60's style music from the 1950s
 

I would like to know if there were any experimental bands from the late 50's (who recorded an LP or single) that sound ahead of their time, and more typical of the mid 60's, even if not well known. I'm excluding The Beatles, because their early stuff still had a fairly 50s sound, and they didn't record until the early 60's.

There's a chance that there wasn't much with a 60s+ sound in the 1950s, but regardless, please tell me what you know about what I'm asking...

Good question.
Apart from some modern classical nothing especially groundbreaking from the 50s comes to mind. Althought I'm sure there must be something.
I'm counting on Frownland here.

Unless you get into that or jazz the closest you're going to get, I figure, is Bo Diddley. Even the '60's didn't sound like the '60's until '64.

Well maybe Blind Joe Death by John Fahey? Released in 1959, so just on the cusp, but his guitar work was pretty ahead of its time, bluesy and folky but arguably with the early glimpses of psychedelic music and avant-garde stuff that was part of his later career. The Transcendental Waterfall, Sligo River Blues and Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues especially have some really interesting elements.

Edit (a link):

Great answer.

Drums of Passion by Babatunde Olatunji from 1959, being the first popular album of African percussion in the west, was pretty far ahead of its time. It wouldn't be until the late 60s or the 70s that this kind of album would become more commonplace.

Drums of Passion seems ahead of its time in what you would have found on an album, but I'm sure that the music on the album was commonplace in areas of Africa some tens/hundreds of years before.

Blind Joe Death does seem slightly ahead. While there doesn't seem to be much (if any) singing, I can picture modern vocals over the top of some tracks. It even has vague similarities with some REM stuff from 20-30 years later.

With this being a folk style piece, were there any British/American folk artists who recorded songs with acoustic instruments and vocals? I've heared some stuff from recently that has sounded very like some 40+ year old recordings, and know that folk music has been around for some time prior to the 60s, but was it in the same form as after this period?

I'm not sure about that. I doubt that it was commonplace hundreds of years before. Maybe tens, I have no idea. My point was that it was stuff not really heard in a western musical context until the later 60s. You know, sort of like the "experimentalism" the Beatles are credited with for using sitar in their music.

The only one that really comes to mind for me is Cecil Taylor. Jazz Advance (1956) helped mold free jazz as we know it today, and it was also quite awesome. I guess that Stockhausen could also fit the bill.

With jazz and "classical" you could we could go for quite awhile. With the parameters extended to include (instrumental) folk the John Fahey is a very good choice. The Drums of Passion is good too but once you get into the realm of non-western music it actually is a flood.

Going strictly rock'n'roll from the '50's a few years ahead of its time I still stand by Bo Didley.