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Elton John: The Union

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Decca Records
Released: 2010.10.27
Time:
 63:12
Category: Calssical
Producer(s): T Bone Burnett
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.eltonjohn.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] If It Wasn't for Bad (L.Russell) - 3:43
[2] Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes (E.John/B.Taupin) - 3:23
[3] Hey Ahab (E.John/B.Taupin) - 5:39
[4] Gone to Shiloh [feat. Neil Young] (E.John/B.Taupin) - 4:50
[5] Hearts Have Turned to Stone (L.Russell) - 3:47
[6] Jimmie Rodgers' Dream (E.John/B.Taupin/T.B.Burnett) - 3:34
[7] There's No Tomorrow (E.John/L.Russell/T.B.Burnett/J.T.Shaw) - 3:45
[8] Monkey Suit (E.John/B.Taupin) - 4:46
[9] The Best Part of the Day (E.John/B.Taupin) - 4:45
[10] A Dream Come True (E.John/L.Russell) - 5:07
[11] I Should Have Sent Roses (E.John/B.Taupin) - 5:21
[12] When Love Is Dying (E.John/B.Taupin) - 4:51
[13] Never Too Old [To Hold Somebody] (E.John/B.Taupin) - 4:58
[14] In the Hands of Angels (L.Russell) - 4:43

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Elton John - Piano, Vocals, Executive Producer
Leon Russell - Piano, Vocal Arrangement, Vocals

Jim Keltner - Drums, Percussion
Jay Bellerose - Drums, Percussion
Debra Dobkin - Beaded Gourd
Dennis Crouch - Acoustic Bass
Don Was - Bass
Davey Faragher - Bass
Drew Lambert - Electric Bass
Marc Ribot - Guitar
Robert Randolph - Pedal Steel
Russ Pahl - Pedal Steel
Booker T. Jones - Hammond B-3 Organ
Keefus Ciancia - Keyboards
Martin Grebb - Keyboards, Hammond B3
Jason Wormer - Dulcimer
Doyle Bramhall II - Guitar
T-Bone Burnett - Electric Guitar, Producer

Darrell Leonard - Conductor, Horn Arrangements, Trumpet, Bass Trumpet
George Bohanon - Baritone Horn, Trombone
Ira Nepus - Trombone
Thomas Peterson - Saxophone
William Roper - Tuba
Maurice Spears - Trombone
Rose Stone - Tambourine, Vocals, Background Vocals
Joe Sublett - Saxophone
Jim Thompson - Saxophone

Bill Maxwell - Conductor, Vocal Arrangement
Neil Young - Vocals  on [4]
Judith Hill - Vocals, Background Vocals
Bill Cantos - Vocals, Background Vocals
Lou Pardini - Vocals, Background Vocals
Jason Scheff - Vocals, Background Vocals
Tata Vega - Vocals, Background Vocals
Brian Wilson - Vocal Arrangement, Background Vocals
Jean Witherspoon - Vocals, Background Vocals
Alfie Silas-Durio - Vocals, Background Vocals
Tanya Balam - Background Vocals
Brian Wilson - Background Vocals on [12]
Kellye Huff - Background Vocals
Perry Morgan - Background Vocals
Keefus Pardini - Background Vocals
Tiffany Smith - Background Vocals

Johnny Barbis - Executive Producer
Mike Piersante - Engineer, Handclapping, Mixing, Tambourine
Jason Wormer - Dulcimer, Editing, Engineer, Handclapping
Kyle Ford - Engineer, Handclapping
Ben McAmis - Engineer
Mark Lambert - Engineer
Kory Aaron - Assistant Engineer
Chris Owens - Assistant Engineer
Vanessa Parr - Assistant Engineer
Brett Lind - Assistant Engineer
Gavin Lurssen - Mastering
Paul Ackling - Guitar Technician
Adrian Collee - Production Coordination
John Eidsvoog - Transcription
Julie Eidsvoog - Transcription
Jessica C. Mitchell - Assistant
Ivy Skoff - Production Coordination
Jon Howard - Production Coordination
Joseph Guay - Photography
Annie Leibovitz - Photography
Frank Ockenfels - Photography
Steve Todoroff - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


On the inaugural episode of Elvis Costello’s talk show Spectacle in 2008, Elton John - who just happened to be a producer on the show - rhapsodized at length about Leon Russell, hauling out a note-perfect impression of Russell’s piano style and Oklahoma drawl. It was enough of a tease to whet the appetite for more but nothing suggested something like The Union, a full-fledged duet album with Russell designed to raise the profile of the rock & roll maverick. Like all lifers, Russell never disappeared - he just faded, playing small clubs throughout the U.S., spitting out bewildering self-released albums of MIDI-synth boogie, never quite connecting with the spirit of his wonderful early-‘70s albums for his Shelter label. The Union quite deliberately evokes the spirit of 1970, splicing Russell’s terrific eponymous LP with Elton’s own self-titled record and Tumbleweed Connection. In that sense, it’s a kissing cousin to John’s last album, 2006’s The Captain and the Kid, which was designed as an explicit sequel to 1975’s golden era-capping Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, but thanks to producer T-Bone Burnett, The Union dials down Bernie Taupin’s inherent pomp and ratchets up the roots. Burnett had John and Russell record live in the studio, trading verses and solos, letting the supporting band breathe and follow their loping lead. This relaxed, natural interplay cuts through the soft haze of Burnett’s analog impressionism, giving the record a foundation of true grit. If there are no immediate knockouts among this collection of 14 original songs, the tunes are slow, steady growers, taking root with repeated spins, with the sound of John and Russell’s piano-and-voice duets providing ample reason to return to The Union after its first play. And even once the songs take hold, what lingers with The Union is that natural interplay, how John and Russell easily connect with their past without painstakingly re-creating it. Surely, it’s a revival for Leon Russell, who has spent decades in the wilderness, but it’s not a stretch to say The Union revitalizes Elton John just as much as it does his idol: he hasn’t sounded this soulful in years.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



The Union is a rare gesture in a dying business: an act of gratitude. Elton John repays a long-standing debt of inspiration to Leon Russell — particularly the rowdy merger of soul, country and gospel rapture Russell perfected as a writer, pianist and arranger on 1969 and '70 albums by Joe Cocker and Delaney and Bonnie — by putting Russell in front of a classy big band, on his first major-label album in a decade. "Your songs have all the hooks/You're seven wonders rolled into one," John sings, ever the fan, in "Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes."

The song, actually about grand entrances and past glories, is almost Russell's story in miniature. It could be about John too. Both men are a long way from their early flamboyance, when Russell ran the R&B big band on Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and John was leaping from clubs to arenas in oversize glasses. The Union often feels like a conversation: the two trading sober and grateful reflections, in songs like "The Best Part of the Day" and "A Dream Come True," on the costs and prizes of a life at the top.

That exchange runs through the music. Singing in a strong, elastic growl and matching John's piano work with low-end rolls and top-note sparkle, Russell jars the younger man from his routine sheen, back to the natural fiber and grandeur of 1970's Elton John and Tumbleweed Connection. On The Union, produced by T Bone Burnett, John and Russell share the resurrection. Each goes back to what he first did best. Then they do it together.

As a songwriter, Russell is as eccentric as his voice. His love songs hurt far more than they show at first. "If It Wasn't for Bad" is finely tuned deception: pop strut, Sunday-service glow and mounting bitterness in that gnarled drawl. Bernie Taupin wrote the words to the Stax-heartbreak shuffle "I Should Have Sent Roses," but the chewy vocal agony is Russell's. When he and John trade lines in "When Love Is Dying," against a choral arrangement by Brian Wilson, John goes for the wrenching high notes. Russell sticks to his odd gritty register, heavy with turmoil.

Russell first became famous for his sharp mischief inside the churn on those Cocker and Delaney and Bonnie LPs, and he works for John the same way: salting the vocal choruses and piano-funk exchanges in "Hey Ahab"; ringing John's earnest rounded tenor with gravelly warmth in the dusky country song "Jimmie Rodgers' Dream." John, in turn, drives this alliance like the eager version of himself that first played with Russell on a 1970 tour. The Civil War tale and Band hommage "Gone to Shiloh" could have come from Tumbleweed Connection; the brassy romp "Monkey Suit" would have fit on 1972's Honky Château.

There is an urgency here too, as if John and Russell know they almost waited too long to bond. "There's No Tomorrow" is built, with new words, on a 1966 grim blues march, "Hymn No. 5" by the Mighty Hannibal. John takes the sober verses; a pedal steel guitar lines the track like gilt on a coffin. But Russell brings the light and common sense. "There's no tomorrow/There's only today," he sings in that rough, eerie voice, just in front of the choir, like a man back from the brink and glad to be at work.

David Fricke - October 12, 2010
RollingStone.com



It was easy to miss Leon Russell's cameo appearance on last Saturday's X Factor, dedicated to songs by the judges' musical heroes. For one thing, his name wasn't mentioned. For another, it was hard not to be distracted by news that Simon Cowell's musical heroes apparently include Kelly Clarkson and Boney M; here was a pretty jaw-dropping insight into his record collection. Mind whirling with the thought of what an all-back-to-mine listening session round Simon Cowell's might entail – you rather picture him sagely announcing he's going to hit you with an obscure old-school dance classic ("this one's strictly for the heads") then playing the Grease Megamix – it was easy for even the most knowledgeable music fan to overlook Russell's contribution to the evening: much fuss was made about the emotional power and loveliness of A Song for You, performed by John Adeleye, but no one credited the 68-year-old Oklahoman who wrote it in 1970.

You could argue that's Leon Russell's current standing all over. Some of his songs are enshrined not merely within the pantheon of classics, but among the stuff known even by people whose only interaction with music comes via Magic FM – he also co-wrote the Carpenters' exquisite Superstar – but hardly anyone associates them with him. It's hard to name another figure who once seemed so central to the rock aristocracy – performing with George Harrison and Eric Clapton, helming Joe Cocker's ascent to superstardom, his songs covered by Bob Dylan and Ray Charles – who has vanished so completely from the public consciousness, a victim of bad business deals, changing times and his own reticence.

In recent years, you could find Russell playing some pretty unprepossessing-sounding venues: The Snail Pie Lounge, Glenville; The Snorty Horse Saloon, Springfield; the Safeway National Barbeque Championships. Enter Elton John, who, while Russell has been busy rocking Gater's Sports Bar and Grill, Gun Barrel City, has been engaged in a clearly heartfelt and largely successful attempt to claw back his own musical credibility. There have been well-reviewed back-to-basics albums, relentless patronage of young artists – it sometimes feels as if no group of teenagers stumbling through Wild Thing in a garage is safe from Sir Elton bursting in and telling them what an inspiration they are to him – and now a chance to rescue an old hero from the environs of the Hog Pit Pub, Midland.

John has audibly taken to the task with relish: "You came like an invasion, all bells and whistles blowing," he sings at his new collaborator on Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes. "Your songs have all the hooks, you're seven wonders rolled into one." If it's touching to hear one of the most successful artists of all time momentarily reduced to gasping fanboy, the album works because it feels like a partnership, rather than an indulgence on John's part or an act of gratitude on Russell's. The sound – gospel-infused blues and country – tends more obviously towards the latter's style than the former's, although, in fairness, it's not that far removed from the pre-glam John of 1970's Tumbleweed Connection. Moreover, the stellar guestlist, including Bono and Brian Wilson, clearly has its roots in John's address book, and there are moments when the melodies could no more obviously be his if they turned up in a pair of sunglasses with windscreen wipers on them. As a result, The Union finally succeeds in doing what John has been tentatively pushing towards for the last decade, stripping his music of the glitzy sheen that's built up over 40 years and often threatened to consume it entirely: nothing here sounds like it could be extravagantly staged by David LaChapelle.

In place of the flamboyance and glitter, there are homages to Stax soul (I Should Have Sent Roses) and The Band (Gone to Shiloh); an eeriness that's bound up with Russell's weathered, drawling voice; dark intimations of mortality – There's No Tomorrow borrows its funeral tone and tune from the Mighty Hannibal's dirge-like 1966 single Hymn No 5 – and the encroaching twilight of their careers on The Best Part of the Day. The latter, full of show-must-go-onisms, sounds rather hokey in theory: in practice, there's something moving about hearing two artists who've enjoyed wildly differing fortunes coming to the same conclusion.

It's fair to say that not many people come to an Elton John album looking for death and eeriness: you do wonder what the people who pay to see him sing The Bitch Is Back next to a inflatable banana that looks like a willy will make of it, and what resuscitating effect it might have on Russell's career – not enough to catapult him to the attention of The X Factor crowd and supplant Boney M in Simon Cowell's affections, perhaps, but enough to ensure the Snorty Horse Saloon is but a memory for the foreseeable future. On those terms – and indeed on any others you'd care to mention – The Union is quite a triumph.

Alexis Petridis
© 2014 The Guardian News



The Union is a collaboration studio album by singer-songwriters Elton John and Leon Russell, released on 19 October 2010 in the US and on 25 October in the UK. This is the 30th studio album by John and the 34th by Russel. This is the first studio release by John since 1979's Victim of Love without any of his regular band members. It is also his highest charting studio album on the Billboard 200 since 1976's Blue Moves, debuting at No. 3, as well as Russell's highest charting studio album since 1972's Carney. The Union was No. 3 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 30 Best Albums of 2010. The album features appearances by: Booker T. Jones (playing Hammond B-3), Neil Young (contributing vocals), Robert Randolph (playing pedal steel), and Brian Wilson (contributing vocal harmonies). This album was dedicated to Guy Babylon, John's keyboard player who died a year before its release. "If It Wasn't for Bad" was nominated for the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The Union has received general critical acclaim with critics praising it as some of the pair's best work to date. It reached No. 3 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Greatest 30 Albums of 2010.

Wikipedia.org



Elton Johns neues Album The Union ist eine Kampfansage an den seelenlosen globalisierten Pop, dessen Wiege meist an Dutzenden von Orten zugleich steht und somit überall und nirgends beheimatet ist. Es ist eine grandiose Hommage an Gospel und Blues, die ihre Wurzeln im gelebten Leben haben, anstatt in einer Marketingabteilung. Nicht 'Retorte' ist hier angesagt, sondern 'Reserve', -ein Begriff, der bevorzugt im Zusammenhang mit Edelmetallen verwendet wird, aber auch als Qualitätsmerkmal eines besonders hochwertigen Weins mit langer Lagerung von zuweilen 20 bis 50 Jahren. In diesem Fall trägt die spezielle Reserve den Namen Leon Russell, der eingeschworenen Fans noch immer ein Begriff ist, auch wenn es heute im Großen und Ganzen still um den amerikanischen Sänger, Songwriter, Gitarristen und Pianisten geworden ist. Bereits in den 60er Jahren spielte er in der Gruppe um Phil Spector, sowie in Folge mit Legenden wie Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton und den Rolling Stones. Weitere Höhepunkte seines Schaffens waren 1971 sein Auftritt auf dem legendären Konzert für Bangladesh und 1972 sein Soloalbum "Carny", das immerhin Platz 2 der US-Charts stürmte.

Was dabei herauskommt, wenn sich ein Star wie Elton John auf seine alten Tage der eigenen musikalischen Anfänge samt Vorbildern und Wegbereitern entsinnt, lässt sich auf The Union bewundern. Zuvor hatte er auf dem iPod eines Freundes alte Songs von Leon Russell gehört. Die bestürzte Frage, wie er ihn nur hatte vergessen können und der Griff zum Telefonhörer waren eins. Elton John fand den Weltklassemusiker chronisch krank und in kleineren Clubs gastierend. Das war im Jahr 2009. Inzwischen konnte der renommierte Produzent T-Bone Burnett gewonnen werden, sowie zahlreiche Gastmusiker, darunter Drummer Jim Keltner, der schon früher in Russells Band mitgespielt hatte, sowie ein grandioser Gospel-Chor, aber auch Gitarrist Marc Ribot, Neil Young und Brian Wilson, auf dessen Beach Boys-Alben Russell oft mit von der Partie war. The Union bietet 14 brillante Songs in ihrer Vielseitigkeit zwischen Gospel, Rock 'n' Roll und Blues und einer Anmutung, die nur als klassisch bezeichnet werden kann. "Never Too Old To Hold Somebody" ist nicht nur eines der schönsten hier vertretenen Stücke, sondern zugleich Credo des gesamten Albums, auf dem sich zwei Legenden zusammenfinden, um gemeinsam an Klavier und Flügel eine längst versunken geglaubte Welt wieder zum Klingen zu bringen!

Andreas Schultz - Amazon.de
 

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