ELF - Carolina County Ball (Classic Rock Album UK 1974)

Selasa, 09 Oktober 2012


Size: 77.1 MB
Bitrate: 256
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Ripped by: ChrisGoesRock
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Source: Japan 24-Bit Remaster

ELF was a blues-rock band founded in 1967 by the late singer and bassist Ronnie James Dio, keyboardist Doug Thaler, drummer Gary Driscoll, and guitarists Nick Pantas and David Feinstein (Dio's cousin). The band was originally called The Electric Elves, but was shortened to The Elves and finally Elf in mid-1970. Elf disbanded in 1975, after recording three albums.

On February 12, 1970, the band was involved in an automobile accident which claimed the life of Nick Pantas, whom the band decided not to replace. After recovering from his injuries, Doug Thaler played keyboards with the band for one more year. He quit the band after their 1972 album, Live at the Bank, and was replaced by Micky Lee Soule. (Upon leaving in 1972, Thaler moved to New York and got a job as a booking agent — Elf was one of the bands he booked. In 1983, he became co-manager of Mötley Crüe. As of 2010[update] he works at Metropolitan Talent as an artist manager, working with artists such as Art Garfunkel, Bruce Hornsby & Ratdog).

Elf's self-titled debut album was produced by Deep Purple members Roger Glover and Ian Paice, who happened to see Elf auditioning in 1972. For the next few years, the band enjoyed mild success as an opening act for Deep Purple.

Dio both sang and played the bass guitar until, in 1973, bass player Craig Gruber was asked to join. The same year saw Feinstein quit the band, to be replaced by Steve Edwards. Feinstein formed a band called The Rods, which met with a moderate amount of success, touring with groups such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, as well as Metallica, before finally retiring from the music industry. He would not return to the music scene until 2004, when his band, Feinstein, released the album Third Wish on the Magic Circle Music label.

In 1974, Dio was asked by Glover to sing on his solo album The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast. Dio's voice gained the attention of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore who had just left Deep Purple and was looking for musicians for his first solo album, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. Apart from guitarist Steve Edwards, he decided to use all of the musicians in Elf for this album, and the band Rainbow was thus formed, with Blackmore replacing Edwards. After they finished recording the album, however, Driscoll, Gruber, and Soule were replaced by Cozy Powell, Jimmy Bain and Tony Carey, who played with Dio and Blackmore during the subsequent tour; Elf was no more.

In 2009, Ronnie James Dio spoke to Classic Rock magazine about the possibility of an Elf reunion in the future: "I’ve been talking to my cousin ‘Rock’ [guitarist David 'Rock' Feinstein] about getting that band back together, and it’s certainly on the cards. But, as usual, it’s dependent on schedules coinciding." On the possibility of a new Elf studio album, Dio said, "I’d only want to do an Elf tour if we could come up with a new album. That would include reworkings of some of the older songs, which I don’t think we ever did justice in the studio, plus also a few new tracks." On May 16, 2010, singer Ronnie James Dio passed away from stomach cancer, making an Elf reunion impossible. However, before his death, he did manage to record a track on Feinstein's solo album entitled "Metal Will Never Die".

For some reason, the second Elf record, 1974's Carolina County Ball, was released under the title L.A./59 in the United States and Japan, while the more widely accepted title was used in the U.K. and Europe. The Ronnie James Dio-led outfit was becoming increasingly entwined with Deep Purple — Roger Glover was producing the band, they appeared on the Deep Purple-owned Purple record label in the U.K., and the group was working frequently with Ritchie Blackmore — and their music began taking on a more powerful, more complex, more Deep Purple-like sound because of it. The more or less straight-up boogie rock of the Elf debut was not entirely abandoned for this follow-up, but tracks like "Annie New Orleans" and "Carolina County Ball" have a depth that goes beyond the accomplishments of the group's previous, self-titled offering. Difficult to obtain, this long out-of-print release is a true find for fans of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Ronnie James Dio's best solo efforts of the '80s. 

01."Carolina County Ball" - 4:46
02."L.A. 59" - 4:21
03."Ain't It All Amusing" - 5:01
04."Happy" - 5:28
05."Annie New Orleans" - 3:01
06."Rocking Chair Rock'n'Roll Blues" - 5:36
07."Rainbow" - 4:00
08."Do the Same Thing" - 3:10
09."Blanche" - 2:31

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