I didn't do anything to this album - I just really love it and want to help more people discover it. I would consider it a five-star album that's similar and equal to the best albums done by Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Byrds, America, and the like, in the mellow country rock vein.
In a better world, this album would have sold millions of copies. But instead the band is so obscure that Wikipedia doesn't even have a page about them, and it's hard to find anything about them on the Internet at all. However, I did come across this one informative essay:
http://www.nickwarburton.com/wordpress/?cat=13
In short, this was a group that had multiple singers and songwriters, and were briefly together for this album plus one in 1972, "Struck like Silver," that isn't nearly as good. I don't know what it is, but this album had a spark that one did not. My least favorite song here would be better than the best song on that second album. This is the one to have.
A lot of great music that was ignored when it came out has been rediscovered decades later. Nick Drake's music is a good example of that. But, unfortunately, Morning remains just as obscure as ever. Maybe it's not weird enough for the types of people who like to discover obscure gems? These guys were writing songs that should have been hits, with lush multiple part harmonies, good lyrics, and catchy melodies.
This album is 38 minutes long.
01 Angelena (Morning)
02 Early Morning (Morning)
03 Tell Me a Story (Morning)
04 Easy Keeper (Morning)
05 Roll 'Em Down (Morning)
06 Sleepy Eyes (Morning)
07 New Day (Morning)
08 As It Was (Morning)
09 Time (Morning)
10 It'll Take Time (Morning)
11 And I'm Gone (Morning)
12 Dirt Roads (Morning)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15252795/Mrning_1970_Mrning_atse.zip.html
The album cover is the official cover, unchanged.
And it has one of "Loves" guitarist, Jay Donnellan.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much - just discovered your blog and am catching up.
ReplyDeleteI took the opportunity of your vacation to avail myself of the archives. Mighty fine work (and plenty of it). I can't imagine how many hours of work has gone into this project already. Crazy.
ReplyDeleteI only found 2 links that were dead/unavailable. This being one of them. The other being the Mike Oldfield & Maggie Reilly, but I'll go ahead and put a note over there also.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for the praise, and for finding the dead links. I just fixed this one.
DeleteHi.
ReplyDeleteHuh. Despite considering myself somewhat of an expert in the country rock of the late 60s/early 70s (especially all the Byrds/Buffalo offspring) I had literally never heard of this band, not even in passing, before stumbling upon it here on your blog. Mostly great stuff, though I could live without the aimless jazz solo in "And I'm gone" that spoils what is an intriguing opening and a nice finish. (Edit challenge? ;-))
Read the article you linked to, very interesting (and amazingly detailed) stuff. It also linked to two songs from the follow up album that you don't seem to like, but to my ears sound just as good.
So, here's my question: Would you mind posting the second Morning album as well?
(All other links on the net have gone dead). I could then either have these as a twofer or (and I'm thinking about this) sequencing them differently for a "Best Of Morning" album. Of course only if you post the follow-up, which I would be much obliged for (or, you know, just a link here in the comments if you really don't want to push that album).
PS: Are you familiar with the band "Gladstone" from Texas? They sound very much like Morning and had equally inexplicably only very limited local success in the early/mid 70s and also broke up after two albums. "A Piece of Paper" should have been a big hit, but what are you gonna do...
I'm psyched if I turned you on to Morning. Music this good shouldn't be forgotten. (And by the way, I like the long jam in "And I'm Gone.")
ReplyDeleteI just posted the second album, thanks to your request.
I've never heard of Gladstone, but I'll check them out if you think they're that good.
Listened back to Gladstone. They are a little less "sweet" than Morning on most of their stuff, since they are only two vocalists harmonizing, and on less songs, but like Morning they don't deserve to be almost completely forgotten.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, they are maybe more in the "really good" rather than "legitimately great" category, but hey, America (whose sound these two groups sometimes come close to) were never great and they sold millions and are still beloved today.
I haven't listened to Gladstone yet, but I read a bit about them yesterday, and I read a commenter claim they were very similar to Batdort and Rodney as well as Aztec Two Step. So I'm going to check those out too, since I'd never heard of them before. Do you have any opinions on those, or other similar artists I should check out?
DeleteSorry, I have never heard of these two duos either. While there might be similarities, Gladstone was for most of their time together a five piece, albeit with its two singers-songwriters more prominently displayed.
ReplyDeleteAs for my own five-star album recommendation for a total classic that absolutely no one bought: the self-titled album from Wayne Berry. (It's entirely on You Tube, but has, I think never been issued on CD). A great album from top to bottom, all killer no filler, with a murderer's row of people helping out (Jackson Browne, Jeff Baxter, Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Gordon on drums etc.), yet it sank without a trace. If you don't know this, check it out. Hard to see how you would be disppointed.
Thanks for the recommedation. I'll definitely check him out. By the way, I just Googled info about him. Did you know Berry put out two solo albums, as well as an exclusive single, and two more albums with a band called Tinder? I just checked out the single (Beechwood Blues) on YouTube, and it sounds good.
DeleteActually the band is called "Timber" (and I believe you can find their stuff on rockasteria), but they're only so-so. Mainly, because they have another lead singer who is horrible. Only half of Timber's stuff is good, and it's Berry's half. You can make a decent ten song album from Berry's Timber cuts, which is what I did. Have to check out Beechwood Blues, though.
ReplyDeleteThe album I mean is actually called "Home At Last". His second album never really got released and exists only as a test pressing.
You can find out more than you probably care to know about Wayne Berry here (unless this is what you Google'd already):
https://www.nodepression.com/wayne-berry-nashville-cat-home-at-last/
...and back to Morning for a second. As stated above, there's some songs that I'm not a super fan of, but really, the sequencing isn't entirely great. The two slightly psychedelic songs "Sleepy Eyes" and "As It Was" are clustered in the middle around the piano doodle "New Day", making this stretch a little soft for my taste. "New Day" quite obviously functions as an overture of sorts for side two, so I would put it as an overture for the entire album. And the long "And I'm Gone" should clearly be the album closer. So I spliced the two albums together into something that for me flows better, at least for the first 18 songs or so. And then I glued the more psychedelic (and for me, slightly boring-ish) stuff at the end. Which brings me to how I put my Morning album together.
ReplyDeleteAll Morning - The Complete Recordings
01 New Day
02 Angelina
03 I Ain't Gonna Leave
04 Roll 'Em Down
05 Comin' In Love
06 It'll Take Time
07 Never Been To Spain
08 Tell Me A Story
09 Dirt Roads
10 (He Played Real Good) For Free
11 Easy Keeper
12 Struck Like Silver
13 Time
14 Understand My Ways
15 As It Was
16 In A Better Frame Of Mind
17 Early Morning
18 Jay's Movie Song
19 Sleepy Eyes
20 Only To Say Goodnight
21 And Now I Lay Me Down
22 And I'm Gone
Bonus Tracks:
23 Yesterday Holds On – Moonpark Interscetion
24 He Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best – Wind
Thanks for the info about Berry.
ReplyDeleteRe: Morning, what do you think of their second album? I guess you and I disagree, in that I like their psychedelic and jazzy stuff too. I also like how "Dirt Roads" follows "And I'm Gone." It's like "And I'm Gone" is the climax, and "Dirt Roads" is the relaxing denouement.
I agree that the second album is a little weaker, mainly because they were straining for material with one of the main songwriters not bringing any songs in. However, I think that the two covers are actually quite well done. But you can hear that this second album is a little more fragmented, with some songs more coming off like "solo with backups" rather than genuine band affairs.
ReplyDeleteAs for the psychedelic stuff on the first album, it depends. I quite like "As It Was", but find "Sleepy Eyes" a little, well, sleepy. And I would like the jazzy middle section of "And I'm Gone" better if I had the feeling it was going somewhere, but instead it's very repetitive.
And I'm sure Morning's drummer feels like his sole song got attached as an after thought rather than the quick encore or relaxing denouement. But hey, different folks, different strokes.
And maybe I'm a little nitpicky in terms of sequencing. I also wouldn't put two songs almost titled the same ("Time" and "It'll Take Time") right after each other, but what do I know. It's not my record. So yeah, I think the album could be seuqenced better but it's a mighty fine album either way.
Yeah, I agree the second album is more fragmented and they didn't seem as into it. But it still has its moments. By the way, do you know what happened to them afterwards, in terms of releasing original music? I see you've tracked down two rare songs not actually by Morning.
DeleteThe pre-Morning tracks were actually in the article that your post links to which also talks about what they did afterwards. Seriously, this has to be the most in-depth article of an obscure band ever written. It has liner notes on all the songs and everything. And, if you want to check them out, the a and b sides from two pre-cursor band singles which are really more or less typical 60s psychedelic-tinged pop.
ReplyDeleteI was aware of the Moonpark Intersection song. Probably because I found it reading that great article a while back. I like it, but I'm not a fan of the other one, which is super generic for the time. It obviously is from a few years earlier, before the band developed its style.
DeleteComing back to acts in the same vein: These two obscure (to me) folk duos made me think of Brewer & Shipley, so I threw that on. I imagine you know them but they're really quite underrated. I take it you're also familiar with Cowboy?
ReplyDeleteI must admit I don't much about either of those. I only know the first one for the hit "One Toke Over the Line" and Cowboy for "Please Be with Me," which is a great song. But since you recommend them, I'll look into them a bit more.
DeleteThe first five albums from Brewer & Shipley are all worth a listen. The first one is quite a bit of its time, and by "Rural Space" they are quite a bit in a country style similar to "Morning".
ReplyDeleteCowboy's first three albums are all worth a listen as well.
I plan on giving both of those artists a listen soon.
DeleteSomeone else similar I've discovered recently is Pure Prairie League. I always knew "Amie" was a great song, but I've only just discovered how good their first two albums are. Craig Fuller seems like the main guy behind that.
Oh, yes, absolutely, do check out more PPL. And you're right about the importance of Fuller: All the classic PPL material is his. Essentially PPL broke up for all intents and purposes right before making their second album, so it's essentially a mini-solo album by Fuller and a solo EP by George Ed Powell glued together, and both were by far the best songwriters, especially Fuller. When he was gone and "Amie" became a belated hit on college radio, the newly assembled PPL with Larry Goshorn were essentially a pretty good bar band with the occasional good tune (again, a lot of them Powell's), but they never hit the heights of the Fuller era again and became worse and worse as they moved towards MOR/AOR rock towards the end of the decade. And the Vince Gill-fronted outfit might just as well be another band entirely (which they pretty much were).
ReplyDeleteFor more Fuller, check out American Flyer. They were quite often a little to close to MOR rock (sign of the times in the late 70s I'd say), but has a number of pretty good tunes.
I've just heard a couple of songs from PPL's 'comeback record' "All in Good Time" from 2005 (which is essentially Fuller and a back up band) but they were pretty good, if a little too much sounding like modern country.
Yeah, I'm interested in what Fuller did post-PPL. I haven't listened yet, but I heard people complain his American Flyer stuff was too slick and produced. (I wonder if there's a non-slick version somewhere, like something live they did?) People also say he and Eric Kaz did a good album together in 1978, but I haven't had time yet to listen to that either. (So much good music to get to!)
DeleteAnd off topic, thoigh only slightly, because the country rock connection is still there. I'm absolutey bummed out today 'cause I just learned that Neil Casal has died, and almost a month and a half ago at that. Plus he committed suicide, so that bums me out even more. Sure, he was never as big a star as he deserved (and it shows in that no major news outlets reported his death), but to kill yourself at age 50, just like that?
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know him, check out some of his music. His early solo albums are all pretty great, especially his debut "Fade Away Diamond Time", "The Sun Rises Here" and "Anytime Tomorrow", his most pop-oriented album. Since you like Matthew Sweet, this should talk to you, if Sweet was more of a country picker.
I know nothing about Casal. I guess I'll put him on the list of artists to check out. Thanks for the info.
DeleteNowhere is the US - Europe divide (and Japan, like Matthew Sweet he was, erm, Big in Japan) more obvious than in a case like Casal's. In the US he was only known to insiders as a pretty good guitar picker, the sort of self-effacing guy who makes your band better without much maintenance (he backed up Lucinda Williams, among many others). Whereas in Europe (all his solo albums came out on European labels) he was known as a singer-songwriter and people would wonder why he would accept to be a guy in a backing band.
ReplyDeleteJust listening to him, I exaggerated a bit his likeness to Sweet, his voice is higher and warmer, closer to someone like Jackson Browne. In any case, well worth checking out.
Here's one of my favorite songs of his:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqTLNVUzCnk&list=PLBDOlXk0Pe8VUWCZqON4W7eF-EelOMUMG
I have both of their albums and just love them! Thanks for posting this!
ReplyDeleteI have a mint "promotional" copy of this album. Wondering if its worth anything?
ReplyDeleteProbably. I'm glad to say I have the vinyl album.
Delete