Stand tall (Burton Cummings) (LP 2270 - 2274)

Burton Cummings  Burton Cummings (Vinyl and CD, Portrait Records, 1976) ***  

Burton Cummings  My Own Way To Rock (Vinyl, Portrait Records, 1977) ***

Burton Cummings  Dream Of A Child (Vinyl, Portrait Records, 1978) ***   

Burton Cummings  Up Close And Personal (CD, Hip-O Records, 1997) ***   

Burton Cummings  Above The Ground (CD and DVD, Sony BMG, 2008) ***  

Genre: Pop rock

Places I remember: Vinyl Countdown; Slow Boat Records; Real Groovy Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Charlemagne

Gear costume: Break It To Them Gently

Active compensatory factors: The charismatic voice of The Guess Who embarked on a solo career in 1976. It had the sniff of inevitability about it really. So was my decision to collect his solo efforts.

The Guess Who is a band that I grew up with and adore. Live at The Paramount was my gateway drug and so, here we are with Burton Cummings.

Having watched a making-of-the-album video that came with Above The Ground, I'm not a fan of the man (he came off as arrogant, snippy - a jerk basically), but his singing ability is peerless - so I'll stick with that.

The first album was a super slick, confident effort. That voice is immediately presented to great effect.

 While it's certainly commercial sounding, it just doesn't sound rough and ready rock and roll, it's too polite. That was obviously the policy - to move away from the raw aspects of The Guess Who and promote the piano playing sophisticated side of Burton Cummings. As far as that goes - it all works, but it just doesn't appeal to me in the same way that his work with The Guess Who does.

Stand Tall was a massive hit and really started off the solo Cummings career with a massive wave of success. But it sort of sums up my previous point.

Really weak moment: an ill-advised lounge singer version of You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. I'd love to know what Randy Bachman's reaction was to it, although Cummings says it ended a five-year-old feud that the two were experiencing.

His second effort, My Own Way To Rock, does away with the nice suit and moody photos and replaces them with an in yer face title and shit eating grin photo for the cover.

Richard Perry is the producer again, and although he's brilliant on the Ringo album and elsewhere, he's not a rock and roll producer to my mind. Worth noting at this point that Cumming's third solo album was self-produced.

That third album, and biggest selling one, was Dreams Of A Child. There were no hits from the previous album, but this one made up for that with Break It To Them Gently which was all over the radio in the late seventies.

The live Up Close And Personal set has B C at his piano and while his playing is great and singing remains superb, it's a bit too much of the same same. That may be a bit harsh - he does a number of Guess Who songs which is a bonus.

The 2008 studio album is solid. In fact he sounds much more convincing on the rock tunes like We Just Came From The USA than he did on the past solo efforts. 

Only problem is with the length - thanks to the CD age this one is also guilty of over-reaching. Still - a double album of mostly on form Burton Cummings is not the worst crime in the world.

Where do they all belong? I was keen to collect the rest of his solo albums until I saw that DVD. These days I tend to stick with what I've got. The Guess Who though - that's different.