LARRY CORYELL — Lady Coryell (review)

LARRY CORYELL — Lady Coryell album cover

Album · 1969 · Fusion

4/5 · 2025-02-14
FunkFreak75

The first release of Larry's material as a solo artist/bandleader. The album puts on display not only his roots, but some of his dreams for where he'd like to try to take music. It also lets people know that here we have a very talented musician/guitarist.

1. Herman Wright (3:21) blues rock built around a "House of the Rising Sun"-like style but with more Terry Kath-like vocals and a track (L) devoted entirely to Larry's fuzzed-up guitar and another (R) that appears in the last minute without the fuzz effect. Not a great song but interesting from an historical perspective. (8.6667/10)

2. "Sunday Telephone" (2:28) a Hendrix-like sound palette with lots of wah-wah lead guitar over which Larry sings with a Gregg Allman-like "Midnight Rider" voice. Not bad! (8.875/10)

3. "Two Minute Classical" (2:08) a full-band instrumental that sounds like a kind of a blend of The Who and The Beatles worked off a mathematical arrangement. Nice guitar performances on multiple tracks. (4.625/5)

4." Love Child Is Coming Home" (2:30) here Larry seems to be trying out Bob Dylan. (4.375/5)

5. "Lady Coryell" (6:31) a full band instrumental psychedelic trip into Larry's sex life: a musical expression of a love making episode with his wife. Did Larry help birth "Southern Rock"? Again, lots of tracks devoted to various guitar styles and sounds here--including one that sounds very much like a sitar (!?) (8.875/10)

6. "The Dream Thing" (2:35) this one sounds like an excursion into the history of the electric guitar with Larry using some genius chord progressions in his three tracks of guitar over drums and bass. I like this one very much: you can really feel Larry's genius for guitar jazz. (9.125/10)

7. "Treats Style" (5:42) like being in the bar for a blues-jazz performance--all instrumental, walking bass line, single line of guitar play. Very nice--and nicely recorded and mixed. When he ramps up both his intensity and clarity/precision at the end of the third minute it's almost as if another guitarist has stepped on stage for a solo turn. (The voices in the background throughout make me think of Buddy Guy.) (9/10)

8. "You Don't Know What Love Is" (2:35) acoustic guitar supporting Larry's plaintive lead--sounding here a bit like Chet Atkins (from a mastery of the melody play--excepting the fact that Chet would play both parts on one guitar, in one track, in one take.) Well done. And pretty! (9/10)

9. "Stiff Neck" (7:12) jazzy R&B drums from Elvin Jones with a jazz- and rock-directed electric guitar playing solo over the top. Elvin is so precise--despite being so syncopated--that his playing sounds as if it were digitally looped. Larry's free-form play, relying on his sound effects as much as his playing dexterity, in the sixth and seventh lends itself toward a psychedelic categorization bordering on that which would become called "heavy metal." (13.25/15)

10. "Cleo's Mood" (4:24) a blues rocker with a great blues "hook" and multiple layers of guitars wailing away over the bass and hand drums. Like a room of hungry cats all impatiently decrying the tardiness of their meal. (8.875/10)

Total Time 39:26

B/four stars; an excellent and very solid display of early, or proto-jazz-rock fusion from one of J-R F's earliest and future stars.