{"id":3800,"date":"2013-04-01T05:02:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T09:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=3800"},"modified":"2025-08-14T08:28:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:28:58","slug":"album-review-barbara-ernie-prelude-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2013\/04\/01\/album-review-barbara-ernie-prelude-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Barbara & Ernie – Prelude To…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I truly admire the people at Real Gone Music<\/strong><\/a>. They continue to unearth music from ages ago that is in some cases long-cherished. In other cases it’s long-forgotten but worthwhile. And in yet other cases, the music never got much of a hearing to begin with; you can’t forget what you never knew.<\/p>\n

And it’s into that last category that Prelude To…<\/em> falls. Credited to Barbara & Ernie<\/strong>, it’s a 1971 one-off collaboration between Barbara Massey<\/strong> (vocals, keyboards and autoharp) and Ernie Calabria<\/strong> (vocals, guitar, electric sitar and some bass). Backed by some ace sessioners, the duo and their album sank pretty much without a trace, despite being on Cotillion (the same Atlantic Records subsidiary that released Emerson, Lake & Palmer<\/strong><\/a>‘s debut LP in the USA).<\/p>\n

Though it’s credited as a duo, Massey’s voice is the most prominent instrument on the record. And she has quite a set of pipes. Not only can she sing whatever sort of material she wishes \u2013 ballads, soulful numbers \u2013 but her singular style means that she can sound like herself while strongly evoking other top-notch vocalists. The musically ambitious \u201cPlay With Fire\u201d finds Massey sounding like some sort of cross between Grace Slick<\/strong><\/a> and Julie Driscoll<\/strong>. On the gentle, stately J.S. Bach<\/strong>-influenced \u201cPrelude,\u201d Massey sounds very much like Laura Nyro<\/strong>. And in other places she may remind listeners of Carole King<\/strong> or Karen Carpenter<\/strong>. And so on: witness \u201cListen to Your Heart,\u201d in which she sounds uncannily like Elaine \u201cSpanky\u201d McFarlane<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Barbara & Ernie’s cover of Jefferson Airplane<\/strong><\/a>‘s (or The Great Society<\/strong>‘s, if we’re being picky) \u201cSomebody to Love\u201d is very much in the style of Driscoll’s work with Brian Auger<\/strong>; Massey’s finely-timed strums on autoharp will make you forget The Lovin’ Spoonful<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The players are certainly no slouches, either. Calabria’s subtle, jazzy guitar work on \u201cSearching the Circle\u201d is a delight, and the horn charts on that tune (and a few others) are subtle and thrilling at once. (Aside: I’ve read that “Searching the Circle” has been sampled for breakbeats and grooves on hip-hop tracks, but can’t tell you which ones.) And with orchestration by a pre-disco Eumir Deodato<\/strong>, this is one of those albums that rewards close listening.<\/p>\n

Listening to this shortish album in 2013, the biggest mystery may be why it didn’t chart; everything about it: writing, singing, performance, arrangement, production \u2013 is exemplary, and it’s a varied (but not too<\/em> varied) collection of songs. One supposes that the \u201cjust too much other good stuff at the time\u201d argument might explain it. But thanks to Real Gone Music, the time for Barbara & Ernie’s Prelude To…<\/em> is now. It’s a gem worth discovering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I truly admire the people at Real Gone Music. They continue to unearth music from ages ago that is in some cases long-cherished. In other cases it’s long-forgotten but worthwhile. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,51,64,65,69],"tags":[262,790,1796],"class_list":["post-3800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-pop","category-reissue","category-review","category-soul","tag-barbara-massey","tag-ernie-calabria","tag-real-gone-music","cat-42-id","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29911,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800\/revisions\/29911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}