AM Gold - Early-'70s Classics

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1995

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Time-Life released this disc as Various - Superhits - Early-'70s Classics (SUD-20) in the Super Hits series in 1992. Tracks 7 and 14 on Superhits are "Sweet Mary" and "Hitchin' A Ride".

Time-Life reissued this disc (in its original pressing) as Various - AM Gold - Early-'70s Classics (AM1-15) in the AM Gold series in 1995. Tracks 7 and 14 on the original pressing of AM Gold are "Sweet Mary" and "Hitchin' A Ride".

Time-Life reissued this disc again (with RE-1 in the matrix number) as Various - AM Gold - Early-'70s Classics. Tracks 7 and 14 on the RE-1 reissue of AM Gold are "We May Never Pass This Way (Again)" and "Right Place Wrong Time".

© 1992, 1995 Time Life Inc.
℗ 1992 Warner Special Products

Track durations obtained from software.

Publishing:
Track 1- Jobete Music Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 2- EMI Blackwood Music Inc. BMI
Track 3- Singing Wire Inc. BMI
Track 4- DenJac Music Co./MCA Music Publishing ASCAP
Track 5- Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc./Summerhill Songs BMI
Track 6- Unichappell Music Inc. BMI
Track 7- Big Hawk Music Inc./Kama Sutra Music Inc. c/o EMI Unart Catalog Inc. BMI
Track 8- Famous Music Corporation/Kaiser Music ASCAP
Track 9- David Schine & Co., Inc. ASCAP
Track 10- Chappell & Co. ASCAP
Track 11- Interior Music Corp. BMI
Track 12- EMI Unart Music Catalog Inc./Stage Door Music Publ. BMI
Track 13- Earmark Music/Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. BMI
Track 14- Intune Inc./Songs of PolyGram International, Inc. BMI
Track 15- EMI Unart Catalog, Inc. BMI
Track 16- Colgems-EMI Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 17- Lowery Music Co. Inc. BMI
Track 18- Kangaroo Music Inc. ASCAP
Track 19- Taradam Music, Inc. BMI
Track 20- Combine Music Corp. BMI
Track 21- Eeyor Music CAPAC
Track 22- Kipahulu Music Co. ASCAP

Complete liner notes:

By 1971, James Taylor was recognized as the living embodiment of the post­hippie singer-songwriter movement. But until You've Got a Friend, culled from his third album, he hadn't enjoyed a No. 1 single. The song was written by former Brill Building tunesmith Carole King, who had fled New York for laid­back California and during the early '70s was herself making the transition to solo recording artist.

Taylor and King were introduced to each other by Danny Kortchmar, a guitarist who had previously worked with him in the Flying Machine and with her in the City. As Carole was recording her landmark album Tapestry, James was a few blocks down the street cutting his own Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, and You've Got a Friend appeared on both sets. King decided not to release her version as a single, so Taylor did-though when they toured together that summer, they usually shared the song in a show-closing duet.

The singer-songwriter movement created a new breed of artists, mostly one-hit wonders but a few who proved more enduring. Harry Nilsson, a former computer supervisor at a Los Angeles bank, definitely fell into the latter camp. By the time he went to London with producer Richard Perry to cut Nilsson Schmilsson, he already had six other albums on the market and had enjoyed a handful of hit singles of his own as well as having written several more for other artists. But that album pretty much established Nilsson's own unique identity, and Coconut was the third straight hit it yielded.

Jim Croce, on the other hand, was a Top-40 newcomer in 1972. The folk veteran had just cut a deal with the production team of Tommy West (his old Villanova college buddy) and Terry Cashman, and Operator was the second hit single off his first album. Little more than a year later, with his career still on the rise, Croce died in a plane crash.

Technical whiz Todd Rundgren made his name as a recording artist in the '60s with the Philly neo-Beatles band Nazz. He cut his solo debut (as Runt, the nickname given him by Patti Smith) with the studio time he got in exchange for producing the first album on Albert Grossman's Bearsville label (a flop by American Dream). Rundgren claimed that the unflattering stereotypes of We Gotta Get You a Woman were meant as a joke, but the fledgling feminist movement denounced him just the same.

With Leon on Me, Bill Withers presented quite another persona, that of the vulnerable but strong male. Despite the 1971 Grammy-winning Ain't No Sunshine, Withers was still on an assembly line manufacturing toilet seats for Boeing 747s when his second album (including this single) was released in '72. The song was apparently inspired by the blue-collar camaraderie he shared with his co-workers. Joe South had been writing and producing hits for Billy Joe Royal since 1965 before he got his own solo deal in 1969. The former sessions guitarist from Atlanta applied topical, brotherhood-message lyrics to an eclectic, country­rooted Southern sound for hits like Walk a Mile in My Shoes.

The era was good to solo artists of every stripe. All-round performer Sammy Davis Jr. topped the pop charts for the only time in his life with the easy-listening The Candy Man. The song, written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, was introduced by Aubrey Woods in the children's musical film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But it was MGM Records boss Mike Curb (later lieutenant governor of California) who noted that Davis' chart success was almost always with show tunes, and he had the Rat Packer cover it. Sammy disliked the song, and Newley disliked Davis' version, but both wound up eating their words.

Bobby Bloom began by eking out a couple of regional hits with the Imaginations in 1961, but he blossomed in the late '60s as a writer, producer and sessions singer on the bubblegum scene. He and Brill Building veteran Jeff Barry co-wrote Montego Bay after Bloom became the first artist on L&R, another MGM label.

Hurricane Smith was 49 years old when he achieved his first pop hit in 1972. But as Norman Smith, he had been working at EMI Records' legendary Abbey Road studios in London since 1955; as house engineer, he recorded all the Beatles' albums through Revolver. He also produced Pink Floyd before taking on his new name (from a 1952 Yvonne de Carlo flick) to become an artist in his own right. Oh Babe, What Would You Say? was his only top 10 stateside.

Other soloists had varying success on the charts. Lobo was the stage name for Kent Lavoie, a Floridian of French and Native American descent, and Me and You and a Dog Named Boo was the first single of a career that lasted the rest of the decade. Tom Jones was riding high on the strength of his network TV show when he revived Clyde McPhatter's rhythm and blues chestnut Without Love. Mark Lindsay rocked as lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders, but his cover of the English band Family Dogg's Arizona was closer to the countrypolitan style he came to use as a solo artist.

B.J. Thomas, who launched his career in a Houston bar band called the Triumphs, became a household sound after topping the charts with the ubiquitous Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) in 1969. A later hit, Rock and Roll Lullaby, was taken from a 1972 album with an all-star cast featuring Duane Eddy on guitar and the Blossoms and Dave Somerville (once of the Diamonds) on backup vocals. The nostalgic ballad presaged Thomas' mid­'70s move to the country field.

Among groups, Bread's fifth LP (after which the soft-rock group eased into a steady decline) was named after its hit single, The Guitar Man, and the guitar solo was in fact played by top sessions drummer Jim Keltner. Edward Bear was the original name of Winnie the Pooh, and Last Song was the first of two American hits for the Canadian trio that assumed the moniker.

Cult favorite Hitchin' a Ride was the second of two American hits by the British quintet Vanity Fare. Motorcycle Mama turned out to be the only Top-40 single for Sailcat, a country-rockish duo featuring Muscle Shoals hangers-out Court Pickett and John Wyker. The DeFranco Family was already one of the hottest groups in Canada when American teen-magazine publisher Charles Laufer formed his own label (distributed by 20th Century) to launch the quintet stateside with Heartbeat­It's a Lovebeat.

Treat Her Like a Lady, meanwhile, kicked off the brief career of the Miami soul-pop family group Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose. ABC was the follow­up to the Jackson 5's debut No. 1, I Want You Back. Principal writer-producer Freddie Perren cut both songs at the same time, with the former being little more than the music to the chorus of I Want You Back repeated over and over.

One of the most unlikely songs to hit the pop charts in the early '70s was Dueling Banjos, written and recorded in 1955 as Feuding Banjos by country star Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith (and based on an older traditional tune). The Dillards made it popular on the folk circuit in the mid-'60s, and their arrangement was picked up by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell.

When author James Dickey heard that version on the radio, he thought it would fit perfectly into the film adaptation of his controversial adventure novel Deliverance. Director John Boorman brought Weissberg and Mandell on location to teach the actors how to mime the square-off scene between a banjo-plucking country boy and a guitar-picking city boy. And when the film starring Burt Reynolds became one of the biggest movies of the year, Dueling Banjos put the backwoods sound high on the charts.

-John Morthland

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