Ringo Starr - Beaucoups of Blues

This was a record I was pretty excited to find. It was the UK pressing, and the gatefold was laminated and looked absolutely pristine. This was also an album I'd never heard. I knew it existed, but honestly I always thought it was a throwaway album kind of like Sentimental Journey that had come out in the spring of 1970. I think one of the reasons I was so casually dismissive was it would be three years before Ringo would regroup and release his self titled album in 1973, which more or less coincidentally aligned with when I really started paying attention to music. Honestly for a long time I had assumed Ringo was his debut.

The album is extra ordinary. I mean, this is a love letter to classic country, and Ringo seems so at home it's disarming. There's always been something special about Ringo's voice. It's an odd thing in many ways, but his ability to convey so much emotion and warmth is disarming. His confidence and charm are absolutely infectious. For those who love to shit on Ringo as a talentless hack who was the luckiest guy in The Beatles, this album is his "hold my beer" moment.

Reading up on how the album came to be only makes it more charming and appealing. Pete Drake, who would end up producing Beaucoups of Blues had been flown to London to play pedal steel guitar on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album and it was Ringo who picked him up at the airport. Apparently Ringo had a bunch of country albums in the car, and the two struck up a conversation with Ringo saying that they should work together. Pete casually mentioned he could get an album's worth of songs written in a week, which Ringo thought was impossible. Turns out it wasn't, and Ringo went to Nashville and over the course of three days in June 1970 all of the recording was done for the album with the sessions being engineered by the legendary Scottie Moore (who oddly never played guitar on the record) and the album was released in September.

In many ways this is a classic album that even in 1970 was an album from another time. Well, probably not entirely true, what I know about country is pretty limited. I'll just settle on "classic" country without the shrill strings. The number of musicians who contributed to this is pretty astounding and among the assembled talent were the likes of The Jordanaires, Charlie Daniels before the beard, and Jerry Reed. Heck, I'm going to guess that for the folks who actually know about such things the cast of studio aces are among the who's who of Nashville's finest at the time.

The album was fitted for Ringo and he doesn't come across as a fish out of water, or an artist who is out of his depth. The songs are played straight, and there's no sense Ringo is taking the piss or giving the listener a sly wink and a nod as he plays at being a country star (Starr, ar ar ar). I'd actually expected this to be a little more silly, and self effacing but there's a reverence to the material, and it's far more charming and engaging than I thought it would be.

Of course at the time people had no idea what to do with this, and the album was likely dismissed as a cruel vanity project that was released to an unsuspecting audience. Oddly it was fairly well received in Canada where the album went as high as 34 on the RPM Albums Chart.

If you're not a fan of traditional country this will not be your cup of tea, but if you think of it as early Americana you're in for an unexpected treat.