Rod Stewart - ...featuring Rod Stewart (1969)

Roderick David Stewart was born in North London in 1945, the son of a Scottish master builder from Edinburgh, and consequently has always maintained his Scottish heritage. The family was mostly focused on football, as his father had played in a local amateur team, and in the summer of 1960 Stewart went for trials at Third Divisiion club Brentford F.C., but nothing came of it, and so he instead opted for the life of a musician. In 1962 Stewart began hanging around with folk singer Wizz Jones, busking at Leicester Square and other London spots, and taking up playing the then-fashionable harmonica. Over the next 18 months Jones and Stewart took their act to Brighton and then to Paris, sleeping under bridges over the River Seine, and then finally to Barcelona, where he was deported from Spain for vagrancy during 1963. Disillusioned by rock and roll, he saw Otis Redding perform in concert and began listening to Sam Cooke records, becoming fascinated by rhythm and blues and soul music. After returning to London in 1963, Stewart joined a rhythm and blues group, the Dimensions, as a harmonica player and part-time vocalist. A more established singer from Birmingham, Jimmy Powell, then hired the group and it became known as Jimmy Powell & the Five Dimensions, with Stewart being relegated to harmonica player. 
Relations soon broke down between Powell and Stewart over roles within the group and Stewart departed, and shortly after that, as he was waiting at Twickenham railway station after having seen Long John Baldry and the All Stars at Eel Pie Island, Baldry heard him playing 'Smokestack Lightnin'' on his harmonica, and invited him to sit in with the group. When Baldry discovered Stewart was a singer as well, he offered him a job for £35 a week, and in June 1964, Stewart made his recording debut (without label credit) on 'Up Above My Head', the B-side to Baldry's 'You'll Be Mine' single. While still with Baldry, Stewart made some solo demo recordings, and after being scouted by Decca Records at the Marquee Club, he signed to a solo contract in August 1964. Turning down Decca's recommended material as too commercial, Stewart insisted that the experienced session musicians he was given, including John Paul Jones, learn a couple of Sonny Boy Williamson songs he had just heard, and the resulting single 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' was released in October 1964. 
Stewart left Baldry's band after a disagreement, but later patched things up when legendary impresario Giorgio Gomelsky put together The Steampacket, which featured Baldry, Stewart, Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll, Micky Waller, Vic Briggs and Ricky Fenson. The group was conceived as a white soul revue, like The Ike & Tina Turner Revue, with multiple vocalists and styles ranging from jazz to R & B to blues. The Steampacket was unable to enter the studio to record any material due to its members all belonging to different labels and managers, although Gomelsky did record one of their Marquee Club rehearsals. Stewart departed from The Steampacket in March 1966, joining a somewhat similar outfit, Shotgun Express in May as co-lead vocalist with Beryl Marsden. The other members included Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green (who would later go on to form Fleetwood Mac), and Peter Bardens (soon to form Camel), and they released one unsuccessful single in October 1966, the orchestra-heavy 'I Could Feel The Whole World Turn Round' (with a couple of great instrumentals on the flip), before disbanding. In 1967 guitarist Jeff Beck recruited Stewart for his new post-Yardbirds venture, joining as vocalist and sometime songwriter. This would become his biggest break, and was also where he first played with Ronnie Wood, whom he'd first met in a London pub in 1964. Following two well-received albums, 'Truth' in 1968 and 'Beck-Ola' in 1969, Stewart and Wood both left, joining Wood's brother Art in his new band Quiet Melon, who recorded a couple of tracks before disbanding, one of which featured Rod on lead vocal. 
Stewart had signed a solo contact with Mercury Records in 1968, but contractual complexities delayed recording until July 1969, and in the meantime he'd been invited to join Ron Wood in a band put together by ex-Small Faces members Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenney Jones, who soon decided to call the new line-up The Faces. In April 1969 Stewart sang guest vocals for the Australian group Python Lee Jackson on their 'In a Broken Dream' album, and in 1972 the title track was re-released as a single and became a massive hit. His payment was a set of seat covers for his car. From this point on, Stewart's solo and band career took off, with hit singles and albums in both capacities, but for this album I'm looking just at the bands who Stewart lent his distinctive vocals to before he hit the big time. I've chosen just songs where he is the sole vocalist, which means omitting some Steampacket duets, but with the exception of the Long John Baldry track, which is worth hearing as it was his debut outing as a singer, and the Shotgun Express single. I've also omitted his time with the Jeff Beck Group, whose studio albums, BBC sessions and live bootlegs are all freely available if you want to sample his work with them - and please do as it's all great stuff.

Track listing

01 Up Above My Head (I Hear Music In The Air) (Long John Baldry 1964)
02 Ain't That Loving You Baby (The Steampacket 1965)
03 Mopper's Blues (The Steampacket 1965)
04 Keep Your Hands Off Her (The Steampacket 1965)
05 Bright Lights, Big City (The Hoochie Coochie Men 1965)
06 Just Like I Treat You (The Steampacket 1965)
07 Can I Get A Witness (The Steampacket 1965)
08 Don't You Tell Nobody (The Hoochie Coochie Men 1965)
09 It's Alright (The Steampacket - BBC session 1965)
10 I Could Feel The Whole World Turn Round (Shotgun Express 1966)
11 Stone Crazy (The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, with Peter Green and Jack Bruce 1967)
12 Doin' Fine (Cloud Nine) (Python Lee Jackson 1969)
13 In A Broken Dream (Python Lee Jackson 1969)
14 The Blues (Python Lee Jackson 1969)
15 Diamond Joe (Quiet Melon 1969)