Name a few albums which helped determine your musical tastes

@spiritofradio -- you are most welcome! And YES to The Köln Concert

MC, you can do what you will with the question.
By "shaped" or "pivot" I mean those albums which turned me on to music, and also to those bands. E.g. Beatles -- lead to a love of the Beatles, of course, but to rock more generally and to the less straight ahead (psychedelic-style of openness) which made my tastes in Pink Floyd, Fripp, Eno, etc. later on. Or, Joni, which opened me toward more female vocals; or Tull, Simon/Garfunkel which created a taste for folk. Etc.

Many things on your lists gets big hurrahs from me! Many I didn’t discover until college (e.g. Steely Dan, a favoriteband of mine to this day). BUT, if I stick to my early "pivotal" requirement, I have to +1 this:

Simon and Garfunkel - Bookends (and Wed. Morning 3 am)

My parents had ever Simon and Garfunkel album (not that many) and a relatively small range of other records (lots of Telemann and Bach). They got played over and over. My only other source of music was good FM radio from SUNY Stony Brook and WPKN Bridgeport.

You all are stocking my next playlist "Audiogon Pantheon"

+1 Hendrix, Axis Bold as Love
Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
Lou Reed, Transformer.

@mdalton Thanks for your list and the vignettes, too. Very sorry for your loss.

I was a grad student in Austin and saw a lot of great local and national acts there. I saw Lyle Lovett and his large band at the Paramount in June 1993, and saw him at Kerbey Lane cafe that summer, too. 

@danvignau

I have scads of these albums listed here, but cannot fathom the mindset that led to the dearth of classical and jazz, especially jazz.

To help you fathom, people are not listing what they think is *best* or *most worthy, musically* because that’s not the question posed in the OP.

Because people are listing the music that first set them off as music lovers, chances are they were exposed early on (early teens or before) to rock or pop, not jazz or classical.

Probably because they came from a world where pop and rock were already dominant. Really dominant. I tried to find stats from earlier eras, but that would take a while. How many kids in high school did I know that were into jazz? Maybe 1% or less. But lots listened to music, bought stereos, etc. so some found there way to better products without necessarily liking jazz or classical. Here’s 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/310746/share-music-album-sales-us-genre/