Listen: All That I’ve Got (I’m Gonna Give It To You) / Billy Preston
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1968. The Beatles starting Apple Records, and even better, turning into A&R guys who immediately proceeded to over spend on their friends. Thankfully they kept George Martin well clear of their roster.

Seems it was primarily George Harrison who got in there signing, writing, playing, producing. His works with Jackie Lomax, Doris Troy, and Billy Preston all proved to be good ones.

Maybe it was the Abbey Road studios, where I’m guessing they were all recorded. Not sure, but something gave every one of those records a roomy, live sound. A decidedly American Delaney & Bonnie & Friends communal feel identified this particular single. Like my previous Billy Preston post, his releases were a touch classy, oddly polished and unpolished alike, and kinda too good for mainstream consumption. What else is new?

Listen: Black Cloud (Edit) / Trapeze Trapeze.mp3

Formula early 70′s blues rock…maybe. The vocal was uncannily close to Steve Marriott, circa Humble Pie – not a bad thing. In fact, there may be a few Jackie Lomax vocal moments in there as well – how rad is that? And the song itself, Free at their best.

At least one member of Trapeze went on to greater fame in, I think, Deep Purple or quite possibly an even more questionable AOR band. I didn’t bother to Wikipedia it all because who cares. In fact, given my disdain for such things, I prefer not to know.

Their second album, MEDUSA, was their pinnacle, at least in my little, little, little corner of the world. I honestly did like it plus no harm done by being on a London distributed label (Threshold). Nice gatefold sleeve, The Moody Blues still respectable. All good.