Jim Sullivan (Folk): U.F.O. auf LP

*** Gatefold Cover

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A seventh son of a seventh son, Jim Sullivan was a West Coast should-have-been, an Irish-American former high school quarterback whose gift for storytelling earned him cult status in the Malibu bar where he performed nightly. Sullivan was always on the edge of fame; hanging out with movie stars like Harry Dean Stanton, performing on the Jose Feliciano show, even stealing a cameo in the ultimate hippie movie, Easy Rider. U. F.O. was a different beast to the one-man-and-his-guitar stuff Jim had been doing on stage; instead, it was a fully realised album of scope and imagination, a folk-rock record with its head in the stratosphere. Sullivan's voice is deep and expressive like Fred Neil with a weathered and worldly Americana sound like Joe South, pop songs that aren't happy - but filled with despair. The album is punctuated with a string section (that recalls David Axelrod), other times a Wurlitzer piano provides the driving groove (as if Memphis great Jim Dickinson was running the show). U. F.O. is a sliceof American pop music filtered from the murky depths of Los Angeles, by way of the deep south. Yet, the record went largely unnoticed, and Jim simply moved on, releasing a further album on the Playboy label. But by 1975, his marriage breaking up, Jim left for Nashville and the promise of a new life as a sessioneer in the home of C&W. That's where it gets hazy. We know he was stopped by cops for swerving on the highway in Santa Rosa. We know he was taken to a local police station, found to be sober, and told to go to a local motel to get some rest. Some time later, his car was spotted on a ranch belonging to the local Genetti family, who confronted him about his business there. The next day Jim's car was found 26 miles from town, abandoned. His car and his hotel room contained, among other things, his twelve-string guitar, his wallet, his clothes, and several copies of his second album, but no note, and no Jim. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air. Jim's family travelled out to join search partie...

Rezensionen

,,Folk und Country, funky orchestriert. Dieser Late-Sixties-Songwriter war mit den Beinen auf dem Sunset Strip, mit dem Kopf aber schon in der Stratosphäre. Mitte der Siebziger Jahre verschwand er auf seltsame Weise von dieser Welt." (musikexpress, 02 / 2011)

,,Auch ohne solche Aspekte, die zwangsläufig zu Kult & Mythen führen, ist U. F.O. eine hervorragende Platte. Sullivan schrieb anspruchsvolle träumerische, aber auch Verzweiflung transportierende Songs mit freundlich surrealistischen Texten und sang mit einer angenehmen Stimme, die gleichermaßen an Tim Hardin und Glen Campbell erinnert." (Good Times, 04 / 05.2011)

,,"U. F.O." gehört mit ,,Pacific Ocean BIue" von Dennis Wilson und,,No Other" von Gene Clark zu den großen, beinahe verschollenen Schätzen des Americana." (Rolling Stone, 04 / 2011)

,,Mit der berühmten Wrecking Crew in Los Angeles aufgenommen und auf einem lndie-Label veröffentlicht, liegt das Debüt jetzt wieder vor: Gründlichst restauriert, sachverständig neu entzerrt und sorgfältig remastered." (Stereo, Juli 2011)