Pure Prairie League "Pure Prairie League" (RCA Victor, 1972) (LP)
(Produced by Bob Ringe & Gus Mossler)
Pure Prairie League "Bustin' Out" (RCA Victor, 1972) (LP)
(Produced by Bob Ringe, Cub Richardson & Mark Smith)
Pure Prairie League "Two Lane Highway" (RCA Victor, 1975) (LP)
(Produced by John Boylan & Paul Grupp)
A classic for the band. The twin-guitar drenched title track was a great, super-groovy 'Seventies harmony vocals radio hit; when I was a kid I always assumed it was by The Eagles. Perhaps even better from a twangfan's perspective is the novelty number, "I'll Change Your Flat Tire, Merle," which I used to hear constantly on KFAT, back in the day. Some of their straight country stuff ("Just Can't Believe It," etc.) sound a bit forced and perhaps even inauthentic. Notable pickers on these sessions include fiddler Johnny Gimble and band member John David Call, who goes into MVP overdrive playing banjo, dobro and steel guitar, and Lord knows what else!
Pure Prairie League "If The Shoe Fits" (RCA Victor, 1976) (LP)
(Produced by John Boylan & Paul Grupp)
Pure Prairie League "Dance" (RCA Victor, 1976) (LP)
(Produced by Alan Abrahams & Richie Schmitt)
Pure Prairie League "Live: Takin' The Stage" (RCA Victor, 1977) (LP)
(Produced by Alan Abrahams & Mark Smith)
This double-LP concert album includes live versions of "Amie" and "Two Lane Highway," as well as a slew of other PPL tunes. George Ed Powell remains the band's frontman, flanked by bassist Mike Reilly and lead guitar Larry Goshern, and John David Call picking several different instruments.
Pure Prairie League "Just Fly" (RCA Victor, 1978) (LP)
(Produced by Alan Abrahams & Mark Smith)
Pure Prairie League "Can't Hold Back" (One Way Records, 1979) (LP)
(Produced by Howard Albert & Ron Albert)
It's on this album that multi-instrumentalist Vince Gill made his debut as the bands' new frontman... Gill had been laying in several group's before this, mostly sitting in on various bluegrass sessions, but also as the leader of the Oklahoma City-based country rock/newgrass band Mountain Smoke, which opened for Pure Prairie League in the mid-'Seventies and brought him onto their radar. Gill is clearly the driving force here, penning about half the songs on the album (along with three others from another new member, Steven Patrick Bolin).
Pure Prairie League "Firin' Up" (Casablanca Records, 1980) (LP)
(Produced by John Ryan & Bill Drescher)
Vince Gill was certainly the star of the show here, singing lead, playing multiple instruments (banjo, fiddle and guitar) and writing over half the songs. The rest of the group included Billy Hinds on drums, Michael Connor (keyboards), Gary Mielke (synthesizer), Mike Reilly (bass) and Jeff Wilson playing lead guitar (and saxophonist Dave Sanborn brought in as a session musician). It's also worth noting that there's one song, "I'll Be Damned" credited to Vince Gill's wife, Janice, and her sister Kristine Arnold, who later formed the top forty country band, Sweethearts Of The Rodeo... As far as I can tell, though, the sisters never recorded this song themselves...
Pure Prairie League "Something In The Night" (Casablanca Records, 1981) (LP)
(Produced by Rob Fraboni & Terry Diane Becker)
The group soldiered on into the early 'Eighties, and was still enjoying reasonable success in the charts until the Casablanca label's post-disco financial collapse, at which point Vince Gill left the band to become a huge solo star in 1980's Nashville. Fully half the songs on this album were composed by Gill, and he had honed in on his roles as lead singer, songwriter and hotshot guitarist to pave his way into the Country Top 40... Although they weren't credited as songwriters this time around, Janis Gill and Kristine Arnold were in the mix as backing vocalists, also positioning themselves for success in Music City.
Pure Prairie League "Mementos: 1971-1987" (Rushmore Records, 1987)
(Produced by Mike Reilly & Jim Dutt)
Although the title implies this is a best-of set, these were actually re-recordings of older fan favorites, performed by a latter-day lineup of the band, which Mike Reilly would hold together until 1988, when they finally called it a day. Though they had continued working as a live band after losing their label, the group went through massive shifts in lineup, including a brief, if fortuitous, rapprochement with the group's original lead singer, Craig Fuller. Vince Gill and other past members joined Reilly and company for this album, which seemed like a last hurrah... though as seem below, more reunions were to come.
Pure Prairie League "All In Good Time" (Thirty Tigers Records, 2005)
Originally from Ohio, The Pure Prairie League were one of the first and most successful of the 1970's country-rock bands. Like their contemporaries in Poco, the band took a long time to find mainstream commercial success, scoring their first big hit, "Aime," in 1975, after playing together for more than half a decade. The band became a staple of 'Seventies Top 40 AOR, though their crossover success in the country charts was pretty limited, as were the attempts of original lead singer Craig Fuller to make it as a semi-solo country-rock artist. In the late 'Seventies/early 1980s Pure Prairie League gained notoriety as the platform Vince Gill used to make his name in Nashville. Here's a quick look at their work...
