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Harry Nilsson

HARRY NILSSON (NILSSON)

 
Harry Nilsson  (June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994), usually credited as Nilsson, was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970’s . He is known for the hit singles “Everybody’s Talkin’” (1969), “Without You” (1971), and “Coconut” (1972).  Nilsson also wrote the song “One” made famous by the rock band Three Dog Night.  He was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists of his era to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing major public concerts or undertaking regular tours.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Chris Spedding went on to play with Cream bassist Jack Bruce (including his first solo album in 1969, Songs for a Tailor) and former Manfred Mann singer Mike D’Abo, plus a host of others, from Elton John to John Cale to Brian Eno to Harry Nilsson (including one of his best known albums, Nilsson Schmilsson).  In 1973, Andy Fraser, the former bass player for Free (“All Right Now”) brought Spedding in as the lead guitarist for his short-lived band Sharks. 
 
(November 2011)
 
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To me, it is positively criminal that there are still some rock music fans out there who do not know about the debut 1968 album by Blood, Sweat and Tears, Child Is Father to the Man.  Besides being one of the first rock bands to have a full brass section (there are also frequent strings plus an Ondioline, a precursor to modern synthesizers), Child Is Father to the Man has a classically based structure, with an “Overture” and an “Underture” and songs that flow from one into another covering rock, country, pop, jazz, blues, folk . . . there is even a fugue section.  The songs are mostly original but include some real beauties among the cover songs:  Randy Newman’s “Just One Smile”, Harry Nilsson’s “Without Her” and Tim Buckley’s “Morning Glory”.  
 
(September 2012)
 
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In 1969, I was in a record store somewhere and saw two debut albums with similar front and back covers, Three Dog Night by Three Dog Night and Kick out the Jams by MC5, both having a swirl of images of the bandmembers, mostly in concert. They are actually quite different bands. Three Dog Night, renowned for their harmony vocals and excellent material, had a succession of hit songs in the 1970’s, including 11 that made the Top Ten, along with 12 consecutive gold albums in a six year period. Not long after the release of Three Dog Night, the Nilsson song “One” became their first hit song, and “ONE” was added to the album cover. I searched for decades to find their album as I had originally seen it, without the song name on it. I finally found a copy, just in time for Hurricane Katrina to wash it away.
 
(December 2016)