Phew!

About

In 1973, Claudia released her first and only solo album Phew! The LP was split between the two producer. Ian Samwell produced the slightly rockier side one, whilst Allen Toussaint the more funk ‘n’ soul side two. The album features the track “Not At All,” which was rumored to be aimed at Mick Jagger and his dispensability. Although she plays the track down as a mere jest. “It was really a joke. There’s no way anybody could, would, or should deny Mick Jagger. I really am sincere when I say how incredibly talented he is and how clever he i. He’s always been kind to me. We were good friend. We have special places for each other in our mind.” The album also features a track Claudia Lennear wrote in tribute to Angela Davi, an American political activist involved in the Civil Rights Movement who was falsely charged and imprisoned for 16 months but later acquitted. “She was very influential to me during that particular movement,” says Lennear. “I just liked the space she was coming from. She wasn’t arrogant, she was just truthful. I just really respected her.” The song, “Sister Angela,” demonstrated her songwriting capabilitie, something which was often masked behind her strong and powerful vocal. Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone reviewed the album in 1973. “Claudia Lennear’s vocal flexibility and energy are staggering. Her recorded personality, though not intimate, is irrepressibly sexy, her professionalism almost frighteningly intact… On side two, Lennear’s magnificent voice is treated as the leading instrument in a basically orchestral conception of sustained brilliance.” Unfortunately the album never really took off. Claudia Lennear puts it down to it being “too far outside the box” and not being focused enough. Comparing it to “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando & Dawn and “The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia” by Vicki Lawrence which were topping the charts at the same time, the songs on Phew! were possibly too bold for there time. Despite the commercial defeat of Phew!, Claudia Lennear continued singing on sessions and appeared on albums by Maxayn, Johnny Nash, José Feliciano, Gene Clark, and Taj Mahal before calling it quits in the 1980. .

via Last.fm

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