Hotcakes (Remastered) Carly Simon

• 1Safe and Sound03:39
• 2Mind On My Man02:58
• 3Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby03:56
• 4Older Sister03:08
• 5Just Not True05:18
• 6Hotcakes01:09
• 7Misfit03:07
• 8Forever My Love03:27
• 9Mockingbird04:14
• 10Grownup03:46
• 11Haven't Got Time for the Pain03:54
• Total Runtime38:36

Info for Hotcakes (Remastered)

Beatles fans refer to the 1968 album, officially titled The Beatles, as The White Album. But for Carly Simon fans 'the white album' is unmistakably, undeniably Hotcakes. On the cover, a heavily pregnant Carly glows with happiness in a setting so gleamingly white that it immediately conveys sun-drenched domesticity. Once again, the photographer was Ed Caraeff, but this was not another session on the smart streets of fashionable London. There is nothing jet set here. Instead, Carly is pictured in the kitchen of the New York townhouse she shared with James Taylor, and in the months before the birth of their daughter, Sally.

The photograph and design concept perfectly represent a set of songs that opens by observing the madness of the world outside the home ('Safe and Sound'), and then extolls the virtues of daydreaming about love ('Mind on My Man'), of having a baby rock on your knee ('Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby'), of looking forward to looking back on a happy marriage ('Forever My Love'), and of turning away from angst and accepting happiness ('Misfit', 'Haven't Got Time for the Pain').

This is not to say that the album represents a turn to the conventional or conservative. Carly's full-length white linen kaftan is one sign that the bohemian spirit lives on. Her broad smile also suggests the playful, intelligent humour found in many of these songs. And we should recall how unusual it was - and still is - for a singer to appear fully pregnant on an album cover. Had this ever been done before Hotcakes? Has it been done since? It seems unlikely, and this cover is all the more remarkable given that, on the heels of No Secrets, Carly Simon was the most popular and best-selling singer around. The autobiographical intensity of her singing and her songs has always been at the core of her appeal, though, and so it was entirely right that her pregnancy should be pictured in all its glory. Any thought of attempting to be discreet about it - for example by using the head-and-shoulders shots on the left, which came from the same session - was wisely rejected. Thankfully, the sixties-psychedelic backdrop was discarded too.

Many commentators have observed that Hotcakes can be seen as a marker of a wider social trend; that it emerged as American baby boomers, exhausted by the upheavals of Vietnam and Watergate era, settled down and hoped for quieter times. Yet the idea that this album somehow blended in, or simply reflected a wider zeitgeist, underestimates its originality. Rock music was largely driven by testosterone in the mid-1970s: by phallic guitars, crashing drums, and strutting popinjays. Even its more acoustic domain was dominated by drugstore cowboys. Carly Simon's music always served to expand the horizons of rock, and this ambition was never so apparent as on the cover of Hotcakes, where it is signalled directly and with apparent pride.

„A glowing, pregnant Carly Simon smiles out from the cover of Hotcakes, one of her biggest selling albums, which featured the gold single 'Mockingbird,' a duet with her husband James Taylor that effectively remade the old Inez and Charlie Foxx hit and bested it on the charts. The album also included another hit, 'Haven't Got Time For The Pain,' as well as 'Misfit,' in which a wife implores her carousing husband to come home, and 'Think I'm Gonna Have A Baby,' which celebrated the joys of same. With such tracks, Hotcakes was an autobiographical concept album that defined domestic bliss at a time when Simon's listeners also were catching their breath and turning inward.“ (William Ruhlmann)

Carly Simon, vocals, acoustic guitar, piano
Jimmy Ryan, acoustic & electric guitar
Bucky Pizzarelli, electric guitar
David Spinozza, electric guitar
Bobby Keyes, tenor & baritone saxophone
Steven Madaio, trumpet
Barry Rogers, trombone
Howard Johnson, tuba, baritone saxophone
Ken Asher, piano, organ
Dr. John, piano, organ
Klaus Voorman, bass
Richard Davis, bass
Larry Brean, bass
Rick Marotta, drums
Jim Keltner, drums
Jim Gordon, drums
Billy Cobham, drums
Russell Kunkel, drums
Ralph McDonald, congas, percussion
George Devons, cabaza
Tasha Thomas, background vocals
Carl Hall, background vocals
Lani Groves, background vocals
Lucy Simon, background vocals
Todd Graff, background vocals
Bennie Diggs and the Revelations, background vocals
Richard Perry, background vocals

Recorded from September - November 1973 at Producers Workshop, Los Angeles and The Hit Factory, New York City
Engineered by Harry Maslin, Bill Schnee
Produced by Richard Perry

Digitally remastered

No biography found.

This album contains no booklet.