Fifty Years of Music • January, 1973

In my Fifty Years of Music series I'm beginning to encounter months like January, 1973 where bands like Aerosmith emerge onto the scene and my jingle-jangle rock 'n' roll bands are fading. 

In going over all the albums released in January, 1973 and only the three above stick out. The Kinks album is basically a compilation of mostly unreleased songs so I added it because I'm such a Kinks fan. Since I'm talking about the Kinks first, I'll point out one song that is actually one of my favorite Kinks songs, the B-side to their 1966 hit single, Sunny Afternoon. So on the '73 compilation album, The Great Lost Kinks Album is a throw away The Kinks provided to Reprise Records to fulfill their contract before they moved over to RCA, Ray Davies includes that B-side single, I'm Not Like Everybody Else. Now instead of playing that version here, I'm going to play you a wonderful live version of the song recorded in 1996 and part of the 2 CD release in the U.S. called To The Bone.  I guess this paragraph makes my point, in looking for songs...

In January 1973, I'm back from Christmas break and ready to knock out four and a half months of my senior year in high school and get out of that place as soon as possible.

I won't know who Gram Parson is at that time, but his 1973 debut solo album is one of those harbinger albums that introduces Emmy Lou Harris on the scene and beats most of the Country music albums made at that time. Merle Haggard was going to produce this album, but backed out at the last minute, maybe he knew this was a change he couldn't be part of for whatever reason. Gram's flame would end up burning out way too fast with his death from an overdose of morphine and alcohol in September of 1973 at the tender age of 26. 

Let me just say, thank god for Elton John to emerge in the 1970's. His sixth album, Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player is his second straight Number 1 album. I have included the entire album here, but feel free to skip his big hits Daniel and Crocodile Rock if you suffer from their overplay or as I say, "Ruined by Radio." There's a lot of great songwriting here as Bernie and Reg are at the top of their game!

Also, as a departure from my usual mix of mixing all the songs from all the albums together, I'll play these first three featured albums here, and then add some other songs from January 1973 you may remember when rock was becoming not so young.