Guess Who- American Woman 55th- Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman

If you have not listened to the Guess Who’s January 1970 classic American Woman in quite awhile, I predict you will be amazed at how strong the songs were, such as “No Sugar Tonight”; how environmentally aware lyricist/gifted singer Burton Cummings was on “New Mother Nature” and “Hand Me Down World”; and how rockin’ Randy Bachman could complement Cummings’ pop side on “American Woman” and before that, “No Time”. So why did Bachman leave at the Guess Who’s peak?

If you lived within five hundred miles of Chicago, Detroit, or Toronto between 1968 and 1972, seemingly there wasn’t a day when the Winnepeg band The Guess Who didn’t have a hit song on the radio:”These Eyes”,”Laughing”,”Undun”,”No Time”,”No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature”,”American Woman”, all written by terrific singer/pianist Burton Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman. Even after Bachman left, the hits continued for the Guess Who with the eco-aware “Hand Me Down World” and “Share the Land”. Both Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman take the guesswork out of popular myth and tell me the real story here In the Studio.

A postscript to what we believed to be the entirety of the recorded Guess Who projects: a four-channel Quadrophonic surround mix of the Best of the Guess Who  has been released. Now as you can surmise, not every one of their earliest hits benefits from the long-ago SQ/QS attempts intended for four-channel records in the early Seventies, but the title song to American Woman, plus “No Time”, “No Sugar Tonight” and “Share the Land” in quad certainly were worth the wait. And speaking of interminable waits, The Guess Who have been eligible for nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for  thirty-five years. Guess how many times they have been nominated? Nada, zippo, not even once.- Redbeard