Genre: rock
Rating: *** (3 stars)
Title: Hard Heartsingin'
Company: Quad
Catalog: QUS-5002
Year: 1969
Country/State: Portland, Oregon
Grade (cover/record): VG/VG
Comments: two small cut out holes in label; name in pen on front cover and time written on back cover
Available: 1
GEMM catalog ID: 4838
Price: $60.00
Living and working in Portland, Oregon Tim Doyle, Richie Moore and Doug Snider started playing together for their own entertainment. As The Sun Trio they graduated to evening and weekend performances on the local club circuit. The resulting exposure brought them to the attention of local music engineers Mike Carter and Russ Gorsline who subsequently took the trio under their professional arms, helping them score recording time at Portland's Rex Studios. Over the next two years the trio recorded a series of demos, running up a substantial studio tab that they couldn't fund.
Like a bad novel, Snider supposedly quit his day job, sold his care and relocated to Hollywood where he began shopping the tapes around to various record companies. Snider eventually finding an interested party in MGM's newly established Quad subsidiary.
Co-produced by Allen Breed, Ernie Fetsch and Snider, 1969's "Hard Heartsingin'" pulled together and polished off the band's earlier demos. I've seen reviews pushing a Doors influence and while the opening title track and a couple of others sported a modest Jim Morrison and company resemblance, for the most part the comparison's a major stretch. Sure, there's a dark and ominous feel to most of the ten original tracks (remember these guys were from Portland), but propelled by Snider's raspy voice and Doyle's Hammond B3 organ, original material such as 'Early In the Morning Rain', '21 Years' and 'New Orleans Queen' (complete with in-studio flubs) sported a fairly standard blues-rock vibe. That's not to give you the impression that album sucks. It's actually quite listenable and stands as one of the better entries in the genre. Quad actually floated a single 'Smokey Joe's' b/w 'Coming Back Home' (104) and while the 45 began to attract West Coast airplay, MGM subsequently decided to close down Quad Records leaving the band without support. They called it quits within a matter of months.
"Hard
Heartsingin'" track listing:
(side 1)
1.) Hard Heartsingin' - 4:23
2.) Jersey Thunder - 2:13
3.) I Didn't Try - 3:33
4.) Early In the Morning Rain - 3:53
5.) New Orleans Queen - 3:13
(side
2)
1.) Moratorium Waltz - 3:01
2.) Smokey Joe's - 2:15
3.) Coming Back Home - 3:49
4.) Tom's Song - 3:00
5.) 21 Years - 2:51
There's
also a late-1990s Australian funk band with the same name.