Carole King wrote this with Toni Stern, a free-spirited painter and lyricist from Los Angeles who complemented King very well. Said Stern: “I’m sure there was a California quality in me that appealed to Carole. She was moving from a familial, middle class lifestyle to Laurel Canyon, where she started to let her hair down, literally and figuratively. We worked off our contrasts.” Stern would usually agonize over lyrics, but she wrote these very quickly.

This song was rumored to be about James Taylor, who was good friends with King and played on her iconic album “Tapestry“. In early 1971, Taylor and King toured together with King the opening act. Many people tended to think that this song was about a short romance between the two. King never confirmed these rumors, and Taylor later dated and married Carly Simon. Toni Stern, however, did have a relationship with Taylor and wrote the lyrics after they broke up and he moved on to Joni Mitchell, but she won’t confirm it’s about the troubadour. “I won’t say who ‘It’s Too Late’ is about,” she told Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

The lyrics describe the end of a loving relationship without assigning blame. Music critic Robert Christgau claimed that “if there’s a truer song about breaking up than ‘It’s Too Late’, the world (or at least AM radio) isn’t ready for it.” Rolling Stone stated that King’s “warm, earnest singing” on the song brought out the song’s sadness. According to author James Perone, the feeling of the song is enhanced by the instrumental work of Danny Kortchmar on guitar, Curtis Amy on saxophone and King on piano. Kortchmar and Amy each have an instrumental solo.

Curtis Amy was married to Merry Clayton, who sang backup on some songs for the album. Amy played the sax solo on The Doors’ “Touch Me.”

Merry Clayton sang background vocals on the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”, which has its own much storied history to it. Her vocals were recorded at a last-minute late-night recording session during the mixing phase. Summoned – pregnant – from bed around midnight by producer Jack Nitzsche, Clayton made her recording with just a few takes then returned home to bed. It remains the most prominent contribution to a Rolling Stones track by a female vocalist. Sadly,  upon returning home Clayton suffered a miscarriage, attributed by some sources to her exertions during the recording. Here’s a short clip of Merry talking about the experience:

“It’s Too Late” won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1972, and the song ranks at #469 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

And we’ll end with a live version of Carole signing this song.

Hits: 61

The song was primarily written by vocalist Gregg Allman, who first began composing it at a rented cabin outside of Macon, Georgia. He enlisted the help of roadie Robert Kim Payne to complete the song’s lyrics. He and Payne broke into Capricorn Sound Studios to complete a demo of the song. Gregg Allman’s solo version of the song, released in 1973, was its biggest chart success.

“Midnight Rider” originated during the group’s time spent at Idlewild South, a $165-a-month farmhouse they rented on a lake outside of Macon, Georgia. Allman felt free to smoke marijuana with no police around, which contributed to his writing at the cabin.

Its genesis was quick: the song came to him out of nowhere, and he completed a rough draft in just over an hour of writing. He found himself stuck on the song’s third verse, which he regarded as an especially important component of the song: “it’s kind of the epilogue to the whole thing,” he later wrote.

In the middle of the night, he went to roadie Kim Payne, who was keeping watch over the band’s warehouse, where they kept their equipment.

Payne helped him write the first two lines of the third verse: “We were getting high and, honestly, he was starting to irritate me—because he was singing this song over and over and I got sick of hearing the band play the same shit over and over again until they got it right,” Payne later recalled. “So I just threw out the line, ‘I’ve gone past the point of caring / some old bed I’ll soon be sharing.'”

Thankful for Payne’s help, he told him he would give him a percentage of its royalties should it become a success. Payne was not originally listed as a songwriter on the song, so he later had Allman contact Phil Walden to produce a contract that allowed him five percent of its future royalties.

Allman wanted to record it immediately, but had no keys to Capricorn Sound Studios, which was adjacent to the warehouse. They phoned both producer Johnny Sandlin and Paul Hornsby who “told us to go to hell, come back in the morning,” according to Payne.

Intent on recording the song, Allman and Payne broke into the building, with Payne smashing a window on a door to allow him to unlock it. After managing to turn on the recording console and microphones, Allman recorded a demo by himself on acoustic guitar.

Unable to find the band members, he enlisted friend Twiggs Lyndon to perform bass guitar on a rough demo, though Lyndon did not know how to play the instrument. Allman instructed him to play the bassline he had envisioned and Lyndon practiced it multiple times to prepare.

He later found Allman Brothers drummer Jaimoe and had him perform congas on the demo. In the final studio recording, Duane Allman plays acoustic guitar, as he had enough studio experience to produce a nice acoustic sound.

Allman called it “the song I’m most proud of in my career.”

“Midnight Rider” uses traditional folk and blues themes of desperation, determination, and a man on the run:

I’ve got one more silver dollar,
But I’m not gonna let ’em catch me, no …
Not gonna let ’em catch
The midnight rider.

Music writer Jean-Charles Costa stated in 1973 that, “‘Midnight Rider’ has been recorded by other bands and it’s easy to see why. The verse construction, the desperate lyrics, and the taut arrangement make it standout material,” while musician and writer Bill Janovitz said that the recording successfully blended elements of blues, country music, soul music, and Southern rock.

“Midnight Rider” has been a concert staple for the band in decades since; it is usually played fairly closely to the original template, and was not used as the basis for long jams until the Allman Brothers’ annual New York City run in 2010.

While the original Allman Brothers release of the song did not chart, “Midnight Rider” was much more successful in cover versions. The verses arrangement features Duane Allman’s acoustic guitar carrying the song’s changes, underpinned by a congas-led rhythm section and soft, swirling organ. Dickey Betts’ lead guitar phrases ornament the choruses and the instrumental break, while Gregg Allman’s powerful, soulful singing, featuring harmony-producing reverb, has led to the song becoming known by some as Allman’s signature piece.

Hits: 69

“Starship Trooper” was written by Jon Anderson, Steve Howe and Chris Squire that first appeared on Yes’ 1971 album The Yes Album. The song is in three parts, “Life Seeker,” “Disillusion” and “Würm.”

Anderson was aware of the title of Starship Troopers, the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein, and from that got the idea of a “Starship Trooper being another guardian angel and Mother Earth”.

“Starship Trooper” was constructed from pieces of music written separately by Anderson, Howe and Squire. Anderson was the primary author of “Life Seeker.” Squire wrote most of the “Disillusion” section; this section had earlier been used with slightly different lyrics as the bridge for the song “For Everyone”, with Squire providing the lead vocals. Howe had written the instrumental “Würm” section while he was in an earlier band (Bodast).

The song was heavily constructed in the recording studio, and as a result the band were never able to play it live quite the way it was recorded. The song changes mood, rhythm, tempo and style continually.

Authors Pete Brown and Lisa Sharken describe the “Würm” section as “a Bolero-paced chord sequence that builds into an explosive solo”. They note that Howe’s solo incorporates rockabilly and country music elements rather than on blues-based music with distortion as is typical for these types of solos.

A theme of “Life Seeker” is the search for God. Anderson has stated that the lyrics:

Mother life hold firmly onto me
Spread my knowledge higher than the day
Release as much as only you can show

Refer to “the point within yourself that knows you,” which we call “God.” The lyrics accept the fact that “no matter how much you want to get clearer visions of what you’re up to, you’re only going to get a certain amount.”

The song uses UFO imagery. Other themes that have been inferred for the song include new age ideas and environmentalism.

Hits: 62

(Admin Note: That’s a playlist of the complete album. Yes, yes we do have that the ability to make that work! It’s more complicated than it looks, but that should work on all browsers that support YouTube.)

Pretzel Logic is the third studio album by Steely Dan, released on February 20, 1974 by ABC Records. It was written by principal band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

They recorded the album at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles with producer Gary Katz. It was the last album to feature the full five-member band of Becker, Fagen, Denny Dias, Skunk Baxter, and Jim Hodder. Although on this recording, drummer Hodder appeared on vocals only. It also featured significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles–based studio musicians.

The album was a commercial and critical success upon its release. Its hit single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” helped restore Steely Dan’s radio presence after the disappointing performance of their 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy. Pretzel Logic was reissued on CD in 1987 and remastered in 1999 to retrospective acclaim from critics.

It was produced by Gary Katz and written primarily by Walter Becker and bandleader Donald Fagen, who also sang and played keyboard. The album marked the beginning of Becker and Fagen’s roles as Steely Dan’s principal members.

They enlisted prominent Los Angeles–based studio musicians to record Pretzel Logic, but used them only for occasional overdubs. Steely Dan’s Jeff “Skunk” Baxter played pedal steel guitar and hand drums.

Steely Dan often incorporated jazz into their music during the 1970s. Baxter’s guitar playing drew on jazz and rock and roll influences. On Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”, he imitates a ragtime mute-trombone solo.

Certain songs incorporate additional instrumentation, including exotic percussion, violin sections, bells, and horns. Music critic Robert Christgau wrote that the solos are “functional rather than personal or expressive, locked into the workings of the music”

Hits: 49

This is from Johnny Winter’s fifth studio album, and his first since “Johnny Winter And” almost three years earlier. It was released by Columbia Records in 1973. Many of the songs on the album have a more rock-oriented power trio sound, with Randy Jo Hobbs, formerly of the McCoys, on bass. He also gets some help from Rick Derringer—a former McCoy as well—on electric, pedal steel, and click guitars; Todd “Hello It’s Me” Rundgren on keyboards; Mark “Moogy” Klingman (later of Rundgren’s Utopia) on piano; and Jeremy Steig on flute.

The Winter brothers, Johnny and Edgar, were born in the mid-1940s in Beaumont, Texas, hometown of The Big Bopper and Blind Willie Johnson, and both attended special education classes in high school. Edgar, a musical child prodigy, mastered a plethora of instruments, while Johnny—the elder brother by two years—focused on the guitar, mandolin, and harmonica.

Johnny recorded his first single at 15, and released his first LP in 1968, after Columbia Record execs caught the Fillmore East gig that same year at which Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper invited Winter on stage to jam. Within a year he was playing Woodstock, and recording on and off with brother Edgar, and by 1970 he was incorporating rock into his blues. He was sidetracked for several years by a bad heroin habit, but cleaned up his act just in time to record 1973’s Still Alive and Well

The fast and furious “Still Alive and Well” opens with Winter saying, “I’m hungry, let’s do this fucker,” at which point his guitar takes over. Meanwhile he sings like a survivor:

Did you ever take a look to see who is left around
Everyone I thought was cool is six feet underground

And even throws a joke at his own expense into the chorus:

I’m still alive and well, still alive and well
Every now and then I know it’s kind of hard to tell
But I’m still alive and well

He plays a pair of flabbergasting solos, and barks and screams, and I’ll be damned if this isn’t the best song about doing junk and living to tell about it since Dion’s great “Your Own Backyard.”

Hits: 61

“Joy to the World” was written by Hoyt Axton, and made famous by the band Three Dog Night. The song is also popularly known by its opening lyric, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog”. The song, which has been described by members of Three Dog Night as a “kid’s song” and a “silly song”, topped the main singles charts in North America, was certified gold by the RIAA.

Some of the words are nonsensical. Axton wanted to persuade his record producers to record a new melody he had written and the producers asked him to sing any words to the tune. A member of Three Dog Night said that the original lyrics to the song were “Jeremiah was a prophet” but “no one liked that”.

When Hoyt Axton performed the song to the group, two of the three main vocalists – Danny Hutton and Cory Wells – rejected the song, but Chuck Negron felt that the band needed a “silly song” to help bring the band back together as a working unit. Negron also felt that the song “wasn’t even close to our best record, but it might have been one of our most honest.”

Unlike most Three Dog Night songs recorded at that point, instead of having just the three main vocalists singing harmony, the song was recorded with all seven members of the band singing. Drummer Floyd Sneed sings the deep lyric “I wanna tell you” towards the end of the song.

Ed. Note: I got to see Three Dog Night as a VIP back in 2011 or 2012. They were still rocking and putting on an energetic show, after all those years. If you’re curious, they’re still touring and still making music. Use your favorite search engine, as they’re on tour right now and are playing small venues with very reasonable ticket prices.

Hits: 63

This song is of the “I’ve been there” variety.

The story is of a man who meets the woman he believes is the love of his life in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel (which exists, it is in Linden TN about 140 miles east of Memphis) and immediately makes a lifelong commitment to her, promising her the storied house on the edge of town with the white picket fence, but in the end she leaves him crying in his beer.

The narrator is telling his story to a bartender, about how much he loved her and how badly he misses her. Then, one at a time, other guys in the bar start adding to his story, until he realizes they’d all been scammed by the same girl.

In the end, they’re all singing in harmony about the “Dixie Chicken” and having a wistful but hearty laugh about all being part of this well-populated men’s club.

Hits: 68

The song originates in a domestic event that took place while Graham Nash was living with Joni Mitchell (and her two cats) in her house on Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles), after they had gone out for breakfast and had bought an inexpensive vase on Ventura Boulevard. Nash wrote the song in an hour, on Mitchell’s piano.

In October 2013, Nash elaborated:

“Well, it’s an ordinary moment. What happened is that Joni [Mitchell] and I – I don’t know whether you know anything about Los Angeles, but on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley, there’s a very famous deli called Art’s Deli. And we’d been to breakfast there.

We’re going to get into Joan’s car, and we pass an antique store. And we’re looking in the window, and she saw a very beautiful vase that she wanted to buy… I persuaded her to buy this vase. It wasn’t very expensive, and we took it home.

It was a very grey, kind of sleety, drizzly L.A. morning. And we got to the house in Laurel Canyon, and I said – got through the front door and I said, you know what? I’ll light a fire. Why don’t you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought?

Well, she was in the garden getting flowers. That meant she was not at her piano, but I was… And an hour later ‘Our House’ was born, out of an incredibly ordinary moment that many, many people have experienced”.

In the same interview, Nash was asked about the harmonies in the song:

“It’s me and David [Crosby] and Stephen [Stills] doing our best. That’s all we ever do. You know, we’re lucky enough to be able to do, you know, anything that we want to do, musically. And, you know, these two guys are incredible musicians.

Crosby is one of the most unique musicians I know, and Stephen Stills has got this blues-based, South American kind of feeling to his music. And I’m this, you know, Henry VIII guy from England… You know, it’s not supposed to work, but it does, somehow”

Hits: 44

Paul Williams wrote this with Roger Nichols. Instrumental backing was by L.A. session musicians from the famous Wrecking Crew.

Sometimes song lyrics are written on the fly, and that was the case with a line in this song. Says Williams:

“On ‘Rainy Days And Mondays’ Chuck Kay, who was head of publishing at A&M, said, ‘That’s a perfect song for The 5th Dimension, let’s play it for them.’ They passed on it. I said, ‘Well, there are a couple of lines that aren’t done yet.’ He said, ‘You’ll finish it in the car.’

So in the car going over there, I came up with a fill line, which was ‘What I’ve got they used to call the blues.’ I didn’t have that line done yet, so I wrote it as just a quick fill line, because I wanted to mention the blues, but it was such a hackneyed expression, ‘I’ve got the blues.’ So I just wrote, ‘What I’ve got they used to call the blues.’ And it actually became my favorite line in the song. I think it’s the best line in the song.

I met Johnny Mercer once at A&M Records, and he sat down and I introduced myself, ‘Paul Williams,’ and he shook my hand. And he walked back into the studio where he was mixing, then he stuck his head back out into the hall and he went, ‘Paul Williams, ‘what I’ve got they used to call the blues,’ that Paul Williams?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’

It was funny. It was one of the great moments of my life, to meet Johnny Mercer, who I think was the lyricist’s lyricist.”

Hits: 75

“We’re an American Band” became Grand Funk Railroad’s first #1 single. It was sung by Brewer rather than Farner, who usually took lead vocals. It is the 99th song on VH1’s 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs.

Brewer’s lyrics are somewhat autobiographical, detailing the band’s recent tour and their energetic live performances. In the song, the band mentions traveling through Little Rock, Arkansas, as well as stopping to party with four groupies that sneak into their hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. The lyrics also mention “sweet sweet Connie”, which is a reference to legendary groupie Connie Hamzy.

Grand Funk was touring with the British group Humble Pie in early 1973. After one performance, the two groups were drinking in a bar when they began arguing over the merits of British versus American rock. Grand Funk drummer Don Brewer stood up and after bragging about American rock heroes such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley, proudly announced, “We’re an American band!”. Thus inspired, he wrote the song the next morning; by late 1973, it was the top-selling song in the world. A video was also made, showing the band playing the song as well as engaging in activities such as basketball, dirtbike riding, and watersports.

The original single was released on gold transparent vinyl.

In celebration of America’s Independence Day, here’s a live version from 1974!

Hits: 88