It's a little bit funny, this feelin' inside

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

28/03/71 : Elton John - Elton John

Well, this is a bit of a surprise with our seventh visit with Elton coming one week after our previous visit - I'm expecting this to be pretty enjoyable in the same vein.

Yeah - he really hit the ground running in those early days with another very decent set of heartfelt songs showing a good amount of variety across the album. It opens up with "Your Song" which is up there with his very finest and I was also vaguely aware of "Border Song" because me and the lovely Mrs Reed saw him play it live on his farewell tour - I didn't know any of the others but still found them enjoyable. Once again, this is an album which hits on first listen but is also going to grow on you with multiple visits - it's a very accomplished piece of work.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on his ninth week of a thirteen week run with it having peaked at #5 in its fifth week - this was actually its second run and it managed five between '70 and '72 spending 22 weeks in total in the charts. The top five this week were Andy Williams, Jimi Hendrix (a new entry), Simon & Garfunkel, a compilation from The Rolling Stones and Jethro Tull (another new entry) - which is somewhat of a mixed bag of genres. The next highest new entry was Johnny Mathis (#27) but I also have to mention The Sound Of Music re-entering at #12 - the UK really couldn't get enough of that album in the late '60s/early '70s.

Wikipedia tells us it's his second album, although his first to chart. Allegedly (and I'm not sure exactly how much I believe this) it wasn't planned to launch Elton as an artist but instead to act a set of demos which could demonstrate his and Bernie's songs for other artists to consider recording - during the 70s only Two Dog Knight (who recorded "Your Song") and Aretha Franklin (who recorded "Border Song" on this album) took up the challenge. Critically, people were nice enough about the songs but felt the album was over-produced - I can only begin to imagine what they must have thought of some of his later offerings. It was, however, still nominated for the Album Of The Year Grammy Award in that year and, in '12, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as an album cited as exhibiting "qualitative or historical significance". And it did well commercially, getting to #2 in Australia and The Netherlands and #4 in Canada and the US, selling half a million copies in the latter.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a decent copy for four quid, but there are mint copies available for £80-90 and, quite bizarrely, a reissued cassette version for £105 - I've absolutely no idea who would want that. This is a very decent album though - Elton's spoiled us for the past couple of weeks and I'm pleased I got a chance to listen to them.

04/04/71 - A quality album

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