Craig Doerge

Craig Doerge (pronounced "Durgie") already had a good collection of credits as a session keyboard player when Columbia Records released his self-titled debut solo album in the summer of 1972. Then recently, he had appeared on Jackson Browne's self-titled debut solo album and on the first Graham Nash/David Crosby album, Graham Nash/David Crosby. He had also been a member of Rosebud, a group that included Judy Henske and Jerry Yester, which had made a self-titled album for Reprise Records the year before, after which Henske divorced Yester and took up with Doerge. The two collaborated on songs, Henske writing lyrics and Doerge music, and "Yellow Beach Umbrella" (later covered by Three Dog Night and Bette Midler) caught the ear of Columbia president Clive Davis, resulting in this album. As one might expect of an A-list session musician, the playing was impeccable, with such high-profile guests as Larry Carlton, Jim Keltner, Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and David Spinozza sitting in. The estimable Peter Matz wrote orchestrations, and jazz greats Ray Brown and Harry "Sweets" Edison played on the closing track, "Raggedy Ann." Doerge's own keyboard work was typically impressive. He turned out to be a competent singer, but he had a relatively generic-sounding voice that seemed more suited to background singing than lead work. (It would have been interesting to hear what Henske, whose big voice is anything but generic, might have done with her own lyrics instead.) The songs were pleasant and entertaining, but not enough to establish Doerge in the singer/songwriter sweepstakes of 1972, where the bar had just been raised by Browne's emergence. Instead, after the album failed commercially, Doerge fell back on his considerable chops, forming the all-star session band the Section with Kortchmar, Kunkel, and Sklar, and backing more successful figures in the Los Angeles soft rock scene, such as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Browne, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. (There are several pseudonyms among the background singer credits. "Wedge Majestic" is really David Lindley; "Lily Heart" is Henske; and, although it's not clear why, Doerge himself is credited as "Napoleon Smith.") ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide