oktober 03, 2025

Published oktober 03, 2025 by ad-vinylrecords with 0 comment

Johnny Rivers ‎- L.A. Reggae (1972) (vinyl Lp) - €5,00

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Johnny Rivers (born John Henry Ramistella; November 7, 1942) is an American musician. 
He achieved commercial success and popularity throughout the 1960s and 1970s as a singer and guitarist, characterized as a versatile and influential artist. 
Rivers is best known for his 1960s output, having popularized the mid-60s discotheque scene through his live rock and roll recordings at the Los Angeles nightclub Whisky a Go Go, and later shifting to a more orchestral, soul-oriented sound during the latter half of the decade. 
These developments were reflected by his most notable string of hit singles between 1964 and 1968, many of them covers. 
Rivers had a total of nine top-ten hits and 17 top-forty hits on the US charts from 1964 to 1977.

In the 1970s, Rivers continued to record more songs and albums that were successes with music critics but did not sell well.  However, his cover-hits laden album L.A. Reggae (1972) reached the LP chart as a result of the No. 6 hit "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu," a cover version of the New Orleans Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns song that features a rollicking New Orleans-style stride piano solo introduction by L.A.'s Wrecking Crew keyboard great Larry Knechtel.

Johnny Rivers' early-'70s album L.A. Reggae was an all-star affair, including Jimmy Webb on keyboards and Crickets co-founder Jerry Allison on drums. 
It was somewhat of a big-band affair as well, with more than a dozen hands, yet it never sounds overblown or over-produced, and it did return Rivers to the charts after a disappointing start to the decade. 
The album mixed covers of vintage rock & roll and '60s standards (including Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl") with some newer songs and in tandem with a handful of originals, which left it straddling two different cultural eras -- and it pulled it off, mostly thanks to the consistency of Rivers' singing and the passion he brought to all of the material, whether a standard from 1950s New Orleans or something he'd written that year. 
It opened with an acknowledgement of Rivers' Louisiana roots, a rippling version of Huey "Piano" Smith's "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu," and there were other plunges into the past, but the original ballads that comprise the middle of the album -- "On the Borderline," "Come Home America," "Stories to a Child" -- take the record firmly into contemporary times, and offer a glimpse of Rivers as a singer/songwriter rather than a rock & roller. 
These pieces hold their own, as does Rivers' version of Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion," mostly thanks to his soulful vocals throughout. 
He doesn't just "cover" the songs he does, but throws himself into them, so that they're as personal as the contemporary originals; as for the latter, they are a little more introspective in their writing than the classics that surround them, but exude the same strong passion and energy, just redirected slightly.


Side one
1.  Rockin’ Pneumonia - Boogie Woogie Flu - 3:30
2.  Knock On Wood - 3:07
3.  Brown-Eyed Girl - 4:12
4.  Memphis ’72 - 3:23
5.  On The Borderline - 4:40
6.  Come Home America - 2:30

Side two
1.  Stories To A Child - 4:15
2.  Mother And Child Reunion - 3:09
3.  Crazy Mama - 3:03
4.  New York City Dues - 5:15
5.  Life Is A Game - 3:20
6.  Use The Power - 1:52


Companies, etc.

Credits

Notes
Release: 1972
Format: LP, Vinyl
Genre: Blues rock
Label: United Artists
Catalog# UAS 29 410 I

Vinyl:  Goed (G)
Cover:  Gebruikerssporen (G)

Prijs: €5,00

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