Whitlock, Bobby – S/T – Used LP

VG/VG.  (nice shape, especially for an album 50+ years old.).

Whitlock 1972. 

The man from Memphis (and Alabama), a lesser known living legend.  While he played on so many great recordings, including uncredited on "Exile on Main Street" this same year, this was his first solo album, and while his other albums had plenty of rock stars play on them, this first one is his best.  Perhaps Derek & the Dominoes was more Bobby Whitlock's album than anyone else, and clearly would have been a completely different (and lesser) album without him, this album is pure Whitlock.  While I might be alone in the following opinion, and we don't always have to rate one album over another (we can just say they are different), for me this is much more enjoyable.  It's a gem. -- winch 

It's interesting to note that around the time of this album, television had purposely began to focus almost entirely on urban settings (unless the show was set in the past), as they realized that most of their viewers were now living in cities, and gradually this plan worked well with manufacturers of clothes and nearly anything.  It really changed the way people think about so many things (and played a huge part in creating the world and mindset of today).  For the next ten years, rural became associated with hillbillies rather than cool anti-establishment figures, and cool would become clean and shiny.  Rural was inbred like the boys in Deliverance, and this had a gradual but huge effect on music.  English artists like Clapton, the Stones, and Elton John could get away with some rural and hillbilly, but in the States, for rock and rollers, it was mostly just Lynyrd Skynyrd.  So it's not surprising that the masses lost interest in artists like Bobby Whitlock (and most of the gritty southern soul singers).  But the music that was so popular owed so much to these musicians from towns like Memphis.  -- winch