Mud can make you prisoner and the plains can bake you dry

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

03/01/71 : Paint Your Wagon Soundtrack - Various Artists

Yes, it's a soundtrack album which features a load of non-original songs, so it should be ignored - but it's such a curious album that I just have to endure it.

The film (which was released in '69) had three main stars who were Jean Seberg, Clint Eastwood (he's 96!) and Lee Marvin (did you know he was awarded a Purple Heart?) - and of these, it's fair to say that Jean made the wise choice in allowing (or possibly demanding) Anita Gordon to sing her parts. Clint has quite the interesting voice - it's fair to say that singing is not really his thing, but he kinda talk-sings his way through his songs in a way that isn't totally dreadful ("I Talk To The Trees" ain't great though). And then we get to Lee who could barely speak, let along sing, with "Wand'rin' Star" in particular being an absolute abomination - and so it obviously spent three weeks at #1 in the UK, keeping The Beatles "Let It Be" off the top. All in all, the album's songs aren't terrible (without being great) but the performances REALLY don't enhance them - you do have to wonder what they were thinking.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their 49th week of a YEAR-LONG (!) run with it having peaked at #2 in its sixth to eighth weeks. The top five this week were Andy Williams, Simon & Garfunkel (which kept this album off the top spot), Motown Chartbusters Vol 4, Led Zeppelin and George Harrison, with the highest new entry being Ten Years After (#17).

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album, but the entry for the film tells us it was shot on location in a custom-built town in Oregon - which was 60 miles away from the nearest hotel, so there was a $80,000 daily expense to get everyone/thing on set! Which only got worse when a rainstorm destroyed the road so Paramount had to rebuild it - all in all, I'm not entirely convinced they'd planned things all that well. Everything went over on time and budget and when the film was finally released, it was nearly three hours long and found the market for musicals was dwindling - the only good thing that came from it is that Clint Eastwood found the whole thing so frustrating that it increased his resolve to become a director.

Amusingly, discogs.com tells us you can pick up a version of this for 75 pence - there is a version available for £21.50, but I struggle to imagine why anyone would want to go there. After the 60s where we couldn't move for soundtracks, it's curious that we end '71 with the only soundtrack album we've seen this year (and it's not like I've been avoiding them in their droves either) - and I think it's fair to say that this isn't going to go down as one of my all-time favourites.

And with that, 1971 is over - and what an odd year it's been (which will undoubtedly be addressed in the annual write-up).

10/01/71 - Meh and weird

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