Movin’ Toward Happiness

Description

Movin’ Toward Happiness is the sophomore studio album by the American country-rock outfit Mason Proffit featuring brothers John Michael and Terry Talbot, released on Happy Tiger Records in 1971. The album was recorded by Marty Feldman at Paragon Studios and by Mal Davis at Universal Recording Corp. in Chicago, Illinois; with the band producing and arranging. Mixed by Feldman and band member Terry Talbot at Streeterville Studios in Chicago. All songs written by band members John Michael and Terry Talbot, except “Good Friend Of Mary’s” written by Mike Cameron.

Based in Chicago, Mason Proffit played a style of country-rock that owed less to the more pop-oriented style of L.A. bands like Poco than it did to the newly bluegrass-happy Grateful Dead of American Beauty and its emerging offshoot, the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Despite the pedal steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, and Dobro, the Talbot brothers, who led the group, were less about a new Nashville than about a fusion of the Old West with hippiedom. They lamented the plight of Native Americans in «Flying Arrow», and while they could pick a mean hoedown on «Old Joe Clark», their version somehow managed to express antiwar sentiments. They recognized the connection between the cowboy myth and the independent spirit of truck drivers, and they managed to mix it all in with a sort of primitive Christianity. In this, they were very much of their time. Mike Cameron’s «Good Friend of Mary’s» fit into the emerging Jesus cult that identified the Christian savior as a kind of proto-hippie, preaching peace and love while wandering the country in long hair and sandals, and the Talbots sang it with their warm tenor harmony in complete sincerity. Such music wasn’t going to make it far out of the early ’70s, but in 1971 it was perfectly appealing, and Movin’ Toward Happiness managed to make the national charts despite being released on the band’s own label, suggesting that they had the potential to appeal beyond a cult. [William Ruhlmann, AMG]

> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/come-and-gone/205583497)

LP tracklist:

Side One
A1. “Michael Dodge” – 2:57
A2. “Hard Luck Woman” – 2:54
A3. “Children” – 2:48
A4. “Hokey Joe Pony” – 2:22
A5. “Flying Arrow” – 3:30
A6. “Old Joe Clark” – 4:01

Side Two
B1. “Let Me Know Where You’re Goin'” – 2:29
B2. “Melinda” – 3:56
B3. “Good Friend Of Mary’s” – 2:44
B4. “He Loves Them” – 3:31
B5. “Everybody Was Wrong” – 5:17

Note: Simultaneously released on 8-track tape, cassette, and 12-inch vinyl LP by Happy Tiger Records, with the LP housed in a gatefold sleeve. Re-issued by Warner Bros. Records in 1973 as part of the double album Come & Gone, also featuring Wanted. Movin’ Toward Happiness was re-issued on CD by Wounded Bird Records in 2006.

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