The new compilation album Somewhere In The Stars by Greenwich Village Folk act Richard, Cam & Bert will be a RSD 2024 Exclusive. The pressing will be limited to 1200 copies on transparent cherry vinyl and comes in a tip-on jacket, with a heavy insert and DL code.
It features the original recording of Richard Tucker’s, “Are You Leaving For The Country,” later covered by his wife Karen Dalton on her 1971 LP In My Own Time and “Sleeping In The Garden,” the only song co-written by Karen & Richard.
Grungie O’Muck artist, bluesman, cover artist for their first album and contributor to this one, shares:
For a few years in the late sixties and early seventies Richard Cam & Bert ruled MacDougal St. walking a fine line between the increasingly commercialized demands created by groups like Crosby Stills and Nash and the fierce integrity of earlier folk performers, the generation to which Richard belonged. They managed this with great aplomb, producing original tunes of great integrity and obvious folkloric origins, as well as those which expressed the anarchic omnipresent psychedelia of the moment. They also never abandoned the idea of including some traditional material in their performances. But for the usual random application of luck they could have been very big.
Richard Tucker, Campbell Bruce, and Bert Lee became a trio in the spring of 1968, and by the end of that year had become regular performers at Greenwich Village nightspots like The Gaslight, The Bag I’m In, and Cafe Feenjon, among others. But mostly they were known as street singers, busking regularly in Central Park. Their only LP, Limited Edition, was released in 1970, and sold mainly at gigs and on the street.
Somewhere in The Stars compiles earlier, previously unreleased recordings, when all three members were signed with Peer-Southern Music publishers as writers and began using their studio to make demos and experiment musically.
Recorded by house engineer Charlie Mack (supervised by Jimmy Ienner), the demos have a rustic, homespun quality. Some of the songs were re-recorded the following year for Limited Edition, but many are heard here for the first time.
Loudon Wainwright III says of the trio:
The trio’s singing, playing, and writing have all withstood the test of time. Believe me, because I was there. In 1969 R,C&B, myself, Charles John Quarto, David Bromberg, Ron Price, and Keith Sykes were just a few of that year’s crop of song-slingers. We were young turks back then, out on the prowl in New York’s Greenwich Village for record deals, gigs, and beautiful young women to sleep with and maybe even write a song about. I’ve lost the names and numbers of those lovelies and I’m not sure what happened to Ron Price, but Richard, Cam, and Bert are back!
