I knew a little about Rod Stewart's catalog when I started managing a Camelot Music store in 1981, but a few months after I started I became considerably more familiar with the depth of his hitmaking, thanks to a customer who brought back a defective (that wasn't so defective) copy of a best of compilation LP from his days on the Mercury label. In fact, it was so good I not only bought it, but the second compilation from those years as well, and spend a good chunk of the early eighties listening to the both of them.
I wrote about Rod Stewart around a million years ago in the third ever post for Friday Night Jukebox. While the earlier posts didn't have quite the biography of the newer ones, I'll still keep this mercifully short as plenty of writers better than I have covered his illustrious career. I will make note, though, that since his humble beginning busking on the street with a harmonica in 1962, Stewart has won multiple Grammy Awards, been elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (solo and as a member of Faces), been elected into the U.K. Music Hall of Fame, and been knighted. He's also sold over 250 million records, and has had ten #1 LP's and six #1 singles in his native U.K., as well as four #1's of each here in the U.S. And to top it off, he'll be releasing his thirty-first album sometime later this year.
Fun Fact: The first solo album Stewart released did not chart in his native U.K. The second one hit #62. Of the next twenty-eight he released, twenty-seven of them reached the top ten in the U.K., and the one that missed peaked at #11. That is one hell of a streak....
"Oh No Not My Baby" (which for whatever reason does not make the usual use of punctuation marks) was written by the great Carole King and her one-time husband Gerry Goffin in 1964. It was originally a hit that same year for Maxine Brown, peaking at #24. Rod Stewart recorded his version in 1973 while still a member of the Faces, but it was released as a solo effort even though he was backed by them in the studio. It was never released on a studio album. The single hit #6 in the U.K. (so many cool kids in Great Britain), and #59 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.
With "Oh No Not My Baby" Rod Stewart (who produced the single himself) took the best of sixties pop, added the best of seventies pop, and created a blue-eyed soul gem. There haven't been too many rock and roll vocalists who can do vocally what Stewart can, and he makes his voice into an instrument of its own as he sings the tale of a man whose friends and family tell him not to trust his lady love, but who's certain that they're oh so wrong about her. The Faces--with the help of a string section and possibly some horns--make a musical panoply in the background of Stewart's plaintive wailing (especially impressed with the drumming which give the song a nice funk groove) that glues the other pieces together. If you're an aficionado of pure sweet pop--I know I am--this one is right up there with the best of what pop has to offer.
Lyric Sheet: "When my friends told me you had someone new/I didn't believe a single word was true/I told them all I had faith in you/I kept a-right on sayin'/Oh, no, not my baby..."
Enjoy:
The Republican Party Is Now a Fascist Cult Just Like Nazi Germany
Peace,
emaycee
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