In the album sleeve, there’s a black and white pic of Rickie Lee with her friends Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman back home at Santa Monica, sometime in the sixties. They look like happy children full of play, like being made to stand in for a snap, much against their will.
It’s pretty much the story of the album. It was Rickie Lee’s first, and it was produced by Lenny and Russ. Though it was released in 1979 (was nominated for an Album of the Year), I never heard it till a few years ago. But this always happens to me when I listen to music from the 70’s - it was my childhood and I’ll never forget how lovely Saturday afternoons used to be, and Sunday evenings.
All the little snatches of films I saw when I snuck into the Plaza - the sounds of the album bring them all back for me. Though I heard it only in 2003, the sound instantly recreates my 70s for me.
The album comes across as a kind of above-average, stylish, evocative pop. All the songs are deeply felt and structured with a great sense of detail. Rickie Lee seems to be singing about people she’s known and met, and her knowledge of this somewhat jazzy, stylish crowd is canny. Take "Chuck E.’s in Love" - the starter track, about a friend that she and her boyfriend (Tom Waits) used to know, called Chuck E. Weiss; there’s also "Danny’s All Star Joint" and the somewhat Latino-sounding people in "Weasel and The White Boys Cool". The album is a sophisticated, layered portrait of this milieu.
For me, I’ll remember the album for two songs - one, the lovely, dreamy, reminiscent, longing, laid-back piano of "On Saturday Afternoons in 1963" (which, I believe, made her reputation in spades) and it’s wistful refrain of "YEEARS may go by..." (yes, many years indeed may just go by on Saturday afternoons in my 70s); and the swirling, beautiful, subdued jangle of "The Last Chance Texaco". Rickie Lee delivers a wonderfully understated, masterful and soaring vocal on this song, which for some reason painted a picture in my mind of the vast, lonely, tearless expanses of Route 66. It’s probably the best written track on the album:)
As far as musicians go - the talents that made up the "supporting cast" are a veritable who’s who - Steve Gadd, Vic Feldman, Jeff Porcaro, Fred Tackett, Randy Newman, Chuck Findley, Ernie Watts, Michael McDonald. The very best of the very best - and it shows.The "Beret Girl" is at home - and making music......