| Late Starter | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 2006 | |||
| Label | Halo | |||
| Producer | Mike Harrison, Mark Stevens | |||
| Mike Harrison chronology | ||||
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Late Starter is the fourth solo album by Mike Harrison, best known as a principal lead vocalist of Spooky Tooth. Released in 2006, it is Harrison's first solo album in over thirty years, following the release of Rainbow Rider in 1975. [1]
The album came about following Harrison's engagement with the Hamburg Blues Band, which commenced in 1999. Michael Maslen, who owned Halo Records and was a Spooky Tooth fan, heard Harrison with the Hamburg Blues Band and persuaded Harrison to record another solo album. [2]
The album is primarily a collection of soul and blues covers, including "Sinner's Prayer", a song by Lowell Fulson and Lloyd Glenn that had most recently been covered two years earlier, on Ray Charles' final studio album, Genius Loves Company . To be more consistent with the history of much of what they were recording, Maslen and Harrison decided to record the album in analogue format. [3]
The album was well received. According to one reviewer, "This is an album haunted by unspoken promises and soulful regret, where hearts are betrayed by love's sweet delusion and sinners pray for forgiveness, delivered in a voice to shatter the strongest of hearts. He might be bloodied by his past, but he's vocally unbowed." [4] Another reviewer commented that "...Harrison has the balls and ballast to not only pay tribute to the likes of Otis Redding and Etta James, but paint their musical fireplaces with his own vocal colour. Harrison’s rasping, yet soulfully blue, voice is perfect for Night Time, Your Good Thing Is About To End and I’ve Got Dreams To Remember. It’s an album of warm surprise for those who recall when Harrison was dubbed ‘the white Ray Charles’ (he really gets his hand into the glove of the master’s Drown In My Own Tears). The gospel shout of Let’s Go Get Stoned is also a winner, showing that Harrison has still got it what it takes." [5]
Lowell Fulson was an American blues guitarist and songwriter, in the West Coast blues tradition. He also recorded for contractual reasons as Lowell Fullsom and Lowell Fulsom. After T-Bone Walker, he was the most important figure in West Coast blues in the 1940s and 1950s.
Spooky Tooth were an English rock band originally formed in Carlisle in 1967. Principally active between 1967 and 1974, the band re-formed several times in later years.
Gary Malcolm Wright was an American musician and composer best known for his 1976 hit songs "Dream Weaver" and "Love Is Alive". Wright's breakthrough album, The Dream Weaver (1975), came after he had spent seven years in London as, alternately, a member of the British blues rock band Spooky Tooth and a solo artist on A&M Records. While in England, he played keyboards on former Beatle George Harrison's triple album All Things Must Pass (1970), so beginning a friendship that inspired the Indian religious themes and spirituality inherent in Wright's subsequent songwriting. His work from the late 1980s onwards embraced world music and the new age genre, although none of his post-1976 releases matched the same level of popularity as The Dream Weaver.
David "Fathead" Newman was an American jazz and rhythm-and-blues saxophonist, who made numerous recordings as a session musician and leader, but is best known for his work as a sideman on seminal 1950s and early 1960s recordings by Ray Charles.
Michael Alexander Kellie was an English musician, composer and record producer.
Mike Harrison was an English musician, most notable as a principal lead singer of Spooky Tooth and as a solo artist. He was also the lead singer in The V.I.P.'s, Art and the Hamburg Blues Band, among others.
Belafonte Sings the Blues is an album by Harry Belafonte, released by RCA Victor (LPM/LSP-1972) in 1958. It was recorded in New York City on January 29 and March 29, and in Hollywood on June 5 and 7. The album was Belafonte's first to be recorded in stereophonic sound.
The Last Puff is an album by British rock band Spooky Tooth, released in 1970.
"Tramp" is a soul blues song with funk elements, written by West Coast blues artists Lowell Fulson and Jimmy McCracklin. First recorded by Fulson in 1967, it was his highest-charting single since "Reconsider Baby" in 1954. It reached #56 in Canada. The song was covered by Otis Redding in a duet with Carla Thomas, and this version reached No. 2 on Billboard R&B chart.
The Mirror is an album by the British rock band Spooky Tooth. It was the only Spooky Tooth album to be released without contributions from Mike Harrison. It also was their last album for nearly twenty-five years, until Cross Purpose in 1999. The Mirror was released in October 1974, one month before group members had permanently disbanded. Members went on to form such bands as Foreigner and The Only Ones.
Mike Harrison is the first solo album by Spooky Tooth principal lead singer Mike Harrison, released on Island Records in 1971.
Rainbow Rider is the third solo album by Mike Harrison, most notable as a principal lead singer for Spooky Tooth. It was released in 1975, on Island Records in North America, and Goodear Records in the United Kingdom. In addition to being part of Harrison's body of solo work, the album is notable as containing one of the earlier and comparatively rare recordings of the Bob Dylan song, "I'll Keep It With Mine", written in 1964 and recorded by Nico, Fairport Convention and Marianne Faithfull, among others. The album was recorded in Nashville, subsequent to Harrison's departure from Spooky Tooth, following the release of Witness (1973). The album features a number of Nashville's best known session musicians of that time, as well as Morgan Fisher, then of Mott the Hoople, and Mick Jones, formerly of Spooky Tooth and later founder of Foreigner. The album was produced and engineered by Chris Kimsey, whose reputation as a recording engineer had developed when he was the engineer on the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, released in 1971. Rainbow Rider was one of Kimsey's first engagements as a producer. Still at an early stage of his career, Kimsey had produced Monkey Grip, the first Bill Wyman solo album, released in 1974, one year prior to Rainbow Rider.
Halo Records, also known as Halo UK Records, is an independent British record label, established in 2000.
Spooky Two is the second studio album by the English rock band Spooky Tooth. It was originally released in March 1969, on the label Island Records.
Witness is a studio album released by Spooky Tooth in 1973. For this recording, original drummer Mike Kellie returned and substantially replaced Bryson Graham. Gary Wright remained the dominant songwriter at this stage of the band's history. Co-lead singer Mike Harrison left the band following the LP's release. The album was remastered and re-released on compact disc (CD) in January 2005 by Repertoire Records.
"Reconsider Baby" is a blues song written and recorded by Lowell Fulson in 1954. Performed in the West Coast blues style, it was Fulson's first record chart hit for Checker Records, a subsidiary of Chess Records. With memorable lyrics and a driving rhythm, "Reconsider Baby" became a blues standard and has been recognized by the Blues Foundation and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame.
Margie Evans was an American blues and gospel singer and songwriter. She started recording in the late 1960s and continued to record for five decades. She secured two hit singles on the US Billboard R&B chart. She has variously worked with Johnny Otis, Bobby Bland, T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Lowell Fulson, Joe Liggins, Lloyd Glenn, Willie Dixon, Al Bell, and Monk Higgins.
Johnny "Big Moose" Walker was an American Chicago blues and electric blues pianist and organist. He worked with many blues musicians, including Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Lowell Fulson, Choker Campbell, Elmore James, Earl Hooker, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins and Son Seals.
Marjorie Hendrix was an American rhythm and blues singer and founding member of the Raelettes, who were the backing singers for Ray Charles, the father of her child, Charles Wayne Hendrix.
Touch is an album released on Ruf Records in 2001 by Mike Harrison and the Hamburg Blues Band.