Barclay James Harvest - Baby James Harvest (1972) [Vinyl Rip]

Sleeve
The "baby" theme was the idea of Ian Cassie, one of the band's managers at the time. The photographer was Julian Cottrell, and the baby was his daughter, Boo! The title came from the finished artwork, although it is probably also a jokey reference to James Taylor's classic album from 1970, Sweet Baby James. Original copies have an inner sleeve listing the performers on each song, which is absent from later reissues.

Crazy (Over You)
Baby James Harvest has been described at different times by members of the band as a "schizophrenic" album. The reason for this is simply that the band were physically split during the recording, with Les, John and Mel at Strawberry in Stockport, and Woolly mostly working with the orchestra in London. On Les's opener, "Crazy Over You", Woolly does play some piano, but Les handles organ and Mellotron as well as the bass part.

Delph Town Morn
John's first contribution to the album is unusual in that it features not members of the orchestra, but a thirteen-piece brass ensemble. They were, in fact, band leader Syd Lawrence's brass section. It's a small world, because Syd's son is Martin Lawrence, who has also had a bit to do with the band down the years! The Delph Town of the title is, of course, the Saddleworth village where John was living at the time, and "Chris's son" in the first line is actually Les!

Summer Soldier
John's classic which closes side one of the album returns to one of his perennial themes: the futility of violence and a plea for peace. The background seems to be Northern Ireland, with the song's mention of bombers and soldiers being stoned, but, unfortunately it could equally apply to a dozen other situations. The second half of the song was arranged by Woolly, the only significant work that he did on the others' songs on this album.

Thank You
The whole of this album was written and recorded in a matter of four weeks or so, and "Thank You" was a late addition to the line-up. Despite the credit on the album, this is actually a John Lees song, and the lyric is just a musical credits list - the "who's who" has been stated before, but just one more time, those mentioned are:
Dixie - owner of a music shop in Huddersfield
Pete (Tattersall) - manager of Strawberry
Teddy (Meyers) - head of EMI Switzerland
Eddie (Buckley) - one of the road crew then
Ollie (Olwen Lees) - John's wife
Chris (Christine) - Les's girlfriend
Janet (Pritchard) - then Mel's wife
Snibbley - Ian Southerington
Heather (Crowe) - Dave Crowe's wife
Georgie - Middle name of Dave Crowe, one of the band's managers at the time
The waterfall - Dave and Heather's baby boy
Cassie - Ian Cassie, the band's other manager
Nicky (Mobbs) - head of Harvest Records
Ricky (Dixon) - of Kennedy Street Enterprises
Eric (Stewart) - member of Hotlegs and 10cc
Kev (Godley) & Lol (Creme) - of 10cc
Billy Bean's Machine - Kev and Lol's "gizmo" effects machine for electric guitars.

One Hundred Thousand Smiles Out
Les's beautiful song is about the isolation of an astronaut lost in space, a theme to which he subsequently returned in "Negative Earth". The "space race" was always in the news after the first manned expedition to the moon in 1969, and that interest was reflected in many other songs from that period on the same subject, for example David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Elton John's "Rocket Man". Les again played the piano in Woolly's absence.

Moonwater (Poco Adagio)
In the meantime, Woolly was at Abbey Road in London, working on his own epic. The idea was to record the orchestral pieces, then take the tapes up to Stockport for the rest of the band to record their parts. However, when Woolly arrived, the tapes wouldn't play properly, so he had to get back on the train to London and do them again! Time was so short that the other three couldn't wait for him, so went ahead with their own songs. "Moonwater" was Woolly's "attempt to bridge the gap between Radios One and Three", and was dedicated to Gustav Mahler, whose work had a big influence on Woolly; the Countess was a Polish countess who worked for a London publishing company. The "additional material" by Les was actually a mellotron part taken from "Eden Unobtainable" - check it out on The Harvest Years!

(www.bjharvest.co.uk/baby.htm)