There's a time from time to time

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

07/11/71 : Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon - James Taylor

We've only met James once before and, whilst I quite like his voice, I found the whole thing to be very "just OK" - here's hoping for more from this.

Hmmm. He certainly does have a nice voice and I knew I liked his version of "You've Got A Friend", with "You Can Close Your Eyes" also being pretty decent. But the rest of the tracks are, on first listen at least, really very average - there's nothing wrong with any of it, but it's all very forgettable. And I'm really not convinced by that outfit...

We're at #8 in the charts this week on his 25th week of an impressive 41 week run (which I think is the longest we've seen so far this year), with it having peaked at #4 in its debut and 19th weeks (which is a curious pairing). The top five this week were Rod Stewart (his first #1 album), John Lennon, Hot Hits 7 (another dolly-bird covers album), T Rex and Motown Chartbusters Vol 6 with the highest new entry being The Spinners (#20).

Wikipedia tells us this is his third album and has remarkable little else in there. The only thing of interest is that it was kept off the top of the US album charts by Carole King's Tapestry - which, of course, also has "You've Got A Friend" on it and both versions of that track won a Grammy (Male Pop Performance for James and Song Of The Year for Carole). Carole plays piano on quite a few tracks on this album, but not YGAF - although it does have Joni Mitchell on backing vocals. Critically, the album was received well enough although Rolling Stone said you needed to listen to it a few times to really get into it and commercially it got to #4 in Canada and #2 in the US.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for £1.50 and the most you can spend on it is £50, which is pretty low for the albums we've seen this year. And I can't say I'm overly surprised because the male singer-songwriter genre is somewhat overpopulated across the years and there are plenty better options for you out there from pretty much any era - it's a "no" from me, Mr Taylor.

14/11/71 - Another decent album

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