Sampler Daze: Let’s Hear It For The Women!

Bonnie Raitt

It occurred to me, while compiling this exhaustive survey of the Warner Bros./Reprise Loss Leaders series, that we might be giving short shrift to the label’s female artists.  Probably not, but this is a good excuse to listen to some more tracks from this great promotional series.

I know we’ve mentioned Bonnie Raitt and Maria Muldaur – but we should start with them anyway because they’re the two ladies that the Loss Leaders went to the most often.  Part of our Loss Leaders All-Star team, Muldaur appeared nine times in the series and Raitt eight.  Another Reprise artist (with six appearances in the series) is Joni Mitchell, the Canadian darling of the hippie set and writer of the song “Woodstock,” most famously covered by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Emmylou Harris, with five appearances in the Loss Leaders series, is another perennial.  Harris was actually discovered by then-Flying Burrito Brother (and ex-Byrd) Chris Hillman, who was so taken with her voice that he considered asking Harris to join the Burritos.  But he recommended her instead to fellow Burrito Gram Parsons, who was seeking a backing vocalist for his first solo album.  Working with Parsons, Emmylou learned a lot about country music and its deep tradition and history.  When Parsons suddenly died in 1973, Emmylou was left without a mentor (and possibly a lover – nobody knows for sure).  She began recording for Reprise in 1975 and went on to become a top country-rock performer.  Here she is represented by “Ooh Las Vegas,” written by Gram Parsons.

Lost Classics! Peter, Paul & Mary

Peter, Mary and Paul

REPOST: Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary died Wednesday at the age of 72.  You can read an obituary here.  We thought we’d just retrieve this earlier post, with links intact.

If you can even imagine it, there was a time between Elvis Presley and the Beatles – and American music was confused indeed.  In 1959, Elvis went into the Army,  Buddy Holly died in an Iowa snowstorm and by that time Jerry Lee Lewis had virtually scandalized himself out of the music business.  Rock and roll’s moment seemed to have passed.

But folk music was still very big.  Groups like the Kingston Trio and the Weavers (with Pete Seeger) still managed to have hit records, and when Peter, Paul and Mary came out of the Greenwich Village scene in 1961 they had their sights set on the top of the pop charts.  Peter Yarrow, Noel “Paul” Stookey and Mary Travers cut their first album in 1962 and it featured mostly traditional folk standards and a Pete Seeger tune, “If I Had A Hammer,” which was a hit.   The next year they would hit again with “Blowin’ In The Wind,” written by the up-and-coming Bob Dylan.