May 19, 2020 —– Chart #36
Hello Musical Friends,
Yesterday my company reopened our office and I had a ‘normal Monday’ at work. This Chart of the Day was my way of dealing with the shelter in place order and working from home during the COVID-19 thing. Forgot to tell all of you that I intended to back the frequency of your Chart of The Day emails down once work life began to return to something resembling normal. Well it may be more like once or twice a week going forward, but we still want to keep our musical taste buds alive and expand your song books. Today I am going back to 1972 and a country rock band that had exceptional harmonies. Pure Prairie League is a favorite of mine. Bustin’ Out is the second album by American country rock band Pure Prairie League, released by RCA Records in late 1972. The album ended up becoming far more popular almost 3 years after its release, during the height of the Country Rock, and Southern Rock boom of the mid-1970s. By then, band leader Craig Fuller was no longer in the band due to draft board issues.
“Amie” was first released as a single in 1973, and went nowhere. In early 1975 it again began receiving airplay mostly on college radio stations and then on major U.S. radio stations. It hit #27 by May 1975. On the album, “Falling In and Out of Love” ends in a segue to “Amie“, which then concludes with the main chorus of “Falling In and Out of Love.” Because of this interrelationship, many American classic rock radio stations play the pair of songs as a single track. The album features a guest appearance by lead guitarist Mick Ronson on the track “Angel #9”. However, today’s selection is neither of those highly familiar tunes. Instead I am going with “Early Morning Riser” as our Chart of the Day.
Pure Prairie League is an American country rock band whose origins go back to 1965 and Waverly, Ohio, with singer and guitarist Craig Fuller, drummer Tom McGrail, guitarist and drummer Jim Caughlan and steel guitar artist John David Call. Fuller started the band in 1970 and McGrail named it after a fictional 19th century temperance union featured in the 1939 Errol Flynn cowboy film Dodge City. Pure Prairie League scored five consecutive Top 40 LPs in the 1970s and added a sixth in the 1980s. The band has had a long run, active from the early 1970s through the late 1980s. The band was revived in 1998 and again in 2004 and as of 2019 continues to perform over 100 concerts a year in venues across the nation. Concerts for 2020 have already been booked (pre-COVID-19 of course).
This band has an interesting history that includes different band members leaving for short jail sentences, back problems, liver transplant and to run a pig farm in Ohio. Notable that in 1978 Vince Gill joined the band and stayed with them through 1982. Over the years more than 30 musicians have come in and out of this band.
PPL (with Vince Gill) interviewed by Dick Clark on American Bandstand:
Keep Rockin’,
Stan