It was 50 years ago today....

I still love those first two McCartneys. Paul played and sang all the parts on the first (as did Emitt Rhodes on his even better s/t 1970 debut), but had hired Studio/Jazz drummer Denny Seiwell by the time of Ram, paying him $150 a week to be on retainer. Not cool.

I really love the fact that they decided to give Ringo a song on every outing. Which other band has 4 different lead singers per album?

Then there’s the fact that even an album comprised of their worst songs would be pretty good by most standards.

The standards they’re judged by are so high that even so called failures, ie the Magical Mystery Tour or Let It Be, would be seen as successes for anyone else.

For me the sheer variety and creativity of the Beatles was missing from their solo efforts. As a last resort I decided to follow Lennon’s advice for those who wanted another Beatles album by combing favourite tracks from their solo albums.

Apart from the difficulty of finding suitable Ringo tracks from his solo efforts, It Don’t Come Easy being the standout, it works quite well.

Ringo's second album is really good. It's no secret he loves Country music (look at the songs he sang on the early Beatles albums), so for Beaucoups Of Blues he went to Nashville and recorded with all the guys Dylan had used for years on his albums---Pete Drake (pedal steel guitar, and producer of the album), the great Buddy Harman on drums (one of my all-time favorites---he played on a lot of the classic 1950/60/70's Nashville recordings---Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman", etc.), Charlie Daniels, The Jordanaires (Elvis' backup singers), D.J. Fontana (Elvis' original drummer), Jerry Reed, Charlie McCoy, Ben Keith (steel player on Neil Young's Harvest), and Roy Huskey Jr. (great upright bassist). Real good album, Ringos singing being its only weakness ;-) .