Bonnie Raitt-Home Plate (1975)


Artist: Bonnie Raitt

Title: Home Plate

Label: Warner Bros.

Format: CD

Cat #: 2864-2

Year of Release: 1975

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US , early cd master

Sold Price: $3.99

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 10/27/20

Discogs Last Sold: 7/4/20 $3.99 NM/NM

Low: $1.50

Median: $3.99

High: $4.00

Current low price: $1.87 VG/VG

Current Number on Sale at Discogs:

Have/Want: 57/8

Where Sold: Baltimore, MD

Time it took to sell: 10 years

Where and When Bought: Record Club? 

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B

Sad To See It Go?: No

I heard a tape of very early Bonnie Raitt sometime in the early 90's when she was at her commercial peak.  It was acoustic and she was very very young.  There is a recording of a 1972 Philadelphia radio show, but I think it was even earlier and recorded on Cambridge radio if memory serves me correctly.

I was a bit disappointed every time I picked up a 70's Bonnie Raitt album due to slickness, even the first one.   I've never tracked down the tape that made excited to hear her in the first place, just her and an acoustic guitar.   They really were made for a general audience, not a "purist" one.  Home Plate is very much of it's era.  Post-Carole King Tapestry singer-songwriter music.  A "state-of-the-art" 1975 production.   Background voices out of "Right Place Wrong Time," funky bass & wah envelope the buried slide of Delbert McClinton's "Sugar Mama."  Bonnie can't be ruined completely, but I'd like to hear her more in her prime without the superfluous crap.  

There's really no "hits" on this, odd that it peaked at 43 on Billboard.  She wasn't quite the popular level of Linda Ronstadt in this time, playing theaters and college gigs.  But, she clearly had a niche that was a bit different than her post-Grammy 90's run. Jackson Browne is all over this.  Emmylou Harris chimes in on "I'm Blowin' Away." It's a bit of a who's who of 70's songwriter elite.  Not that I care so much about hits, but I'm just trying to place it in career context.  The Dean of music criticism gave it an A despite being "produced with much tape trickery" by Elektra's house producer Paul A. Rothchild.

My favorite track is the closer, "Sweet and Shiny Eyes."  She is in a bar, it's her birthday and having a picture taken with Fernando.  Her background vocalist "bar" consists of Jackson Browne and Tom Waits among others, but you would never know it unless you looked at the liner notes.

Sounds like a fun time!




 

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