More of the Music of Harry Nilsson
More Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Harry Nilsson
This forgotten gem sank like a stone in 1969, but time has treated this album well. It holds up to this very day. The production is superb throughout. Judging by this early album and the one before it, it appears he was already a pro in the studio, as well as an accomplished songwriter, and, most importantly, the owner of one of the sweetest tenors in popular music, then or now.
Harry checks off a few very important boxes for us here at Better Records:
- It’s a Personal Favorite
- It’s a Must Own Album from 1969.
- It’s a Pop Masterpiece
- It’s an Album We Think Should Be More Popular with Audiophiles
- It’s Part of the Core Collection of Well Recorded Rock & Pop Albums
What to Listen For
The average copy suffers, most notably, from honky vocals. It seems to be a mastering EQ problem, since it affects a larger percentage of copies with earlier stampers and not as many of the later pressings. The later copies have problems of their own, though, so you can’t just assume that the copies with high numbers will sound better — they don’t always, and the earlier ones can sound amazing when you’re lucky enough to get hold of a good one.
It just goes to show that (all together now…) you can’t know anything about the sound of a record without playing it, and to take it a step further, you can’t really know much about the sound of an album without cleaning and critically listening to multiple copies. But that’s a lot of hard work, and who has the time, other than us?
What Were You Doing In 1969?
If the answer is “Recording an album of innocent, touching, and completely unironic pop music,”” well, you could only be Harry Nilsson.
This album is simply wonderful, and it’s wonderful on a number of different levels. It’s wonderful in a way that strongly appeals to my contrarian nature. (You can’t love LPs without having at least a small streak of contrarianism.)
The idea of doing a nostalgic, wistful, unapologetically sweet album, as innocent as a Norman Rockwell painting — an album with songs about puppies; rainmaking; old railroads; holding hands; a broken-down old dancer; Mother Nature’s son; patriotically marching down Broadway in a World War II parade; hanging out with a dancing bear; sending flowers to the one you love—how could an album full of songs like these be recorded by a Pop Star in 1969!
You remember 1969. Protests against the Vietnam war. Hippies and the countercultural revolution. Chemical mind expansion in full swing. Tuning in, turning on and dropping out. Trying to keep up with the easy riders, not the Joneses. With all this happening, one mostly unsuccessful songwriter with an oddly Swedish name — just one in fact — comes along and produces a record that flatly refuses to acknowledge any of it is going on. Nostalgia hadn’t even been invented yet and here was an album full of it, whose first song declares that “Dreams are nothing more than wishes, and a wish is just a dream you wish to come true,” followed by “If only I could have a puppy, I’d call myself so very lucky.” Either this Nilsson guy was incredibly naive or he had some kind of balls. A few albums down the road we realized it was the latter.
Side One
The Puppy Song
Nobody Cares About The Railroads Anymore
Open Your Window
Mother Nature’s Son
Fairfax Rag
Side Two
Mournin’ Glory Story
Maybe
Marchin’ Down Broadway
I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City
Rainmaker
Mr. Bojangles
Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear
AMG 4 Star Review
Ironically, Harry is where Harry Nilsson began to become Nilsson, an immensely gifted singer/songwriter/musician with a warped sense of humor that tended to slightly overwhelm his skills, at least to those who aren’t quite operating on the same level. This aspect of his personality surfaces partially because the record is a crazy quilt of originals, covers, bizarre Americana, quiet ballads, show tunes, and soft-shoe shuffles.
It doesn’t really hold together, per se, due to its lack of focus (which, if you’re a cultist, is naturally the reason why it’s charming). Due to the sheer number of shuffling nostalgia trips, it seems as if Nilsson is attempting to sell the entire album on personality and, to anyone who isn’t converted to his unique perspective, these may the moments that make Harry a little difficult to take, even with songs as expertly constructed as the delightful “Nobody Cares About the Railroads Anymore,” an attempt to ape Randy Newman’s Tin Pan Alley style.
Then, there are the songs that really work, such as the sardonically cute “The Puppy Song,” the gentle “Mournin’ Glory Story,” and “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City,” a thoroughly winning folk-rock song he wrote for Midnight Cowboy but which was rejected in favor of “Everybody’s Talkin’.”
These are the moments that deliver on the promise of his first two records, while the rest suggests where he would go next, whether in the immediate future (a cover of Newman’s “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear”) or several years later (the weird in-jokes and insularity of portions of the album, which would become his modus operandi as of Nilsson Schmilsson).
Further Reading