Anyone who grew up in the \u201970s and early \u201980s who had a regular diet of AOR radio is undoubtedly familiar with the crossover country music of Ronnie Milsap. For a good portion of that time, it was impossible to escape the reach his music had. I remember our family going to some radio station appearance at a car dealership in Niles, and someone\u2014it might have been my mom\u2014won a copy of Milsap\u2019s then-current album Only One Love In My Life<\/i>. (Yes, I\u2019m eventually going to get to reviewing that one\u2026 so much nostalgia to revisit from my life, so little time.)<\/p>\n
It might surprise some people, then, if they were to pick up Milsap\u2019s self-titled debut album. If anything, this disc captures Milsap\u2019s musical roots\u2014and they weren\u2019t necessarily country music, though one can still hear tinges of it among the influences. It\u2019s a bit of an eye-opener, but a surprisingly welcome one.<\/p>\n
If one had to describe Milsap at this early stage in his career, I\u2019d have to compare him to Elvis Presley, both in terms of the material he covered and his vocal delivery. Now, that\u2019s not meant to be an insult; it simply means that Milsap wasn\u2019t following any particular musical genre at this point, but was choosing material both close to him and befitting his musical and vocal style. In that regard, he\u2019s extremely successful.<\/p>\n
Listening to tracks such as \u201cSunday Rain,\u201d \u201cSweet Little Rock And Roller,\u201d his cover of \u201cCrying\u201d and the humorous asides of \u201cThe Cat Was A Junkie,\u201d you have to be honest. If you were to put these on as background music at any party, someone would more than likely think you put an Elvis record on. Milsap\u2019s vocal delivery is smooth enough to make such a comparison a compliment, and he is able to take the material\u2014none of which he had a hand in writing\u2014and make it pretty much his own. (The sole exception might be \u201cCrying,\u201d on which he does seem to channel Roy Orbison at times\u2014again, not an insult.)<\/p>\n
But anyone pining for Milsap the crossover country artist will likewise find enough to enjoy on Ronnie Milsap<\/i>. The first version of one of his early hits, \u201cPlease Don\u2019t Tell Me How The Story Ends,\u201d might not be a true country song per se, but it has the overall feel that should make some listeners be right at home with it. Likewise, \u201cBlue Skies Of Montana\u201d tells the story of Native Americans pining over the loss of ancestors and their land; while the ending of the song drags on a little too long, it\u2019s still a decent effort.<\/p>\n
In fact, Ronnie Milsap<\/i> overall is a surprisingly solid disc, though it\u2019s been eclipsed by the later-day success Milsap had upon switching to RCA Nashville and narrowing his musical focus a tad. Yes, if you pick this one up expecting early renditions of songs in the vein of \u201cSmoky Mountain Rain,\u201d you\u2019re going to be disappointed. However, if you go into the album with few preconceived notions about either Milsap or his music, you should be in for a real treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7479],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46490","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ronnie-milsap","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46490"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}