I haven’t had the chance to write about Rory Block before, even though she takes up an amount of space in my CD collection. In the early ’90s we had a strong Rory Block affection, buying seven of her CDs, going to see her live at least twice (and trying to a couple times more, but things came up), and playing those albums over and over. She played the Albany/Saratoga area frequently then, and I associate her with those years of transition to Albany, 1989 and 1990. In more recent years, she hasn’t been getting a lot of play, but I couldn’t say why. She’s a great writer, great singer, and a great guitar player. Just writing this reminds me that I really should be giving her more listens.
So . . . I found this record on a run down to Shady Dog last year. My friend Shawn was itching to get out of the house so we met up down at Shady Dog and went through the bins for a while, and I picked up a handful of discs.
And in the bins, I found this Rory Block record I’d never seen. From the cover shot, I had to wonder: was this blues? Or something else? I couldn’t get a good connection to Discogs to check it out, and I didn’t really study the credits very hard, or I would have noticed that Rory only plays piano and Rhodes on this record. No guitar at all. And she doesn’t even play on every track.
But here’s the thing. In addition to the discount sticker from “Russ Miller ‘The Specialists,'” offering this album for even less than its discounted $1.49, it’s also autographed. On it, Rory signed:
“To Del (Dearest Del,) Thanks so much for everything. Much love, Rory.”
To my mind, if she took the time to write “Dearest Del,” that meant she was signing to someone she actually knew, that this was truly a message intended for whoever Del was. And now it was in the used bins at Shady Dog for $8.98 (so, at least a better showing than $1.49). What happened to it? Did Del no longer treasure it, or had Del passed on and someone decided to sell this off? No way to know. But as a fan of Rory Block, it would have made me sad to have left this signed record unappreciated in the bins. So I bought it and brought it home.
Well. It’s from 1979, and someone thought it would be a good idea to make Rory Block pretty much the same as every other female singer from 1977. It wasn’t. I’m kinda glad I rescued this, but . . . oh, man, it is not a good record. Or at least not a good Rory Block record.
Being a big Jethro Tull fan and record note/sleeve reader in the late ’70s, I always gave artists who showed up on the Chrysalis Records inner sleeves a chance when I could find their records at the local community college listening library. I distinctly remember this one, and the sleeve pointed me to it . . . see the second photo here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/282802444530
I don’t think I made it past the end of the first side, as it wasn’t at all the type of music I liked at the time . . . so I was very pleasantly surprised when I was asked to review a Rory show for Metroland all those years later and experienced something completely different!
(I know my knowledge of and greater ongoing appreciation for Steeleye Span, UFO, Trevor Rabin, Rory Gallagher, Steve Hackett, Roy Harper and Blondie stemmed from this or similar Chrysalis inner sleeves at the time.)
(don’t know why your approval expired, sorry about that – my laptop died so i wasn’t checking in).
One of those Chrysalis sleeves was an eternal mystery to me because someone had cut out one (and only one!) of the images, and I could never figure out what it had been – and then it turned out it was for the very record the sleeve went to, the first Blondie album. The oddest behavior.
https://vinyldistractions.com/blondie-blondie/