Crazy Eyes

Early country-rock originators Poco hit a zenith on their sixth album, 1973’s Crazy Eyes. For one thing, they brought in producer Jack Richardson (Alice Cooper, Grass Roots), whose song know-how made this Poco’s most satisfying release. The title song (with musical arrangement by Bob Ezrin) mourns the great Gram Parsons in a big, country-rock opera kind of way, complete with banjo breaks, vocal (and string) breakdowns, and Rusty Young’s soothing pedal steel. It’s a stunner of an undertaking for the genre. The barrelhouse piano and guitar picking imbue “Blue Water” with a kind of electric bluegrass straight out of a juke joint. Timothy Schmit’s “Here We Go Again” could’ve been a great Eagles song, and it wasn’t even a single here. "A Right Along” adds a propulsive rock-anthem beat, “ooh” vocals, and Tommy-gun guitars to its country-ish foundation, and the results raise eyebrows like leather trousers tucked into cowboy boots. J.J. Cale’s “Magnolia” gets a beautiful acoustic turn, and Richie Furay (on his last Poco album) singing Gram Parsons' “Brass Buttons” sends the whole album home.