Elvis Presley Elvis Love Songs

Elvis Presley Promised Land

Charlie Pride The Best of Charlie Pride

Charlie Pride Did You Think To Pray

John Prine John Prine

John Prine Common Sense

Ray Price I Won’t Mention It Again

Procol Harum  Shine On Brightly

Procol Harum  Procol Harum In Concert With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra – Live

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Elvis Presley Elvis Love Songs

Elvis Presley Promised Land

What can I say? He was called ‘The King of Rock & Roll‘ and was certainly a huge part of early rock & roll’s history. I was never much of an Elvis fan; I went with The Beatles. One of my sisters was and still is an Elvis fan, and we get along just fine. I can listen to Elvis’s music from his early years and enjoy it; however, I don’t care much for his movie music or his music from the mid-sixties and beyond. These two albums contain a movie soundtrack and a gospel collection. I have always found it interesting that early country and western musicians, almost without fault, had to release a gospel album. Some of that rubbed off on Elvis; he was raised in parts of the country that leaned heavily towards C & W, and he fancied himself, sublimely, as a man of faith.

Having listened to these two albums along with the accompanying Wikipedia articles, I am still not an Elvis fan, but I can appreciate the impact he had on the USA, and to a lesser extent, on the rest of the world.

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Charlie Pride The Best of Charlie Pride

Charlie Pride Did You Think To Pray

Charlie Pride wandered between The Nashville Sound and more traditional country and western music. These two albums highlight his career in music on the best of album and the prerequisite country and western gospel album on the other. They are not great albums, but after Ray Price, a monkey with a tambourine would sound good. I enjoyed the “The Best of Charlie Pride” album. He was on the radio plenty of times as I grew up, and it rubbed off on me.

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John Prine John Prine

John Prine Common Sense

I have and continue to derive a great deal of pleasure from the debut self-titled album by John Prine. A greatest hits album featuring John Prine would have to include 3/4’s of this album, it is one great song after another. He is a master storyteller and can cram more into a three-minute song than some hacks can put in a short novel.

“Illegal Smile” shows us John Prine’s sense of humour.

“Hello In There” is a gut-check song that made me stop and ask myself, “How do I treat my elders?”

“Sam Stone” is a song about a drug-addicted veteran with a Purple Heart and his road from the battlefield to his death by overdose. Sam Stone is a powerful song that I have on my Remembrance Day playlist.

“Angel from Montgomery” is about an old woman who wants an angel to come down and take her away from the hard life that she is living. This song has a great organ playing in it. “Angel from Montgomery” has been covered by a long list of artists, which attests to its power.

“Donald and Lydia” is another song that tells a story with characters John Prine has created in such a way that we are pulled into their lives; they aren’t just residing in a song, but are brought to life.

John Prine’s debut album is on the shores of the proverbial deserted island with one foot on dry sand and the other in the water. I certainly enjoyed this album and will most likely listen to it again in the not-too-distant future.

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Ray Price I Won’t Mention It Again

I Won’t Mention It Again is a studio album by country music artist Ray Price. It was released in 1971 by Columbia Records.

The album debuted on Billboard magazine’s country album chart on June 12, 1971, held the No. 1 spot for five weeks, and remained on the chart for a total of 42 weeks. It also won the Country Music Association Award for Album of the Year. It included two hit singles: “I Won’t Mention It Again” (No. 1) and “I’d Rather Be Sorry” (No. 2).

AllMusic gave the album three stars. Personally, I think they were being generous. This album exemplifies the music genre known as The Nashville Sound, “orchestrated strings and choruses”, “sophisticated background vocals,” and “smooth tempos.” For this album, Ray Price ruined some good songs. Six of the eleven tracks are by Kris Kristofferson, which highlights the impact of Kris on the music world, and the shallowness of Ray Price, who relied on others to write good songs and then plagiarized them.

These Kristofferson songs are on the Ray Price album, I Won’t Mention it Again:

Kiss the World Goodbye

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

I’d Rather Be Sorry

“Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)

When I Loved Her

Jesse Younger

Good on Kris for writing some fantastic songs, and hopefully, getting some royalties from this, which is the only positive aspect I can find in this recording.

Going from bad to worse, we get an iconic pop song, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, brutalized by Ray Price. I could not finish this record; there is only so much pain that a man can take.

I won’t mention this album again.

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Procol Harum  Shine On Brightly

Procol Harum  Procol Harum In Concert With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra – Live

Procol Harum are often cited as the band that ushered in the age of prog rock. According to AllMusic: “Prog-rock began to emerge out of the British psychedelic scene in 1967, specifically a strain of classical/symphonic rock led by the Nice, Procol Harum, and the Moody Blues.” Procol Harum were probably not the first band to experiment with the newly emerging world of technology in music and other aspects of Prog, such as extended tracks, often using the entirety of one album side, extended solos, fantastic lyrics that often used a story that ran through the whole album, and a focus on technical skills.

Shine On Brightly is a pretty good album; it is not traditional top ten material, but it does contain some rather compelling music. My favourite is “In Held ‘Twas in I,” which is a good example of prog rock using extended song formats, this one being over 17 minutes in length. I have albums that don’t have enough material to fill 17 minutes, let alone add a 2:30 song at the beginning. I walked away from this album with an earworm that didn’t last long.

Procol Harum Live with The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra booted “In Held ‘Twas in I” out of my ear and replaced it with the “Conquistador” song. I am partial to this album because I live in Edmonton and simply enjoy listening to it.

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And that brings us to the end of the “P.” I was going to do a list of a few highlights from that portion of the library, but I liked too many of them, so I abandoned that thought rather quickly. There was, however, one exception, Pink Floyd. They are a band that I have enjoyed from the early 70s up to the present. Dark Side of the Moon is the album that I listen to the most, not just from their canon, from the whole library. Dark Side of the Moon isn’t just a deserted island record; it is a foundational piece of the island’s character.

Enough already! Let’s move on from the letter “P” and enter the realm of the letter “Q”. The Kingdom of Q has a Queen. And that is all it has. One album, Queen. One album that showcases the talent of the whole band, but front and center, the voice of Freddie Mercury. 

The Game is the eighth studio album by the British rock band Queen. It was released on June 30, 1980, by EMI Records in the UK and by Elektra Records in the US. The Game features a different sound from its predecessor, Jazz (1978). The Game was the first Queen album to use a synthesizer (an Oberheim OB-X).

A critical and commercial success, The Game became the only Queen album to reach No. 1 in the US and also their best-selling studio album in the country, with four million copies sold to date, tying with the sales of News of the World. Notable songs on the album include the bass-driven “Another One Bites the Dust” and the rock and roll “Crazy Little Thing Called Love“, both of which reached No. 1 in the US.

And another letter of the alphabet bites the dust (sorry, I couldn’t resist). The letter “R” is a hefty stack of albums, and I look forward to starting there later today.