Andy Fraser - July 3, 1952 - March 16, 2015

Another year flies by, and I'm back giving a word about Andy - now gone a frightening nine years! Wow, that kinda stopped me in my tracks. Busy here dealing with the new FAS magazine at the moment, and as I'm at the point where Andy leaves Free, I've been thinking about what he did after that quite a bit. The 'AFB' album has always been a favourite but some of the songs other people picked up is also interesting.

Robert Palmer had a huge US hit with Fraser's 'Every Kinda People', and what a great song that is, but LONG before that he sang with Vinegar Joe, and they covered Andy's 'Talkin' 'Bout My Baby'. This was included on their excellent 'Six Star General' LP in 1973. In my opinion (for what it's worth) Vinegar Joe swung between being very, very good, and really, really bad. Fortunately, this version of the Fraser song falls into the former, and is excellent. Palmer may be right at the top of his range, but this is fantastic stuff, and really does ring of the 'AFB' sound, even though it pre-dates that trio substantially. They've obviously copied Andy's demo pretty closely, and the bass here is great

It's also interesting to remember that VERY briefly in November 1973 Palmer, Fraser and Kossoff almost had a group together, and did have a few rehearsals. This song was included there (also 'On Your Way Down', written Allen Toussaint and covered by Little Feat, who played with Palmer on his first solo albums), but other than a few rough recordings (rehearsals at Basing Street), nothing was finished, and they all moved on to other things. So today, if you've never heard it, here's the Vinegar Joe version of Andy's song. Great stuff.