Continuous Hit Music – a weekly exploration of vinyl finds in 2012. Read ’em all here.

Artist: Charlie Rich
Title: Behind Closed Doors
Original Release: 1973
Label: Epic
Store: An antique shop on Richlands Rd, Taralga, NSW
Price: $5
(Original)

Amazing how I can spend money just about anywhere. Having headed to Taralga over the holidays for a wedding, some time was killed perusing one of the 5 shops in this small country town. One was a secondhand/oldwares shop. It had a box of records hidden away under some old board games and things. And even there I could find a couple of pieces worth having.

Technology is improving, and maybe one day, it will be easy and make financial sense for a small store like this to put their inventory online. Until then, there are treasures to be found. Not that this album is particularly rare either. Although the 7” of The Flame by Cheap Trick was a find. But I’ve deciding to just write about albums here.

I don’t know much about Charlie Rich really, outside of this one album, and a couple of other tracks. It seemed that when I started reading Gram Parsons and Elvis Costello drop country artist names, I went for George, Buck and Merle. But I picked up this album because everyone says it’s a classic.

Certainly there are classic songs on here. The title track is rightly regarded as a masterpiece. But it’s the little songs in this album. is about as sad a song as I’ve ever heard. Contrast it with The Most Beautiful Girl, a clear eyed love song, as sweet as ever been brewed.

The album was produced by Billy Sherrill. The man is Nashville through and through, famously distrusting Elvis Costello’s intentions when he came to Nashville to record Almost Blue. It’s 70s Nashville too – a bit croony, and a fair bit of schmaltzy strings. Sometimes it gets a bit much, and it certainly sounds dated. When Sherrill dials it back, like on I Take It On Home, it works better.

That said, you wouldn’t trade the strings or the crooning or anything for something as great as We Love Eachother. Big, sentimental and lovely – sometimes schmatlz works. It’s my favourite song on this album. Why be coy?

This seems like an American copy with an one of the more obscure Epic logos (three circles shaped like a lowercase “e”). Charmingly, it’s owner wrote his name on the back of the sleeve in pen. ‘Ray Goodlow, Dec 74”. I wonder if young Ray imagined the record would end up in Marrickville, 38 years later.

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