Gamblin’ Man – Spotify

“Sweet Forgiveness” was Bonnie Raitt’s comeback album. After starting off as a critics’ darling with her four track made in Minnesota eponymous debut she wandered into the wilderness, changing producers with each record and having less and less success. So it was decided she should work with a certified hitmaker, Paul Rothchild. Their first attempt, 1975’s “Home Plate,” was slicker than what had come before and there was no hit but the team decided to stay the course and 1977’s “Sweet Forgiveness” finally yielded a radio track, a cover of Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” But Bonnie ended up in no-man’s (no-woman’s?) land. Her old fans shrugged their shoulders and not enough new fans signed on and she shifted to a woman’s best friend, Peter Asher, for her next LP, but that resulted in a collection even sweeter and who knew what to do?

Bonnie ended up making a rougher, rootsier album with her then boyfriend, Rob Fraboni, entitled “Green Light,” and there began the walk into the wilderness, Warner Brothers was done, their investment had never paid off, eventually she was dropped. Not that you could blame the Bunny, after eight albums and no breakthrough it could be argued it was time to cut their losses. Who knew nearly a decade later WB execs newly ensconced in the Capitol Tower would sign Bonnie and she’d end up being not only the favorite of the critics, but the whole world, with “Nick Of Time.” Credit Don Was, who let Bonnie be Bonnie. He engineered a return to what once was, that initial LP from ’71, albeit with modern technology. You see Bonnie Raitt always had an edge, and if you tried to clean it up, cut it off, you removed her essence.

Meanwhile, over on RCA, the Record Cemetery of America, there was a band with little traction that had a track on its second album that ended up gaining momentum and breaking through long after its initial release. That act was Pure Prairie League. That song was “Amie.” The writer of that number was one Craig Fuller.

Now purchasers of “Bustin’ Out,” the Pure Prairie League album containing the hit, knew it did not stand alone, because when you dropped the needle on side two the opening cut was a magical, harmonious number that set your mind adrift before the picking for “Amie” began. That’s right, scratch a baby boomer and they’ll be able to sing “Falling In And Out Of Love” as well as the hit, they see them both as one long number, a veritable suite, hell, as you reached the end of “Amie,” “Falling In And Out Of Love” returned.

I got e-mail from Craig Fuller.

I assumed it wasn’t him. After all, I regularly hear from Mike Campbell, a guy from Canada, not the guitarist extraordinaire in Tom Petty’s band. You’d be surprised how many people have your name. Then again, it was the real David Gilmour, and one of the privileges of my work is if I write about someone they read it, and oftentimes they do reach out. So when I got wished a Happy New Year by one Craig Fuller I decided to investigate. His e-mail address had a “49” in it and Wikipedia told me that was the year he was born in, so I asked…

And he said:

“I presume you mean the musician and not the former White House staffer; that would be me. Read your thoughts on things everyday; well done.”

And that made me tingle. Reminded me of those Pure Prairie days, the work with Little Feat and in between, the partnership with Eric Kaz, and for two albums Steve Katz and Doug Yule too.

I bought those American Flyer LPs. Which were on United Artists, so they could not break through. If only they’d been with the Bunny. But I played them and there was one cut that truly stuck out, “Gamblin’ Man.” But did Craig Fuller sing it? I knew Eric Kaz wrote it, I pulled my vinyl, there was no detail, I scoured the internet and came up with nothing, so I decided to ask my new buddy Craig himself…

“No that was Eric Kaz; he wrote it and did a bang-up job!  I think he sang it a lot better than Bonnie R..”

I agree.

The odds are down and the track looks slow
Sure don’t feel like a sure thing

And speaking of things, the Triple Crown is still one, especially the Kentucky Derby, but basically horse racing is going the way of duckpin bowling, it’s fading away. But fifty years ago, it was still burgeoning.

Your horse gets jumpy when the pack runs wild
It don’t like a good thing

Trains and gambling. For most of the twentieth century those were standard songwriting subjects. But trains have faded from songdom the same way westerns have faded from moviedom, there’s no romance left. And gambling…it’s been institutionalized, you can still lose your life savings but the state needs the tax revenue, so the renegade element has been eviscerated from society.

You must be crazy
To gamble this way
The children hungry
And the rent ain’t paid
Gamblin’ man
Ramblin’ fool
Sure must be crazy
To gamble on you

We don’t choose who we love. I know, I know, you can go to a good school and try to build a dynasty through matrimony but the truth is the heart wants what the heart wants and even though you may have money in the bank your heart yearns for something different. This is the conundrum of love, so often what you want is bad for you.

So who better to sing about a gamblin’ man than the blues rock mama herself, Bonnie Raitt.

Now if you want to go back to the nadir, the album that caused the label to connect Bonnie with Rothchild, you’ll find an opening track so mellifluous that to hear it once is to be taken away to a place of reflection you enjoy inhabiting so much you spin it over and over again.

That’s right, Bonnie’s 1974 album “Streetlights,” produced by Jerry Ragavoy, was a dud, it was so soft that it nearly put you to sleep, but despite getting no traction at the time it contains Bonnie’s signature song, her cover of John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” and the aforementioned opening cut, a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “That Song About The Midway.”

I met you at a midway at a fair last year

That’s another thing no one writes about anymore, the carnival, the fair, a place where rogues caroused and sans cellphone cameras anything could happen.

You stood out like a ruby in a black man’s ear

I’m not sure you can say this anymore, political correctness and all, but the point is it’s funny who gains your attention, you’re just minding your own business and then your eyes lock on to someone and they can’t let go.

You were playing on the horses, you were playing on the guitar strings

That’s right, once upon a time bands were not brands. Sure, musicians were entertainers, but they didn’t fit into regular society, they enjoyed the freedom of the hours to live an alternative life, which they ultimately sang about.

So, this guy was betting on the ponies…

And so was the guy in “Gamblin’ Man.”

The deal is down so you slip right in
You’ve got the deck but you can’t win

Dreamers. We fall for them time and again, until we learn our lesson. We’re infatuated by the tales they spin, until we realize most of them don’t come true, and that their purveyors fail even if they have the ammunition in their arsenal. You know the type, charismatic with a wink in their eye, they’re hard to resist.

And Bonnie’s singing about him with such swagger we know she’s headed for heartbreak. That seems to be the story of the blues mama’s life, right? Livin’ hard, being taken advantage of, never finding true happiness.

But Eric Kaz’s rendition is more fatalistic. The hope is absent. It’s a cautionary tale by someone burned enough times to be wise.

I bet you Craig Fuller is pretty wise.

It was a different era. You had to have skills to play, you had to practice to get there. And so few passed muster. And then you got a smidge of fame and…

Bonnie Raitt had an unforeseen renaissance, in her later years she’s become something akin to America’s Sweetheart, but sans sweet stickiness, Bonnie’s the sister at the soiree, the one you worry about but always manages to survive.

American Flyer broke up. And its albums were in the rearview mirror until the internet unearthed everything that came before. To the point where you can now hear American Flyer’s version of “Gamblin’ Man.”

The cards are cold and the cut is thin
You’ve got the deal but you won’t win

That’s right, despite all the advantages, most don’t win. And that seems so unfair. You work hard, but mistakes made when you weren’t looking, like signing with the wrong label, employing the wrong producer, keep you from grabbing the brass ring.

But you keep on keepin’ on, there’s nothing else to do.

After all…

You’re a gamblin’ man.