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were right there along with them. We were told by radio we were too country for rock and too rock for country. It made it hard to get some decent air play until 1979 when we finally did. So it was quite an effort. It finally got enough for Richie Furay to just say “I’ve had it. I need to move on.” And now he’s a solo artist. And yeah, it finally got to him. We thought we had a hit way back in ‘72 with “It’s a Good Feel- ing to Know.” Tat’s our anthem.
Cotton and the Big Kahuna Paul Cotton | Continued
ing member? So many of their hits became songs that you actually wrote and arranged. PC:Tank you for saying that. I did have some luck there. It took a while. Tey wanted a harder edge to the music, and that’s what I kinda brought to them. I was more of a rock’n’roller than a Bakersfield kind of guitar player and that style.
GD:Was that more of the Jim Messina style that you replaced? PC: Yes, completly the opposite of guitar world. Yeah. But that’s what they were looking for. Tey were looking for a huskier, lower voice. Tey had all the higher voices, but they had no one singing harmonies or writing songs in lower keys. And that was my forte.
GD: If you had to describe the Poco music in the ‘70s that you con- tributed to, how do you describe that? Tere were the other groups that were very big when harmony came about — Crosby, the Birds and then eventually also the Eagles were there. PC: All great fans of ours. Well, we
GD: Yeah, quite a few of the songs if you go back and listen — like “Crazy Love,” “Te Heart of the Night,” and “Keep on Trying” — that was sort of the more edgy look that you thought you were bringing to them. But right in ‘78, ‘79, when the band really became the biggest, you were saying Richie Furay had already left the band. PC: Yes, he had already left the band — three or four albums before that actually. Yeah, we had a lot of Top 40, Top 60 hits back when there were those kind of charts on the radio. And then, bingo!, a little station down in Appleton, Wiscon- sin, started playing “Crazy Love” and the whole country jumped on it. And that became our first solid No. 1 hit all over the country.
GD: Just when it gets the biggest, it’s also the end of Poco? PC:Well, we continued for 20 more years.
GD: But not as a full-time band, right? PC:Well, it kind of was off-and-on in the ’80s when we moved to Nashville, and we were trying to be- come part of the scene down there. But it wasn’t recognized there ei- ther, and we ended up back on the road again. All through the ‘90s on the road. Didn’t make any records in the ‘90s until towards the end. But I made solo albums.
20 KONK Life
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