Tuesday Tune.

Gerry Rafferty was a popular music giant at the end of the 1970's, thanks to the song "Baker Street" and the album City To City. His career long predated that fixture of top 40 radio, however-indeed, by the time he cut "Baker Street, " Rafferty had already been a member of two successful groups, the Humblebums and Stealers Wheel.

Gerry Rafferty was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1947, the son of a Scottish mother and an Irish father. His father was deaf but still enjoyed singing, mostly Irish rebel songs, and his early experience of music was a combination of Catholic hymns, traditional folk music, and 50's pop music. By 1968, at age 21, Rafferty was a singer-guitarist and had started trying to write songs professionally, and was looking for a gig of his own.

Enter Billy Connolly, late of Scottish bands like the Skillet-Lickers and the Acme Brush Company. Connelly was a musician and comedian, who'd found that telling jokes from the stage was as appealing an activity to him-and the audience-as making music. He'd passed through several groups looking for a niche before finally forming a duo called the Humblebums with Tam Harvey, a rock guitarist. They'd established themselves in Glasgow, and were then approached by Transatlantic, one of the more successful independent record labels in England at the time, and signed to a recording contract. After playing a show in Paisley, Rafferty approached Connelly about auditioning some of the songs he'd written. Billy Connelly was impressed not only with the songs but with their author, and suddenly the Humblebums were a trio. The Humblebums trio was a major success in England, both on stage and on record.

Rafferty and Joe Egan put together the original line-up of Stealers Wheel, which was one of the most promising (and rewarding) pop-rock outfits of the mid-1970's. Unfortunately, Stealers Wheel's line-up and legal history were complicated enough to keep various lawyers well paid for much of the middle of the decade. Rafferty was in the group, then out, then in again as the line-up kept shifting-their first album was a success, the single "Stuck In The Middle With You" a huge hit, but nothing after that clicked commercially, and by 1975 the group was history.

In 1978, Rafferty signed to United Artists Records. That year, he cut City To City, a melodic yet strangely enigmatic album that topped the charts in America, put there by the success of the song "Baker Street." The song itself was a masterpiece of pop production, Rafferty's Paul McCartney-like vocals carrying a haunting central melody with a mysterious and yearning lyric, backed by a quietly thumping bass, tinkling celeste, and understated keyboard ornamentation, and then Raphael Ravenscroft's sax, which we've had a taste of in the opening bars, rises up behind some heavily amplified electric guitars-it was sophisticated '70s pop-rock at its best [and better yet, it wasn't disco! -- author's note], and it dominated the airwaves for months in 1978, narrowly missing the No. 1 spot in England but selling millions of copies and taking up hundreds of cumulative hours of radio time.

source:paisley.org

Trivia:

• In 1997, The Simpsons featured an episode where the character Lisa Simpson plays a saxophone cover of "Baker Street".
• In 1998, The Foo Fighters recorded a hard rock cover of "Baker Street".
• He has a singing brother, Jim Rafferty, who sang a song called "The Bogeyman" in 1980 released on Charisma Records.
• He also has a singing nephew, Mark Rafferty, who released an album of funny songs mostly regarding Scottish football (Mr. Mark).
• According to Billy Connolly, Rafferty is an expert at prank telephone calls.
• Rafferty currently lives alone in London.

source:wikipedia

Whatever's Written on Your Heart

Yeah, night and day, night and day

Wakin’ up here on a rainy day
I swore last time that I would stay away
I came down here to talk to you
I said this time I might get through

I heard her speak but all the words were dead
We talked all night and left it all unsaid
So we agree to disagree
At least we’ve got our memory

(chorus)
Whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters
You’ll find a way to say it all someday, yeah
Whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters
Yeah, night and day, night and day

You’ve got your secrets, yeah, and I’ve got mine
We’ve played this game now for a long, long time
You don’t lean on anyone
You never had no place to run

You never wanted me to get too close
We love and hate the ones we need the most
I tried to find a way to you
One thing I could say to you

Whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters
You’ll find a way to say it all someday, yeah
Whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters
Yeah, night and day, night and day

Maybe I’ve always set my sights too high
You take the easy way and still get by
I know there ain’t no special way
We all get there anyway

I heard her speak but all the words were dead
We talked all night and left it all unsaid
So we agree to disagree
At least we’ve got our memory

Whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters
You’ll find a way to say it all someday, yeah
Whatever’s written in your heart, that’s all that matters
Yeah, night and day, and day
Yeah, night and day, and day
Yeah, night and day, and day
Yeah, night and day, and day
Yeah, night and day, and day
Yeah, night and day, and day
Yeah, night and day, and day

Yeah, night and day, and day... (whatever’s written in your heart)