I was trying to decide what the theme was going to be for this weeks #threetunetuesday sponsored by @ablaze and I kept being drawn back to my post from last week. While all of the artists I covered are pretty phenomenal, I couldn't help but feel that I did Paul Carrack a disservice by only including him as a bonus tune for you.
With that in mind, I decided to dedicate a whole post to Paul Carrack this week. More specifically, three of the bands that Paul Carrack has had the privilege of playing with. Or, depending on how you look at it, they had the privilege of being in a band with him.
If you read my post last week, you know that for the longest time I didn't even know who Paul Carrack was. I knew a lot of his work, but I never realized just how prolific he was. Due to that fact, I am going to be relying on Wikipedia for some of my information. Credit where it belongs and I hope you can forgive me.
Paul's career started with a jazz-rock band called Warm Dust which I have never heard of before. You better believe if their three studio albums are available on Spotify, that's what I am going to be listening to this morning!
After the demise of that band, Carrack and the bassist from Warm Dust founded the band Ace. Now, Ace should be pretty familiar to you if you are a lover of "Yacht Rock" like I am. Ace was only together for a few years and their only hit is the one I give you above. "How Long" was written and sung by Carrack and it made Ace what would be considered a one hit wonder.
Thankfully, Carrack didn't give up and moved on to even greater things. It makes sense that How Long was released before I was born, because I feel like I have been hearing it all my life. It's just a very smooth song with a nice vibe and Carracks vocals are so crisp and clear. It's a good jam.
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Roxy Music is one of those bands that I never really got into. They had a couple big hits in the US, but honestly the cover of "More than this" by 10,000 Maniacs probably did better than the original by Roxy Music. They also had that song "Love is the drug" that has been included on a lot of movie soundtracks. Roxy Music has actually been together since 1971, but Paul Carrack didn't join up with them until their final five years from 1978 to 1983 or so.
While Roxy Music doesn't specifically highlight Paul, it laid the foundation for what would be the majority of his career as a session musician for various bands as well as his solo career. After he finished his run with the next band I am going to cover, he was a supporting member of Roger Waters Bleeding Heart Band.
It's safe to say Paul has worked with just about everyone in the music business from that time.
Not only has he had songs recorded by the likes of Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, Diana Ross, Tom Jones, Michael McDonald, and Jools Holland (thanks again wiki), he also has served as a session musician for Elton John, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr (remember last week), B.B. King, The Pretenders, The Smith's, and Madness.
Eventually, Carrack was asked to join a new band by Mike Rutherford from Genesis named Mike + The Mechanics. They had a ton of success during the 80's with hits like "All I need is a miracle", "Silent Running", "The Living Years", and several others. Carrack received immense praise from Phil Collins.
From there, Paul Carrack went on to have a pretty successful solo career with including the song that I shared as a bonus track for you last week. If you have access to a music streaming service, I highly recommend that you take a deep dive into Paul Carrack. Unless you are a metal maxi or something like that, I don't think you will be disappointed.
Finally, I am going to leave you with this gem that Paul wrote and performed when he was with a little band called Squeeze. I don't think they were around very long, but "Tempted" was one of their biggest hits and it still gets played on the radio to this day.
If you had asked me, I would have guessed this song is much newer than it actually is. It feels more late 80's early 90's than early 80's to me, but what do I know.
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