Audio Autopsy, 1973: Bonnie Raitt, "Takin' My Time" LP: Collab with Andres of The Vinyl Room
When Andy told me he loved Bonnie's 3rd album, I had to try and arrange a collab of some sort! I loved Bonnie, in real time, from her 1971 start (I was 16), and even met her the following year!
Here’s the 2 1/2-minute clip of Bonnie being feted at the Kennedy Center Honors, late 2024. Enjoy her entire 22-minute tribute, with her many musician friends joining in, at the end of this article.
Bonnie Raitt was born on November 8, 1949, in Burbank, California, not far from her eventual first record label home, Warner Bros., in beautiful downtown Burbank! Her mother was a piano player, and her father, John Raitt, was a world-renowned actor and singer in musical productions like Oklahoma! and The Pajama Game.
John Raitt’s job as a theatre actor meant that Bonnie did not interact with him as much as she would have liked. She came to resent her mother, who became the main authority figure in the family whenever John was away, according to Mark Bego’s Bonnie Raitt: Just in the Nick of Time (1995).
As a child, Bonnie would often play with her two brothers, Steve and David, and was a self-described tomboy.
As a 13-year-old in 1968, there was no way I could relate to, or even be particularly attracted to, say, Janis Joplin’s truly rough-edged and bluesy persona. Bonnie, especially by the time I met her in ‘72 at 17 with two albums as her introduction? That’s another story, and one I enjoy telling!
Bonnie’s creative journey began at age 8 when she was given a Stella guitar (like the one pictured above) as a Christmas present.
As a teenager, Raitt was self-conscious about her weight and her freckles, and saw music as an escape from reality. “That was my saving grace. I just sat in my room and played my guitar,” Raitt revealed to Mark Bego. At age 14, she listened to the album, Blues at Newport 63, which instilled an interest in blues music and the slide guitar technique.
Jumping ahead later in the decade (in the “Janis Joplin era,” as it happens…and, from her personal website bio): In the late ’60s, and restless at home, she moved east to Cambridge, Mass. As a Harvard/Radcliffe student majoring in Social Relations and African Studies, she attended classes and immersed herself in the city’s turbulent cultural and political activities.
“I couldn’t wait to get back to where there were folkies and the antiwar and civil rights movements,” she says. “There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late-’60s in Cambridge.” Also, she adds with a chuckle, “the ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind.”
Three years after entering college, Bonnie left to commit herself full-time to music, and soon found herself opening for some of the surviving blues giants: From Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Sippie Wallace, she learned first-hand lessons of life, as well as invaluable techniques of performance.
Jumping ahead a decade, here’s a clip of Bonnie and the 84-year-old Sippie Wallace (she’d pass away 4 years later) on Late Night with David Letterman on April 27, 1982 (just finishing the show’s third month in its initial late-night NBC iteration). Bonnie performs Terry Adams’ (NRBQ) “Me and the Boys” from her just-released 8th album, Green Light.
Dave then interviews Bonnie and Ms. Wallace, and the two roar through Sippie’s “Women Be Wise” (which Bonnie recorded on her ‘71 debut), with Dr. John on piano:
“I’m certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who’ve ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids,” she says. “I was especially lucky as so many of them are no longer with us.”
Returning to her early-’70s beginning, word spread quickly of the young “red-haired blueswoman” and her soulful, unaffected way of singing, as well as her uncanny insights into blues guitar.
Warner Bros. tracked her down, signed her up, and in November, 1971 (right around her 22nd birthday) released her debut album, Bonnie Raitt (produced by 28-year-old Willie Murphy, a regular on the late-’60s folk circuit with John Koerner, who was a key early mentor to the young Bob Dylan).
Houston radio station ad-exec Dad would bring home promo albums from the station on a regular basis. I had been weaned, quite gloriously, since age 13 in ‘68, on the early albums by such eventual legends as Frank Zappa, Jethro Tull, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and many more from the Warner Bros./Reprise Records catalog, every one during the week they were originally released.
In the late fall of 1971, I was a high school junior, and had no idea who this Bonnie “Ray-itt” (as I first pronounced her name) was when Dad dropped off her debut to my bedroom! I had nothing to go on, other than the liner notes, and whatever Barry Hansen (aka Dr. Demento a few years later) might’ve said about her or the album in the weekly Warners Circular promo piece (made available to radio personnel and record industry types). Needle down on Side One, track one, Stephen Stills’ “Bluebird”:
Click here to hear the song via YouTube video!
I was initially struck by the unusual, but happy guitar sound she was using at the start. By the time the piano glissando led us to her singing, I was drawn to her voice…warm and inviting, and not trying to do too much. By the last third of the song, it sounded like a party I was happy to be a part of! Plus, I was familiar with the Stills name, from having bought and enjoyed the first Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young albums.
Bonnie’s interpretations of classic blues by Robert Johnson and Sippie Wallace on her debut made a powerful critical impression, but her adding intriguing tunes by contemporary songwriters, as well as some of her own writing, hinted that she would not be restricted to any one genre or style going forward.
Give It Up followed in September, 1972, produced by Michael Cuscuna, a writer and jazz producer. While I enjoyed her debut, Give It Up was the one that I really fell in love with, and with it, discovered a new female singer I truly enjoyed. By this time, Carole King’s Tapestry had been released, and I was hearing and loving her hits on the radio (Dad wasn’t bringing home A&M/Ode Records!).
Joni Mitchell’s Reprise albums I was getting from Dad, but where she seemed a little arch, icy, and too poetic for this teen boy, I was really starting to enjoy Bonnie, whose music seemed as warm and enveloping as Joni’s was a little too chilly to the touch.
“Overall, Give It Up has a smoother, more polished sound than its predecessor,” asserted our friend, Mark Bego. A Bonnie original led off the album, and it became a live raver, and was the first song to make me adore her latest collection. It may have also been the first song to actually make me laugh out loud, just from the sheer fun of hearing a song!
October 1973: Takin’ My Time Released
“When I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which I had gone to as a fan — it was unbelievable to me. It would continue to be unbelievable until about my third album [Takin’ My Time].
“I kept waiting for Warner Bros. to say, ‘OK, that was fun, but you’re not selling, so see you later.’ But, I signed with them because they didn’t care about selling. They said make whatever record you want and we’ll make our money from Deep Purple and Black Sabbath.”—Bonnie Raitt, from a recent interview found online.
Takin’ My Time: The Reviews
Robert Christgau, in his Consumer’s Guide ‘70s: “I hear people asking when Bonnie is going to do something new, but conveying songs from Calypso Rose and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas into the women’s music of the ‘70s is new enough for me.”
Vik Iyengar, Allmusic.com: “This album is an overlooked gem in the catalog of Bonnie Raitt. On Takin’ My Time, she wears her influences proudly in an eclectic musical mix. Although she did not write her own material for this album, she demonstrates an excellent ear for songs and chooses material from some of the best songwriters of the day.”
“She is a great interpreter, and her renditions of Jackson Browne’s “I Thought I Was a Child” (above…click here for the song on YouTube) and Randy Newman’s “Guilty” (below…click here for YouTube) from this album are the definitive versions of these songs.”
“The highlights of this album are the romantic ballads ‘I Gave My Love a Candle’ and ‘Cry Like a Rainstorm,’ where Raitt adds an emotional depth to the performance unusual for such a young woman. (Perhaps that’s a result of her spending time with elder statesmen of the blues community such as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace).
“Despite being a relative newcomer, Raitt had already earned the respect of her mentors and her peers, as evidenced by the musical contributions of Taj Mahal, and Little Feat members Lowell George and Bill Payne on the album. This is the last consistent album she would make until her comeback in the mid-’80s.”
My collaborator for this piece, Andy, reveals how his love of the blues was born and grew, in an article he wrote early in 2025:
Andres of The Vinyl Room and How He Discovered Bonnie and Takin’ My Time
The year was 2011. I was in my early twenties, in my penultimate year of university, while working 40 hours a week to support my studies. Life was hectic. Nightlife was wild. But music never really left my side.
I only knew about Bonnie Raitt vicariously, courtesy of other artists who had covered her smashing hit, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”.
The melancholy in her voice pulled me in like a magnet, so I decided to explore her discography a bit more. When I stumbled upon her third studio album, Takin’ My Time, something strange happened.
I should clarify at this point that I’m not precisely the most open-minded person when it comes to new (or new-to-me) music, let alone when it comes to vocals. Think Simon Cowell critiquing singers at a talent show: similar expectations, accent and snark, minus the cruelty. In other words, I may say things more nicely than Simon, but I am still impossible.
Feed a child on vocalists of the technical stature of Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, George Michael, Aretha Franklin, Freddie Mercury and B. B. King, and you’ll reap mini-Simon Cowells catching trains and buses from work to class and from class to bars and from bars to afterparties, critiquing singers in their head while trying to make ends meet, dreaming of a better life!
But I digress.
It must have been Bonnie’s pitch accuracy and vocal control, a rarity among her contemporaries. Or maybe it was that sweet longing, that genuine melancholy in her voice which had captivated me in the first place. The bluesy vibes certainly went a long way.
Whatever it was, there was something on that album that changed me. For good. Forever.
It’s a powerful record, and I don’t exaggerate when I say that every single track could have been a single. There’s some urgency to it, like she had a lot of interesting stories to tell, but she masterfully managed to squeeze them all in under 40 minutes.
The genres are varied enough to keep you on your toes: blues, folk, jazz, rhythm and blues, even some calypso. But, all these elements blend beautifully into a coherent narrative where nothing feels out of place and yet you’re still left craving more.
Importantly, the record isn’t some rushed affair. It’s soothing. Relaxing. Therapeutic.
It was on heavy rotation during my endless commutes as I burned the candle on both ends. It calmed me down, kept me company, and made for an unusual addition to my otherwise electrifying, high-octave-heavy, vocal-acrobatic-prone repertoire of choice.
Above all, perhaps, it was a great antidote to my hazy, frenzied, work-hard-play-hard permanent state of being at the time.
I remember winding down after long days and long(er) nights as I listened to Joel Zoss’s “I Gave My Love A Candle” (above; click here for YouTube audio of the song) and Eric Kaz’s “Cry Like A Rainstorm” (below; click here for YouTube audio) on my headphones on the bus or train ride back home.
I have this vivid image of me looking out the window, blinding city lights giving way to sunrise, fully aware of how messy certain aspects of my life were at the time, but having a strange sense of hope for the future.
“Everybody’s Crying Mercy” (above, written by jazz pianist, Mose Allison; click here for YouTube audio) and “I Feel The Same” (below, written by folk/blues singer, Chris Smither; click here for YouTube audio) were usually on heavy rotation on my way to a night out. These songs are not precisely club bangers, but bluesy chords and sensual vibes have always talked to me in ways the latest techno or EDM hit could never.
The song I connected with the most, though, is “Guilty” (YouTube audio just below), the final track on the album. It’s a Randy Newman cover and, while Bonnie remains faithful to the structure, timeless melody and confession-style storytelling of the original, she gives it an interesting twist by adding her own cadence to it and making the story truly her own.
Every single word in that song resonated with me so much that I wish I had written it myself. It truly felt as if someone had uncovered the darkest, deepest, most hidden away places of my soul and laid them bare for all to see. It was as if some sort of detective had watched me for a couple of days and then confronted me with uncomfortable truths which I needed to face but I couldn’t have verbalized on my own.
This song in particular has certainly helped me heal and make amends with some decisions I made during those troubled times:
The entire album evokes, for me, such strong memories of that particular time in my life. Every time I listen to it, I am instantly transported to the mad days of my youth, like an unofficial soundtrack that will inadvertently confront you with your past… all of it, yes, including those places, things, people and events you would rather brush under the carpet.
I can’t think of many other records that have this instant power of taking me back where I once belonged.
How would I describe this record to someone who’s yet to discover it? Melancholic, sensual, a bit sassy. Elegant, yes, but refreshingly frank. Unceremoniously unadorned, yet irresistibly charming. Troubled but hopeful.
Which is not too dissimilar to how my friends and family would describe that wild early twenties version of me, wandering around life in a constant state of hangover and sleep-deprivation, catching trains and buses, living on the fast lane, making the most of the time he was given.
 | A guest post by
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My expectations were high, but you have exceeded them so much that I am genuinely, truthfully speechless (which doesn't happen very often 😅). It was a tremendous honour to collaborate with you once again. I find it really moving that, across different generations, continents, contexts, life experiences and a million etceteras, we both stumbled upon Bonnie; you, early on in the game, and from the vicinity; me, much later, from far afield. And yet, the fact we both felt comforted, embraced, sort of, by her voice and her music says so much about her brilliance as an artist, musician and peformer (and although I haven't, unlike you, met her, I am pretty confident we can certainly add "person" to the list).
It was particularly interesting and informative for me to learn, in this article, about her early life and her career beginnings, especially her experience opening for blues legends, and what she said about how much she absorbed from them (not only as musicians but also as individuals). Come to think of it, she sounded already SO seasoned on this, her third effort, in genres and in contexts where women had to work twice as hard (sadly still the case, but especially at the time).
Brad, what an absolute pleasure to be your friend, and what a blessing to have met you. Thank you!!!
I missed this because it came out when I was still very new to Substack. Perfect time to bring it back. Great work!