🎵 AotW AOTW: Rita Coolidge THE LADY'S NOT FOR SALE (SP 4370)

[LPJim]

Rita Coolige
THE LADY'S NOT FOR SALE
A&M SP4370

She ain't ashamed to show her soul
Why she'll sell it for a song
But free don't mean she's easy
Or right for going wrong

So let her be the lady, Lord
She wants so bad to be
And let her win the gentle man
That she was born to please*

SIDE ONE: My Crew 4:53/ Fever 3:28/ Bird on the Wire 5:39/ I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 3:15/ A Woman Left Lonely 5:05.

SIDE TWO: Whiskey Whiskey 4:00/ Everybody Loves a Winner 4:04/ Donut Man 3:25/ Inside of Me 6:35/ The Lady's Not For Sale* 4:10.

Marc Benno, guitar/ Mike Utley, keyboards/ Carl Radle, bass/ Jim Keltner, drums/ Al Perkins Jr., guitar/ Russ Kunkel, percussion/ Booker T. Jones, flute & vocals/ Jerry McGee, acoustic guitar/ Bernie Leadon, guitar/ Lee Sklar, bass/ Al Kooper, lead guitar/ John Sebastian, harmonica/ Charlie Freeman, guitar/ Tommy McClure, bass/ Sammy Creason, drums/ Sneaky Pete, pedal steel guitar/ Vocals: Priscilla Jones, Donna Weiss, Venetta Fields, Sherlie Matthews, Maxine Willard, Kris Kristofferson.

Front & back cover photo: Bob Jenkins/ Inside photo: Terry Paul/ Art Direction: Roland Young/ Album Design: Chuck Beeson/ Recorded at Wally Heider's and Sunset Sound, Los Angeles/ Recording Engineers: Glyn Johns, John Haeny, Richie Moore/ Remix Engineer: David Anderle

Produced by David Anderle, a Willow Production.
The producers would especially like to thank Marc Benno and Kris Kristofferson for their inspiration.

Booker T. & Priscilla appear courtesy of Share Productions/ Carl Radle - Shelter Records/ Bernie Leadon- Asylum Records/ John Sebastian - Warner Bros. Records/ Al Kooper - Columbia Records/ Kris Kristofferson - Monument Records.

SP 4370 entered the Billboard Top 200 albums on November 11, 1972, peaked at # 46 and charted for 24 weeks, according to Whitburn's "Top Pop Albums."


www.ritacoolidge.com
JB

 

[Dave]

Though Rita's REAL Commercial-Breakthrough was Anytime...Anywhere, it was on the stregnth of the hit single, "Fever", the 'almost as Big B-Side', "My Crew", Tim Hardin's delicate ballad (and Coolidge '45'), "Bird On The Wire", the 'typical Bob Dylan, remake', "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" (Which is NOT the similar-titled WHITNEY HOUSTON song, years later...!), the Booker T. Jones-penned, "Everybody Loves a Winner" (...But when you lose, you lose alone...) the Mark Benno-authored "Donut Man" (also available as a '45'), the legnthy, but still interestingly-insighted, "Inside of Me" and the rousing title-cut, "The Lady's Not For Sale", that Rita's career was finally taking off with The Lady's Not For Sale...

Other highlights, or at least a "few signs of life" were her "duet" album with Kris Kristofferson, Full Moon and Fall Into Spring, which she recorded while pregnant with her and Kris's daughter, Casey, along the way...


Dave

 

[W.B.]

The other thing I noticed about Ms. Coolidge's work by this point, was that lacquers for her albums and singles were being cut at The Mastering Lab in Hollywood (as opposed to A&M Studios). I believe she was one of a very few A&M artists whose lacquers were largely not cut in-house (the other being Cat Stevens, whereby Sterling Sound cut lacquers for many of his LP's and 45's then). Though TML didn't ID their lacquers on the dead wax until the end of 1973, I recognize their cutting style of the period enough to realize it was they that mastered the copy I have of "Fever" / "My Crew" (AM-1396-S).

As to Dave's points about Rita's star beginning to rise here, there was also, around the same time, her then-husband Kris Kristofferson's Jesus Was a Capricorn LP on the Monument label which yielded his later, more-tortured-in-getting-there hit "Why Me (Lord)." And a year after these, their Full Moon album was put out on A&M. More on that in a few weeks . . .