Music City Recorders, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Producer: Pete Drake
Engineer: Scotty Moore
Beaucoups Of Blues, Ringo Starr’s second solo album, was recorded over a three-day period in Nashville, Tennessee, in June 1970.
Starr left the UK on 22 June 1970 to travel to the USA. He returned on 1 July, having completed the album recordings.
George was making an album and I sent my car for this steel guitarist and producer Pete Drake, from Nashville. So Pete Came and he noticed in my car I had all these country tapes. I don’t know why he was shocked at this but he goes, ‘Wow, you’ve got all these country tapes!’ ‘Yeah. I love country music.’ He said, ‘Well, why don’t you come to Nashville and we’ll make a record?’ Furthest thing from my mind. And I said, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to Nashville for months to make a record.’ With The Beatles I was so used to months and months making a record. He said, ‘What are you talking about? We did [Bob Dylan’s] Nashville Skyline in a day,’ or whatever. Couple of hours! ‘Oh, OK.’ So I flew to Nashville because of him and we did Beaucoups Of Blues. And we actually did it in two days [sic]. Far out. We picked and learned five songs in the morning and we recorded five songs at night, and had a lot of fun in between. But these were all starters, I felt for getting me back on my feet.
Mojo, July 2001
Two sessions took place on each day: from 6-9pm, and 10pm to 1am the following morning.
The first sessions were on Thursday 25 June 1970. From 6pm the musicians worked on two songs: ‘Woman Of The Night’ and ‘Without Her’, both written by guitarist Sorrells Pickard.
Three songs were recorded during the late night session: ‘Beaucoups Of Blues’ by Buzz Rabin; and ‘Love Don’t Last Long’ and ‘Waiting’ by Chuck Howard. Pickard and Howard both played guitar on the album recordings.