The 2003 re-release of
Music from Free Creek: The Long Lost Super Session Album comes with a six-page booklet explaining who plays what on a simply amazing collection of marquee talent recorded at the Record Plant in June through August of 1969. This edition features a 2001 interview with
Moogy Klingman conducted by I.C. Timerow for the fanzine
Heavy Metal Mayhem, which goes into great detail on how this event came together. While record labels were looking for something of this enormity -- keep the alleged "jam" between
Mick Jagger and
Bob Dylan that never happened in mind -- and a prank of an album called
The Masked Marauders slipped into record stores, the public had little clue that something on that scale actually did exist.
Linda Ronstadt, backed up by musicians from
the Eagles and
Three Dog Night, might not have shaken the Earth, as
Ronstadt and
Three Dog Night only had one hit each at the time, but in retrospect they add diversity to an album featuring
Dr. John, Chris Wood,
Delaney Bramlett,
Todd Rundgren,
Mitch Mitchell, and so many others. It also has
Buzzy Linhart and
Buzzy Feiten, the two "Buzzys" who get confused with each other in musical discussions of the day. Broken up into six divisions -- the
Eric Clapton session, the
Jeff Beck session, the
Keith Emerson session, the
Harvey Mandel session,
Moogy Klingman's odds & sods, and the
Linda Ronstadt session,
Music from Free Creek is easy to digest.
Mitchell jamming on an instrumental "Hey Jude" with
Feiten,
Elliott Randall, and 19-year-old
Moogy Klingman is a delight. Material by Mike Gayle of
the Glitterhouse,
Bernie Leadon of
the Eagles,
Aaron Neville,
Allen Toussaint,
Dylan, co-producer Earl Dowd,
Harvey Mandel, and others helps the effort live up to its billing.
Music from Free Creek is a super session album where the musicians are playing for the fun of it, and that comes across. The material doesn't get bogged down in "names"; it just flows.
–
~Joe Viglione, Rovi