The following is a chronological and, as far as can be ascertained, complete guide to all known studio and concert recordings made (whether for official release or otherwise) by the artists during the period discussed in this book. Where appropriate, release data and chart data is provided for all LPs and 45s released in the U.S. and UK; additionally, information is provided for a number of unofficial “bootleg” releases. Also included are key radio and television performances and significant demo or recording sessions. LPs that include full track listings are those by any of the three primary artists this book focuses on or by artists who play a major part in the story. For LPs that contain a small contribution from one of the three primary artists, full track listings are not provided. Finally, a broad selection of cover versions by other artists has also been included.
1963—Jon and Alun
LP: Relax Your Mind
Original UK release: Decca LK 4547
Tracks: “Relax Your Mind” / “Walk to the Gallows” / “I’m My Own Grandpa” / “The Poor Fool’s Blues” / “Black Is the Colour” / “Easy Rambler” / “I Never Will Marry” / “Alberta” / “John B” / “The Song of the Salvation Army” / “Lone Green Valley” / “The Way of Life” / “Sinking of the Reuben James”
Notes: Future Cat collaborator Alun Davies and Michael “Jon Mark” Burchell were just a couple of years out of school when they delivered this fine collection of folk-themed originals and rearranged traditional airs.
1964—The Fabulous Corsairs
45: “You’re Gonna Have to Change Your Ways” b/w “Cha Cha Blues” (demo)
Notes: James and Alex Taylor’s debut recording, a demo cut at local producer Jimmy Katz’s two-track studio in Raleigh, North Carolina. Alex composed the A side, James the B side.
1965—Cat Stevens
Recording: Demo session
Notes: Anxious to get some of his songs down on tape, Stevens hired a small Denmark Street studio, Regent Sound, in London, and cut at least one song, “Back to the Good Old Times,” which was unreleased until its inclusion on the 2001 Cat Stevens boxed set.
Released to coincide with what was then regarded as Cat Stevens’s reemergence as a media-friendly (if not musically popular) personality, Cat Stevens also coincided with an altogether unexpected rejuvenation of interest in his back catalog. Between 1971 and 1975, after all, Stevens ranked among the most sainted singer-songwriters in that entire genre, and was so popular that, by the time the decade reached its midpoint, his downfall wasn’t simply inevitable, it was imperative.
The bard behind a stream of cocktail-party confessionals, the sensitive soul who uncorked the very wellspring of human consciousness, Stevens was so intrinsically bound up within the peculiar zeitgeist that defined early-seventies America that neither death nor retirement could have liberated him. In terms of prolonging his career, his conversion to Islam probably wasn’t up there with his best ideas. But in terms of personal survival, it was the smartest thing he ever did.
The boxed set does not address such weighty issues, of course. Just one disc, the fourth, traces Stevens’s activities from 1975 on; only two songs postdate his disappearance, a live “Father and Son,” recorded at a UNICEF concert in 1979, and a single track from 1997’s Raihan—Syukar album. And, should you choose to play the boxed set backwards, little therein prepares the listener for all that came before. Even by the most generous criteria, late-1970s albums like Numbers and Izitso were overwrought turkeys, every last ounce of soul and passion squeezed out by Stevens’s relentless pursuit of the honesty for which he was renowned. Again, if he hadn’t disappeared, he’d have vanished anyway.
Go back to the beginning, though, and listen in awe. The collection opens with Stevens’s first recording, a flimsy demo from 1965; it kicks into gear with his first 45 and the slew of minor classics he unleashed between 1966 and 1968. Hits “I Love My Dog,” “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun,” “Matthew and Son,” and “The First Cut Is the Deepest” punctuate selections from two late-1960s albums, together with a generous helping of B sides and even a few choice unreleased tracks, including “Honey Man,” a union with the then-unknown Elton John, which, though nobody could have guessed it at the time, would essentially dictate the course of popular music through the next five years.
His former gift for familial whimsy had been utterly replaced by a new thoughtfulness. Cut through the still-effervescent pop melodies that he was spinning, and Stevens’s best compositions possess a seriousness that defied the expectations of his early audience, at the same time that it defined his future crowd. So it was that even the trite philosophy of “Moon Shadow” took on the weightiest of meanings; so it was that a radio-lite version of the hymn “Morning Has Broken” took on the magnitude of the Sermon on the Mount. And so it goes on until we reach 1973’s Foreigner, with its horribly misjudged, side-long title suite, and the conscientious lyric reader is left wondering which is going to collapse beneath the portentousness first, singer or song. In fact, both give way simultaneously, and the Cat would never purr so contentedly again.
None of which is to detract from the beauty, fragility, and, yes, occasionally, majesty of Stevens’s finest recordings—which in turn represent at least three-quarters of this box. With between four and five tracks apiece culled from his most crucial albums, the seamless sequence that voyaged from Mona Bone Jakon to Catch Bull at Four and then briefly resurfaced for Buddha and the Chocolate Box, the box is unquestionably a magnificent edifice, while the booklet’s inclusion of Stevens’s own recollections about songs and sessions offers an irresistible glimpse into the inner workings of those records.
The bare simplicity of “Lady D’Arbanville,” the muted nostalgia of “Where Do the Children Play,” the exuberant punch of “Oh Very Young,” the sweet sparseness of “I Want to Live in a Wigwam”; even at his most gauchely naive, Stevens tapped emotions that few pop stars even dreamed of approaching, and the fact that he remained (for want of a better term) a pop star throughout only testifies to the universality of those emotions.
1965–66—The King Bees
45: “What She Does to Me” b/w “That Ain’t Love”
45: “Rhythm and Blues” b/w “On Your Way Down the Drain”
45: “Lost in the Shuffle” b/w “Hardly Part 3”
Original U.S. releases: RCA 8688, RCA 8787, and RCA 8979, respectively
Notes: Danny Kortchmar, Joel Bishop, bassist Dicky, and singer/organist John John McDuffy recorded a triptych of soulful 45s for RCA during their time in New York City, released in the order listed above. “Lost in the Shuffle” was also recorded by Blues Project, the band that McDuffy would join following the King Bees’ breakup.
September 1966—Cat Stevens
45: “I Love My Dog” b/w “Portobello Road”
Original UK release: Deram DM 102
UK chart peak: #28 (7 weeks, total)
Notes: A putative Mike Hurst solo single, the Mike D’Abo–composed “Going Going Gone” was recorded at the same session as Steve’s debut single. Unreleased at the time, it finally debuted on the CD compilation Mike Hurst: Producers Archives Volume 3 in 2009.
October 1966—Jackson Browne
LP: The Columbia Demo
Notes: See January 1967, The Nina Demo.
December 1966—Cat Stevens
45: “Matthew and Son” b/w “Granny”
Original UK release: Deram DM 110
UK chart peak: #2 (10 weeks)
January 1967—Jackson Browne
LP: The Nina Demo
Tracks: “Holding” / “Somewhere There’s a Feather” / “I’ve Been Out Walking” / “Funny You Should Ask” / “Love Me, Lovely” / “You’ve Forgotten” / “Someday Morning” / “Cast Off All My Fears” / “In My Time” / “Melissa” / “It’s Been Raining Here in Long Beach” / “You’ll Get It in the Mail Today” / “Shadow Dream Song” / “The Light from Your Smile” / “Gotta See a Man About a Daydream” / “Time Travel Fantasy” / “The Fairest of the Seasons” / “Sing My Songs to Me” / “Lavender Windows” / “The Painter” / “Fourth and Main” / “Bound for Colorado” / “We Can Be” / “And I See” / “Ah, But Sometimes” / “Marianne” / “Tumble Down” / “You Didn’t Need a Cloud” / “Lavender Bassman” / “She’s a Flying Thing”
Notes: Two-LP demonstration disc produced by Nina Music. Largely recorded at Jaycino Studios, New York, on January 7, 1967, but also incorporating an earlier session for Columbia on October 5, 1966.
January 1967—The Tremeloes
45: “Here Comes My Baby” b/w “Gentlemen of Pleasure”
Original UK release: CBS 202519
UK chart peak: #4 (11 weeks)
Notes: Originally known as Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, in which form they ranked among the early British Invaders, the group lost vocalist Poole in late 1966 and seemed doomed to obscurity after their next two singles (“Blessed” and “Good Day Sunshine”) sank without trace. Instead, Stevens’s “Here Comes My Baby” became the first in a run of hits that would carry the band into 1971 and include the UK chart topper “Silence Is Golden” alongside further smashes “Even the Bad Times Are Good,” “Call Me Number One” (which got to #2), and “Me and My Life.”
February 1967—Paul and Barry Ryan
45: “Keep It Out of Sight” b/w “Who Told You?”
Original UK release: Decca F12567
UK chart peak: #30 (6 weeks)
Notes: Brothers Paul and Barry Ryan were nearing the end of their chart career when they covered this Cat Stevens number. A Mike Hurst production, it rewarded them with a return to the Top 30 for the first time in almost a year. Too little too late, however; one single later the pair went their separate musical ways, although Barry would bounce back the following year with a bombastically brilliant English-language rendition of Claude François’s French hit “Eloise.”
“Keep It Out of Sight” is most readily available on the compilation CD Mike Hurst: Producers Archives Volume 3
March 1967—The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
LP: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Original U.S. release: Liberty 7501
U.S. chart peak: #151 (8 weeks)
Notes: Contrary to the oft-quoted insistence that Nico was first to record a Jackson Browne song, the honor actually rests with his old bandmates in the Nitty Gritty crew. Their debut album includes versions of Browne’s “Holding” and “Melissa,” together with the Steve Noonan/Greg Copeland composition “Buy for Me the Rain” (a #45 U.S. hit single).
March 1967—Cat Stevens
LP: Matthew and Son
Original U.S. release: Deram 18005
Original UK release: Deram DML/SML 1004
UK chart peak: #7 (16 weeks)
Tracks: “Matthew and Son” / “I Love My Dog” / “Here Comes My Baby” / “Bring Another Bottle Baby” / “Portobello Road” / “I’ve Found a Love” / “I See a Road” / “Baby Get Your Head Screwed On” / “Granny” / “When I Speak to the Flowers” / “The Tramp” / “Come On and Dance” / “Hummingbird” / Lady”
Notes: A CD version released later included the bonus tracks “School Is Out” and “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun.”
March 1967—Cat Stevens
45: “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun” b/w “School Is Out”
Original UK release: Deram DM 118
UK chart peak: #6 (10 weeks)
April 1967—P. P. Arnold
45: “The First Cut Is the Deepest” b/w “Speak to Me”
Original UK release: Immediate 047
UK chart peak: #18 (10 weeks)
Notes: P. P. Arnold arrived in the UK in 1966 as a member of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes. “Discovered” there by Mick Jagger, she remained in the UK as a solo artist, signed to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label. It was Mike Hurst, another early supporter, who suggested she record Stevens’s “The First Cut Is the Deepest,” and his production was certainly a large part of the ensuing performance’s immortal beauty.
April 1967—Nico
Recording: Rehearsal
Original bootleg release: The Velvet Underground: Ultra Rare Tracks Volume 4 (3D-Reality Classics)
Notes: No recordings are known to be in existence of Nico performing at the Dom, with or without Jackson Browne. However, bootlegs do exist capturing an hour or so of Nico and Reed practicing songs together, around the same time. The quality is rough and it doesn’t bear much repeated listening. But the duo hacking, chatting, giggling, and squabbling through an effervescent clutch of songs drawn from both Chelsea Girl and the Lou Reed songbook does have a compulsive appeal, whether one is listening to Nico previewing a verse of “Secret Side,” six years before she finally recorded the song, or Lou stumbling through a line of “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” before Nico dissolves into a disbelieving “Oh my God!” You also get to hear just how much David Bowie stole from “These Days” for his first album-era opus “When I’m Five.”
More importantly than any of that, however, you get a sense of how Nico must have sounded in 1967, playing the Dom, with just a guitarist. Tim Buckley for a while, or Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed or Jackson Browne, singing her lovely little songs in a gentle, gorgeous croon, pausing between songs, or sometimes midway through, a little uncertain, a little aloof…Properly remastered, neatly spliced and edited (where, oh where, is the Nico boxed set?), this would actually be an essential document.
Another ghost of this era emerges on a tape recorded at the Whisky A Go Go on June 5, 1979. It was Danny Fields who first suggested Tim Hardin and Nico get together to play in 1967; Tim Hardin preceded Jackson Browne as her regular accompanist and went onto gift one song to Chelsea Girl, “Eulogy to Lenny Bruce.”
A decade later, the pair reunited in L.A., as Nico toured the U.S. on the eve of her early-1980s comeback. The opening two numbers are dominated by Nico’s harmonium; you hear Hardin for the first time tuning up for “Henry Hudson” before coming to the fore with “Femme Fatale” and, most notably, John Cale’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a song that is usually ascribed to a mythical Nico-Cale reunion. Hardin himself then performs a couple of songs, before Nico and her harmonium return for a spectral “Valley of the Kings” and, finally, “The End.”
May 1967—David Garrick
45: “I’ve Found a Love” b/w “(You Can’t Hide) a Broken Heart”
Original UK release: Piccadilly 7N 35371
Notes: Proof that not everything Cat Stevens touched could turn to gold, as Garrick followed up two minor hits (the Stones’ “Lady Jane” and “Dear Mrs. Applebee”) with a resounding flop.
July 1967—Cat Stevens
45: “A Bad Night” b/w “The Laughing Apple”
Original UK release: Deram DM 140
UK chart peak: #20 (8 weeks)
July 1967—Cat Stevens
Recording: Soundtrack session for Twinkie
Original UK release: Mike Hurst: Producers Archives Volume 3 (Angel Air SJPCD 302)—2009
Notes: Archived for almost forty years, this is Stevens’s abandoned contribution to a proposed Lindsay Anderson movie.
July 1967—The Flying Machine
Recording: LP recording sessions subsequently released as James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine (1971)
Tracks: “Rainy Day Man” / “Knocking Round the Zoo” (multiple takes) / “Something’s Wrong” (instrumental) / “Night Owl” (multiple takes) / “Brighten Your Night with My Day” (multiple takes) “Kootch’s Song”
September 1967—The Flying Machine
45: “Night Owl” b/w “Brighten Your Night with My Day”
Original U.S. release: Rainy Day 8001
Original Canadian release: Barry 3477
October 1967—Nico
LP: Chelsea Girl
Original U.S. release: Verve V5032/V6 5032
Notes: Includes versions of Jackson Browne’s “Fairest of Seasons,” “Somewhere There’s a Feather,” and “These Days.” Yet when pressed to name his own favorite Nico performance, Browne eschewed this LP altogether and selected a song from her sophomore set, produced by Frazier Mohawk and John Haeny.
“Frozen Warnings,” the penultimate cut on 1968’s The Marble Index, emerges one of her iciest performances, with Browne singling it out as “an exceptional melody and an atmospheric ballad.” The recurrent vision of the “frozen borderline” is genuinely haunting, heaving into view in the a cappella opening verses, then growing closer as the instrumentation slides in behind her.
October 1967—The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
LP: Ricochet
Original U.S. release: Liberty LRP 3516
Notes: Includes versions of Jackson Browne’s “It’s Been Raining Here in Long Beach” and “Shadow Dream Song.”
December 1967—Cat Stevens
45: “Kitty” b/w “Blackness of the Night”
Original UK release: Deram DM 156
UK chart peak: #47 (1 week)
December 1967—Cat Stevens
LP: New Masters
Original U.S. release: Deram 18010
Original UK release: Deram DML/SML 1018
Tracks: “Kitty / “I’m So Sleepy” / “Northern Wind” / “The Laughing Apple” / “Smash Your Heart” / “Moonstone” / “The First Cut Is the Deepest” / “I’m Gonna Be King” / “Ceylon City” / “Blackness of the Night” / “Come On Baby” / “I Love Them All”
Notes: When the album was released on CD, the following bonus tracks were included: “Image of Hell” / “Lovely City” / “Here Comes My Wife” / “The View from the Top” / “It’s a Supa Dupa Life” / “Where Are You” / “A Bad Night.”
February 1968—Cat Stevens
45: “Lovely City” b/w “Image of Hell”
Original UK release: Deram DM 178
March 1968—The Hour Glass
LP: Power of Love
Original U.S. release: Liberty LRP 3555/SRP 7555
Notes: The Hour Glass formed from the wreckage of two Southern rock bands, Duane and Gregg Allman’s Florida-based Allman Joys, and the Alabama-rooted Men-Its, featuring Pete Carr, Johnny Sandlin, and Paul Hornsby. Gigging in St. Louis, they were discovered by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band manager Bill McEuen; he landed the band a deal with Liberty and oversaw their relocation to Los Angeles. He also introduced them to Jackson Browne, whose “Cast Off All Your Fears” would be included on the band’s debut album.
March 1968—The Fugs
LP: Tenderness Junction
Original U.S. release: Reprise 6280
Tracks: “Turn On-Tune In-Drop Out” / “Knock Knock” / “The Garden Is Open” / “Wet Dream” / “Hare Krishna” / “Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon, October 21, 1967” / “War Song” / “Dover Beach” / “Fingers of the Sun” / “Aphrodite Mass (Litany of the Street Grope-Genuflection at the Temple of Squack-Petals in the Sea-Sappho’s Hymn to Aphrodite-Homage to Throb Thrills) ”
Notes: Danny Kortchmar and Charlie Larkey weren’t quite taking a musical vacation for the months that they were Fugs, but both admit that they had faced more challenging propositions. Nevertheless, Tenderness Junction is a scintillating listen, a combination of period agitprop politics and poetry, shot through with the kind of “far out” dialogue so beloved of the era. The exorcism of the Pentagon, included here as a far-too-short live excerpt from the actual event, would swiftly inspire British underground rockers the Edgar Broughton Band to pen their own anthem “Out Demons Out.”
March 1968—Tom Rush
LP: The Circle Game
Original U.S. release: Elektra EKS 74018
U.S. chart peak: #68 (14 weeks)
Notes: Includes versions of Jackson Browne’s “Shadow Dream Song” and James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” and “Sunshine Sunshine.” The album was prefaced by a single in late 1966, Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going” b/w ”Sugar Babe.”
May 1968—Steve Noonan
LP: Steve Noonan
Original U.S. release: Elektra EKS 74017
Notes: “Filled,” said Billboard’s review, “with all the promise of a folk spotlight…[Noonan’s] debut will offer a persuasive array of folk music to buffs.” Includes versions of Jackson Browne’s “The Painter,” “Trusting Is a Hard Thing,” “Tumble Down,” “She’s a Flying Thing,” and “Shadow Dream Song.”
July 1968—The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
LP: Rare Junk
Original U.S. release: Liberty 7540
Notes: Includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” a cut that was also released as a single.
Summer 1968—James Taylor
Recording: The London sessions and demos for Taylor’s Apple LP
Notes: These recordings provided two of the bonus tracks featured on the 2011 remaster of James Taylor, “Sunshine Sunshine” and “Carolina in My Mind.”
September 1968—Hedge and Donna
LP: Hedge and Donna 2
Original U.S. release: Capitol ST 107
Notes: Doug Weston once described the mixed-race Hedge Capers and Donna Carson as “literally the best act” to emerge from the Troubadour’s Monday open mike sessions all year, although it makes sense he would have said that; he was their manager. The duo signed to Capitol in late 1967; this, their second LP includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “From Silver Lake.”
October 1968—Cat Stevens
45: “Here Comes My Wife” b/w “It’s a Supa Dupa Life”
Original UK release: Deram DM 211.
Notes: A demo from this period, “If Only Mother Could See Me Now,” recorded at East London Recording Studios, was included on the 2001 Cat Stevens boxed set.
Late 1968—Clear Light
Recording: Tracks for an unfinished, unreleased Clear Light album
Notes: Work on a second Clear Light LP, the first to feature Kootch, got under way and at least two tracks, “Darkness of Day” and “What a Difference Love Makes,” were recorded before the band broke up. Ralph Schuckett and Michael Ney would swiftly resurface, playing on the Carole King–composed “Porpise Song,” a highlight of the Monkees’ Head movie. Schuckett would then reunite with Kootch in Jo Mama.
December 1968—James Taylor
LP: James Taylor
Original U.S. release: Apple 3352
Original UK release: Apple SAPCOR 3
U.S. chart peak: #62 (28 weeks)
Tracks: “Don’t Talk Now” / “Something’s Wrong” / “Knocking Round the Zoo” / “Sunshine Sunshine” / “Taking It In” / “Something in the Way She Moves” / “Carolina in My Mind” / “Brighten Your Night with My Day” / “Night Owl” / “Rainy Day Man” / “Circle Round the Sun” / “The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream”
Notes: When the album was released on CD, bonus tracks included “Sunny Skies” and “Let Me Ride,” both of which were recorded at Crystal Sound Studios, Los Angeles, in 1969; and “Sunshine Sunshine” and “Carolina in My Mind,” which were demos recorded in London in the summer of 1968.
January 1969—The City
LP: Now That Everything’s Been Said
Original U.S. release: Ode 244012
Tracks: “Snow Queen” / “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” / “Now That Everything’s Been Said” / “Paradise Alley” / “Man Without a Dream” / “Victim of Circumstance” / “Why Are You Leaving” / “Lady” / “My Sweet Home” / “I Don’t Believe It” / “That Old Sweet Roll (Hi-De-Ho)” /” All My Time”
Notes: Carole King’s first step toward a solo career aligned her with Charlie Larkey, Jim Gordon, and Kootch for a Lou Adler–produced LP that the guitarist describes as “an excellent album, one of those period albums that went completely under the radar, one of those undiscovered gems. This was way before anybody was aware of Carole’s abilities as a performer, including Carole. She’d never been on the stage before, she was strictly behind the scenes.”
Led out by a single coupling the insistent “Paradise Alley” with “Snow Queen” (Ode 113), Now That Everything’s Been Said offered a dry run for everything that King would go on to accomplish over the next three years. The band already plays with the clunky garage feel that so exquisitely hallmarks 1970’s Writer, although the only ears that seem to have been open at this time were the Byrds’. By fall, their definitive version of the album’s “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” was pursuing “The Ballad of Easy Rider” up the U.S. chart.
A second City single, “That Old Sweet Roll” b/w “Why Are You Leaving,” would be released in May 1969.
Spring 1969—James Taylor
Recording: Demos
Notes: Attempts to get Taylor’s second Apple album under way saw two songs cut at Crystal Sound Studios in Los Angeles, “Sunny Skies” and “Let Me Ride.” Unreleased at the time, they were finally issued as bonus tracks on the 2011 remaster of James Taylor.
March 1969—James Taylor
45: “Carolina in My Mind” b/w “Taking It In”
Original U.S. release: Apple 1805 (withdrawn)
Notes: The rarest of all Taylor’s “official” releases, released to radio and the media and then withdrawn to be repressed with a different B side.
March 1969—James Taylor
45: “Carolina in My Mind” b/w “Something’s Wrong”
Original U.S. release: Apple 1805
U.S. chart peak: #118 (1 week)
Original UK release: Apple 1805
Notes: The single would not break the Top 100, but it prompted two very swift covers, by country singer George Hamilton IV and the Everly Brothers. Melanie (LP: Candles in the Rain, April 1970), John Denver (LP: Take Me to Tomorrow, April 1970), Scottish popsters Marmalade (LP: Reflections of the Marmalade, June 1970) and Tony Orlando and Dawn (LP: Candida, November 1970) would also record the song, but the most successful version was by the Philadelphia band Crystal Mansion, who scored a #73 hit with the song in November 1970.
The Tony Orlando connection was not a fluke. A successful performer early in the 1960s, Orlando saw his recording career grind to a halt, and by 1963, he was working in music publishing, first at Robbins, Feist and Miller, than at April-Blackwood, where he handled the same James Taylor catalog that Chip Taylor acquired back in 1967.
And there he might have remained had producers Hank Medress and Dave Appell not called him in to replace the lead vocalist in a Detroit-based trio they were leading through a song called “Candida.” Without ever meeting his bandmates, whose parts were recorded in California, Orlando laid down his vocals, convinced that the song would never be heard of again. Instead, it became the biggest hit of his career so far, and within two months, Orlando had quit his music-publishing job and joined Dawn full-time.
Like Orlando, the remainder of the Dawn team had impressive careers as undeserving underachievement behind them. Telma Louise Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson were ex-Motown backing vocalists (their credits included Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold,” and Isaac Hayes’s “Theme from Shaft”), and producers Appell and Medress (a former member of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” hit makers the Tokens) were simply that, producers. But naming the band after Bell Records boss Wes Farrell’s daughter, Dawn, and picking “Candida” for their first release was more than just a good idea. It was a decision that would redraw the boundaries of pop through the 1970s.
“Candida” entered the charts in August 1970; by September, it had sold over a million records. And while it would only reach #3, the next four years would see Tony Orlando and Dawn run up three #1 hits of such magnitude that today one of them, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” remains an integral part of America’s popular culture. An album followed and, loyal to his erstwhile employers, Orlando selected two Taylor songs from the April-Blackwood file, “Carolina in My Mind” and “Rainy Day Man.”
Mid-1969—Sweet Thursday
LP: Sweet Thursday
Original UK release: Polydor 2310 051
Original U.S. release: Tetragrammaton T12
Tracks: “Dealer” / “Jenny” / “Laughed at Him” / “Cobwebs” / “Rescue Me” / “Molly” / “Sweet Francesca” / “Side of the Road” / “Gilbert Street”
Notes: Future Cat Stevens sidemen Alun Davies and Harvey Burns join Nicky Hopkins, Jon Mark, and Brian Odgers on a fine slice of late-1960s UK folk. Barely noticed at the time it came out (and lost altogether in the U.S., when the band’s label went bust on the day of release), Sweet Thursday would be reissued in 1973.
June 1969—Cat Stevens
45: “Where Are You” b/w “The View from the Top”
Original UK release: Deram DM 260
July 1969—Various Artists
EP: Walls Ice Cream
Original UK release: Apple CT 1
Notes: A promotional four-track extended-play (EP) record that featured James Taylor’s “Something’s Wrong” alongside cuts by labelmates Mary Hopkin, Jackie Lomax, and the Iveys.
August 1969—Ashes Featuring Pat Taylor
LP: Ashes Featuring Pat Taylor
Original U.S. release: Vault 125
Notes: Soft rock obscurity includes version of Jackson Browne’s “Gone to Sorrow.”
September 1969—Hedge and Donna
LP: All the Friendly Colors
Original U.S. release: Capitol ST 279
Notes: The duo’s third LP includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “There Came a Question.”
September 1969—Evie Sands
LP: Any Way That You Want Me
Original U.S. release: A&M 1090
Notes: Chip Taylor never lost faith in James Taylor’s songwriting, as evidenced by the inclusion of “Carolina in My Mind” on the latest LP by the King Bees’ old friend Evie Sands.
January 1970—Cat Stevens
Recording: Demos
Original bootleg release: Elton John, Rarities Collection 1969–1972 (no label, 1 CD)
Notes: Looking for a new record label, Stevens cut a number of demos in early 1970. One of these, the wonderfully clunky “Honey Man,” cut at Pye Studios on January 30, subsequently appeared on the Cat Stevens boxed set. The unknown Elton John provides piano, thus paving the way for “Honey Man,” to first surface aboard this disc.
This is one of the most comprehensive gatherings of genuine Elton rarities to have resurfaced, although one should take the title’s “1969–1972” billing with at least a little pinch of salt—“Billy and the Kids,” after all, is best known as a mid-1980s B side; “Go It Alone” and “I Fall Apart” hail from the Leather Jackets era, and that’s just the first three songs. Later, “Cry to Heaven” was on Ice on Fire; “Sweetheart on Parade” is from Elton’s Gary Osborne days; “Chameleon” was on Blue Moves; and “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”…Yeah, well, you get the picture.
When it sticks to its brief, however, the boot is great. True, the sound quality is thin enough to slide under doors, but a demo for Empty Sky’s “Lady What’s Tomorrow” kicks off a sequence that also includes “Sixty Years On,” “Son of Your Father,” “I Need You to Turn To,” and “Indian Summer,” together with such acetate-only jewels as “Sara’s Coming Back,” “There Is Still a Little Love,” and “There’s Still Time for Me.” “Honey Man” was definitely worth the price of admission.
March 1970—James Taylor
LP: Sweet Baby James
Original U.S. release: Warners 1843
Original UK release: Warners K46043
U.S. chart peak: #3 (102 weeks)
UK chart peak: #7 (59 weeks)
Tracks: “Sweet Baby James” / “Lo and Behold” / “Sunny Skies” / “Steamroller” / “Country Road” / “Oh Susanna” / “Fire and Rain” / “Blossom” / “Anywhere Like Heaven” / “Oh Baby, Don’t You Loose Your Lip on Me” / “Suite for 20G”
Notes: Considering its sacred place in the pantheon of singer-songwriters in general and Taylor’s oeuvre in particular, Sweet Baby James is a surprisingly unambitious album, its stone-cold classics (the title track, “Fire and Rain”) very much outnumbered by the songs that could be considered little more than lighthearted muso rock. The mood makes a mockery of the record’s reputation for introspection and self-absorption. True, it never becomes a barrel of laughs. But the Flying Machine–era “Steamroller,” the disingenuous “Suite for 20G,” and a throwaway cover of “Oh Susanna” grin a lot wider than the maudlin man on the cover looks like he ought to.
March 1970—Carole King
45: “Up On the Roof” b/w “Eventually”
Original U.S. release: Ode 66006
Notes: A trailer for King’s upcoming solo debut LP, reprising the old Drifters hit.
March 1970—Tom Rush
LP: Tom Rush
Original U.S. release: Columbia 9972
U.S. chart peak: #76 (16 weeks)
Notes: Includes Jackson Browne’s “Colors of the Sun” and “These Days.”
April 1970—Jackson Browne
LP: The Criterion Demo
Tracks: “Last Time I Was Home” / “Jamaica Say You Will” / “Song for Adam” / “Doctor My Eyes” / “Low Road” / “Door into the Morning” / “Another Place” / “The Birds of St. Marks” / “Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood” / “Gone to Sorrow” / “Hot Like Today” / “A Child in These Hills” / “The Top” / “My Opening Farewell” / “The Times You’ve Come” / “From Silver Lake” / “Some Kind of Friend” / “There Came a Question” / “Have I Seen Her? ” / “Colors of the Sun” / “Dancing Sam” / “Taking So Long”
Notes: The fruits of a handful of sessions dating back to the previous fall, recorded for Browne’s new publishers, Criterion.
Spring 1970—Various Artists
LP: Bumpers
Original UK release: Island IDP 1
Notes: A bountiful double-album package showcasing the cream of the Island label’s early 1970 output, highlighting recent releases and anticipating forthcoming ones and following a tradition launched by the earlier You Can All Join In and Nice Enough to Eat.
Of all the labels operating in the UK as the decade turned, Island was unquestionably the most adventurous, at the same time maintaining a stable whose internal logic now seems impeccable. Leaning toward the folkier side of hard rock and the bluesier edge of prog, Island rounded up the stars of the British underground, and these periodic compilations showcased the label at its best, maintaining a cohesion and sense of musical purpose that few (if any) samplers can match.
Cat Stevens’s contribution was the still-unreleased Mona Bone Jakon’s gorgeous “Maybe You’re Right.”
May 1970—Johnny Darrell
LP: California Stop-Over
Original U.S. release: United Artists UAS 6752
Notes: Includes version of Jackson Browne’s “Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood” and “These Days.”
May 1970—Carole King
LP: Writer
Original U.S. release: Ode 77006
Original UK release: A&M AMLS 996
Tracks: “Spaceship Races” / “No Easy Way Down” / “Child of Mine” / “Goin’ Back” / “To Love” / “What Have You Got to Lose” / “Eventually” / “Raspberry Jam” / “Can’t You Be Real” / “I Can’t Hear You No More” / “Sweet Sweetheart” / “Up On the Roof”
June 1970—Cat Stevens
45: “Lady D’Arbanville” b/w “Time/Fill My Eyes”
Original UK release: Island WIP 6086
UK chart peak: #8 (13 weeks)
June 1970—Cat Stevens
LP: Mona Bone Jakon
Original U.S. release: A&M 4260
Original UK release: Island ILPS 9118
U.S. chart peak: #164 (16 weeks from March 1970)
UK chart peak: #63 (4 weeks)
Notes: An outtake from the album, the B side “Time/Fill My Eyes,” was featured on the Cat Stevens boxed set.
July 1970—James Taylor
45: “Sweet Baby James” b/w “Suite for Zog”
Original U.S. release: Warners 7387
Notes: Taylor appeared on TV’s Mike Douglas Show in the run-up to this release (June 11) to perform “Sweet Baby James” and “Blossom.”
July 1970: Jimmy Cliff
45: “Wild World” b/w “Be Aware”
Original UK release: Island WIP 6087
UK chart peak: #8 (12 weeks)
Notes: The studio band that accompanied Cliff on the single would also work with Cat Stevens as he began demoing material for his next album. One track from this process, “The Joke” (recorded at Island Studios on September 17), would appear on the Cat Stevens boxed set.
July 1970—Livingston Taylor
LP: Livingston Taylor
Original U.S. release: Capricorn SD 33-334
Tracks: “Sit On Back” / “Doctor Man” / “Six Days on the Road” / “Packet of Good Times” / “Hush a Bye” / “Carolina Day” / “Can’t Get Back Home” / “In My Reply” / “Lost in the Love of You” / “Good Friends” / “Thank You Song”
Notes: One single was culled from Liv’s debut album, “Carolina Day” b/w ”Sit On Back.”
August 1970—John Stewart
LP: Willard
Original U.S. release: Capitol ST 540
Notes: Best known for writing the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer,” folkie Stewart put out a second album that was a veritable family affair, as producer Peter Asher recruited James Taylor, Carole King, Joel Bishop, Russ Kunkel, Abigail Haness, and Danny Kortchmar to the proceedings. Taylor contributed guitar and/or vocals to four songs: “Big Joe,” “Clack Clack,” “All American Girl” and “Oldest Living Son”—none of which was singled out as “especially noteworthy” by Billboard’s review.
Fall 1970—Various Artists
LP: El Pea
Original UK release: Island IDLP 1
Notes: Following on from Bumpers, El Pea features crucial cuts from across the label’s then-forthcoming release schedule; each assuredly drew an entire new audience into Island’s grasp, in an age when the label was simply pumping out new product.
The punningly titled (and sleeved) El Pea highlights much of what 1970 had in store for the label, with selections ranging from cuts from much-anticipated new albums by superstars Traffic and Free to those by cult demigods Mott the Hoople and Quintessence, and a handful of names that might well have been new to the average browser: Mike Heron slipping out of the Incredible String Band with his Smiling Men with Bad Reputations debut, Nick Drake still laboring away in absolute obscurity, and so on.
And so it goes on—from Jethro Tull to Blodwyn Pig, from Fairport Convention to Sandy Denny, twenty-one tracks spread across four sides of vinyl, with Cat Stevens nestling on side three with his version of Jimmy Cliff’s signature hit “Wild World.”
September 1970—James Taylor
45: “Fire and Rain” b/w “Anywhere like Heaven” (U.S. B side) or “Sunny Skies”(UK B side)
Original U.S. release: Warners 7423
Original UK release: Warners 6104
U.S. chart peak: #3 (16 weeks)
UK chart peak: #42 (3 weeks)
Notes: Taylor’s breakthrough hit, at least in the USA, “Fire and Rain” is also his most oft-covered composition. Immediate versions by Anne Murray, Johnny Rivers, R. B. Greaves, R. Dean Taylor, and Blood Sweat and Tears were followed in 1971 by versions from John Denver, Andy Williams, Richie Havens, the Isley Brothers, Skeeter Davis, Bobby Womack, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Cher, and more. Today, more than fifty different artists have released their own interpretations of the song.
October 1970—James Taylor
45: “Carolina in My Mind” b/w “Something’s Wrong”
Original U.S. release: Apple 1805 (1969)
U.S. chart peak: #67 (7 weeks)
Notes: A timely reissue for Taylor’s first Apple 45, successfully riding the coattails of the hit.
October 1970—James Taylor
LP: Amchitka: The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace (recorded live October 16, 1970)
Tracks: Introduction / Introduction of Phil Ochs / “The Bells” / “Rhythms of Revolution” / “Chords of Fame” / “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” / “Joe Hill” / “Changes” / “I’m Gonna Say It Now” / “No More Songs” (all Phil Ochs) / Introduction of James Taylor / “Something in the Way She Moves” / “Fire and Rain” / “Carolina in My Mind” / “Blossom” / “Riding on a Railroad” / “Sweet Baby James” / “You Can Close Your Eyes” (all James Taylor) / Introduction of Joni Mitchell / “Big Yellow Taxi” / “Bony Maroney / “Cactus Tree / “The Gallery” / “Hunter” / “My Old Man” / “For Free” / “Woodstock” (all Joni Mitchell) / “Carey” / “Mr. Tambourine Man” (Joni Mitchell and James Taylor) / “A Case of You” (Mitchell) / “The Circle Game” (Joni Mitchell and James Taylor)
Notes: The album was originally released by Greenpeace in November 2009.
October 1970—James Taylor and Joni Mitchell
LP: In Perfect Harmony
Original bootleg release: Escargot records (no catalog number)
Tracks: “That Song About Midway” / “The Gallery” (Joni Mitchell) / “Rainy Day Man” / “Steamroller” (James Taylor) / “The Priest Song” / “Carey (Joni Mitchell) / “Carolina in My Mind” (James Taylor) / “California” / “For Free” / “The Circle Game” (Joni Mitchell) / “You Can Close Your Eyes” (Joni Mitchell + James Taylor)
Notes: The album was recorded live at the London Royal Albert Hall, October 29, 1970. Both Joni and James would also make solo appearances on BBC TV’s In Concert series during this visit, Mitchell opening the first series on October 9; Taylor following on November 16.
Late 1970—James Taylor
LP: Roses for Carole
Original bootleg release: Main Street
Tracks: “For Free” / “Carolina in My Mind” / “Okie from Muskogee” / “Sweet Baby James” / “Circle ’Round the Sun” / “Greensleeves” / “Blossom” / “Up On the Roof” (Carole King vocal) / “Country Road” / “Night Owl” / “Brighten Your Night with My Day” / “Long Ago and Far Away” / “Riding on a Railroad” / “Highway Song” / “Fire and Rain” / “You Can Close Your Eyes”
Notes: Recorded at the Berkeley Community Center in California, 1970.
November 1970—Cat Stevens
LP: Tea for the Tillerman
Original U.S. release: A&M 4280
Original UK release: Island ILPS 9135
UK chart peak: #20 (39 weeks)
U.S. chart peak: #8 (79 weeks)
Tracks: “Where Do the Children Play” / “Hard Headed Woman” / “Wild World” / “Sad Lisa” / “Miles from Nowhere” / “But I Might Die Tonight” / “Longer Boats” / “Into White” / “On the Road to Find Out” / “Father and Son” / “Tea for the Tillerman”
Notes: An outtake from the album, “Love Lives in the Sky,” was featured on the Cat Stevens boxed set.
November 1970—Cat Stevens
LP: The World of Cat Stevens
Original UK release: Decca SPA93
Notes: A budget-priced compilation of material from Stevens’s two Deram LPs.
November 1970—Cat Stevens
Recording: French TV bootleg video
Tracks: “Lady D’Arbanville” / “Wild World” / “Katmandu” / “Maybe You’re Right”
November 1970—Carole King
LP: Tapestry
Original U.S. release: Ode 77009
Original UK release: A&M AMLS 2025
U.S. chart peak: #1 (302 weeks)
UK chart peak: #4 (90 weeks)
Tracks: “I Feel the Earth Move” / “So Far Away” / “It’s Too Late” / “Home Again” / “Beautiful” / “Way Over Yonder” / “You’ve Got a Friend” / “Where You Lead” / “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” / “Smackwater Jack” / “Tapestry” / “A Natural Woman”
Notes: Even if you have never heard Tapestry, its contents are a part of your musical furniture. From the reprise of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” a hit in 1961, to “Where You Lead”’s rebirth as the theme to television’s Gilmore Girls in the late 1990s, and on to the sheer ubiquity of “I Feel the Earth Move,” “It’s Too Late,” and “A Natural Woman,” Tapestry is the soundtrack of the baby boom generation and beyond. And for that, if nothing else, the album deserves every plaudit that has ever been showered upon it.
Tapestry was reissued within Sony’s Legacy series in April 2008, accompanied by a second disc re-creating the album in live form, drawn from concerts recorded in 1973 and 1976.
November 1970—Tom Rush
LP: Wrong End of the Rainbow
Original U.S. release: Columbia 30402
U.S. chart peak: #110 (9 weeks)
Notes: Includes a version of James Taylor’s “Riding on a Railroad.”
November 1970—Gator Creek
LP: Gator Creek
Original U.S. release: Mercury SR 61311
Notes: Gator Creek was a sprawling eight-piece band made up of some of L.A.’s most in-demand session players: husband-and-wife duo Kathy and Mike Deasy, saxophonist Allen Beutler, keyboard players Mike O’Martin and Dee Barton, bassist Ray Neapolitan, drummer Gene Pello, and a Messina-less singer/guitarist named Kenny Loggins. Their first and only LP includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “These Days.”
December 1970—Jo Mama
LP: Jo Mama
Original U.S. release: Atlantic SD 8269
Tracks: “Machine Gun Kelly” / “Midnight Rider” / “Searching High, Searching Low” / “Lighten Up, Tighten Up” / “Venga Venga” / “Sailing” / “Great Balls of Fire” / “The Sky Is Falling” / “The Word Is Goodbye” / “Check Out This Gorilla” / “Cotton Eyed Joe” / “Love’ll Get You High”
Notes: Peter Asher perhaps inevitably produced the debut album by Kootch’s Jo Mama, a high-octane funky rock band completed by Abigail Haness, Joel Bishop, Charlie Larkey, and former Clear Light organist Ralph Schuckett.
The album is loose and boogiesome, packed with slinky originals, and one of the sexiest “Great Balls of Fire” ever waxed. With Haness an irresistible force that peaks with the sensuous “The Word Is Goodbye,” and the folk hoedown “Cotton Eye Joe” transformed into a blue-eyed soul, Jo Mama slithers out of the speakers like a swamp snake, yet its direct lineage to Writer, Tapestry, and Sweet Baby James is unmistakable.
Early 1971—Marianne Faithfull
LP: Rich Kid Blues
Original UK release: Demon DIAB 861
Notes: Anybody searching for the finest ever cover of a Cat Stevens song should halt here, with Marianne Faithfull’s version of “Sad Lisa.”
Faithfull was at the end of her tether when she got together with producer Mike Leander to record the sessions that what would, after almost three decades in the archive, become her Rich Kid Blues LP. She was living rough on a Soho bomb site in early 1971; Leander agreed to help her back onto her feet, finding her an apartment, encouraging her to go into detox (she lasted a day and a half before she persuaded someone to bring her some smack), and arranging for publishers Gem Music to finance the making of a new album. Then, with Faithfull sporting the dental damage wreaked by a male nurse at the detox clinic, a broad gap where her front teeth had once been, Leander took her into the studio.
It was a peculiar situation. “People, even people I was working with every day on the record, persisted in seeing me as this glittering, wealthy, high-living chick, when it was perfectly obvious that I wasn’t anything like that anymore. I’d moved on. I wasn’t living in Chelsea, I was hanging out on a bomb site in Soho. I was missing my two front teeth.”
Her teeth weren’t the only thing she’d lost. Her voice had completely abandoned its original richness; had shed even the husk that had rattled through her last single, “Sister Morphine.” Even there, she had at least been recognizable. Now, she was reduced to speaking in a pained whisper, shot through with gaping holes from which her very soul hung out to dry, and Faithfull herself admits, “My voice is so weak…I can’t bear to listen to it. It’s the sound of somebody incredibly high, probably on the edge of death. There’s no energy. Anybody who heard that record would have just said, ‘Well, that’s that. We’ll never hear from her again.’”
Although the sessions unquestionably feed out of the same basic mind-set that inspired Faithfull’s original recording of “Sister Morphine,” back then, she had only been wondering what it might feel like to be so close to death. Now she knew, and her choice of songs echoed that knowledge: sparse, stark interpretations of Tim Hardin’s “Southern Butterfly,” Sandy Denny’s “Crazy Lady Blues,” Phil Ochs’s “Chords of Fame,” and, of three Dylan covers, a positively spine-chilling “Visions of Johanna.”
But it is “Sad Lisa” that truly haunts, a rendering that wrings so much meaning from Stevens’s lyric that it could almost be a different song. But it isn’t.
February 1971—Cat Stevens
45: “Wild World” b/w “Miles from Nowhere”
Original U.S. release: A&M 1231
U.S. chart peak: #11 (13 weeks)
February 1971—James Taylor
45: “Country Road” b/w “Sunny Skies”
Original U.S. release: Warners 7460
U.S. chart peak: #37 (8 weeks)
Notes: A surprisingly underperforming follow-up to one of the signature hits of the previous year, but with so much Taylor on the market now, who can blame anyone if they decided to just keep listening to the songs at 33 rpm?
February 1971—Cat Stevens
Recording: Soundtrack session
Notes: Recording for the Harold and Maude movie soundtrack took place on February 15 at the Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. “Don’t Be Shy” and “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” were featured on the Cat Stevens boxed set.
February 1971—The Flying Machine
LP: James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine
Original U.S. release: Euphoria 2 (recorded 1967)
U.S. chart peak: #74 (8 weeks)
Tracks: “Rainy Day Man” / “Knocking Round the Zoo” / “Something’s Wrong” (instrumental) / “Night Owl” / “Brighten Your Night with My Day” / “Kootch’s Song” / “Knocking Round the Zoo” (Danny Kortchmar vocal)
CD bonus tracks: “Knocking Round the Zoo” intro / “Brighten Your Night with My Day” intro / “Knocking Round the Zoo” (alternate version) / “Night Owl” (alternate version)
Notes: An opportunistic first release for the long-archived recordings made the afternoon that Taylor, Kootch and Co. spent in the studio with Chip Taylor. The album was accompanied by a single, “Brighten Your Night with My Day” b/w “Knocking Round the Zoo.”
February 1971—James Taylor
Notes: Taylor appeared on television’s Johnny Cash Show on February 17, performing four songs: “Fire and Rain,” “Country Road,” and “Sweet Baby James,” plus a duet of “Oh Susanna” with the host. It was after this broadcast that he and fellow guest Linda Ronstadt were spirited away by Neil Young to contribute to Young’s gestating Harvest LP (see below).
March 1971—Cat Stevens
LP: Matthew and Son / New Masters
Original U.S. release: Deram 18005/10
U.S. chart peak: #173 (12 weeks)
Notes: A two-LP set pairing Stevens’s first two Deram albums.
March 1971—Alex Taylor
LP: Alex Taylor with Friends and Neighbors
Original U.S. release: Capricorn SD 860
U.S. chart peak: #190 (2 weeks)
Tracks: “Highway Song” / “Southern Kids” / “All in Line” / “Night Owl” / “C Song” / “It’s All Over Now” / “Baby Ruth” / “Take Out Some Insurance” / “Southbound”
March 1971—Kate Taylor
LP: Sister Kate
Original U.S. release: Cotillion SD 9045
U.S. chart peak: #88 (8 weeks)
Tracks: “Home Again” / “Ballad of a Well Known Gun” / “Be That Way” / “Handbags and Gladrags” / “You Can Close Your Eyes” / “Look at Granny Run, Run” / “Where You Lead” / “White Lightning” / “Country Comfort” / “Lo and Behold” / “Jesus Is Just All Right” / “Do I Still Figure in Your Life” / “Sweet Honesty”
Notes: It would be seven years before Kate followed up Sister Kate, with a self-titled album coproduced by brother James.
March 1971—Tom Rush
LP: Classic Rush
Original U.S. release: Elektra 74062
U.S. chart peak: #198 (1 week)
Notes: Compilation including “Shadow Dream Song” (Browne) and “Something in the Way She Moves” (Taylor) from The Circle Game.
March 1971—Jackson Browne
LP: Syracuse University
Tracks: “Under the Falling Sky” / “World to Gain” / “Together Again” / “Mae Jean Goes to Hollywood” / “Last Time I Was Home” / “Jesus in 3-4 Time” / My Opening Farewell from Silverlake” / “Rock Me on the Water” / “Jamaica Say You Will” / “Holiday Inn (aka “Together Again”)” / “Take It Underground” / “When You Lose Your Money” / “Our Lady of the Well” / “These Days” / “Someday Morning” / “Shadow Dream Song” / “Song for Adam” / “Looking into You”
Notes: An oft-circulated recording of Browne’s March 27 show includes four songs that are not known from any other source: “Holiday Inn,” “Take It Underground,” “When You Lose Your Money,” and “World to Gain.”
March 1971—James Taylor
LP: Live at the Anaheim Convention Center
Original bootleg release: CBM (no cat number)
Tracks: “Sweet Baby James” / “I Feel Fine” / “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On the Jukebox” / “Sunny Skies” / “Chili Dog” / “Steamroller” / “Riding on a Railroad” / “Conversation” / “Places in My Past” / “You Can Close Your Eyes” / “Soldiers” / “Carolina in My Mind” / “Long Ago and Far Away” / “Country Roads” / “Fire and Rain” / “Sixteen Candles” / “Love Has Brought Me / “Oh Don’t You Know” / “Come On Brother Get Up and Help me Find the Screw” / “The Promised Land” / “Isn’t It Nice to Be Home Again”
Notes: The most ubiquitous of early James Taylor bootlegs, this album, which was recorded live on March 21, 1971, features cuts that have also appeared on the discs In Disneyland, Isn’t It Nice to Be Home Again, A King and Two James, and Tailor Made.
March 1971—Joni Mitchell
LP: Blue
Original U.S. release: Reprise 2038
Original UK release: Reprise K44128
U.S. chart peak: #15 (28 weeks)
UK chart peak: #3 (18 weeks)
Notes: With a voice that could accelerate from foxy to foghorn without pausing for breath, Mitchell was always the auditory joker in the singer-songwriter pack, a point that she would prove with her later embrace of jazz and even avant-garde possibilities. For now, however, she was happy to have found a home, and Blue, the album that history rates as her best, is her most devout concession to the form. James Taylor appears on “California.”
April 1971—Cat Stevens
Recording: An audience recording of Stevens’s return to the Gaslight, a Greenwich Village club
Tracks: “Moon Shadow” / “On the Road to Find Out” / “Wild World” / “Longer Boats” / “Maybe You’re Right” / “Sad Lisa” / “Miles from Nowhere” / “Hard Headed Woman” / “Peace Train” / “Father and Son” / “Charges IV”
April 1971—Carole King
45: “It’s Too Late” b/w “I Feel the Earth Move”
Original U.S. release: Ode 66015
Original UK release: A&M 849
U.S. chart peak: #1 (17 weeks)
UK chart peak: #6 (12 weeks)
Notes: The most successful of singles culled from Tapestry but by no means the sole smash. “So Far Away” b/w “Smackwater Jack” would make #14 later in the year, while UK buyers were tempted with a Top 20 reactivation of King’s first solo hit, 1962’s “It Might as Well Rain Until September.”
May 1971—Carole King
LP: California Concept
Original bootleg release: Carnaby Records (no cat number)
Tracks: “I Feel the Earth Move” / “Whispering Wind” / “Child of Mine” / “Beautiful” / “It’s Too Late” / “Smackwater Jack” / “So Far ”/ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” / “Up On the Roof” / “You’ve Got a Friend” / “Natural Woman”
Notes: Recorded at the Troubadour, May 1971.
May 1971—James Taylor
Notes: Taylor made his second appearance on the top BBC TV series In Concert on May 3, 1971.
May 1971—James Taylor
LP: Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon
Tracks: “Love Has Brought Me Around” / “You’ve Got a Friend” / “Places in My Past” / “Riding on a Railroad” / “Soldiers” / “Mud Slide Slim” / “Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox” / “You Can Close Your Eyes” / “Machine Gun Kelly” / “Long Ago and Far Away” / “Let Me Ride” / “Highway Song” / “Isn’t It Nice to Be Home Again”
Original U.S. release: Warner 2561
Original UK release: K46085
U.S. chart peak: #2 (45 weeks)
UK chart peak: #4 (42 weeks)
June 1971—Cat Stevens
45: “Moon Shadow” b/w “Father and Son”
Original U.S. release: A&M 1265
Original UK release: Island WIP 6092
U.S. chart peak: #30 (11 weeks)
UK chart peak: #22 (11 weeks)
June 1971—Cat Stevens
LP: Father and Son
Original bootleg release: Trademark of Quality TMOQ 71036
Tracks: “Moon Shadow” / “On the Road to Find Out” / “Wild World” / “Longer Boats” / “Father and Son” / “Hard Headed Woman”
Notes: These tracks were taken from the PBS (KCET Los Angeles): Full Circle TV performance broadcast on June 8, 1971. The LP was completed with the following cuts from a Chicago performance the following year: “Where Do The Children Play” / “Miles from Nowhere” / “Maybe You’re Right” / “Peace Train” / “Sad Lisa” / “Changes IV” / “Into White.”
June 1971—Cat Stevens
LP: Chapter 4
Original bootleg release: CBM 681
Tracks: “Moon Shadow” / “Where Do the Children Play” / “Wild World” / “How Can I Tell You” / “On the Road to Find Out” / “Miles from Nowhere” / “Lisa Lisa” / “Longer Boats” / “Peace Train” / “Hard Headed Woman” / “Father and Son” / “Changes IV”
Notes: Taken from a performance recorded live June 21, 1971. A number of shows on this tour were recorded and subsequently bootlegged, including Berkeley (June 30, 1971) and Santa Monica (July 1, 1971—the show that featured the off-the-cuff rendition of “Portobello Road” that prompted Alun Davies to include the song on his solo LP).
June 1971—Carole King
LP: Carnegie Hall Concert, June 18, 1971
Original U.S. release: Sony 485104 (released 1996)
Tracks: “I Feel the Earth Move” / “Home Again” / “After All This Time” / “Child of Mine” / “Carry Your Load” / “No Easy Way Down” / “Song of Long Ago” / “Snow Queen” / “Smackwater Jack” / “So Far Away” / “It’s Too Late” / “Eventually” / “Way Over Yonder” / “Beautiful” / “You’ve Got a Friend” / “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” / “Some Kind of Wonderful” / “Up On the Roof” / “Natural Woman”
Notes: Having already informed the audience that “Song of Long Ago” was written under the influence of James Taylor, King surprised positively nobody by stepping out for the end of the show with Taylor in tow, to duet through a remarkable “You’ve Got a Friend,” an imploring “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” and a heartbreaking “Up On the Roof.” It’s a magnificent performance, your ears almost urging King’s fragile, sometimes even childlike voice not to give out or give in, even though you know it won’t. Unconscionably archived for a quarter of a century before finally being released, Carnegie Hall Concert is King at her undisputed peak.
June 1971—The Byrds
LP: Byrd Maniax
Original U.S. release: Columbia 30640
U.S. chart peak: #46 (10 weeks)
Notes: Includes version of Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.”
August 1971—Johnny Rivers
LP: Home Grown
Original U.S. release: United Artists UAS 5532
U.S. chart peak: #148 (4 weeks)
Notes: Includes versions of James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and Jackson Browne’s “Our Lady of the Well” and “Rock Me on the Water.”
August 1971—James Taylor
45: “You’ve Got a Friend” b/w “You Can Close Your Eyes”
Original U.S. release: Warner Brothers 7498
Original UK release: Warner Brothers K16085
U.S. chart peak: #1 (14 weeks)
UK chart peak: #4 (15 weeks)
September 1971—Cat Stevens
45: “Tuesday’s Dead” b/w “Miles from Nowhere”
Original UK release: Island WIP 6102
Notes: An unexpected miss.
September 1971—Cat Stevens
45: “Peace Train” b/w “Where Do the Children Play”
Original U.S. release: A&M 1291
U.S. chart peak: #7 (12 weeks)
Notes: Two of Stevens’s best-known, most successful and most loved tracks, astonishingly never released as singles in his homeland.
September 1971—Cat Stevens
LP: Teaser and the Firecat
Original U.S. release: A&M 4313
Original UK release: Island ILPS 9154
U.S. chart peak: #2 (67 weeks)
UK chart peak: #3 (93 weeks)
Tracks: “The Wind” / “Ruby Love” / “If I Laugh” / “Changes IV” / “How Can I Tell You” / “Tuesday’s Dead” / “Morning Has Broken” / “Bitterblue” / “Moon Shadow” / “Peace Train”
Notes: An outtake from the album, “The Day They Make Me Tsar” (from the two-year-old Revolussia stage play), was featured in the Cat Stevens boxed set.
September 1971—James Taylor
45: “Long Ago and Far Away” b/w “Let Me Ride”
Original U.S. release: Warner Brothers 7521
U.S. chart peak: #31 (8 weeks)
September 1971—Jo Mama
LP: J Is for Jump
Original U.S. release: Atlantic SD 8288
Tracks: “Keep on Truckin’” / “Back on the Street Again” / “Smackwater Jack” / “If I Had a Billion Dollars” / “My Long Time” / “When the Lights Are Way Down Low” / “Love Is Blind” / “3 A.M. in L.A. ” / “Sweet and Slow” / “Have You Ever Been to Pittsburgh” / “Sho ’Bout to Drive Me Wild”
Notes: Kootch and Co.’s second (and final) album was a considerably slicker, more laid-back beast than its incendiary predecessor, slinky still but dipping deep into a blue-eyed soul vein that American rock would not truly be mining for another couple of years. A cover of Carole King’s “Smackwater Jack” is a highlight, however, and “Have You Ever Been to Pittsburgh” travels on an almost mantric hook line. “Back on the Street Again,” would receive a major boost when James Taylor covered it on his next album, One Man Dog.
Following the band’s breakup, Abigail Haness, like the rest of the members, moved into a long career in sessions, but she may be best remembered as the singing voice of Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
October 1971—Carole King
Notes: King took a very pink-clad bow on BBC TV’s In Concert series on October 2, 1971, with James Taylor as her special guest guitarist (“So Far Away”).
November 1971—James Taylor
Notes: Having already guested on Carole King’s In Concert BBC TV broadcast on October 2, Taylor returned for his own performance, broadcast on November 13.
November 1971—Cat Stevens
Recording: Bootleg video/DVD
Tracks: “Moon Shadow” / “Tuesday’s Dead” / “Wild World” / “How Can I Tell You” / “Maybe You’re Right” / “I Love My Dog” / “Bitterblue” / “Changes IV” / “Into White” / “Father and Son”
Notes: Unreleased officially, but oft-circulated, the video is of Stevens’s BBC In Concert TV performance broadcast November 27, 1971.
November 1971—The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
LP: All the Good Times
Original U.S. release: United Artists 5553
U.S. chart peak: #162 (10 weeks)
Notes: Includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.”
November 1971—Linda Ronstadt
LP: Linda Ronstadt
Original U.S. release: Capitol ST 635
U.S. chart peak: #163 (10 weeks)
Notes: Includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “Rock Me on the Water.”
December 1971—Cat Stevens
45: “Morning Has Broken” b/w “I Want to Live in a Wigwam”
Original U.S. release: A&M 1335
Original UK release: Island WIP 6121
U.S. chart peak: #6 (14 weeks)
UK chart peak: #9 (13 weeks)
Notes: B side “I Want to Live in a Wigwam” was a Teaser and the Firecat leftover that would remain unavailable on LP until its inclusion on 1985’s Footsteps in the Dark—Greatest Hits Volume Two LP (Island ILPS/ICT 3736). It has since been collected in the Cat Stevens boxed set.
December 1971—Carole King
LP: Music
Original U.S. release: Ode 77013
Original UK release: A&M AMLH 67013
U.S. chart peak: #1 (44 weeks)
UK chart peak: #18 (10 weeks)
Tracks: “Brother Brother” / “Song of Long Ago” / “Brighter” / “Surely” / “Some Kind of Wonderful” / “It’s Going to Take Some Time” / “Music” / “Sweet Seasons” / “Carry Your Load” / “Growing Away from Me” / “Too Much Rain” / “Back to California”
Notes: It is oh-so-fashionable to describe Music as Tapestry Part Two: same band, same studios, same producer—it’s an easy course to take. But it is not the correct one, for one thing had changed. Tapestry was recorded with King still a commercial and, so far as the mainstream was concerned, critical unknown, following up two utterly overlooked LPs with what everybody involved assumed would be another. Instead, she found herself not simply with the biggest hit of the year, but one of the biggest hits of all time, and the fact that a woman who had never set foot on a stage before was now expected to write and record a suitable follow-up while also pounding the boards of the land placed an unimaginable burden on both singer and songs.
Despite spinning off the Top 10 hit “Sweet Seasons” b/w “Pocket” (Ode 66022), Music is archetypal King, but it is not remarkable King. “Some Kind of Wonderful,” the now-obligatory golden oldie, is the album’s peak; “It’s Going to Take Some Time” is its indisputable classic (even if it took Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” to make us realize that), and “Song of Long Ago” is a warmly wonderful duet with James Taylor.
Her own dislocation shows through in the number of songs that refer to being on the road and separation, which might have been okay if she’d not already said all there was to say on the subject in “So Far Away.” The album was still an enormous hit. But if Writer and Tapestry were the sound of a young woman not particularly looking for her place in this world, Music is the sound of her finding it regardless. And maybe not being bowled over by the discovery.
December 1971—Livingston Taylor
LP: Liv
Original U.S. release: Capricorn SD 863
Tracks: “Get Out of Bed” / “May I Stay” / “Open Up Your Eyes” / “Gentlemen” / “Easy Prey” / “Be That Way” / “Truck Driving Man” / “Mom, Dad” / “On Broadway” / “Caroline” / “I Just Can’t Be Lonesome No More”
Notes: One single, “Get Out of Bed,” was culled from Liv’s sophomore album, but did not progress beyond promotional copies.
December 1971—Carly Simon
LP: Anticipation
Original U.S. release: Elektra 75016
Original UK release: Elektra K42101
U.S. chart peak: #30 (31 weeks)
Notes: Recorded in London with Cat Stevens in attendance and his producer Paul Samwell-Smith overseeing the sessions, Anticipation was titled for the song Simon wrote about her first date with Cat, itself a hit single (#13) in early 1972.
January 1972—Cat Stevens
LP: Very Young and Early Songs
Original U.S. release: Deram 18061
U.S. chart peak: #94 (10 weeks)
Notes: Compilation of Deram-era material, largely focusing on non-LP tracks and hits.
February 1972—Jackson Browne
LP: Jackson Browne aka Saturate Before Using
Original U.S. release: Asylum 5051
Original UK release: Asylum SYL 9002
U.S. chart peak: #53 (23 weeks)
Tracks: “Jamaica Say You Will” / “A Child in These Hills” / “Song for Adam” / “Doctor My Eyes” / “From Silver Lake” / “Something Fine” / “Under the Falling Sky” / “Looking into You” / “Rock Me on the Water” / “My Opening Farewell”
February 1972—Alex Taylor
LP: Dinner Time
Original U.S. release: Capricorn CP 0101
Tracks: “Change Your Sexy Ways” / “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield” / “Comin’ Back to You” / “Four Days Gone” / “Payday” / “Who’s Been Talkin’” / “Who Will the Next Fool Be” / “From a Buick Six”
Notes: Alex would cut further albums, including Third for Music (Dunhill 50151—1974), Dancing with the Devil (Ichiban—1981) and Voodoo in Me (King Snake CD 15). He died in 1993.
February 1972—Neil Young
LP: Harvest
Original U.S. release: Reprise 2277-2
Notes: In Nashville in February 1971 to record at the city’s Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Neil Young was booked for a February 17 appearance on the Johnny Cash TV show, alongside James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. Following the broadcast, the trio returned to the studio, where they recorded Young’s newly written “Heart of Gold.” Taylor and Ronstadt handle backing vocals; Taylor also played banjo on the song “Old Man.”
March 1972—Jackson Browne
45: “Doctor My Eyes” b/w “I’m Looking into You”
Original U.S. release: Asylum 11004
Original UK release: Asylum K13403
U.S. chart peak: #8 (12 weeks)
March 1972—Tom Rush
LP: Merrimac County
Original U.S. release: Columbia 301306
U.S. chart peak: #128 (10 weeks)
Notes: Includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.”
March 1972—Jennifer Warnes
LP: Jennifer
Original U.S. release: Reprise MS 2065
Notes: Produced by John Cale, one of Jackson Browne’s colleagues on Nico’s Chelsea Girl LP in 1967, Jennifer includes a stunning reprise of that album’s “These Days.”
May 1972—Jackson Five
LP: Lookin’ Through the Windows
Original U.S. release: Motown 750
Original UK release: Tamla Motown STML 11214
U.S. chart peak: #7 (33 weeks)
UK chart peak: #16 (8 weeks from Nov. 1972)
Notes: Includes UK Top 10 hit version of Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes.”
August 1972—Jackson Browne
45: “Rock Me on the Water” b/w “Something Fine”
Original U.S. release: Asylum 11006
Original UK release: Asylum AYM 506
U.S. chart peak: #48 (9 weeks)
September 1972—Cat Stevens
LP: Catch Bull at Four
Original U.S. release: A&M 4365
Original UK release: Island ILPS 9206
U.S. chart peak: #2 (27 weeks)
UK chart peak: #1 (48 weeks)
Tracks: “Sitting” / “The Boy with the Moon and Star on His Head” / “Angel Sea” / “Silent Sunlight” / “Can’t Keep It In” / “18th Avenue” / “Freezing Steel” / “O Caritas” / “Sweet Scarlet” / “Ruins”
September 1972—Alun Davies
LP: Daydo
Original UK release: CBS 65108
Tracks: “Market Place” / “Old Bourbon” / “Portobello Road” / “Poor Street” / “Abram Brown Continued” / “Waste of Time” / “I’m Gonna Love You Too” / “Vale of Tears” / “I’m Late” / “Young Warrior”
Notes: A solid if occasionally workmanlike solo album from Cat Stevens’s longtime collaborator, largely recorded with Stevens’s regular band and with Cat and Paul Samwell-Smith in the producers’ chairs. The Melody Maker review points out that “there are plenty of good, interesting songs, and from working with Cat he has a full understanding and appreciation for writing good, strong melodies, so when in places his lyrics tend to fall down a little, there is still a tune to keep interest going.” Which about sums it up.
September 1972—Jackson Browne
LP: The Return of the Common Man
Original bootleg release: The Amazing Kornyfone Record Label TAKRL 1993
Tracks: “Take It Easy” / “A Song for Adam” / “My Opening Farewell” / “For Everyman” / “Redneck Friend”
Notes: Jackson Browne’s first bootleg was released in 1976. Side one dates from September 1975; side two (above) was recorded in New York City precisely three years earlier.
September 1972—Bonnie Koloc
LP: Hold onto Me
Original U.S. release: Ovation OVOD 14-26 208
Notes: Includes a version of Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.”
October 1972—Eagles
LP: Eagles
Original U.S. release: Asylum 5054
Original UK release: Asylum AYM 508
U.S. chart peak: #22 (49 weeks)
Notes: Includes versions of Jackson Browne’s “Nightingale” and “Take It Easy,” the latter a U.S. hit single (#12) that same summer.
October 1972—Bonnie Raitt
LP: Give It Up
Original U.S. release: Warner Brothers BS 2643
U.S. chart peak: #138 (15 weeks)
Notes: Having played a number of shows with Jackson Browne opening for her, Burbank, California–born Raitt included Browne’s “Give It Up or Let Me Go”—a song that would also be featured on the B side of her latest 45, “Stayed Too Long at the Fair”—on her second album.
October 1972—Cat Stevens
LP: Catnip
Original bootleg release: CBM (no catalog number)
Tracks: “Moon Shadow” / “On the Road” / “Where Do the Children Play” / “Longer Boats” / “Maybe You’re Right” / “Miles from Nowhere” / “Strange Sound” / “Hard Headed Woman” / “I Know I Have to Go” / “Sad Lisa” / “Let’s All Start Living” / “Into White”
Notes: A number of dates on Cat’s 1972 U.S. fall tour were recorded and subsequently distributed as bootlegs, including Columbus, Ohio (October 21), Tampa (October 25), Cleveland (October 30) and Toronto (November 12).
November 1972—Cat Stevens
45: “Sitting” b/w “Crab Dance”
Original U.S. release: A&M 1396
U.S. chart peak: #16 (11 weeks)
November 1972—Cat Stevens
45: “Can’t Keep It In” b/w “Crab Dance”
Original UK release: Island WIP 6152
UK chart peak: #13 (12 weeks)
November 1972—James Taylor
LP: November 1972 Volumes 1 and 2
Original bootleg release: Sweet Records 4033/Country Records 4022
Tracks: “Sweet Baby James” / “Making Whoopee” / “Long Ago and Far Away” / “Lo and Behold” / “Anywhere like Heaven” / “Brighten Your Night with My Day” / “Something in the Way She Moves” / “Highway Song” / “Sunny Skies” / “Carolina in My Mind” / “To Cry” / instrumental / “Hymn” / “Fanfare” / “Nobody but You” / “You’ve Got a Friend” / “Chili Dog” / “New Tune” / “Back on the Street Again” / “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” / “Country Song” / “One Man Parade” / “Steamroller” / “Fire and Rain” / “You Can Close Your Eyes”
Notes: Recorded live at Radio City Music Hall, New York, November 4, 1972.
November 1972—Dianne Davidson
LP: Mountain Mama
Original U.S. release: Janus JLS 3048
Notes: The third album by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Davidson includes versions of Jackson Browne’s “Something Fine” and “Song for Adam.”
November 1972—Carly Simon
45: “You’re So Vain” b/w “His Friends Are More Than Fond of Robin”
Original U.S. release: Elektra 45824
Original UK release: Elektra K42127
U.S. chart peak: #1 (17 weeks)
UK chart peak: #3 (15 weeks)
Notes: The erstwhile Mrs. James Taylor later revealed that “You’re So Vain” was written about David Geffen, but only after almost forty years of rumor had allied its subject matter with actor Warren Beatty, singer Mick Jagger, husband J.T., and even former lover Cat Stevens. Stevens was swift to deny the rumor. The single was still on the chart when he remarked, “If ‘You’re So Vain’ is dedicated to me, it’s only as much as Carly Simon is a Cancer and so am I. She might in fact be writing about herself. In that song, I think she mentions ‘Mirror.’”
Released alongside the single, the attendant album No Secrets (Elektra 75049) would also top the charts in 1973. Taylor sings backup on one song, “Waited So Long,” while Simon also covers his Flying Machine–era “Night Owl.”
November 1972—James Taylor
LP: One Man Dog
Original U.S. release: Warner Brothers BS 2660
Original UK release: Warner Brothers K46185
U.S. chart peak: #4 (25 weeks)
UK chart peak: #27 (5 weeks)
Tracks: “One Man Parade” / “Nobody but You” / “Chili Dog” / “Fool for You” / “Instrumental I” / “New Tune” / “Back on the Street Again” / “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” / “Woh, Don’t You Know” / “One Morning in May” / “Instrumental II” / “Someone / Hymn” / “Fanfare” / “Little David” / “Mescalito” / “Dance” / “Jig”
November 1972—The Section
LP: The Section
Original U.S. release: Warner Brothers BS 2661
Tracks: “Second Degree” / “Same Old Same Old” / “Sporadic Vacuums of Thought” / “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” / “Holy Frijoles” / “Doing the Meatball” / “Swan Song” / “The Thing What Is” / “Mah-Hoo-Dah-Vay” / “Zippo Dippo”
Notes: Released simultaneously with the latest James Taylor album, The Section finds his regular band of Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Craig Doerge, and Russ Kunkel stepping out on their own with a fine slice of rootsy R&B. Jo Mama revisited!
November 1972—James Taylor
45: “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” b/w “Who, Don’t You Know”
Original U.S. release: Warner Brothers 7655
Original UK release: Warner Brothers K46185
U.S. chart peak: #14 (11 weeks)
Notes: One further hit single would spiral from One Man Dog, as “One Man Parade” b/w “Nobody but You” limped to #67 in spring 1973. It would be Taylor’s final solo hit for two years (a duet with Carly Simon, “Mockingbird,” reached #5 in 1974).