This is the third and likely final volume in my series of Carole King demo albums. (I wish I could do more, but my source material runs out after this.) In practice, it largely plays out as a solo acoustic version of her classic 1971 album "Tapestry." So if you like that album, you should enjoy this.
This contains versions of all the songs from "Tapestry" except for "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," which was on the previous album in this series, and "Where You Lead." On top of that, there are six other performances of songs originally done on other albums. "Song of Long Ago" and "Carry Your Load" come from her other 1971 album "Music." "Eventually" is from her 1968 album "Now That Everything's Been Said." "No Easy Way Down" and "Up on the Roof" are from her 1970 album "Writer." Finally, there's an interesting live duet of King and Barry Mann on Mann's (and song "You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling," which was a massive hit for the Righteous Brothers.
The first five songs are from the official album "The Legendary Demos," and the last two are from an official live album. The other nine are unreleased. However, most or all of them come from soundboard bootlegs, so the sound quality is high throughout.
I kind of "faked" much of this album in that I didn't actually have that many real demos to work with this time, so I used solo acoustic versions of songs played in concert instead. Unfortunately, I couldn't use this method to keep going past 1971, because King seems to have stopped playing solo acoustic in concert after that time. (The two songs from 1973 here are exceptions, but they're "Tapestry" songs. I just chose the 1973 versions because they sounded the best.) That's a shame, because she went into a relative commercial decline after "Tapestry," and I think a lot of that had to do with the production of her albums (which wasn't that bad on a per song basis, but tended to make all the songs sound the same). I think it would be a revelation to hear those songs in solo acoustic format.
If you enjoy this album, definitely check out the other two albums in this series. I find it weird how millions of people bought the "Tapestry" album, but don't know about her earlier songs, the best of which were just as good as the "Tapestry" ones.
This album is 55 minutes long.
01 You've Got a Friend (Carole King)
02 It's Too Late (Carole King)
03 Beautiful (Carole King)
04 Tapestry (Carole King)
05 Way Over Yonder (Carole King)
06 Up on the Roof (Carole King with James Taylor)
07 I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)
08 So Far Away (Carole King)
09 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Carole King)
10 Song of Long Ago (Carole King)
11 Carry Your Load (Carole King)
12 Eventually (Carole King)
13 No Easy Way Down (Carole King)
14 You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin' (Barry Mann & Carole King)
15 Smackwater Jack (Carole King)
16 Home Again (Carole King)
https://www.imagenetz.de/jG2xS
For the album cover, I once again used the template from the first album in this series. I just changed the basic background color. Plus, the photo of King is from 1971.
Thanks for these great stripped down versions - the power of the songs, if anything, is greater in their raw forms. Have you considered collecting Jackie DeShannon's demos in a similar way? It'd make a great companion set. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteFunny you ask that. I would love to make an album of DeShannon's demos. I've heard of them, and I've been looking for them for a long time, but I've only ever heard a few on YouTube, plus one or two that have been officially released. If you (or anyone else) have them, please pass them on, then I can try to do something with them. I especially want to find her folky stuff, not her Brill Building-type stuff.
DeleteActually, I just did a little Googling, and I might be able to find some of these after all. I'll see. The stuff I'm most interested in is an unreleased album called "Girl of Yesterday." Here's one original song from it on YouTube:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVJ3drD47uc
I'm also interested in finding demos of P. F. Sloan. There's one official album of those, which are great (and much better than his fully produced music), but there are a lot more, apparently.
I don't have the demos, unfortunately, apart from an MP3 of "Splendor in the Grass" which is great (but I can't recall where I found it). I think the Jackie DeShannon Appreciation Society issued two CDs of demos a while back, but their website hasn't been updated since 2006.
Deletehttp://jackiedeshannon.tripod.com/index.html
There's a tantalizing list of demos on this page, too:
http://jackiedeshannon.tripod.com/jdsas5.html
It's beyond frustrating that there seems to no official compilation, especially these days where pretty much every song and their demos recorded in the '60s seem to have been reissued. Good luck with your search!
Yeah, I've been aware of the above, but I only started looking for that stuff recently, so I missed out on what the society did. However, I use SoulSeek to find a lot of things, and yesterday, after you brought this up, I did a search and found someone has the "Girl of Yesterday" stuff. So it's in my queue. Hopefully I'll be able to get that. If I do, I'll post it here.
DeleteYou can find another song from it here, a DeShannon original done by the Byrds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in6iyfe4Ntc
Good news! SoulSeek came through for me. I was able to finally get the DeShannon demos that I was looking for. I've just posted them. You played a role in reminding me to do another search, so thanks for that.
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