Eric Burdon & Tovarich - The Man (1971)

On 5 February 1971 Eric Burdon left his band in the middle of their European tour, allegedly due to exhaustion, and after returning home and taking time off, he started working on his next album, to be titled 'Guilty!'. This was a collaboration with blues legend Jimmy Witherspoon, and after Burdon and Witherspoon played seven consecutive Mondays at the Whiskey A Go Go club in July 1971, they decamped to the studio to record the album between July and September. 'Guilty!' was released in late 1971, with Burdon sharing vocal duties 50/50 with Witherspoon, and it was a concept album about getting released from prison, dealing with the survivor’s guilt of being out, and the very real fear of getting hauled in front of an unmerciful judge for something as minor as a traffic violation. Burdon and Witherspoon share the vulnerabilities of victimhood, and every track is intense, honest, and gripping, but despite this meeting of two great bluesmen, it suffered poor sales and received some scathing reviews. Following the release of the album, Burdon decided to take his band from the sessions out on tour, and he named them Tovarich, which is Russian for "comrades". The line-up was John Sterling on guitar, Terry Ryan on organ, George Suranovich on drums, and Kim Kesterson on bass, and they played some gigs around Los Angeles towards the end of 1971. Their show from 10 December was recorded, and shows great chemistry between Burdon and the band, and as only one track from 'Guilty!' was played during their set, mainly because 'Soledad' was a Burdon/Sterling co-write, there was a real possibility that this line-up could go into the studio and record an album of their own. Alas, it was not to be, and Tovarich went their separate ways, with Sterling re-appearing some years later to provide the soundtrack to the 1976 movie 'Revenge Of The Cheerleaders'. The recording quality of the 1971 gig was pretty good, and it got me wondering what a studio album would have sounded like with them playing this material, so I played around with the tracks, removed the audience noise and extraneous chatter from Burdon, added some top end and fades where needed, and ended up with a 47-minute 'studio' album from a band that never really existed. So here is what could have been Eric Burdon & Tovarich's debut album from 1971, 'The Man'. 

Track listing

01 City Boy
02 All I Do Is Wait For You
03 The Man
04 Stop
05 Gotta Get It On Today
06 Funky Fever

07 Soledad
08 Be Mine