncelebrated. The latter, in fact, are what makes this box stand out. A great deal of the fun comes from antiquated time pieces like Johnny Wright's "Hello Vietnam" ("I hope theworld will come to learn/That fires we don't put out will bigger burn") or that master of the hayseed soliloquy Red Sovine's "If Jesus Came to Your House" ("Would you have to change your clothes before you let him in?/Or hide some magazines and put the Bible where they'd been?"). Overall, From The Vaults serves as an evocative sampler of what a rural jukebox was playing when Gunsmoke ruled the tube.