Sammi Smith Looks Like Stormy Weather 1969 - 1975 (CD)

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(ACE Records) 24 tracks 12 page booklet Sammi Smith sang soulful, melancholy country music.... more

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Sammi Smith: Looks Like Stormy Weather 1969 - 1975 (CD)

(ACE Records) 24 tracks 12 page booklet

Sammi Smith sang soulful, melancholy country music. Her low, distinctively husky voice was built for sad songs, and she has been described as country music’s Dusty Springfield. Compiled and annotated by Bob Stanley, “Looks Like Stormy Weather” is a collection built for winter nights.

There was a compelling warmth to her voice that should have taken her out of country and into the Hot 100 – or even the UK charts – more than once, but her only real crossover moment came in 1971 when she scored the original hit version of ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’. DJ Ralph Emery recalled being in a motel room with Sammi one night in 1970 where she had sat and played him a whole bunch of Kris Kristofferson songs. At that point, neither the DJ nor Sammi had a clue what was around the corner for her, or for her friend Kristofferson, who was then just the janitor at Columbia Records.

‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ topped Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart for three weeks in 1971, peaked at #3 on Billboard’s Hot 100, won “Single of the Year” and the “Best Country Song” at the CMA awards, and a Grammy for “Best Country Vocal Performance by a Female”. Sammi’s voice would have been new to most listeners – its melancholic ache and sensuous depth suited the song’s needs perfectly.

Now signed to the tiny Mega label, she would record seven albums for them between 1970 and 1975, and the pick of them are the heart of this compilation. Highlights include the self-written ‘Jimmy’s In Georgia’, the heart-in-mouth sensuousness of Kristofferson’s ‘I’ve Got To Have You’, the barroom lament ‘The Toast Of ‘45’, which Sammi described as “a hellacious song”, and the everyday tragedy ‘This Room's For Rent’.

“Looks Like Stormy Weather” includes the best of Sammi’s three early Columbia singles, the Bobbie Gentry-like ‘Brownsville Lumberyard’. As a bonus, it also features a pair of previously unissued songs in ‘Desperados Waiting For A Train’ and ‘Texas 1947’, both written by the great Guy Clark.

Article properties: Sammi Smith: Looks Like Stormy Weather 1969 - 1975 (CD)

Interpret: Sammi Smith
Album titlle: Looks Like Stormy Weather 1969 - 1975 (CD)
Genre Country
Label Ace Records
Artikelart CD
EAN: 0029667103725
weight in Kg 0.1

Smith, Sammi - Looks Like Stormy Weather 1969 - 1975 (CD) CD 1
01	I'm in for stormy weather	Sammi Smith
02	Manhattan, Kansas	Sammi Smith
03	This room for rent	Sammi Smith
04	Saunders' ferry lane	Sammi Smith
05	But you know I love you	Sammi Smith
06	I've got to have you	Sammi Smith
07	Brownville lumberyard	Sammi Smith
08	The good-for-something years	Sammi Smith
09	I was just fifteen	Sammi Smith
10	Cover me	Sammi Smith
11	Birmingham mistake	Sammi Smith
12	Jimmy's in Georgia	Sammi Smith
13	Long black veil	Sammi Smith
14	He makes it hard to say goodbye	Sammi Smith
15	Then you walk in	Sammi Smith
16	When michael calls	Sammi Smith
17	The toast of '45	Sammi Smith
18	I miss you most when you're right here	Sammi Smith
19	Sunshine	Sammi Smith
20	Today I ed loving you again	Sammi Smith
21	He's everywhere	Sammi Smith
22	Help me make it through the night	Sammi Smith
23	Desperados waiting for a train	Sammi Smith
24	Texas 1947	Sammi Smith

Sammi Smith Help Me Make It Through The Night Sammi Smith Help Me Make It Through The... more

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"Sammi Smith"

Sammi Smith

Help Me Make It Through The Night

Sammi Smith

Help Me Make It Through The Night

(Kris Kristofferson)

recorded May 25, 1970 (online discography shows May 6, 1970) (18:00-21:00) Monument Recording Studio, 114 17th Ave South, Nashville, Tennessee; Producer: Jim Malloy; Arranger: Bill Walker

Sammi Smith: vocal; Jerry 'Chip Young' Stembridge: guitar; Billy R. Sanford: guitar; Jerry W. Shook: guitar or tic-tac bass; Weldon Myrick: steel guitar; Roy M. 'Junior' Huskey, Jr: bass; Jerry K. Carrigan: drums; David Paul Briggs: keyboard; William Whitney 'Bill' Pursell: keyboard; Byron Theodore Bach: cello or violin; Martha McCrory: cello; Marvin D. Chantry: viola; Gary F. Van Osdale: viola; Brenton Bolden Banks, George Binkley III, Lillian Vann Hunt, Martin Katahn, Sheldon 'Shelly' Kurland: violins

Master MOA M-1065 - Mega 615-0015

From Gay Talese's acclaimed 1966 profile of Frank Sinatra in Esquire magazine, Kris Kristofferson remembered Sinatra saying that he needed a woman or a bottle to help him make it through the night. What Sinatra actually said was barely less pithy: “Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” From the quotation as he remembered it, Kristofferson fashioned this song. He was staying with Dottie and Bill West on Shys Hill Road in Nashville, and offered the song to Dottie who turned it down as too suggestive. The first to record it, in August 1969, was Bill Nash, the hard-luck Mercury artist who recorded the never-released first version of For The Good Times.

In March 1970, Ray Price placed a bizarrely jaunty version of Help Me Make It Through The Night on his 'For The Good Times' LP, but it had yet to be released when Smith made her recording, so it's unclear where Smith heard it. Kristofferson was in her circle, so it's possible that he pitched it to her. After Smith came to Nashville from her home in California in 1967, Frank Jones signed her to Columbia. One year after Columbia dropped her, Brad McCuen signed her to Mega Records. McCuen had been with RCA since 1948, but when his mentor, Steve Sholes, died, McCuen was let go. Mega had no shortage of money for a start-up. McCuen hired engineer Jim Malloy to produce Sammi Smith's and Mega Records' first LP in May 1970.

“We knew Kris's songs were ahead of their time,” Malloy told Todd Everett. “Sammi loved them just as I did. You just didn't write those kind of songs for country music because it was the Bible Belt. But we done the album and when we were finished I played it for the people that ran the label. They liked 'Help Me Make It Through The Night,' but they didn't think they could get it played because I didn't use any background singers.” Bill Walker, who wrote arrangements for Eddy Arnold and The Johnny Cash Show, had violins playing one long, sustained note as the cellos wove a dark counterpoint around it. The first single from the session was one on which Mega owned the publishing. The consensus was that Help Me Make It Through The Night was too suggestive for airplay, but Malloy got home late one night and the phone was ringing. It was Chris Lane, a dee-jay on KFOX, Los Angeles.

He said, “You have a monster, monster record on the Sammi Smith LP.” Malloy asked what it was. Lane said, “'Help Me Make It Through The Night.' I played it the other night and the phones lit up. It's gotten so bad I have to announce I'm gonna play it every hour so please stop tying up the phone lines.” Mike Hoyer, an all-night dee-jay on a powerhouse station in Des Moines was on it, too. Apparently, truckers liked it. Mega didn't even have a national sales or promo staff, and at one point, McCuen's secretary was taking orders. Sammi Smith never topped Help Me Make It Through The Night, and neither did Mega Records. She died in February 2005, aged 61. Mega Records was finished by 1976.

- Colin Escott -

Various Country & Western Hit Parade 1970

Read more at: https://www.bear-family.de/various-country-und-western-hit-parade-1970.html
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