Plenty of cool-cat phrasing and hipster lingo and bebop instrumentation, and best of all: the ubiquitous TV-commercial announcer has serious flow, flipping from clip-clop staccato to lusciously elongated vowels with effortless ease. Then, of course, there was the lyrical imagery, a riot of whimsy against the squareness of the era. Nordine's language was one of playfulness and imagination, and Colors showcases the word-jazzist in top form: the 1966 album actually began as a series of radio commercials used by a paint company, each a swinging ode to a color of paint.

Wisely, the concept was expanded beyond the run of a few commercials to cover the entire rainbow and beyond. The Asphodel reissue contains 34 pigmentation-tributes in miniature (just to give you an idea: at 1:41, both "White" and "Grey" are the longest tracks). My favorite is probably the opener, "Olive," in which Nordine simultaneously waxes enthusiastic about the titular color while poking fun at pop-culture trends. Over an insistent high-hat shuffle and a swinging guitar line, our wordsmith announces that olive "is about to be named color of the year / by those with the nose for the new / for the passionate few" while bird-chirping organ flits between the syllables. It's a bit Dr. Seuss-y, yes, but you'll get no complaints from me.

Then there's the flute-trilling "Maroon": "Think of the times, the number of the times / that you can make rhymes with our friend / maroon." Nordine goes on to rattle off a list of maroon-rhyming situations, with each pronunciation of the color wafted out in waves of echo. Most telling of all, though, is "Flesh," an astute observation about "color-centric thinking" breathlessly spilled out over a frantic rhythm and barely-keeping-up guitar. "Flesh as a color / is about as close to a problem / as a color can get," he notes in defiance of the then-commonly-accepted view that the color "flesh" equals "Caucasian." After going on to throw some delicious barbs at racist thinking, institutionalized and otherwise, he hits upon the irrefutable essence of the song: "The proper color for flesh to be / is the proper color it is." (This reminds me of some trivia I recently read: up until 1962, Crayola had a "flesh" crayon. That year, the company changed the name to "peach" out of recognition of their former color-centric thinking.) How about a little "Yellow"?

Mary Margaret O'Hara, "The Cry of Man"
The 2006 double-disc Hal Wilner-orchestrated star-studded spectacular Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Shanteys (Anti-) contained a great many gems, but this aching, otherworldly interpretation of the Harry Kemp poem of the same name is a true standout.

If you've never hear O'Hara before, prepare yourself: the Canadian chanteuse's voice is one of sweeping, swooping wonder, capable of riveting acts of soprano-fied acrobatics. (Check out her unclassifiably brilliant 1988 debut, Miss America, for all the evidence you need.) Kemp (1883-1960) was a boxcar poet who at one point mingled with Eugene O'Neill, Emma Goldman, and Upton Sinclair. I'd never heard of him before, but his "The Cry of Man" is an astonishingly heartbreaking poem. "There is a crying in my heart/ for what I may not know/ infinite crying of desire/ because my feet are slow," O'Hara grieves over the ghostly sighs of a musical-saw while flugelhorn and oboe moan away in lip-biting lament. Every now and then, a harmonica wheeze (courtesy of Stan Ridgway) creeps into the foreground, then immediately recedes. Underneath it all, rudimentary clatters of percussion pronounce their own death-rattle. The pain is almost too much to bear, but probably a perfectly fitting tribute to a man who was known to remove his own teeth with a screwdriver when they became too rotten.

Gil Scott-Heron, "No Knock"
Imagine no Public Enemy, no KRS-One, no Mos Def - hell, imagine hip-hop as a total non-entity. Are you there yet? Well, if there was no Gil Scott-Heron, that's exactly where we'd be, most likely. His 1970 debut, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (RCA) - based on his chapbook of poetry bearing the same name - could very well be square one for proto-rap, welding laser-precise cultural commentary to bongo-and-conga-driven rhythms.

The album also boasted a first introduction to his signature spiel, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." One year later, the media-eviscerating diatribe was re-released in a thumping bassline/rudimentary drumbeat incarnation…it became a classic, and ultimately served as a pivotal building block in the eventual architecture of hip-hop. But everybody already knows about "Revolution," so how about a lesser-known, but equally vital track? "No Knock" (1972) - recorded on album number three, Free Will (RCA) - is a fierce, fist-raised response to a newly passed law which no longer required police to knock before entering a house. It's a righteous piece of street poetry, particularly effective in its fusion of indignant phrasing and clipped-tone fury with near-hypnotic conga rumbles. Scott-Heron bobs and weaves around the percussion, throwing uppercuts and left hooks into the deceptively lulling rhythm: "You explained it to me I must admit / But just for the record you were talkin' shit / Y'all rap about no knock bein' legislated / For the people you've always hated / In this hell hole you, we, call home."

The Waterboys, "The Stolen Child"
Mike Scott and the lads' self-described "Big Music" - the phrase borrowed from the title of an early song of the band, referring to their booming spiritual-anthem template - proved a bit divisive for audiences wary of anything even vaguely arena-rock in nature, but their fourth album, 1988's Fisherman's Blues (Chrysalis) marked an enormous, and quite fortuitous, change in direction.

Scaling back to their bombastic tendencies in favor of gentle, down-home-y intimacy, the Waterboys relocated from Britain to a small town in the west of Ireland and created a ravishing collection of mostly acoustic-based Celtic folk-rock, the highlight of which - along with a drunk-on-love take on Van Morrison's "Sweet Thing" - is a gloriously sob-inducing reading of William Butler Yeats' poem "The Stolen Child." Over a wistful bed of bells, chiming piano, and bouzouki, Scott beckons with bright eyes but fallen heart, "Come away, o human child / to the waters and the wild/ with a faery, hand in hand / for the world is more full of weeping than you can understand." Meanwhile, traditional Gaelic vocalist Tomas McKeown delivers a gorgeously moving reading of the poem, his recitation occasionally weaving around that of Scott's when they both reach the "come away, o human child" refrain. And those flute trills? Simply exquisite.

The Last Poets, "White Man's Got a God Complex"
Along with Gil Scott-Heron, these guys were the godfathers of rap, pairing street-smart poetry-as-social-commentary with tight syncopated rhythms. Formed in 1968, the Harlem trio threw biting rhymes about racism and inequality over African drumming patterns, thus creating a persuasive new artistic outlet for black nationalism - persuasive enough, apparently, that some of the more paranoid folks in power logged the Last Poet's names into their watch-lists. This Is Madness (Douglas/Celluloid/Light in the Attic, 1971) - the album from which "White Man's Got a God Complex" rang its clarion call - was considered "radical" enough to land them under the scrutiny of President Nixon's counter-intelligence programs at the time. The nerve - speaking out against racism and prejudice like that! Good thing America had such a fine upstanding leader to keep everybody on the straight and narrow, eh?

Patti Smith, "Piss Factory"
Ah, the punk-poet post-hippie priestess, the shaman of CBGB's - what could I possibly say? Perhaps the greatest living proof that rock music and poetry need not be mutually exclusive - besides Bob Dylan, of course, whose omission from this list stems mainly from my pure blinding paralysis at the prospect of coming up with a single representative entry. Smith's 1975 debut, Horses (Arista), remains one of the most potent opening statements of all time, but let's get technical for a moment: the year before saw the release of her first recording, the 7-inch "Hey Joe," a cover of the rock standard augmented by a curious spiel about Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Nice, but what a B-side! "Piss Factory" is nothing short of revelatory, a gritty chunk of social realism set to piano-overdrive jazz-punk.

Consider Smith's opening intro: "Sixteen and time to pay off / I got this job in a piss factory inspecting pipe." Captivating, to say the least - and entirely true to life. She'd written the poem in 1970 - all of 23 years old - about her experiences as a suburban factory worker, dreaming of something bigger in life than just getting paid for repetitive activity for 40 hours a week. In song form, it's a sweltering, lusty beast, with Smith gazing through the grime and beyond the glazed-eyed stares of her beaten-down co-workers to indulge in reveries of better days, of dancing to the radio. (Her "twist and shout" references contained within thus predicting the oldies-radio interpolations she will soon expand upon further with Horses). Observing the assembly-line drone next to her, she declares, "And yeah, we both look the same / both sweatin', both pumpin' / But you know she got nothin' to hide / And I got something to hide here called desire / I got something to hide here called desire." Every syllable is an ache, a yearning for a world almost within reach but still utterly ungraspable to seemingly everyone around her.

Smith closes the song with a desperate farewell: "I'm gonna get out of here, I'm gonna get on that train / I'm gonna go on that train and go to New York City / I'm gonna be somebody, I'm gonna get on that train, go to New York City, / I'm gonna be so bad I'm gonna be a big star and I will never return, / Never return, no, never return, to burn out in this piss factory / And I will travel light. / Oh, watch me now."