Crazy Love Heart Of The Night Indian Summer Poco

Crazy Love Album: Legend (1978)
Heart Of The Night Album: Legend (1978)
Indian Summer Album: Indian Summer (released May Day 1977)
by Poco

"Crazy Love" is a 1979 hit single for the country rock group Poco introduced on the 1978 album Legend. Written by founding group member Rusty Young, "Crazy Love" was the first single by Poco to reach the Top 40 and remained the group's biggest hit, with a special impact as an Adult Contemporary hit, being ranked by Billboard as the #1 AC song for the year 1979.

In 2012, Young would thus recall his writing "Crazy Love": "I was living in Los Angeles, working on my house one day" - "I was paneling a wall and looking out over the valley in L.A. and the chorus came into my head" - "I always had a guitar close at hand. It took about thirty minutes to write that song, because it was all there. It was kind of a gift." Young added that the "'Ooh, ooh, Ahhhh haaa' part" of the chorus was a stopgap he intended to replace with formal lyrics but the musicians who first backed Young on the song told him: "Don't do that, that's the way it's supposed to be."

In a July 17, 2011, broadcast of the Original 70s Soundtrack on urockradio.net, Young would say of his writing "Crazy Love: "for the first big hit - the only really huge hit Poco's had - [to be] a song that I wrote and sang is pretty ironic" - "When the band started all I did was [play] steel guitar and banjo and dobro and that kind of stuff: I was the instrumentalist in the band - I didn't sing and I didn't write....But I've always said that with the band what happened is that as people have left the band it's left room for others to grow. I had great teachers: Richie Furay; Neil [Young] and Stephen Stills [of Buffalo Springfield] were around in the beginning [and] I could listen to them writing songs, working on songs and how they did it. Jimmy [Messina] taught me really a lot about the whole recording process and writing poems. I just had these great teachers that I was around."

By the time of the May 1977 release of the album Indian Summer Timothy B. Schmit had been recruited to join the Eagles: Schmit remained with Poco for their Indian Summer tour whose Santa Monica Civic Auditorium edition in July 1977 was recorded as The Last Roundup, intended to be released as Poco's final album. In 1978 Rusty Young and Paul Cotton auditioned for Poco's label ABC Records in hopes of being allowed to record an album together: in Young's words he and Cotton "got a little rehearsal hall, put together a band, and played...'Crazy Love' and 'Heart of the Night'" - the latter a Paul Cotton composition - for ABC Records executives "who said go ahead, make a record". Recorded at Crystal City Studios (Los Angeles) between April and August 1978, the resultant project was intended to be credited to the Cotton-Young Band: however ABC Records elected to have Young and Cotton along with two sidemen who'd backed them at Crystal City - drummer Steve Chapman and bassist Charlie Harrison - continue as Poco (keyboardist Kim Bullard joined Poco by the year's end), with The Last Roundup being shelved and the Crystal City tracks issued as the twelfth album release from Poco in November 1978, under the title Legend.

It has been alleged that the February 1979 takeover of ABC Records by MCA arrested the surge in Poco's popularity, MCA not being interested in the group: (LA Times 27 April 1979 quote from "a source close to ABC":) "[Poco]'s sales would be better now if that change [ie. ABC's takeover by MCA] hadn't happened. Poco's records really suffered. Those guys are hexed." ("Crazy Love"'s parent album Legend would still manage to reach #14 on the Billboard album chart in April 1979, being that month certified as a Gold record for sales of 500,000 units.)

"Crazy Love" would spend seven weeks at the #1 position on the airplay-focused Adult Contemporary chart in Billboard, whose year-end tally would rank "Crazy Love" as the #1 Adult Contemporary hit for 1979. Grazing the Billboard C&W chart (#95), "Crazy Love" would have a Canadian hit parade tenure with a #15 peak, becoming Poco's second charting single in Australia with a #73 peak (leaving "Rose of Cimarron" -#49 in 1976 - as Poco's Australian chart best).

Although Poco would have three subsequent Top 40 hits all of which reached the Adult Contemporary chart's Top Ten, "Crazy Love" remained the band's signature song: in a 2008 interview promoting an upcoming Poco gig, Rusty Young stated: "The only reason we're [ie. Young and the interviewer] talking now is 'Crazy Love'. That was our first hit single. It's a classic, and it still pays the mortgage."

Heart of the Night's lead vocalist and composer Paul Cotton would describe it as a song which (Paul Cotton quote:) "kind of wrote itself...in twenty minutes", being "inspired by my love and lust for New Orleans", a city Cotton had previously focused on "Down in the Quarter" (album Head Over Heels/ 1975); Cotton has also stated that he wrote "Break of Hearts" (album Ghost Town/ 1982) as a followup to "Heart of the Night" (although "Break of Hearts" contains no regional references). Cotton, born in Alabama but raised in Chicago, would aver: (Paul Cotton quote:): "I'm just drawn to the South. Hey, I spent 25 winters in Chicago."

"Heart of the Night" is highlighted by an alto sax solo by Phil Kenzie who had similarly and memorably contributed to the Al Stewart 1976-77 hit "Year of the Cat": Kenzie had become acquainted with Cotton and Young as a result of Kenzie's playing behind Al Stewart during the 1977 Year of the Cat tour which featured Poco as opening act. Two other members of Al Stewart's tour band, drummer Steve Chapman and bassist Charlie Harrison, also played on the sessions for the Legend album. (Paul Cotton:) "Steve Chapman, right after we rehearsed ['Heart of the Night'] in the studio, said 'Man, that’s going to be a big hit.'"

In 1978, with Poco seemingly disbanded, Cotton and Rusty Young (Young quote:) "got a little rehearsal hall, put together a band, and played [several songs including] 'Crazy Love' and 'Heart of the Night'" for ABC Records executives who okayed Cotton and Young recording an album as the Cotton-Young Band; however by the time the album - recorded at Crystal City Studios (Los Angeles) between April and August 1978 - had been completed ABC had decided to issue it as a new Poco album, a decision which effectively promoted Steve Chapman and Charlie Harrison from being one-off session players to tenured members of Poco.

A live performance by Poco of "Heart of the Night" appears on the November 1979 multi-artist album No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future which contains selections from the September 1979 Madison Square Garden concerts by Musicians United for Safe Energy. A live rendition of "Heart of the Night" - featuring sax player Phil Kenzie from the original recording - is also featured on the 2004 Poco concert album Keeping the Legend Alive recorded May 20, 2004 at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville.

Indian Summer is the tenth studio album by Poco, released on May 1, 1977. The appearance of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen playing synthesizer on two of the tracks marked another move away from the country rock sound the band had primarily been known for. This was the band's last studio album before both Timothy B. Schmit and George Grantham left the group.

"Indian Summer" Track 1
Paul Cotton – lead vocals, Gretsch White Falcon
Timothy B. Schmit – backing vocals, bass
George Grantham – backing vocals, drums
Rusty Young – steel and sitar steel guitars
Steve Forman – percussion, creatures
Donald Fagen – ARP Odyssey, ARP String Ensemble

During the ten-year period during which Bruce, Novarro, Mineo, Linkletter, Stevens, Tate, Sebring, Frykowski and Folger all turned up dead, a whole lot of other people connected to Laurel Canyon did as well, often under very questionable circumstances.

Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, lead guitarist and bass player for the Allman Brothers, were killed in freakishly similar motorcycle crashes on October 29, 1971 and November 11, 1972. Allman was the son of Willis Allman, a US Army Sergeant who had been murdered by another soldier near Norfolk, Virginia (home of the world’s largest naval installation) on December 26, 1949. In 1967, Duane and his younger brother, Gregg, then billing themselves as The Allman Joys, ventured out to Los Angeles. While there, Gregg auditioned for and was almost signed by the Laurel Canyon band Poco, which featured Buffalo Springfield alumni Richie Furay and Jim Messina, as well as future Eagle Randy Meisner. Duane was killed when a truck turned in front of his motorcycle at an intersection and inexplicably stopped. Just over a year later, Oakley had a similar run-in with a bus, just three blocks from where Allman had been killed. Following the crash, Berry had dusted himself off and declined medical attention, insisting that he was okay. Three hours later, he was rushed to the hospital, where he died. Both Oakley and Allman were just twenty-four years old.