Rock Archeologia

Grinder's Switch (Featuring Garland Jeffreys) - Grinder's Switch (1970)

Artist: Grinder's Switch
(Featuring Garland Jeffreys)
Album: Grinder's Switch
Label: Vanguard
Catalog#: VSD 6550
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1970
Genre: Pop/Rock, Blues Rock
Duration: 00:34:41

• New York singer/songwriter Garland Jeffreys made his disc debut as the leader of the band Grinder's Switch on Vanguard Records in 1970. By the evidence of its ten Jeffreys-composed songs, he and the group had spent a lot of time listening to the Band's Music from Big Pink and the batch of songs Bob Dylan had developed with the Band in the late '60s, including "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)." Jeffreys, Ernest Corallo, and Stan Szelest approximated the Band's rough vocal trio of Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel, and the country-rock musical arrangements, with their prominent organ and piano work by Szelest, also strongly recalled the sound of the Band. (Szelest actually joined a later lineup of the Band, appearing on their 1993 album, Jericho.) Jeffreys had some clever and amusing things to say in his lyrics, marking him as the singer/songwriter he would develop into later. But upon release, Garland Jeffreys and Grinder's Switch was so much of a clone of the Band that it was hard to separate it out as the work of an independent entity. - William Ruhlmann.

 • Side One:
A1. Sister Divine 04:45
A2. Father, The Son And The Holy Ghost 03:56
A3. Won't Ya Come Back Home 02:26
A4. Dear Jolly Jack 03:41
A5. And Don't Be Late 02:42
 • Side Two:
B1. An Imaginary Invalid 04:05
B2. Last Night I Drove Down To The Bar (Women And Wine) 02:09
B3. Evening 01:52
B4. They Call Me Fortune And Fame 02:17
B5. Seven Sleepers' Den 07:40

      Art Direction by Jules Halfant
      Producer, Remixing: Lewis Merenstein
      Photography by Joel Brodsky

Personel:
Ernest Corallo - Acoustic, Electric & Steel Guitar, Mandolin, Vocals
Richard Davis, Bob Piazza - Bass
Garland Jeffreys - Composer, Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
Garland Jeffreys & Grinder's Switch - Vocals
Sanford Konikoff - Drums
Neil Schwartz - Engineer
Stan Szelest - Harmonica, Organ, Piano, Vocals

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