Welcome back to this special retrospective music-posting feature. The gimmick is simple — each week, you post a list (ranked or unranked) of your favourite 25 (or however many) albums of a given year (or, occasionally decade). We are now moving backwards through the early days of the LP era. The early 50 which we are now beginning to explore are a tricky period because were are in the midst of a market transition between 10″ LPs and 12″ LPs. A lot of the early 33 1/3 rpm turntables were 10 ” in diameter to accomodate 78 rpm records. The late fifties mark the period where backward compatibility with the 78″ rpm was finally abandoned in favor of the longer playing time of the 12″ record something that had immediately appealed to issuers of classical music but that purveyors of other genres were slower to adopt. In this respect, 1955 is a critical year in terms of the wider adaptation of the 12″ format. While Frank Sinatra’s 16 track album In The Wee Small Hours was issued as a double 10″ and as a four disc 45 rpm box set, it was also issued as a single 16 track 12″ record, one of the first pop records to receives this treatment (Wikipedia)

My personal list is alphabetical Asterisks (*) indicate post publication edits or additions.