They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

At the time, did you consider yourself to be a Baroque popper?

No… to put myself in a category, okay, pop, yeah, definitely pop. But ‘Brrr-roke?’ Come to think of it, I was brrrroke my whole life! Yeah, a brrrrrrrroke popper! That’s exactly what I am! — Emitt Rhodes, in a 2010 interview

If you want the prototypical example of a record company killing the goose that laid the golden egg, look no further than the story of Emitt Rhodes. An incredibly talented teen who’d had a couple local hits with his band the Merry-Go-Round, Rhodes released a self-titled album in 1970 that featured him on all vocals and instruments, and which earned favorable comparisons to Paul McCartney’s similar one-man-band home-recorded solo debut released earlier that same year. But after that, the suits stepped in, and it was all downhill.
Continue reading »