Gems from the Record Room - Love Is The Only Goal: The Best Of Wendy Waldman (1996)



Love Is The Only Goal: The Best Of Wendy Waldman

Wendy Waldman is an enormously talented songwriter, singer, and musician who started out in the early seventies and is still going strong. When her first group Bryndle (with Karla Bonoff, Andrew Gold, and Kenny Edwards) disbanded, she was signed by Warner Brothers, where she recorded her first five albums between 1973 and 1978.

This extraordinarily well chosen set is drawn from those five albums, Love Has Got Me, Gypsy Symphony, Wendy Waldman, The Main Refrain, and Strange Company, except "Mad Mad Me" which was re-recorded for this collection and "Charles River Song" which is an unreleased demo. Wendy's music embodies everything that was good about the L.A. singer-songwriter movement in the seventies.

Wendy first landed on the map when Maria Muldour recorded two of her songs, "Mad Mad Me" and "Vaudeville Man," on her 1972 album, Maria Muldour. Even though none of her own albums ever charted, as a songwriter, Wendy is no stranger to the charts. According to her website, more than 150 songs, written or co-written by Wendy, have been recorded by others, including the Grammy award winning, "Save The Best For Last" which was a number one hit for Vanessa Williams and has gone on to become a standard.

All five of Wendy's Warner Bros. albums are long out of print, indeed this collection is also out of print on disc, but MP3s are still available, an excellent value at about $12.00 for the 18 tracks. Wendy recently released Back By Fall, A Retrospective, which surveys all eight of her studio albums with 35 tracks spread over two CDs. More information about this, as well as a complete discography including her work with Bryndle and the Refugees is at her website.

Listen to "Vaudeville Man"


Listen to "Love Has Got Me"



Photo courtesy of Wendy Waldman










Comments

Anonymous said…
Great post on a fine songwriter...good work, Bill! I'm sure you remember seeing Wendy open for Jackson Browne in Indy way back when.

Dave the Rave
2/28/2013
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