CoronaVinyl Day 207 (R): Takin' My Time by Bonnie Raitt

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "R," and apparently I have two Bonnie Raitt albums, so let's listen to one, okay?  I'm going with her third studio album, 1973's Takin' My Time.

Raitt is one of those "musician's musicians" that everyone seems to love.  Perhaps it's because she always comes across as having a very pleasant demeanor, she was one of the first prominent female guitarists, and she's always made the kind of music that she wants to make -- which has generally been critically acclaimed -- rather than trying to please mainstream audiences.  Of course, that's not to say she hasn't had mainstream success.  She had three multi-platinum records from 1989 to 1994 (two of which hit #1 on the Billboard album chart, and the other one went to #2), and her 1991 song "Something to Talk About" was a Top 5 hit, and pretty much all of that happened after she turned 40.

As it turns out, she was making music for nearly two decades before then.  Her parents encouraged her and her siblings to play music, so she was playing guitar at an early age.  She attended Harvard's then-female counterpart Radcliffe, but ended up turning to music prior to graduation.

Takin' My Time is an amalgamation of various genres, from blues to New Orleans R&B/soul to calypso to folk to jazz.  There are slower songs and more uptempo songs, and all ten songs on the album are covers.  The description makes it sound like the album is disjointed, but I think it all works well together.  It didn't hurt that her backing musicians were pretty damn good.  Among others, blues legend Taj Mahal, legendary session drummers Jim Keltner and Earl Palmer, most of the band Little Feat, John Hall of Orleans (who also produced the album and was later a U.S. Congressman!), and Beach Boys/Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks all made appearances on the album.   While the album was critically praised, it only went to #87 on the Billboard album chart, though it was her highest-charting album up to that point in time.

She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  She was ranked by Rolling Stone as #50 on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and #89 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.  She has won 10 Grammy Awards, in pop, rock, and Americana categories, no less.  And I just found out today that she was also married for eight years to actor Michael O'Keefe, who is best know for playing Danny Noonan in Caddyshack.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Let Me In"

This is a cover of The Sensations' 1961 hit R&B song, but Raitt and friends give it a New Orleans-style jazz send-up with a great brass section and piano that make it sound like it belongs in Preservation Hall.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Write Me a Few of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues"
This one is a cover of a song by bluesman/slide guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell, who helped teach Raitt slide guitar techniques a few years earlier.  I love a good slide guitar blues song, and Raitt has some nice bottleneck work on this song.