Dwight Twilley Band - Fire (1975)

As I mentioned in the recent Dwight Twilley post for his 'Blueprint' album, the Dwight Twilley Band's first self-produced single 'I'm On Fire' became something of an unexpected hit, reaching #16 on the Billboard charts in 1975 with relatively little promotion. This was actually because just before it came out, Twilley and musical partner Phil Seymour had departed for England to record tracks for their first album, tentatively called 'Fire', with producer Robin Cable at Trident Studios. However, the success of the single prompted co-owner of Shelter Records Leon Russell to recall the band back to the US and to offer them the use of his 40-track home studio to record their debut album, and he also gave them the services of engineer Roger Linn, who contributed lead guitars and bass to some of the tracks. All the songs that they had recorded in England were put to one side, and new material written at Russell's studio, although the old songs were not completely junked, but were kept for use on a possible follow-up record, provisionally called 'The B Album'. In 1989 both Dwight Twilley Band albums were reissued on CD, complete with bonus tracks, by the audiophile DCC Compact Classics label, and they re-issued them again in 1990 with different bonus songs. In 1993, shortly before Phil Seymour's death, Twilley released 'The Great Lost Twilley Album', which collected a fraction of the hundreds of early unreleased songs Twilley and Seymour had recorded for Shelter, including several tracks from 'The B Album' and 'Blueprint', as well as a few alternate versions of released songs, and fans were at last able to piece together those two unreleased albums. To follow the recent 'Blueprint' post, here is the earlier 'B Album' otherwise known as 'Fire', from 1975, and you may notice that 'Dancer' features on both albums, but as it was included on the track listings for each record, I was torn about which album to remove it from, so in the end I left it on both. 

Track listing

01 I'm On Fire
02 England
03 Look Like An Angel
04 I Don't Know My Name
05 Lovin' Me
06 Rock Yourself, Son
07 Sky Blue
08 Shark (In The Dark)
09 Miserable Lady
10 You Were So Warm
11 No Resistance
12 Dancer
13 Please Say Please

Dwight Twilley - Blueprint (1979)

Dwight Twilley was born on 6 June 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he attended Edison High School in the late 60's In 1967 he met Phil Seymour at a theatre where they had gone to see The Beatles' 'A Hard Day's Night', and they soon began writing songs and recording together. They continued their partnership over the next several years under the band name Oister, with Twilley writing all the songs and playing guitar and piano, while Seymour played drums and bass, and both sang leads and harmonies. Twilley and Seymour eventually decided to leave Tulsa and try to be discovered in Memphis, Tennessee, and by sheer chance, the first recording studio that they wandered into was Sun Studio, where they met Jerry Phillips, son of Sun founder Sam Phillips, who referred them to the Tupelo, Mississippi studio of former Sun artist Ray Harris, and which was credited with introducing them to rockabilly, and adding a harder edge to their sound. The duo ultimately moved on to Los Angeles in 1974 to find a label, where they signed with Shelter Records, the label set up and owned by Denny Cordell Leon Russell, with Cordell promptly changing the group's name from Oister to the Dwight Twilley Band. They recorded 'I'm on Fire' in one night at Tulsa's The Church Studio, and it became their debut single, reaching #16 on the Billboard charts in 1975 with relatively little promotion. The unexpected success of the self-produced single put a halt to recordings that they were making in England, as Russell now permitted the band to record new tracks at his 40-track home studio, where one of the engineers was Roger Linn, who also contributed lead guitars and bass to some of their recordings. 

After rejecting 'Shark (In The Dark)' as their second single, in order to keep the group from being perceived as a cash-in novelty act following the success of the 1975 film 'Jaws', they released 'You Were So Warm' as the follow-up 7", backed with 'Sincerely', However, this failed due to distribution problems, as just after the single was released, Shelter Records collapsed in the midst of a lawsuit between Russell and Cordell. When the album 'Sincerely' was finally released in 1976, it failed as well, peaking at #138, and when Shelter switched distribution again to Arista Records, ABC elected to keep Tom Petty and J. J. Cale, leaving Twilley alone on the Shelter/Arista label. Bill Pitcock IV became a credited member of the Dwight Twilley Band, after playing lead guitar on most of their recordings, but their second album, 'Twilley Don't Mind', proved to be another commercial disappointment in 1977, and Seymour left the band the following year, pursuing a solo career with some success. After the demise of the Dwight Twilley Band, Twilley continued as a solo act, keeping Pitcock on lead guitar and adding Susan Cowsill on harmony vocals. 

This line-up released the album 'Twilley' for Shelter/Arista in 1979, and his next album, 'Blueprint', was co-produced by Jack Nitzsche, and was due to be released in May 1980 by Arista, but it was rejected by the label after the failure of the 1979 single 'Somebody to Love', and it was never released, keeping him out of circulation until his Shelter contract expired at the end of 1981. He then moved to EMI America for 1982's 'Scuba Divers', which was a combination of three rejected Blueprint tracks plus some new material. 'Blueprint' has long been considered a great lost Twilley album, and fans have attempted to piece it together from tracks which have appeared on various rarities albums from him, but generally only four of the tracks included were actually from the original 'Blueprint'. This post uses the confirmed track listing of 'Blueprint' (tracks 1-10), but as this is less than half an hour of music, I've added in six of the bonus tracks from the audiophile CD re-issues of 'Sincerely', some of which were included on the fake 'Blueprint' which is currently doing the rounds, as they are from roughly the same time period and so they fit in quite nicely. 

Track listing

01 Somebody To Love
02 I Love You So Much
03 She's All My Light
04 Just Like You Did It Before
05 Dancer
06 Money
07 Then We Go Up
08 Leave Me Alone With My Baby
09 I Found The Magic
10 Cryin' Over Me
11 Livin' In The City

12 Baby's Got The Blues Again
13 It's So Amazing
14 You Never Listen To My Music

15 Didn't You Say
16 Tiger Eyes