Album review: POCO – One Night In Nashville

POCO - One Night In Nashville

Purple Pyramid/Cleopatra [Release date 28.01.22]

This 2004 live recording is one of the last to feature original members Rusty Young, Richie Furay, and George Grantham together with Paul Cotton who joined the band for their third album in 1971 replacing Jim Messina. Sadly both Young and Cotton died in 2021. Grantham suffered a stroke in 2004.

So there’s a certain end of an era appeal to this set which is essentially a “best of”. The album was originally released in 2004 as ‘Keeping The Legend Alive’ and then reissued as ‘Alive In The Heart Of The Night’ in 2006.

The band formed out of Buffalo Springfield, revered as pioneers of country-tinged rock. It was The Eagles who took this genre to a massive commercial audience and Poco were forever in their shadow.

It’s for that reason that Young perhaps understandably states at the opening that he won’t mention Don Henley. There was evidently a bit of bad blood, with founder member Randy Meisner leaving Poco after their first album (1969) and subsequently forming Eagles. And for a time Poco had future Eagles stalwart in their ranks, Timothy B.Schmidt.

It was after his departure in 1977 that Poco experienced their most successful period in terms of record sales with ‘Legend’ (1978) producing two chart singles – included here – ‘Crazy Love’ and ‘Heart Of The Night’. The album chimed with the popularity of late-1970s AOR and Phil Kenzie revives his sax solo on the latter song. But it would be another ten years before they had similar success with the album ‘Legacy’ which brought together again the original members.

‘One Night In Nashville’ is a great way of introducing yourself to the band who always had greater recognition in their homeland and amongst their peers. They were beset by line-up changes (Furay left in 1973) and poor early album sales but they nevertheless are rightly regarded as integral players in the history of country rock. ****

Review by David Randall

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