The Baby Huey Story LP 1971 Curtis Mayfield VG++ Vinyl gatefold

$

77

The Baby Huey Story

The Living Legend

Curtom Records CRS8007  LP 33RPM 12" 1971 (USA)

Baby Huey's only album, released after his untimely death, is titled The Living Legend with good reason. He was legendary in his appearance, a 400-pound man with a penchant for flamboyant clothing and crowned by a woolly Afro, a look that is best illustrated by one of several rare photos included in the Water Records edition that shows our man in a wide-lapeled polka-dot shirt with a lime-green jacket. Beyond his unusual appearance, though, he was graced with a stunning, fierce voice on par with Otis Redding and Howard Tate, wailing and howling one moment and oddly tender and sentimental the next. Nowhere on Living Legend is his range more apparent than the opening track, "Listen to Me," where listeners are introduced to both the enigma of Baby Huey and his diamond-tough psychedelic funk backing band, the Baby Sitters. The high-energy instrumental workout "Mama Get Yourself Together" is worthy of the J.B.'s and a hazy, spiraling ten-minute rendition of Sam Cooke's chestnut "A Change Is Going to Come" confirms that the Baby Sitters could hold their own with Blood, Sweat & Tears. Further lore that catapults The Living Legend from good to great: the production was helmed by Curtis Mayfield, reason enough to make it near essential, and is highlighted by three of his compositions, "Mighty Mighty," which Mayfield and the Impressions recorded a few years earlier; "Running," a classic Mayfield cut that can only be heard here ripped to glorious bits by a band that is trying to let every member solo; and "Hard Times," which Mayfield himself would revisit on his 1975 album There's No Place Like America Today, although Baby Huey's razor-edged reading remains the definitive version -- no small caveat considering Mayfield not only wrote the tune, but could rightfully be considered one of the architects of soul to boot.

Tracklist
A1 Listen To Me
Written-By – M. Johnson
6:35
A2 Mama Get Yourself Together
Written-By – J. Ramey
6:10
A3 A Change Is Going To Come
Written-By – S. Cooke
9:23
B1 Mighty, Mighty
Written-By – C. Mayfield
2:45
B2 Hard Times
Written-By – C. Mayfield
3:19
B3 California Dreaming
Written-By – J. Phillips
4:43
B4 Running
Written-By – C. Mayfield
3:36
B5 One Dragon Two Dragon
Written-By – J. Ramey
4:02

Art Direction – Michael Mendel
Producer – Curtis Mayfield

Vinyl is EXCELLENT in a plastic inner sleeve in a gatefold hard card picture sleeve in FAIR condition (delete hole, pen marks, edge wear, seam tape repair) in a plastic protector sleeve.

Note About Shipping To The U.S.
We are located in Canada, but have registered ourselves on eBay.com instead of eBay.ca because it gives us significantly better global exposure.  The problem with this is that eBay wants us to charge shipping appropriate to US, where media mail and other options make for fairly reasonable delivery costs. We tried it for a while but ended up losing money on shipping or having to cancel the orders because we couldn't afford to ship for those rates. To manage this we have set the US shipping to run a calculator based on an American location (we chose Plattsburgh as fairly close) and charging according to UPS pricing.  This avoids the cancellation issue, but appears to the buyer to be a prohibitive shipping cost and misrepresents the shipping as being only expedited. If you give us your postal code we will see if we can offer a more reasonable option, but generally we can get a single LP by air to most places in the continental US for $11, a few bucks less for ground.
Thanks for shopping Sir Helmitt,
Jeff Green, e-sales