Think about the modern music industry for a second,
right? When we look at massive cultural institutions,
a monolithic rock band, for instance, we really
shouldn't think of them as just artists. They
are effectively these massive global supply chains.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, they have established
marketing departments and deeply invested record
executives. Exactly. And millions of consumers
who have already pre -ordered a very specific
expectation of what they're going to get. Yeah.
So if a global pop icon wants to change direction,
they are essentially trying to retool an entire
international factory. Which takes a ton of time.
Right. It is meticulously orchestrated. It's
heavily focus grouped. And, you know, everybody
sees the transition coming from miles away. Because
the momentum of a machine that size is just incredibly
difficult to disrupt. The financial pressure
to simply keep delivering the exact same product
is immense. Which brings us to a really fascinating
historical anomaly. What happens when one of
the most recognizable figures on the planet decides
to just halt the factory, walk away from the
machinery, and tear off in an entirely different
direction? Almost overnight. with zero warning
to the public. Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today
we are immersing ourselves in a comprehensive
Wikipedia article detailing a truly bizarre,
brilliantly executed moment in music history.
We are talking about Ringo Starr's 1970 solo
album, Boku Blues. And our mission today is to
explore for you how a global pop icon completely
pivoted his musical identity in a mere three
days. Which is just wild to think about. It really
is. And beyond just the sheer logistics of that
recording session, we are looking at why this
deeply underrated, entirely unexpected country
album serves as an absolute masterclass in trusting
your authentic passions. Over public expectation,
yeah. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
the timeline of this release is crucial for understanding
the sheer cultural whiplash the public experienced.
Let's set the stage for you. The year is 1970.
The Beatles are in the midst of their very public,
very messy dissolution. Right. It was exhausting
for everyone involved. Definitely. So Ringo steps
out on his own and releases his debut solo album,
Sentimental Journey. And to give you some context
on that record, it is a collection of old pop
standards. We're talking Tin Pan Alley music.
Yeah, those classic pre -rock and roll tunes
from the 20s, 30s, and 40s that your grandparents
would have listened to on the radio. radio, he
releases that in April. So the public is just
barely wrapping their heads around Ringo as this,
like, tuxedo -wearing crooner. Right. And then,
a mere five months later, in September, he drops
Bakoo of Blues, a pure, unfiltered, highly traditional
country and western album. He wasn't simply dipping
a toe into a new aesthetic to see if it would
work, you know. He was completely relocating
his artistic center of gravity. While the fans
and the critics were still trying to digest his
foray into big band standards. Exactly. He had
already secretly engineered a massive geographical
and genre shift. So to understand where this
sudden country pivot came from, we actually have
to rewind the tape just a bit back to his tenure
with the Beatles. Because viewing this as a random
impulse of whim completely misses the reality
of the situation. Right. Ringo had these deep
almost obsessive country music roots that he
had been actively nurturing for years. I mean
he sang lead vocals on the Beatles cover of Buck
Owens' massive country hit act, Naturally. He
co -wrote the heavily country -influenced track,
What Goes On, and he penned his very own original
country song, Don't Pass Me By. His championing
of the genre inside the band was actually so
persistent that it heavily influenced the overall
sonic shift of the Beatles' 1964 album, Beatles
for Sale. So the seed for a solo country record
was always there. planted deep in his creative
DNA. It just required the right catalyst to finally
pull it to the surface. And that catalyst arrives
in the form of a rather fateful car ride in May
or June of 1970. The setting is London. Ringo
is playing drums on the recording sessions for
George Harrison's sprawling solo album, All Things
Must Pass. Right, and George had arranged to
fly an American pedal steel guitarist named Pete
Drake all the way to England to play on a few
tracks. And for those who might not be familiar
with the instrument, a pedal steel guitar is
that complex horizontal instrument played with
a metal slide. It produces that weeping, sliding,
distinctly melancholic sound that essentially
defines traditional country music. Pete Drake
wasn't just a musician. His presence was a symbol
of pure unadulterated Nashville authenticity.
Yeah. And the logistical task falls to Ringo
to drive out to the airport, pick up Pete Drake.
and transport him back to the studio. Okay, let's
unpack this because the visual here is incredible
to me. It really is. Think of Ringo Starr in
1970 as a superhero who has a deeply nerdy secret
identity. I love that comparison. By day, he
is the world's most famous rock star constantly
dodging massive crowds of paparazzi outside Abbey
Road studios. Right. But in the privacy of his
own vehicle, he is a massive unapologetic country
music fanatic. So when Pete Drake gets into the
passenger seat of Ringo's car, He immediately
notices that the entire vehicle is loaded to
the brim with country music albums. Just absolutely
covered in them. That moment of recognition is
the turning point of this entire narrative. Pete
Drake didn't look across the console and see
a former Beatle burdened by global fame. No,
he saw a genuine knowledgeable fan of the genre.
Exactly. Recognizing that shared deep -seated
connection, Ringo takes a massive creative leap.
He turns to Drake and asks, almost tentatively,
if they could possibly collaborate on a country
album together at some point. And Drake's response
is, like, the ultimate industry flex. Oh, totally.
He essentially looks at Ringo and says, without
missing a beat, that his musician friends back
home in Tennessee could write more than a whole
album's worth of original material in a single
week. And Ringo's immediate reaction is absolute
disbelief. He tells Drake that is physically
impossible. Right, because of his background.
Yet despite his skepticism, Ringo eagerly agreed
to try. And this is a vital distinction to make.
What do you mean? Well, this proposed album was
not some vanity project forced onto a label by
a bored rock star looking for distraction, you
know. Oh, I see. It was genuine validation from
a deeply respected industry insider. Pete Drake
issued a direct creative challenge, and Ringo,
despite his monumental fame and established wealth,
humbled himself enough to accept the premise.
So the challenge is accepted in that car, which
brings us from a purely conceptual idea floating
around London to the boots on the ground reality
in Nashville, Tennessee. Though initially Ringo
actually wanted to execute this project the comfortable
way. Right. He proposed holding the actual recording
sessions in England, suggesting that Drake could
just record the backing tracks in America and
like mail the master tapes over the ocean for
him to sing over. Basically, phoning it in from
the comfort of his own mansion. Exactly. But
Drake flatly refused that idea. He convinced
Ringo that if he wanted to make a legitimate
country album, he had to physically immerse himself
in Nashville. He had to breathe the air. Yes.
So on June 22nd, Ringo flies out to Tennessee.
And what unfolds over the next few days is a
massive culture clash. You have the leisurely,
experimental, British rock star lifestyle slamming
into the hyper -efficient, industrial -grade
Nashville recording machine. Drake booked studio
time at Music City Recorders, bringing in the
legendary Scotty Moore to act as the engineer.
Oh, wow. And they proceeded to cut every single
track for the entire album in just three days,
June 25th, 26th, and 27th. OK, wait. I am genuinely
struggling to understand the logistics of that
timeline. It's intense. The late era Beatles
were notorious, I mean sometimes infamous, for
their excruciating studio habits. They would
spend weeks, sometimes months, experimenting
with tape loops, layering dozens of vocal takes.
Agonizing over the exact tone of a single snare
drum hit. Exactly. How does a musician heavily
conditioned to that luxurious slow -moving environment
physically adapt to cutting an entire full -length
album in 72 hours? Did he just radically What's
fascinating here is the underlying mechanism
of how Nashville operated in 1970 compared to
London. The Nashville studio culture relied on
highly specialized session players. These weren't
rock bands trying to discover their sound through
trial and error. Right, they were pros. These
were professionals who treated recording like
a highly disciplined trade. They used something
called the Nashville Number System, which is
a shorthand method of writing chord charts. And
that speeds things up. Massively. It allows a
room full of musicians to learn a brand new song
in minutes and play it perfectly together on
the very first try. They played live on the floor,
locking in instantly. So Ringo is stepping into
a room with guys who essentially view musical
perfection as a baseline expectation, not a destination
you spend weeks trying to reach. Precisely. The
schedule must have been grueling. It was an absolute
gauntlet. Pete Drake had gathered a massive stack
of material written purposely for Ringo by local
songwriters. Right. Ringo himself later described
the physical toll of those sessions. He said
he would wake up, learn five brand new songs
in the morning over breakfast, and then go into
the studio and successfully record those same
five songs that night. Just churning them out.
Guitarist Charlie Daniels, who actually played
on the album, perfectly encapsulated the stark
difference in studio cultures. What did he say?
He noted that the atmosphere was simply, go in,
sit down, and work. He said, here's the songs,
here's the chords, let's get it done. It was
not a Beatles -type leisurely session, it was
work. Wow. Throwing Ringo into the deep end of
the pool with hardened Nashville Session veterans
seems incredibly risky. I mean, we are talking
about guys who've played on thousands of hit
records. Totally. How did he avoid being completely
swallowed whole by the pressure of that relentless
pace? The saving grace was Ringo's foundational
skill set. Publicly, the narrative often unfairly
characterizes Ringo as simply the lucky drummer
who happened to be in the right place at the
right time with Lennon and McCartney. Right,
people always say that. But the veteran players
in that Nashville studio saw something entirely
different. Session drummer, DJ Fontana, a man
who played with Elvis Presley and knew exactly
what elite musicianship looked like, observed
Ringo playing. And what was his take? Fontana
stated, he never varied from that tempo. He had
the greatest conception of tempo I've ever heard
in my life. Wow. He went on to say, I have never
heard anybody play that steady in my life. And
that's a long time. That is an astonishing level
of praise coming from a legend like DJ Fontana.
He essentially recognized Ringo as a human metronome.
Precisely. Stripped of the pop star facade and
the Beatlemania hysteria, Ringo possessed a mechanical
mastery of his instrument. Right. That unshakable
timing and inherent musicality allowed him to
not only survive this three -day sprint, but
to earn the immediate unquestioned respect of
the most demanding session pros in the world.
It sounds like he finally found a room full of
peers who understood his specific genius. Oh,
exactly. And because they were operating with
this hyper -efficient live -on -the -floor momentum,
they actually generated an overabundance of creative
material. Which is crazy to think about. Yeah.
This wasn't a panicked, frantic three days where
they barely managed to scrape together enough
tracks for an LP. They worked so fast that they
had hours of extra studio time just to mess around.
The surplus of energy in that room was remarkable.
Beyond completing the actual album tracks, which
included a fantastic duet with Genie Kendall
called I Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way, they
just kept the tape rolling. Yeah. They recorded
a sprawling 28 -minute original track titled
Coochie Coochie. 28 minutes of continuous playing.
Furthermore, they capped off the sessions with
two massive improvised jam sessions, one lasting
18 minutes and the other stretching to 20 minutes.
That is just wild. And there is tangible proof
of just how prolific this Kunlken was. In 1992,
there was an auction featuring acetate discs
from these very sessions. Oh, acetates are those
fragile direct -to -disc test pressings that
musicians use to evaluate a recording before
it goes into mass production? Exactly. These
acetates, originally bearing the working title
Ringo in Nashville, revealed a completely different
track order and included entirely unreleased
songs, such as one called The Wishing Book. It
paints a picture of an incredibly joyous, profoundly
prolific three days that then, you know, the
Nashville bubble bursts and reality hits. Right.
The album is fully mastered and Bakua Blues is
officially released to the public in September
1970. And the presentation is as authentic as
the music. The cover art features a great down
-to -earth photograph of Ringo shot by Marshall
Falwell Jr. standing casually outside musician
Tracy Nelson's smokehouse. Yeah, the aesthetic
is right. The sound is completely legitimate.
But dropping a pure country record to millions
of screaming pop fans in 1970 is essentially
like serving a rare steak to a room full of vegans.
That is a great way to put it. How did the actual
consumer base react to this? Well, bemused is
the most accurate term used in the sources to
describe the fan base's reaction. Bemused, a
polite way of saying they were entirely baffled.
Pretty much. The abrupt change in style alienated
his core demographic. I mean, the album completely
missed the UK charts, failing to make a dent
in his home country. Which had to sting. In the
United States, it peaked at a rather lackluster
number 65 on the Billboard top LPs chart, although
it did manage to climb to number 35 on the country
albums list. Right, showing you had some genre
cred. Yeah, and it found slightly better traction
internationally, hitting number 34 in Canada,
33 in Australia, and 21 in Norway. But when measured
against the stratospheric commercial expectations
of anything carrying the Beatles Association,
it was widely considered a commercial disappointment.
And the tepid commercial reaction had immediate
consequences. Ringo actually stepped away from
releasing any more solo music for a significant
period. Yeah, he chose instead to focus his creative
energies on his film -acting career. Apple Records
had even preemptively announced in October of
1970 that a second volume of the Nashville recordings
would be released. Oh, wow. But due to the poor
sales of the first, that follow -up album never
materialized. It's a shame. So what does this
all mean? I want to pose this question to you
and directly to the listener as well. Okay. We
have a scenario where an artist fulfills a lifelong
burning ambition. He proves beyond a shadow of
a doubt that he has the musical chops to keep
pace with the most elite session players on earth.
But his established fan base is totally confused
and the album commercially tanks in his own home
country. Looking at the full picture, do we evaluate
this project as a success or a failure? Evaluating
this requires a complete reframing of how we
define success, I think. How so? If the only
metric you care about is the billboard charts
or unit sales, then it registers as a footnote.
But for Ringo, on a personal artistic level,
the creation of Boku Blues was the ultimate victory.
Really? Yeah, the sources emphasize that it became
abundantly clear to everyone in that Nashville
studio that his natural vocal timbre was far
more suited to the storytelling, melancholic
nature of country music than it ever was to the
sweeping pop standards he attempted on Sentimental
Journey. That makes a lot of sense. His voice
carries that slightly mournful everyman quality
that perfectly fits a maudlin country narrative.
The true triumph was uncovering his authentic
solo voice and having the courage to trust his
passion, even knowing it would likely alienate
the audience he had spent a decade building.
It serves as a powerful testament to prioritizing
deep artistic fulfillment over shallow commercial
expectation. Exactly. Here's where it gets really
interesting, though. because the historical record
actually ended up entirely vindicating that brave
choice. It did. While the general public was
scratching their heads, the contemporary music
critics, you know, the people whose job it was
to analyze the actual craft, they listened to
the record and absolutely loved it. They recognized
the brilliance of the pivot immediately. The
critical reception is one of the most fascinating
aspects of this story. Yeah. Jeffrey Cannon,
writing his review for The Guardian, boldly rated
Boku of Blues as his absolute favorite of all
the solo Beatles releases that came out in 1970.
Wait, really? Just to put that in perspective,
that means he rated this weekend Nashville Project
above Paul McCartney's highly anticipated solo
debut. Yep. And above John Lennon's raw masterpiece,
Plastic Ono Band. He did. And the reasoning Cannon
provided was incredibly astute. He wrote that
the album was superior, not because Ringo's a
good singer, but because this time he'd let himself
be used well. He said people who work with men
like Pete Drake and Charlie McCoy don't go wrong.
Charles Burton reviewing the album for Rolling
Stone was equally captivated by the project.
He actually drew a highly favorable comparison
between Ringo's effort and Bob Dylan's legendary
country pivot, Nashville Skyline. That's high
praise. Burton noted that instead of lovable
Bob Dylan standing in front of those luxurious
Nashville backing tracks, the listener gets lovable
Richard Starkey, crooning his heart out with
total sincerity. And even Robert Kriscoe, the
notoriously tough critic writing for the Village
Voice, awarded the album a solid B grade. Wow,
Chris Gow is tough to please. He really is. Chris
Gow didn't ignore Ringo's technical flaws. You
know, he's specifically pointed out that Ringo
was often singing flat while attempting to impersonate
Buck Owens' vocal style. Right. But he ultimately
praised the underlying spirit of the record.
He wrote that the songs and the production bespoke
a high quality obsession that made the music
resonate and stick with the listener. High quality
obsession. That is a brilliant phrase. It perfectly
articulates the idea that you do not need to
be technically flawless if your passion for the
material is undeniably authentic. Absolutely.
And the long -term legacy of the album proves
that this critical praise wasn't just a fluke.
The original songs from this album went on to
have a life of their own covered by actual legends
of the genre. Like Jerry Lee Lewis himself who
covered I'd Be Talkin' all the time just a year
later in 1971. And jumping decades into the future,
In 2012, Texas country legend Ray Wiley Hubbard
recorded a cover of Ringo's epic 28 -minute original
jam, Gucci Cucci. And actually brought Ringo
in to sing on the new track. Which is amazing.
This race is an important question about the
fundamental nature of creative genius and the
power of collaboration. Ringo Starr didn't attempt
to be the solitary tortured mastermind here.
He didn't lock himself in a London studio for
six months trying to write, arrange, and produce
a country album entirely by himself just to prove
a point to the world. He leaned heavily on Pete
Drake, Chuck Howard, Charlie Daniels, and the
entire ecosystem of Nashville session players.
He presents the self -awareness to know exactly
what he didn't know. Yeah. True mastery in any
field often looks exactly like this. Having the
humility to let dedicated experts guide you.
Ringo provided the initial vision, the funding,
the unshakable tempo on the drums, and that high
-quality obsession the critics noted. But he
allowed the seasoned professionals to actually
build the house around him. Exactly. Which is
such an incredibly refreshing, ego -free approach,
especially coming from a man who had just spent
the last decade in the biggest, most heavily
scrutinized band in human history. For sure.
So let's bring this all together. What a phenomenal
journey. We started with a chance encounter in
a car ride in London where a deeply hidden nerdy
passion was finally spoken out loud to the right
person. Yep. That single conversation sparked
a grueling, hyper efficient, joyous three day
recording sprint in Nashville. The resulting
album utterly bemused his existing pop fans,
tanked commercially, but ultimately achieved
incredible critical vindication and secured a
lasting respected legacy in the traditional country
music world. It stands as a profound testament
to the power and the necessity of the hard pivot.
And for you listening to this, the direct application
of the Book Who of Blues story is incredibly
clear. You should never ignore your weird, deeply
niche passions just because they don't align
with what people expect from you. That's the
real takeaway. Even if your fans, whether that
means your actual audience, your clients, your
coworkers, or just your friends and family, are
totally confused by your new direction, you have
to trust your gut. You do. If you attack your
new goals with that high quality obsession, and
if you have the humility to surround yourself
with the absolute best in that specific field,
you can produce the most authentic, fulfilling
work of your life. But as we wrap up, I want
to leave you with one final, slightly different
angle to mull over regarding this story. Okay,
what's that? Think about the modern landscape
we operate in today. We live in an era defined
by algorithms. Systems on streaming platforms
and social media that financially punish creators
who step outside their neatly defined, highly
profitable genres. That is so true. If a modern
megastar attempted a drastic 72 -hour genre pivot
like Ringo did, the algorithm would likely bury
it entirely before the fans even had a chance
to be bemused. Wow. It makes you wonder, have
we engineered a cultural supply chain where that
kind of brave, bizarre, completely authentic
left turn is practically impossible today? It's
a daunting thought. Halting the factory requires
a lot more courage when the machines are automated.
Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. We'll
catch you next time.