James Taylor: Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon - 1971
This continues in the same vein as 1970's Sweet Baby James, albeit with a bit more oomph to it in just a few places, such as on the robust opener, Love Has Brought Me Around.
Carole King's You've Got A Friend (from Tapestry) is dealt with in a similar instrumental way to hers - acoustic guitar and bongos (but no piano) - but Taylor's voice is warmer in timbre than King's slightly harsher one. It was strange that albums like these two, ones that are so relaxing and laid-back, were composed and played by someone tortured at the time by alcoholism, depression and romantic turmoil. Listening to them, you would imagine Taylor to be a man at one with himself so mellow are they.
Just check out a song like Places In My Past, something of a melancholic one, but one that is so sleepy it just makes you think all is fine. The same applies to the travel-inspired country vibe of Riding On A Railroad - yes it is a sad song but it has no griping gotta getaway angst in its delightful melody and calm delivery.
Add to that the gentle and short anti-war number, Soldiers. Mud Slide Slim is just so representative of that laid-back, subtly rhythmic Carole King/Taylor sound of the time. Gently-played bongos were so de rigeur, weren't they? Elton John and more importantly Bernie Taupin must have been influenced by the lyrics and overall feel of Hey Mister, That's Me Up On The Jukebox, I'm sure. Even on these intrinsically laid-back numbers there is still a bit of rock solidity and that was something John and Taupin would use too.
The Americana/Old West theme of Machine Gun Kelly would have been loved by Western-obsessive Taupin too. The punchy and brassy Let Me Ride also fits the seventies Elton bill. It seems that they all do now, as one listen to Highway Song will put that one list as well.
Both these albums are highly pleasurable and reassuringly unthreatening. Works of genius they are not, but there also need to be albums you can rely on. Here we have two. What a dreadful cover Mud Slide Slim had, though. No worry for James, however, he managed to attract Carly Simon.
Both of these albums are in my top 100 albums, even though it was all over after this. The music is so well written and the arrangements are so perfect and so well performed that I never get tired of listening to them. He was like a lot of the singer-songwriters though cuz it seems like they had a few great albums at the very beginning and then it suddenly just ended and they never really recovered. I always wondered why that happened.
ReplyDeleteI like these ones but they are the only two I am familiar with.
DeleteI was recently watching a YouTube clip of Taylor and Carly Simon doing Mockingbird live. His dancing was embarrassingly bad!
I think I've seen that clip. Was it at some outdoor concert or something like that? Mockingbird was a good record. That was on her album Hotcakes, which was her second last good album. There was only one more decent one after that.
ReplyDeleteI've reviewed a few Carly Simon albums, but they are all pretty similar.
DeleteThis is the clip -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WM_R-6AKHE
It's a fun clip, but he looks very geeky on it, not made to be a rocker. At the end he looks like Basil Fawlty.
https://res.cloudinary.com/uktv/image/upload/v1546946056/j65lyhqcyxjoyk6jovuw.jpg
I loved Fawlty Towers. The public television stations here showed all the British TV shows for years and years. I think by time I saw them they were already old, like from the '70s. Monty Python and that one I think was called Are You Being Served and it was about a department store. And that one where Patricia Rutledge played that lady Hyacinth Bouquet and it was so funny. I can't remember the name of the show. I don't even know if they still show them anymore. Probably.
ReplyDeleteYes, you can still catch them all on classic comedy channels.
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