VA - Earl's Closet: The Lost Archive of Earl Mcgrath, 1970-1980 (2022)

"Earl was a wonderful man with a great eye for new and innovative art. And such an amusing companion, too." - Mick Jagger Earl McGrath was the ultimate '70s jet setter, an art collector and comic bon vivant who stumbled into the record business between legendary parties in New York and LA and discovered Daryl Hall and John Oates and then Jim Carroll. Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun gave Earl his own label, Clean Records, in 1970; Mick Jagger hired him to run Rolling Stones Records in 1977. Friend to Joan Didion, Andy Warhol, and a galaxy of luminaries, Earl was an inveterate tastemaker.

Actor Harrison Ford, who before Star Wars fame was Earl's handyman and pot dealer, called him "the last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians." After Earl died in 2016, journalist Joe Hagan, author of the critically-acclaimed Sticky Fingers, the biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, discovered a trove of rare and unheard tapes in Earl's apartment in New York-literally inside his closet. "I asked for a step ladder and the first box I pulled off the shelf was a master tape of Some Girls, the Stones album," says Hagan. Now Light in the Attic Records proudly presents Earl's Closet, a double album of the treasures discovered inside, including unheard music by Daryl Hall and John Oates, David Johansen, Terry Allen, Delbert McClinton, Warhol "Superstar" Ultra Violet, Detroit sax legend Norma Jean Bell, Jim Carroll and an eclectic cast of undiscovered artists who once vied for fame and glory-folk, rock, country, funk and R&B gems that virtually no one has heard in decades. Whether it's the almost-famous power pop of Shadow from Detroit, or the Delfonics-style soul of the Blood Brothers Six, Earl's Closet retraces the dreams of artists who once sent demos to Earl McGrath. Longtime Light in the Attic-affiliated reissue producer Pat Thomas assisted Hagan in tracking down the artists and finalizing the paperwork. At once an archival mixtape, a secret history and a journey into the heart of an era, Earl's Closet features a deep booklet of documents, images and ephemera from Earl's archive, expansive liner notes by Joe Hagan, who tracked down and interviewed the artists, and astonishing photographs by Earl's late wife, the Italian countess Camilla Pecci-Blunt McGrath.

An album that starts out with a cut by a duo with a prototypical moniker like "Delbert & Glen" likely isn't too promising on its face. However, when that cut is a demo version of "Two More Bottles of Wine," recorded a few years before Emmylou Harris made it a country classic, and the "Delbert" in question is Delbert McClinton (the "Glen" is fellow Texan Glen Clark; the two released two solid, if unremarkable, albums in the early '70s) well, maybe you've got something special on your hands. The "Earl" here is Earl McGrath, a consummate '70s bon vivant, a man who could claim Harrison Ford as his one-time pot dealer and Mick Jagger as the rock star who trusted him to run the Rolling Stones' record label. (Rolling Stones Records was, interestingly enough, the second label McGrath would run; the other was Clean Records, which had Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun as a patron and Delbert & Glen as one of its few acts.) Needless to say, he was definitely the kind of guy who was the recipient of all kinds of demo tapes, and some of the ones he had stashed in his closet (yes, his actual closet) comprise this excellent 22-track collection, which gives a highly personal but exceptionally prismatic look at '70s rock culture. McGrath would split his time between the coasts—as befitting a party aficionado such as himself—but this compilation leans much more heavily into the vibes of mid-'70s LA. Not only are there songs that are on-the-nose with their geographic affinities ("Gonna California," "California") but also those that explicitly reference the Golden State ("Dixie Darling," "Killer"). Of these, the best may be "Killer," by the unimaginatively named duo Country (also signed to McGrath's Clean label—clearly his eye for marketing was not matched by his eye for talent); the track manages to evoke both Neil Young-style cynical weariness and soft-rock gentility á la America. But this set is not all LA chill: a hilariously rickety take on "Funky But Chic" by David Johansen is a bit of a shambolic palate cleanser, and the Jim Carroll Band's "Tension" provides a pretty clear contrast between what was going on in downtown NYC and what was happening in Hollywood at the same time. Any compilation that can feature unheard Daryl Hall & John Oates tracks alongside rough-and-ready tracks by Terry Allen—and still make conceptual and stylistic sense—is a truly special album indeed.

Tracklist
1. Delbert & Glen - Two More Bottles of Wine (2:58)
2. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Baby Come Closer (2:49)
3. Terry Allen - Gonna California (2:40)
4. Kazoo Singers - Only Yourself to Lose (2:47)
5. Michael McCarty - Christopher (2:44)
6. Jim Hurt - Dixie Darling (3:07)
7. Mark Rodney - California (3:02)
8. Country - Killer (3:52)
9. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Dry in the Sun (2:53)
10. Shadow - Oh La La (2:31)
11. Terry Allen - Cocaine Cowboy (2:46)
12. Ultra Violet - How Do You Do (Children of the Most High) (4:06)
13. Johnny Angel - Invisible Lady (3:08)
14. Shadow - I See My Days Go By (3:33)
15. Blood Brothers Six - Where Have All the Flowers Gone (5:24)
16. Len and Betsy Greene - Salt Showers (3:34)
17. Paul Potash - Holy Commotion (3:51)
18. Jabor - Sail Away (4:08)
19. David Johansen - Funky but Chic (4:13)
20. Norma Jean Bell - Just Look-Ah What You'll Be Missing (4:50)
21. The Jim Carroll Band - Tension (3:24)
22. Little Whisper and the Rumors - Waiting for Me (3:22)