If I Could Only Remember My Name
Encyclopedia
If I Could Only Remember My Name is the debut solo album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

 by David Crosby
David Crosby
David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...

, released in February 1971 on Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

. One of four high-profile albums released by each member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)
Crosby, Stills & Nash is a folk rock supergroup made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, also known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young when joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young...

 in the wake of their chart-topping Déjà Vu album, it peaked at #12 on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...

. It has been in print continuously since its initial release. The album gained new recognition in 2010 when it was listed second on the Vatican's "Top 10 Pop Albums of All Time" as published in the official newspaper of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano
L'Osservatore Romano
L'Osservatore Romano is the "semi-official" newspaper of the Holy See. It covers all the Pope's public activities, publishes editorials by important churchmen, and runs official documents after being released...

.

Content

A large grouping of prominent musicians from the era appear on the record, including Nash, Young, Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

, members of the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

, Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....

, and Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...

. This ad-hoc ensemble was given the moniker of "The Great Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra
Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra
The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra is a nickname given to artists who recorded together in the early 1970s. They were predominantly members of Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Their first album together was Blows Against the...

" by longtime Crosby associate Paul Kantner
Paul Kantner
Paul Lorin Kantner is an American rock musician, known for co-founding the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane and its spin-off band Jefferson Starship.- Overview :...

; many of the same musicians appeared on the latter's Blows Against The Empire
Blows Against the Empire
Blows Against the Empire is a concept album by Paul Kantner and Grace Slick, released under the name Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, the first album to use the "Starship" name, although the personnel line-up was not the same as would appear on the first actual Jefferson Starship...

, recorded concurrently with Crosby's album. The album also features the only recorded appearance of David Crosby's reclusive brother, Ethan Crosby
Ethan Crosby
Ethan Crosby was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. Brother of David Crosby of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.- Early life :...

.

Although the album garnered its share of detractors, including Crosby's then-manager David Geffen
David Geffen
David Geffen is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer and philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990...

 and influential Village Voice rock critic Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...

 and only a lukewarm review from Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....

 in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, it was a modest commercial success, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart. Two singles were taken from the album, "Music Is Love", which was released in April 1971 and peaked at #95 on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

, and "Orleans" which was released in July 1971. The album has gained in critical appreciation since its release.

The album was released on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 on October 25, 1990, having been digitally remastered from the original master tapes, using the equipment and techniques of the day, by original engineer Stephen Barncard
Stephen Barncard
Stephen Quinn Barncard is an American record producer and sound engineer. He is best known for his work producing rock albums of the 1970s, including the Grateful Dead's American Beauty and David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name.-References:***...

. A double-disc reissue appeared on November 6, 2006, with an audio disc remastered in HDCD, including a bonus track "Kids and Dogs," and a second DVD Audio disc of the original album remixed for 5.1 digital Surround Sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...

. Reviews of the most recent reissue place the album in the same influential company as the more baroque works of Nick Drake
Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...

 and Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...

.

Side one

  1. "Music Is Love" (David Crosby
    David Crosby
    David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...

    , Graham Nash
    Graham Nash
    Graham William Nash, OBE is an English singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer...

    , Neil Young
    Neil Young
    Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...

    ) – 3:16
    • Crosby - guitar
      Guitar
      The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

      , vocal; Nash - guitar, vocal; Young - guitar, bass
      Bass guitar
      The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

      , vibraphone
      Vibraphone
      The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....

      , congas, vocal
  2. "Cowboy Movie" (Crosby) – 8:02
    • Crosby - electric guitar
      Electric guitar
      An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

      , vocal; Jerry Garcia
      Jerry Garcia
      Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

       - electric guitar; Phil Lesh
      Phil Lesh
      Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career....

       - bass; Mickey Hart
      Mickey Hart
      Mickey Hart is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995...

       - drums
      Drum kit
      A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

      ; Bill Kreutzmann
      Bill Kreutzmann
      Bill Kreutzmann is an American drummer who played with the rock band the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career...

       - tambourine
      Tambourine
      The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....

  3. "Tamalpais High (At About 3)" (Crosby) – 3:29
    • Crosby - electric guitar, vocals; Nash - vocals; Jorma Kaukonen
      Jorma Kaukonen
      Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen Jr. is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist, best known for his work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.-Biography:...

       - electric guitar; Garcia - electric guitar; Lesh - bass; Kreutzmann - drums
  4. "Laughing" (Crosby) – 5:20
    • Crosby - guitars, vocal; Garcia - pedal steel guitar
      Pedal steel guitar
      The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...

      ; Lesh - bass; Kreutzmann - drums; Nash, Joni Mitchell
      Joni Mitchell
      Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

       - vocals

Side two

  1. "What Are Their Names" (Crosby, Garcia, Lesh, Michael Shrieve
    Michael Shrieve
    Michael Shrieve is an American drummer, percussionist, and later, an electronic music composer. He is best known as the drummer in Carlos Santana's eponymous band, playing on their first eight albums from 1969 through 1974...

    , Young) – 4:09
    • Crosby - electric guitar, vocal; Young - electric guitar, vocal; Garcia - electric guitar, vocal; Lesh - bass, vocal; Shrieve - drums; Nash, Mitchell, David Freiberg
      David Freiberg
      David Freiberg is an American musician. He was vocalist and/or bass guitar player with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship.-Career:...

      , Paul Kantner
      Paul Kantner
      Paul Lorin Kantner is an American rock musician, known for co-founding the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane and its spin-off band Jefferson Starship.- Overview :...

      , Grace Slick
      Grace Slick
      Grace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...

       - vocals
  2. "Traction in the Rain" (Crosby) – 3:40
    • Crosby - guitar, vocal; Nash - vocal; Laura Allan - autoharp
      Autoharp
      The autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers, which, when depressed, mute all of the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a chorded zither. -History:There is debate over the...

      , vocal
  3. "Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves)" (Crosby) – 5:53
    • Crosby - electric guitar, vocals; Nash - vocals; Gregg Rolie
      Gregg Rolie
      Gregg Alan Rolie is an American keyboardist, organist, and singer, who is one of the founding members of the bands Santana, The Storm, Abraxas Pool and Journey, for whom he was the original lead singer. He currently performs with his Gregg Rolie Band...

       – piano
      Piano
      The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

      ; Garcia - electric guitar; Kaukonen - electric guitar; Jack Casady
      Jack Casady
      Jack Casady , is an American musician considered one of the foremost bass guitarists of the rock music era and best known as a member of Jefferson Airplane. First playing as a lead guitarist with the Washington D.C...

       – bass; Shrieve – drums
  4. "Orleans" (traditional) – 1:56
    • Crosby - guitars, vocals
  5. "I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here" (Crosby) – 1:19
    • Crosby - vocals

Personnel

  • David Crosby
    David Crosby
    David Van Cortlandt Crosby is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of three bands: The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash , and CPR...

     – guitars, vocals
  • Laura Allan - autoharp, vocal
  • Jack Casady
    Jack Casady
    Jack Casady , is an American musician considered one of the foremost bass guitarists of the rock music era and best known as a member of Jefferson Airplane. First playing as a lead guitarist with the Washington D.C...

     - bass
  • David Freiberg
    David Freiberg
    David Freiberg is an American musician. He was vocalist and/or bass guitar player with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship.-Career:...

     - vocal
  • Jerry Garcia
    Jerry Garcia
    Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

     – guitars, pedal steel guitar, vocal
  • Mickey Hart
    Mickey Hart
    Mickey Hart is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995...

     – drums
  • Paul Kantner
    Paul Kantner
    Paul Lorin Kantner is an American rock musician, known for co-founding the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane and its spin-off band Jefferson Starship.- Overview :...

     - vocal
  • Bill Kreutzmann
    Bill Kreutzmann
    Bill Kreutzmann is an American drummer who played with the rock band the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career...

     – drums, tambourine
  • Phil Lesh
    Phil Lesh
    Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career....

     – bass, vocal
  • Joni Mitchell
    Joni Mitchell
    Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

     - vocals
  • Graham Nash
    Graham Nash
    Graham William Nash, OBE is an English singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer...

     – guitar, vocals
  • Gregg Rolie
    Gregg Rolie
    Gregg Alan Rolie is an American keyboardist, organist, and singer, who is one of the founding members of the bands Santana, The Storm, Abraxas Pool and Journey, for whom he was the original lead singer. He currently performs with his Gregg Rolie Band...

     - piano
  • Michael Shrieve
    Michael Shrieve
    Michael Shrieve is an American drummer, percussionist, and later, an electronic music composer. He is best known as the drummer in Carlos Santana's eponymous band, playing on their first eight albums from 1969 through 1974...

     - drums
  • Grace Slick
    Grace Slick
    Grace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...

     - vocal
  • Neil Young
    Neil Young
    Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...

     – guitars, bass, vibraphone, congas, vocals

Production

  • Stephen Barncard
    Stephen Barncard
    Stephen Quinn Barncard is an American record producer and sound engineer. He is best known for his work producing rock albums of the 1970s, including the Grateful Dead's American Beauty and David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name.-References:***...

    , engineer, digital remastering producer
  • Ellen Burke, assistant engineer
  • Gary Burden
    Gary Burden
    Gary Burden is an American artist specializing in the field of album covers. He is considered as one of the pioneers of the concept of album cover art. In the 1960s and '70s he designed covers for many rock stars, such as Mama Cass, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, The Eagles...

    , art direction
  • Henry Diltz
    Henry Diltz
    Henry Stanford Diltz is a folk musician and photographer, who has been active since the 1960s....

    , photography
  • Elliot Roberts
    Elliot Roberts
    Elliot Roberts is an American music manager, record executive, and philanthropist, best known for helping start the careers of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell....

     & Ronald Stone, management
  • David Geffen
    David Geffen
    David Geffen is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer and philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990...

    , direction
  • Bill Dooley, digital mastering engineer

External links

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