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Posted by Paul Griggs on June 5, 2008, 7:33 pm
81.154.15.159
I've just unearthed another piece of Lonnie memorabillia which may be of interest. The Mule Skinner Blues album was originally going to be called "The Rock Island Line Rolls On" and was scheduled for release on the Carlton label in 1996 to celebrate forty years since the title track was a hit. Because of my personal interest in the album (I wrote one of the songs) I contacted Carlton who sent me a demo cassette of the entire album plus the promotion flyer that was to be sent to dealers. There were initially sixteen songs on the album.
There seemed to be delay after delay with the release of the album and I spoke to Lonnie from time to time but even he couldn't explain the problem, until November 1996 when he told me that there had been major changes at Carlton. A large number of staff had been made redundant and they were no longer going to release full price albums but concentrate on budget reissues. This meant that Lonnie was looking for a new outlet for the album. Eventually Donal Gallagher secured the release on BMG and the album was released in January 2000. It was now a fourteen track album as two of the songs "Across the Bay" and "You're Already Gone" were left off.
I've just re-listened to these two tracks and they are not that memorable, they're both ballads and when I played the second one it was so similar to the first that I thought I had mis-wound the cassette.
I've scanned the flyer and it's on page four of my memorabillia so you can see how the cover would have looked if the Carlton release had gone ahead.
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