February 16, 2015

101 Reel-to-Reel Tapes 94: David Gates ~ First, Bread

reel-to-reel tape box cover detail
detail photo by Styrous®


In addition to my 20,000 Vinyl LP collection I'm selling, I have reel-to-reel, pre-recorded tapes for sale. If interested, contact me by email please, not by a comment. 

I will have the David Gates ~ First, reel-to-reel tape, for sale on eBay. I have others for sale on eBay now (see links below).    

~ ~ ~


First is the first solo album by David Gates, the lead singer of the group, Bread. released by Elektra in September of 1973. It is jazz flavored and after a look at the musicians involved, you don't have to ask why. The musicians on the album include: Jimmy Getzoff - violin, Jim Gordon - drums, Jim Horn - sax, John Guerin - percussion, Larry Carlton - guitar, Larry Knechtel - keyboard, Louie Shelton - guitar, Mike Botts - drums and Russ Kunkel - drums. It was an incredibly talented group of musicians.



reel-to-reel tape box cover
album cover photo by Frank Bez
photo of album by Styrous®


Ok, so, my favorite song on this album is, Soap (I Use The). With its twangy guitar, it has a quasi-country sound to it. A bouncy, almost happy song about all the every day things done in spite of having lost a love. There's something kind of wistful and dear about the tune I can't explain. 

A tour de force is the Suite: Clouds, Rain. Opening with the sound of the wind the orchestra enters followed by piano. It goes into a slow dreamy rock ballad that is interrupted halfway through by thunder. It picks up in tempo slows down again then goes into a nice instrumental break with keyboard by Gates. It is in the vein of the Mystic Moods Orchestra (see link below). 

Do You Believe He's Comin' is a God-Rock religious song with some really fine guitar work in it that rivals any others. Gates sings about the coming of Him; who "Him" is is never really stated but the implication is there. It's a really nice song.

Lorilee is a mellow instrumental through the first half of the song with lots of good keyboard and guitar work. The vocal, when it does come in, is languid and sensual, with an almost Brazilian feeling to it.

Gates studied the cattle ranching business while touring with Bread and purchased a 1,400 acre cattle ranch financed by royalties he earned during his time with the group.  


reel-to-reel tape box cover detail
album cover photo by Frank Bez
detail photo by Styrous®



David Ashworth Gates was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on December 11, 1940. He was the lead vocalist for Bread and played guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, viola and percussion. Quite a talented guy.  

Gates was surrounded by music from infancy as the son of a band director and a piano teacher. He became proficient in piano, bass and guitar by the time he enrolled in Tulsa's Will Rogers High School. Gates joined local bands around Tulsa. During a concert in 1957, his high school band backed Chuck Berry. In 1961, his family moved to Los Angeles, where Gates continued writing songs, and he worked as a music copyist, as a studio musician, and as a producer for many artists including Pat Boone

In 1968, Gates and Robb Royer got together with Jimmy Griffin to form Bread. The group was signed by Elektra, where it would remain for the eight years of its existence. It released its first album, Bread, in 1969, which peaked at No. 127 on the Billboard 200. The first single, Dismal Day, written by Gates, was released in June 1969 but did not sell well.  

Bread's second album, On the Waters (a play on Ecclesiastes 11:1), with a new drummer, Mike Botts, was released in 1970, and became a breakout success. It contained the No. 1 single Make It with You and was the first of seven consecutive Bread albums to go Gold in the U.S. 



reel-to-reel tape box back
 album back cover photo by Ken Banks
photo of album by Styrous®



John Payne Guerin was born in Hawaii on October 31, 1939, and was raised in San Diego. He was an American drummer, percussionist, and session musician.   

Guerin began performing with Buddy DeFranco in 1960. In the late 1960s he moved to Los Angeles where he worked with artists including Frank Sinatra, George Harrison, Frank Zappa, The Animals, Joni Mitchell, Them, Thelonious Monk, Lou Rawls, Ray Conniff, George Shearing, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt, Nelson Riddle and many others. From July 1972 to January 1973 he was the drummer for The Byrds, and joined the L.A. Express later that year. The band served as Joni Mitchell's back-up band on tour during the mid- to late-1970s; Guerin had a brief relationship with Mitchell at the time.

A leading exponent of the jazz-rock style, he was one of the most prolific drummers of all time. Among his many contributions to motion picture and television scores, Guerin worked on the soundtrack to the 1988 film homage to Charlie Parker, Bird by Clint Eastwood. Those are also his drums on the theme song during the opening credits for the television series Hawaii Five-O.

In later years, Guerin worked with Oscar Peterson, John Faddis, Jimmy Heath, Ray Charles, Sonny Rollins, Justin Morell, Andreas Pettersson, David Basse, David Garfield, Gary Lemel, and Mike Melvoin.

He died of heart failure on January 5, 2004 in West Hills, California



reel-to-reel tape box back detail
album back cover photo by Ken Banks
detail photo by Styrous®


Jim Gordon is an American recording artist, musician and songwriter. He was born on July 14, 1945, and was raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. He was a Grammy Award winner and one of the most requested session drummers in the late 1960s and 1970s, recording albums with many well-known musicians of the time, and was the drummer in the blues rock supergroup Derek and the Dominos, Little Richard, and Delaney & Bonnie. His discography is phenomenal (link below)! 

In 1983, Gordon, at the time an undiagnosed schizophrenic, murdered his mother and was sentenced to sixteen years to life in prison. He was not allowed to use an insanity defense because of changes to California law due to the Insanity Defense Reform Act and is still serving his sentence at the California Medical Facility, a specialist medical and psychiatric prison in Vacaville, California.   




reel-to-reel tape box back detail
album back cover photo by Ken Banks
detail photo by Styrous®



Jim Horn was born in Los Angeles on November 20, 1940. He is an American saxophonist, woodwind player, and session musician. He toured with Duane Eddy for five years, playing sax and flute on the road, and in the recording studio. He became one of the most in-demand horn session players of the 1970s and 1980s. The artists with whom Horn has collaborated is amazing (link below)! 

Horn played on solo albums by three members of the Beatles, and worked on a session with Paul McCartney, who was producing a track for the Duane Eddy 1987 album project. He also played flute and saxophone on The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, and also played flute on The Rolling Stones' album Goats Head Soup

Jim Horn toured with John Denver on and off from 1978 to 1993. He also played with Denver in concert occasionally after the Wildlife Concert in 1995.

IN 2007, Horn was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, TN as a member of The Wrecking Crew.

The artists with whom Horn has collaborated is amazing (link below)! 



reel-to-reel tape box back detail
album back cover photo by Ken Banks
detail photo by Styrous®



Larry Carlton is an American jazz, smooth jazz, jazz fusion, blues, pop, and rock guitarist. He was born in Torrance, California, on March 2, 1948. 

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Carlton was a session musician in Los Angeles, making up to five hundred recording sessions a year, including albums by Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, The Four Tops, Christopher Cross, Barbra Streisand, the Partridge Family, and Charly García's Clics Modernos. His guitar work on Steely Dan's Kid Charlemagne from their 1976 LP The Royal Scam has been listed as the third best guitar solo on record by Rolling Stone magazine. From 1971 to 1977 he played with the jazz-rock group The Crusaders.  In 1979 he played guitar on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall.

Carlton has won four Grammy Awards for his performances and compositions, including performing on the theme song for the television series Hill Street Blues (1981).  

In 1988, while working on his electric guitar LP On Solid Ground, which was released in 1989, Carlton was the victim of a random act of violence, shot in the throat outside Room 335, his private studio in Southern California. The bullet shattered his vocal cord and caused significant nerve trauma. Carlton managed to recover quickly and completed On Solid Ground by the end of the year. 



reel-to-reel tape box back detail
album back cover photo by Ken Banks
detail photo by Styrous®



Lawrence William "Larry" Knechtel was born in Bell, California, on August 4, 1940, and was an American keyboard player and bassist, best known as a member of The Wrecking Crew, a collection of Los Angeles-based session musicians who worked with such renowned artists as Simon & Garfunkel, Duane Eddy, The Beach Boys, The Mamas & the Papas, The Monkees, The Partridge Family, The Doors, The Grass Roots and Elvis Presley, and as a member of the 1970s band Bread.   

In 1970 Knechtel won a Grammy Award for his piano work on Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel. He also played the piano on Johnny Rivers' 1972 hit Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.  

Knechtel was proficient in other instruments, notably the harmonica and the electric bass guitar, which can be heard on Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds, Stoney End by Barbra Streisand, If I Can Dream by Elvis Presley and on tracks by The Doors (who did not have their own bass guitarist). 

Knechtel died on August 20, 2009, in Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, Washington, at the age of 69 of an apparent heart attack.   



reel-to-reel tape 
detail photo by Styrous®


William Louis "Louie" Shelton was born on April 6, 1941. He is an American guitarist and music producer. During the 1960s, He was a session musician working in recording studios around Hollywood. Among his more notable session work was for The Monkees, including their first self-titled album, and both recordings of the Boyce and Hart song Valleri




reel-to-reel tape
detail photo by Styrous®



Russell "Russ" Kunkel, born on September 27, 1948, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an American drummer and producer who has worked as a session musician with many well-known artists, including Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, and Glenn Frey

In the 1970s, Kunkel worked with bassist Leland Sklar, guitarist Danny Kortchmar, and keyboardist Craig Doerge and they eventually became known as "The Section"; they recorded three albums under that name between 1972 and 1977.  

Kunkel had a cameo as doomed drummer Eric "Stumpy Joe" Childs in the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap.  


reel-to-reel tape labledakls
detail photo by Styrous®


Michael G. Botts, was born in Oakland, California, on December 8, 1944. He was an American drummer, best known for his work with 1970s soft rock band Bread, and as a session musician. 

Botts died from colon cancer in Burbank, California, on December 9, 2005, one day after his 61st birthday.   




Tracklist:

Side 1:

1 - Sail Around The World  - 3:14
2 - Sunday Rider  - 3:21
3 - Soap (I Use The)  - 2:25
4 - Suite: Clouds, Rain  - 8:52

Side 2:

1 - Help Is On The Way  - 2:52
2 - Ann  - 3:50
3 - Do You Believe He's Comin'  - 4:52
4 - Sight & Sound  - 3:00
5 - Lorilee  - 4:42


Personnel:
   
David Gates - vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, viola and percussion  
Jimmy Getzoff - violin  
Jim Horn - sax   
Russ Kunkel - drums 


Credits: 

    Co-producer [Associate Producer] – Larry Knechtel
    Design – Robert L. Heimall
    Engineer – Armin Steiner, Bruce Morgan
    Musician – Jimmy Getzoff*, Jim Gordon, Jim Horn, John Guerin, Larry Carlton, Larry Knechtel, Louie Shelton, Mike Botts, Russ Kunkel
    Photography By [Cover Photo] – Frank Bez
    Photography By [Inside Photo] – Ken Banks
    Producer, Arranged By – David Gates
    Written-by [All Songs] – David Gates

Label: Elektra ‎– EST 75066-C
Format: reel-to-rell tape
Country: US
Released: Sep 1973
Genre: Pop, Rock
Style: Acoustic, Soft Rock, Ballad


David Gates ~ First songs on YouTube: 
 
Sunday Rider    
Ann   


The David Gates ~ First, reel-to-reel tape, is for sale on eBay 

Other reel-to-reel tapes now for sale on eBay     



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