CoronaVinyl Day 451 (T): The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "T," and I have been listening to Traffic's fifth studio album, 1971's The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, off and on for the past week.  With college basketball and the like getting in the way, I haven't had a chance to post about it, but here we go.  This is one of the album covers hanging in my office, and the album sleeve is a funky parallelepiped-type thing.

The album is a nugget of prog rock/jazz fusion/post-psychedelic goodness, and in addition to Steve Winwood on the keys and guitars, Chris Wood on, well, woodwinds, and Jim Capaldi on percussion, it was the first Traffic album to featured percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, as well as the only Traffic studio album to drummer former Derek and The Dominoes and in-demand session drummer Jim Gordon and bassist Ric Grech, who had been in supergroup Blind Faith with Winwood (and Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker).  It's also the only Traffic album to feature two tracks with Capaldi on lead vocals -- the excellently named "Light Up or Leave Me Alone" and "Rock & Roll Stew."

The album was one of the band's most successful in the U.S., reaching #7 on the Billboard album chart -- their second of four consecutive Top 10 studio albums in the U.S. -- and eventually going platinum (their only platinum album stateside).

The version of the album on Spotify is an expanded version with one extra track, "Rock & Roll Stew, Parts 1 and 2."

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"
The title track is one of Traffic's signature songs.  It's a plodding and meandering, nearly 12-minute song that, in my mind, is kind of the essence of the jazz fusion genre.  One of my friends told me he and his buddies used to put this on the jukebox at college bars just to piss people off.  That kind of makes me like it more.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Rock & Roll Stew"
Penned by Grech and Gordon and, as mentioned above, featuring Capaldi on lead vocals, this is a gritty, bluesy, funky little number.