We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
For every successful singer-songwriter in the 1970’s, there were a dozen others trying to make it. Both newbies and vets like Buffy St. Marie who released the LP “Moonshot” in 1972.
St. Marie, born to Cree parents on a reservation in Saskatchewan Canada and adopted by a couple in Massachusetts when she was abandoned as an infant, had been kicking around the folk music scene for years. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen were with her playing the Toronto coffee-house and club scene.
She had released seven albums with little success. She did write some songs that other people covered including “Cod’ine” done by many including Janis Joplin and Quicksilver Messenger Service as well as the anti-war song “Universal Soldier” which she wrote about the dead and wounded soldiers she saw returning from Viet Nam in the early 60’s when we were not even acknowledging they were there. Donovan put that one on the charts.
She also won an Academy award in the 1980’s for co-writing “Up Where We Belong” from “An Officer & A Gentlemen”.
And appeared many times on Seasame Street back in the day educating kids about the native peoples of North America…..she also did some acting in TV shows and movies.
But, St. Marie claims, with some evidence, that her career was blacklisted by Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, J.Edgar Hoover and radio stations around the country for her work with Native American movements of the 1960’s and 70’s.
Here is a nice doc if you care to learn more about her….
So, what about this record? Well, it’s St. Marie going with a more pop-rock angle at the insistence of her record label to try and generate more sales. It’s a mixed bag.
She had a minor hit with a cover of ‘Mister, Can’t You See” by Micky Newbury & Townes Van Zandt but her pairing with Nashville session pros like Charlie McCoy, David Briggs, Kenny Buttrey and Norbert Putnam mostly seems like a struggle.
St. Marie’s voice, while powerful, has this built in flutter that, for me, is only annoying. It’s like that quaver you hear in today’s auto-tuned records, although this is natural.
The songs that work for me are the cover of Arthur Crudup’s soul classic “My Baby Left Me” and the Native empowerment anthem “Native North American Child”. “Lay It Down” and the title track also stand out.
The critics were mixed on the effort…Janet Maslin in Rolling Stone said “considering the kind of experimental, stylistic departure it represents, it nonetheless bears a personal stamp” while Paul Evans called it ‘her slightest record”. Robert Christgau lauded her for doing something”overtly perverse from Nashville” and liked it’s “art-pop” record sensibilites.
Most of this I can take or leave. You’ll have to decide if it’s more than that.
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