![]() ![]() The single peaked at #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100, the highest charting single of her career. It’s my very life,” she told Rolling Stone a year later. There’s a lot of him in there…that’s why I did it.” When the song went to radio in March of 1977, it began gaining the kind of traction on the charts that had eluded her. “I went into the studio and cut that with his arrangement. “It really floored me,” she recalled to Rolling Stone’s Cameron Crowe. One of Coolidge’s additions was an arrangement of Jackie Wilson’s (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher” by her brother-in-law Booker T. She told the New York Times, “Jerry said we could put out the album that we had recorded and it would automatically sell 150,000 copies, but he wanted to try a more ‘up’ thing for AM radio.” They kept half of the unreleased album, and recorded five more songs. When she and producer David Anderle turned in an album called Southern Lady in 1976, A&M Records president Jerry Moss suggested that they keep working, rather than release it. This was her first compilation album and contains all previously released. Listen to Rita Coolidge’s Anytime…Anywhere now. Greatest Hits is a 1980 album by Rita Coolidge released on the A&M Records label. Critics, while praising her voice and song choices, were waiting to hear the release of something they felt Coolidge was emotionally invested in, or as Rolling Stone’s Stephen Holden wrote of 1974’s Fall Into Spring, something that was “more than merely lovely.” While Coolidge consistently worked as a performer during this time period, her albums didn’t capture the public’s imagination. Her early albums explored the intersections of blues and jazz with folk and country, and featured the creme de la creme of session players including Spooner Oldham, Al Kooper, Leon Russell, and her brother-in-law Booker T. She gained infamy as the “Delta Lady” on Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, signing with A&M Records to begin her solo career at the end of the tour in 1971. In Los Angeles, she quickly became a ‘first call’ session singer, adding her voice to hits like Stephen Stills’ “Love The One You’re With,” and recordings by Judee Sill, Graham Nash, and Eric Clapton. The Nashville-born, Florida State University graduate had moved to Memphis, Tennessee just out of college to, in her words, “give music a chance.” When Delaney and Bonnie invited her to Los Angeles to sing background for them in 1969, she made the leap. Despite having five solo albums under her belt, Rita Coolidge had not yet achieved the commercial breakthrough that had long been predicted for her.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |