Gentle Soul

Mild Soul were the singing-songwriting duo of Pamela Polland and Rick Stanley, and produced 1 LP for Epic in 1968 that bridged the folk-rock and singer/songwriter-soft rock eras. The self-titled recording, despite developing on a significant label, is incredibly rare, and hasn’t been released on CD. Made by Terry Melcher (the Byrds, Paul Revere & the Raiders), it experienced a significant stellar supporting solid of session music artists, including Ry Cooder on acoustic guitar, Vehicle Dyke Parks on harpsichord, Paul Horn on flute, and Larry Knechtel (later on a founding person in Breads) on body organ, plus mentioned arranger Jack port Nitzsche. A good, though not main, effort, it had been indeed a mild record, generally paced from the close male-female harmonies of Polland and Stanley; in addition they wrote a lot of the tunes, usually however, not constantly as a group. The folky and acoustic-flavored, however, not totally acoustic, atmosphere and harmonies recalled the Rock Poneys. The total amount between male and feminine vocals, nevertheless, was naturally a lot more actually than it had been using the Rock Poneys, who have been dominated by Linda Ronstadt actually on the figures with tranquility lead vocals. Another research point, though a lot more obscure, will be the Bay Region folk-rock duo Blackburn and Snow, although Mild Soul were even more subdued, actually foreshadowing the gentle rock of the first ’70s. Ahead of Soft Spirit, Pamela Polland acquired already begun to determine herself being a folk-rock songwriter, putting her compositions using the Increasing Sons (“Tulsa State”) and, as a matter of known fact, the Rock Poneys, who do her “I’ve Surely got to Know” on the second record. (“Tulsa State” was afterwards included in the Byrds and Jesse Ed Davis.) She and Stanley documented two singles for Columbia, “Inform Me Like” and “Our Country wide Anthem” before the release from the Epic LP. Soft Soul were jointly for about 3 years, where they employed several music artists as accompanists, including Jackson Browne (who in fact changed Stanley for a limited period, though he hardly ever recorded using the group) and drummer Sanford Konikoff (who acquired performed briefly with Bob Dylan within the middle-’60s). Epic couldn’t possess promoted them extremely heavily, though. Not merely is the record scarce, however the label didn’t also list Polland and Stanley’s brands over the sleeve, although a minimum of there was an image, and the brands “P. Polland” and “R. Stanley” dominated the songwriting credits. Polland documented solo materials for Columbia within the ’70s, and was still documenting within the ’90s.