Glenn Yarbrough - For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (1967/2017) [HDtracks]

There were numerous obscure attempts, most of them commercially and artistically unsuccessful, by folk revival veterans to move into folk-rock-pop in the last half of the 1960s. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her is Yarbrough's. Although Yarbrough's usual idea of a contemporary singer/songwriter to cover on record was limited to Rod McKuen, here he tackles many of the giants: Simon & Garfunkel (the title cut), Buffy Sainte-Marie ("Until It's Time for You to Go"), Ian & Sylvia ("The French Girl"), Bob Dylan ("Tomorrow Is a Long Time"), Phil Ochs ("Pleasures of the Harbor" and "Crucifixion"), and, most unexpectedly, Buffalo Springfield (with what must have been one of the very few covers of Stephen Stills' "Everybody's Wrong"). The songs' tepid folk-rock arrangements are dressed up in MOR orchestration by George Tipton and Perry Botkin Jr., and delivered with laconic understatement by Yarbrough. It's limp as a dishrag, not suiting Yarbrough's voice well and not doing justice to the songs, with the clash of orchestration, country-ish folk-rock, and raga-tinged guitar on "Everybody's Wrong" ranking as the LP's oddest venture. If you're looking for interesting trivial connections, though, there are plenty. Tom Mastin, known if at all as the composer of a song on Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow album ("How Do You Feel"), wrote the far less renowned folk revival-styled "Golden Under the Sun," which was unfortunately much less memorable than the tune he placed with the Airplane. Michael Brewer (who had briefly played with Mastin in a folk-rock act) and Tom Shipley wrote another of the tracks, "Comes and Goes," though this was also unimpressive. And the record was produced by Rick Jarrard, as it happens the producer of Surrealistic Pillow.