Item the first: Yes, country superstar Kenny Rogers had a career before he became famous for such songs as \u201cThe Gambler\u201d and \u201cLady.\u201d This, of course, shouldn\u2019t be too much of a surprise to music aficionados; anyone who\u2019s ever heard \u201cRuby, Don\u2019t Take Your Love To Town,\u201d \u201cSomething\u2019s Burning\u201d or \u201cJust Dropped In\u201d knows about the group The First Edition.<\/p>\n
Item the second: Rogers seemingly spent the last 30-plus years of his life denying that The Ballad Of Calico<\/i>, the 1972 release from The First Edition, existed. He steadfastly refused to allow it to be re-issued on CD. To date, this album remains out of print.<\/p>\n
\u2018Tis a shame, really, as it could be called the first country-rock concept album ever. Mostly the brainchild of Michael Murphy (who would later go onto his own solo fame with \u201cWildfire\u201d), this two-record set tries to take the listener back to the 1880s and the city of Calico, California, as it grew and fell under the guise of miners making their fortune in silver\u2014though most of the wealth went to the elite few. (Gee\u2026 sound familiar?)<\/p>\n
A true group effort in that all members of the band shared in lead vocals, the overall concept of this disc is indeed noble\u2014but, like many efforts before it and others that followed, the end result falls short of what the whole project was indeed about.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the four sides, the listener is given the chance to not only experience the creation and growth in popularity of the city, but to learn the tales of some of the individuals who made up its history. I can\u2019t say with any certainty how much of these tales were based in fact and how many were created by Murphy. \u201cSally Grey\u2019s Epitaph,\u201d for example, is taken almost word for word from her tombstone.<\/p>\n
Stylistically, Rogers and crew dare to tackle numerous genres of music within these 18 songs. There are a few, such as \u201cVachel Carling\u2019s Rubilator\u201d and \u201cOne Lonely Room,\u201d dare to suggest the path that Rogers\u2019s career would eventually take him. Others, like \u201cDorsey, The Mail-Carrying Dog\u201d and \u201cMadame De Lil And Diabolical Bill,\u201d have just enough whimsy to them to keep the listener\u2019s interest. And others like \u201cOld Mojave Highway\u201d make the listener wonder why these tracks aren\u2019t better known or weren\u2019t hits way back when.<\/p>\n
The biggest complaint with The Ballad Of Calico<\/i> is that the project is overambitious. Telling the story of the rise and fall of what is now a ghost town was a great concept; however, trying to cram so much history into a relatively short period of time makes the listener feel like either certain songs don\u2019t quite fit the narrative (\u201cRoad Agent,\u201d \u201cSchool Teacher\u201d) or that tremendous chunks of the history have been glossed over.<\/p>\n
The thing is, The Ballad Of Calico<\/i> is not a bad album\u2026 and it certainly did not deserve the derision that Rogers might have felt when the album essentially failed on the market. An embarrassment, it is not\u2014though it can\u2019t quite be called a success, either. Concept albums have historically proven to be extremely difficult to flawlessly execute; I could probably count on one hand those I would say achieved their goals. But the songs on this one\u2014like the town of Calico, itself\u2014almost weep for what might have been for this album.<\/p>\n
All of that said, it is worth spending about an hour of your time to check out\u2026 and I\u2019d challenge everyone holding this back from the general public to think about it again, and let today\u2019s listeners rediscover this album. Like what Murphy tried to do with the city of Calico and its inhabitants, it might help to resurrect some ghosts and give them another shot at life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10920],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-46804","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kenny-rogers-the-first-edition","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46804","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=46804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46804"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46804"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}