Words And Music

by Margo Guryan

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$62 USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
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1.	If I Lose 01:22	buy track
2.	You Promised 01:40	buy track
3.	The Wise Man 01:55	buy track
4.	The Morning AfterThe Morning After 05:27	buy track
5.	Moon Ride 02:52	buy track
6.	More Understanding Than a Man 03:18	buy track
7.	More Understanding Than a Man (Instrumental) 02:03	buy track
8.	There I Was 02:05	buy track
9.	Kiss & Tell 02:47	buy track
10.	Halfway In Love 02:18	buy track
11.	Goodbye July 02:30	buy track
12.	Four Letter Words 01:36	buy track
13.	Hurry On Home 01:57	buy track
14.	I Ought To Stay Away You 02:41	buy track
15.	I Love 02:08	buy track
16.	Under My Umbrella 02:01	buy track
17.	I Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You 02:19	buy track
18.	Sunday Morning 02:20	buy track
19.	Thoughts 02:14	buy track
20.	Love Songs 02:53	buy track
21.	Don't Go Away 02:04	buy track
22.	Take A Picture 03:08	buy track
23.	Sun 02:35	buy track
24.	What Can I Give You 02:20	buy track
25.	Come To Me Slowly 02:27	buy track
26.	The 8.17 Northbound Success Merry-Go-Round 02:10	buy track
27.	Something's Wrong With The Morning 01:44	buy track
28.	Think Of Rain 02:25	buy track
29.	Can You Tell 02:33	buy track
30.	Someone I Know 02:45	buy track
31.	Love 05:27	buy track
32.	Why Do I Cry 02:14	buy track
33.	Spanky And Our Gang 02:04	buy track
34.	Most Of My Life 02:11	buy track
35.	It's Alright Now 02:02	buy track
36.	Timothy Gone 01:44	buy track
37.	The Hum 02:44	buy track
38.	Please Believe Me 03:54	buy track
39.	Yes I Am 03:16	buy track
40.	I Think A Lot About You 02:17	buy track
41.	I’d Like To See The Bad Guys Win 01:42	buy track
42.	Values 02:32	buy track
43.	California Shake 03:28	buy track
44.	Hold Me Dancin' 02:54	buy track
45.	Shine 03:02	buy track
46.	Goodbye July 03:53	buy track

about

Witness to revolutions in jazz and pop, Margo Guryan earned her place in the songwriting pantheon and then some. That she was largely unknown for decades is not the stuff of crushed dreams, but a result of her own choices and priorities. From humble beginnings to the peaks of her 1968 baroque pop masterpiece Take a Picture and the collected Demos to the recent viral ubiquity of “Why Do I Cry”, Words and Music captures the entirety of Guryan’s career, featuring 16 previously unreleased recordings and a 32-page booklet telling the whole story.

Guryan released just one album in her heyday: 1968’s Take A Picture. But, as Margo was disinterested in performing, touring, and promoting the work, the album went barely noticed at the time. Nevertheless, by the 1990s, the record had become a highly sought after cult favorite. Then, a new generation of listeners came to learn about her work when Take A Picture was reissued in 2000, followed shortly thereafter by the collected 27 Demos, supervised by Margo herself, an incredible compilation of unearthed alternate takes and new-to-the-public songs. Guryan’s life in the intervening years remained filled with music; she became a music teacher, kept writing songs, and cultivated friendships with a growing circle of acolytes.

Her early tunes were recorded by bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, bossa nova icon Astrud Gilberto, the famed South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, and folk hero Harry Belafonte. Jazz singers Anita O'Day and Carmen McRae all released takes on her material, as did pop singer Claudine Longet and folk-rock icon Mama Cass Elliot. "Sunday Morning," Margo's biggest hit, was first popularized by soft-rockers Spanky & Our Gang, followed by recordings from torch singer Julie London and country royalty Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry. In 1967, Billboard called Margo "one of the most sought-after writing talents in the music business."

Born in 1937 in New York City, Guryan began learning piano at age six before eventually enrolling at Boston University to study music. She spent much of her early career immersed in the jazz world, including working for Impulse! founder Creed Taylor, writing for jazz artists, and attending Lenox School of Jazz in Western Massachusetts, where she worked in an ensemble alongside fellow students Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Her peers were, at that very moment, exploding the consciousness of jazz. Margo, a then-recent graduate in composition, had once been told that the highest mode of education is perception. So she mostly lingered and listened. It was at Lenox where Margo became friends with her teacher, Max Roach, who in 1961 even asked Margo to pen the liner notes for his first Impulse! album.

The story of Margo Guryan is one of a woman who dug deep from an early age and was never afraid to change. With her keen feel for tone, phrasings, tension, presence, and lyrics that cut, her name today is synonymous with sophisticated songcraft and inimitable 1960s cool.Her ingenuity and technique set her in the tradition of chamber-pop icons like Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach while the bittersweet candor in her depictions of womanhood suggest a middleground between Carole King's pop-factory and singer-songwriter eras. But the understated rigor of Margo's artistic voice is all her own.

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released June 7, 2024

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Margo Guryan Los Angeles, California

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