Today marks the first appearance of Catie Curtis on the blog, and probably the first time I’ve thought about the Boston-based folk rock artist since I bought this album sometime after its 2001 release.
My memory is fuzzy but I believe it was my wife who discovered Curtis through an NPR interview and suggested we give the full album a listen.
Here’s a song from Bob Dylan’s great 1997 album Time Out of Mind, a “comeback” record that earned him the Album of the Year Grammy. Amazingly, this is the only Dylan release to ever win Grammy’s top honor.
‘Standing in the Doorway’ is a highlight of this elegiac album. It’s about the end of a relationship, but like most songs on Time Out of Mind, it feels like it’s just as much about the end of life.
Closing out my three weeks on the albums of 1974 is Barry White’s Can’t Get Enough. This was White’s third album and his only one to top the Billboard 200.
Between 1973 and 1975, White released his first four albums and saw every one top the R&B chart. Six of the 10 albums he released in the 70s did so, and nine of the 10 went Gold or Platinum.
Five months ago, while writing about the latest additions to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, I confessed that I didn’t know ‘Lady Marmalade’ was a cover (I know the song through its inclusion in the 2001 film Moulin Rouge).
In fact, it was a hit R&B song by Labelle, a band fronted by Patti LaBelle.
Well, this week Labelle makes another appearance thanks to their 1974 album Nightbirds, on which ‘Lady Marmalade’ is the opening track.
I was impressed by the 60 studio albums released by James Brown over the course of his career. Well, Willie Nelson makes Brown look like a slacker.
Nelson has released a whopping 95 studio albums, including 75 solo records and 20 in collaboration with others. That’s an average of one and a half albums per year for nearly 60 years! And I’m not including live albums or soundtracks.
Meet Me In Montauk 